Israel, Palestine & the Levant rolling events: Oct 23 on

Merry Christmas:

This is a battle, not only of Israel against these barbarians, it's a battle of civilization against barbarism. And I know in this that we have your support.

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) December 24, 2023

Video of Israeli forces invading and destroying a stadium in Gaza, turning it into a detention camp. There are reportedly hundreds of Palestinians being held under horrific conditions in this stadium alone, stripped naked and abused. This includes men, women, children and elders. pic.twitter.com/BhtCQZwP8p

— Good Shepherd Collective (@Shepherds4Good) December 25, 2023

Tell me once again this isn't ethnic cleansing.

Feel like I'm losing my fucking mind that Israel's actions aren't being seen as exactly what they are: the genocidal rampages of a racist, ethno-religious fascist state asserting its power over a population it has immiserated after colonizing.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, justifies what is going on.

That fucking Clash of Civilizations crap is so infuriating. People are alive. Civilizations are just loose aggregations of ideas and cultural artifacts within which people do their living. They just happen and they contain about as much harmful nonsense as they do good stuff. What matters is the people in them who just go about living their lives. That's why wars improve NOTHING, you assholes.

Oh, and Merry Christmas to the many lovely people of ILX. Rant over.

I haven’t felt very good this Christmas what with feeling helpless about Gaza, and the record breaking month long warmth in Minnesota where I am for the holidays. As a fellow Lutheran, the words of the pastor in Bethlehem haunt me that my tax money is supporting this.

Sending money to Gaza charities is about all I feel I can do.

OPINION: The facts demonstrate that the northern Sinai Peninsula is an ideal location to develop a spacious resettlement for the people of Gaza. https://t.co/1U38AWSVwb

— The Jerusalem Post (@Jerusalem_Post) December 25, 2023

can we use words yet

Siri what’s a pogrom

This quote from the Jerusalem Post article is especially wow:

The Egyptians locked the residents of Gaza and the refugees of the 1948 War in the Gaza Strip, and, with the backing of the United Nations, still deny them the right to rebuild their lives in all Arab countries, including in the adjacent Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. This harsh policy was one of the major and long-term catalysts for the intensifying human stagnation of now circa 1.8 million inhabitants within the Strip.

Full statement from Tal Mitnick, the Israeli 18-year-old sentenced to prison for refusing to enlist:

"I do not want to take part in the continuation of the oppression and the continuation of the cycle of bloodshed, but to work directly for a solution, and therefore I refuse." pic.twitter.com/TbkCTAPieR

— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) December 26, 2023

This is a very good piece.

While the martyrdom of over two million innocent Palestinian civilians continues, despite the temporary ceasefire and the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners, a bigger question looms: who will run what remains of the Gaza Strip after the guns fall silent? Netanyahu has declared that he wants the IDF to keep indefinite security control of the strip but no one in Israel wants to assume all the responsibilities of an occupying power again.

Meanwhile, his own grip on power at home is weakening. He faces strong popular opposition for his failure to prevent the horrendous Hamas attack and, more generally, for making Israel the most dangerous place in the world for Jews to live. He is also embroiled in a corruption trial on charges—all of which he denies—including fraud, breaching public trust and accepting bribes. Politically speaking, he is a dead man walking. His days in power are numbered and there is a chance that he will end up in prison. But he is still the prime minister, and his clearly stated aim is to eradicate Hamas and to prevent it from returning to power ever again. So, who will govern the Gaza Strip after the Israeli army leaves?

This ghastly war has also exposed the ruthless hypocrisy of the western leaders, their blatant double standards, their indifference to Palestinian rights and their complicity in Israel’s war crimes.

This is not a conflict between two equal sides but between an occupying power and a subjugated population. And there is absolutely no military solution to this conflict. Israel cannot have security without peace with its neighbours. A negotiated political compromise, as in Northern Ireland, is the only way forward. That settlement required external intervention, as does this one. Here, however, the US cannot serve as the sole broker because its pronounced bias in favour of Israel would make it a dishonest one. Ever since 1967, it has arrogated to itself a monopoly over the Israeli-Palestinian peace process but failed to put pressure on Israel to compromise. What is needed now is a new international coalition led by the UN which includes the US and EU but also Arab states and members of the global south.

