C. Joanna and I exchange as follows:
___________________________________________________________ Boddi writes about Israel/Palestine:
"Compared to the horrors of Rwanda or even Guatemala, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict does not actually represent that much outright crime against humanity for the parties to reconcile themselves to. It was a war but it was nothing like Korea or Vietnam or even the recent Balkan wars, for example. If not for religion and foreign involvement, it would be a relatively small war in world terms. I think it should not be fetishized."
In 1948, there were about 1 mill Palestinians living in Palestine. Then 75% of them were gone -- having lost everything they own, many having to spend the next 3 generations in refugee camps. WHY? for having done WHAT? This is not bad compared to....what's the point of the comparison?
You can always find something more horrible to compare something to. But one of the diffs between Rwanda...Guatemala... etc is that the perpetrators of the horrors there do not parade around the world presenting themselves as the only democratic state in Africa....South America, ....
Joanna _____________________________________________________________
The point is not that the Israelis didn't do bad stuff, nor that Palestinians didn't do bad stuff, nor am I suggesting that the sides were equally bad. The point is that other societies have reconciled themselves to a lot worse. The issues of injustice are significant but greater injustice has been overcome by reconciliation. The issues are fairly well-understood and a compromise can be reached so long as it includes a fundamental logic of reconciliation and we don't try to make more of this conflict than it is (as the Zionist and Jihadi radicals would like). I think the two-state solution enshrines the conflict, ultimately.
Of course Israel isn't democratic. I am suggesting that Israel become democratic by making the people under occupation into citizens.
Brad Delong writes: _____________________________________________________________
You may be right. Certainly we two-staters have to start facing facts: our project has crashed and burned spectacularly in the 1990s. (Although I can't help wondering if Yitzhak Rabin's assassination really did materially change the course of history.) _____________________________________________________________
Of course Rabin's assassination hurt the process and maybe a compromise could have been worked out. That said, I think a two-state solution would have left the radicals on both sides with well-defined and unresolved provocations outstanding and clear targets. If not Rabin's assassination, it would have been some massacre somewhere that caused the parties to come to blows.
A one-state solution forces the Zionists away from the fantasy that Israel is a Jewish state with some incidental, accidental population of Arabs. Israel is a largely Arab state, no matter how you divide it up. It also embraces the reality that Palestinians can't be cut off from the Israeli economy. Make the country one state and the Wall becomes an outrage, empty Arab villages become an outrage. Put more Arabs on Israeli buses and bus bombings turn from military action to murder in the eyes of Palestinians. What does a dirt-poor Arab farmer care if some lunatic Zionists want to "settle" his miserable land so long as they pay for it? And speaking of payments, do you think the Palestinian population is really going to turn down the inevitable billions a year that an American president would offer as a kick-in on a reparations fund?
Look, the agitators on both sides will always be after sovereignty over land on the other side of the '67 border. So give it to them - both at the same time.
peace,
boddi