That’s by Avi Shlaim. Anything he has to say about I/P is worth reading.

Good read, though I think as of three weeks after that article, with 20,000+ dead and at least 5,000 still under rubble and a Palestinian child being killed by Israel every ten minutes, we are firmly in “ethnic cleansing” territory, based on many of the definitions I have read.

The Shalim piece was published three weeks ago, he might agree with you today.

*Shlaim

yeah i don’t doubt it

that's a good statement by Tal Mitnick

He is truly courageous.

Day three updates from my husband, part of the first team of surgeons from the US to enter Gaza on a medical mission.

Please pray for Palestine. pic.twitter.com/rUSY82ib6R

— Lauren Hasan (@ldallan) December 28, 2023

Israel cannot have security without peace with its neighbours.

This was an interesting piece but I think leaves more questions than answers. Yes its current actions look like repeating the US mistake of winning a war (Iraq) instead of winning the peace, which can still be done even if you lose (Vietnam)

But, on the other hand Israel HAS already won the peace with almost all of its neighbours (though it remains to be seen if, or by how much , this changes now). It only really has the one enemy, in Iran, anymore

Then there is the question of, does it actually want peace? There's a presumption that peace is the preferred outcome everywhere that I don't think is necessarily true.

The changing nature of Israels demographics and internal politics are gradually making negotiated solutions more difficult internally, and the West Bank seems more of a roadblock than Gaza, once you get your people settled somewhere via population transfers that becomes very difficult to undo, as we know from the population transfers and settler colonialism in Mariupol in recent times.

The landscape has changed a lot afaict since the solutions mooted around the end of the Clinton period , and is continuing to move further away not towards

There is a widespread feeling among Israelis now, justified or not, of “we tried peace and look what they did to us”

oof. "no justice, no peace" as the saying goes. iirc over 200 Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli forces in 2023 pre-10/7, that doesn't sound like "peace" to me (not directed at u at all, MA)

the only route to peace is a free Palestine so no, it is not justified for Israelis to believe they have “tried peace”.

"we tried oppressing them and putting them in an open air prison and forcing them out of their homes! why do they hate us?"

smdh

pic.twitter.com/hmU5RMUNcv

— Armenian Patriarchate Of Jerusalem (@ArmenianQuarter) December 28, 2023

Northern Gaza is no more. An unspeakable crimepic.twitter.com/PAyabfjzf3

— Bruno Maçães (@MacaesBruno) December 27, 2023

xp, right I'm just saying that 10/7 likely put a negotiated solution further away, at least in the nearer term. I heard John Mearsheimer say the same on a podcast I listened to last night, fwiw.

How much store do you put in what Mearsheimer says? Genuine question, I'm surprised anyone gets anything out of him at all, so I'm curious about someone having a more positive reading of him

TBH I'm not the biggest fan and don't always put a ton of stock in what he says, more citing him as someone I don't always agree with but agree with on that. It's just kind of my sense from Israelis I'm in touch with on social media, mainstream Israeli media, etc. Although there's no choice but to hope otherwise.

It seems clear that a negotiated solution is further away than ever, though surely dead in the water long before 10/7. Feels like been receding since 2002ish?

Olmert years are the last time I remember it seeming at least plausible. Netanyahu openly and actively against any resolution involving a Palestinian state obv, and that was just as true before 10/7, but 10/7 has definitely pushed public opinion further away from it.

Longer term it's hard to know, events can reverberate in unpredictable ways.

I’m not sure how there’s a political solution given the strength of public feeling and that there’s seemingly little opposition in the opposition. But that’s based on partial reading.

Olmert years are the last time I remember it seeming at least plausible.

I still don't really understand what went wrong in the Camp David 2000 era, had the settlements in the West Bank become established already by then? I feel like the expansion of those signalled the end to any political solution. Israel's changing demographics amplifying that, (plus I think diaspora don't get to vote?). These feels like permanent structural changes

The west bank had been settled ever since 1967 but my understanding is the number and pace of settlement went way up in the late 70s or 1980s

Sorry yes, I worded that badly - I realized its been settled since the occupation but I'd assumed the rate went way up later from the early 2010s . What I don't get is why the settlements weren't a bigger stumbling block to a political solution when that seemed more tenable circa 2000 (tho I guess ultimately they were), given their comparatively smaller size to today

it's not just the pace of settlements that impedes a political solution, although the pace reflects the direction of Israeli political sentiment. it's as much or more the cumulative effect across five decades of settlement. that cumulative effect and the political impossibility of undoing it that has always been central to the strategic goal.

the settlements were a big reason why Arafat rejected the Camp David offer, as Israel stipulated they needed to keep control of the roads between settlements in the West Bank, which would severely curtail Palestine's territorial autonomy

There have been various proposals over the years for territorial swaps etc. Settlements don’t literally make two states impossible but the more/bigger, the harder it gets. Also, while it may seem far fetched, there is always a possibility of two states where the “Palestinian state includes some currently Jewish settlements and the “Jewish state” includes some currently Palestinian areas. You can give people a choice whether to move. Although I’m sure some given that choice won’t be too happy about it.

When it comes to negotiations more generally, in my experience it’s impossible to say for certain why they fail. You can always point to someone and say “they wouldn’t budge on x.” But negotiations are a poker game and you never really know what someone wouldn’t budge on under the right circumstances. So I kind of throw my hands up when trying to figure out why various rounds failed. There are always multiple plausible explanations.

It’s bleak right now but what is the alternative? Armed struggle to the death? Israel will win that at least in the short term and unless other powers get involved, in which case things start to look like a world war. Use public opinion to sever Israel’s ties with the US? We are nowhere close to that. Decades from now maybe.

Did read in The Guardian somewhere that a two state solution would mean 200k settlers moving.

Israel will win that at least in the short term and unless other powers get involved, in which case things start to look like a world war.

Which powers (other than Iran) would get involved and for what reason?

Use public opinion to sever Israel’s ties with the US? We are nowhere close to that

Might not be close to that right now, but its maybe less of a given than it once was. But on the flipside I don't know if Israel needs the US as much as it once did. Relations with Turkiye over the coming decade might start to become more important though

Though on that second point, it may well be for different reasons than public opinion over current events but I don't know how reliable the US will be as a backer over the next decade or two

Speaking of public opinion:

We asked the same question we presented back in mid-October, about the extent to which Israel should take into consideration the suffering of the Palestinian population in Gaza when planning its military operations there. Here, too, there has been no change in the distribution of responses. Now, as in October, a large majority of Jewish interviewees (81%) think that this factor should not affect Israel’s military planning, while a large majority of Arab interviewees (83%) hold the opposite view, and think that it should be taken into account to a large extent.

In the Jewish sample, we found large differences between political camps, though in all three there is a large majority who think that the suffering of the Palestinian population should not influence Israel’s planning of the war – almost total consensus on the Right (89%), more than three-quarters of those in the Center (77.5%), and just over half of those on the Left (53%).

https://en.idi.org.il/articles/51872

But on the flipside I don't know if Israel needs the US as much as it once did.

Israel doesn’t appear to have a functioning war machine without US arms and money.

Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza’s Palestinians, which is opposed by a majority of US citizens, could be stopped within a few days if the US stopped sending military aid and weapons to Israel. It will not happen because the supposed “democracy “ that we’re supposed to be worried about ending next fall has already ended.

I'll acquiesce to both the above if true, I'm thinking aloud here (and to prevent any potential misunderstanding I agree that the US shouldn't be backing Israel with weapons - especially not carte blanche, and especially x2 in the context of the onerous strings attached and drip feeding of weapons to Ukraine)

My question more is along the lines of Israel no longer faces the existential threat it did decades ago, so is it as reliant on the US for its existence as it was in the past? Especially as Israel has weapons to spare to be helping out its friend Azerbaijan.

(especially not x2)

As far as I can tell US military aid generally comprises about 20% of Israels military budget, with some ebbs and flows. Significant but not enough by itself to prevent Israel from having a functioning war machine

the more specific point of dependence is that it's very reliant on the usa for resupplying - israel doesn't domestically produce munitions, military vehicles, etc. fast enough to keep up with the rate it is using them at

US has also had to get involved in downing Houthi ships now.