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West Bank is literally an colony of Israel, governed in a police-state fashion, parts of which have been annexed to Israel proper already. It's a part of Israel in everything but the name, though only 20% of it's inhabitants have citizenship or human rights. Israel profits out of it, controls everything inside it, and exercises a complete degree of control over it's citizens. Arab Inhabitants of West Bank have more legal restrictions then Jewish inhabitants, but have no rights. Just like in the colonial territories of the British Empire for example (replace Arabs with Africans, Jewish with white people).
Gaza is the only part of the territories that can claim a degree of independence, even if only inside it's borders. It does have it's own armed and police forces, taxation system, and governance. It may be completely under the mercy of IDF as far as armed forces go, but it's not like there are no other independent countries that don't face a similar situation. It's borders, both land and maritime, are however governed by Israel to a degree that no independent country in the world faces.
The fact that it doesn't claim independence (either under the name Gaza or Palestine) is also the main reason why I don't rank it up there with places like South Ossetia or Kosovo who are a worldwide recognition away from being truly independent countries. Gaza is however an independent territory to some degree, separate from either West Bank or Israel.
I think treating Gaza as a state actor and Hamas as it's government with some of said responsibilities is not faulty. Treating Palestine as whole as such is wrong, however and treating Hamas terrorist actions as Palestinian terrorism is faulty as well. Of course, when Israel actively acts as an obstacle for Hamas to perform some of it's state responsibilities (impossible to govern effectively with the blockade) it shouldn't be blamed for not meeting those responsibilities.
Fun facts for Gaza:
Israel's policies have basically created the worst country in the world right next to it's borders. At least they don't have AIDS. In short its insane to expect a government to function well when you basically ensure that they can't do anything and periodically bomb their most important institutions.
I actually agree with Israel that it is not the occupying power of Gaza Strip, it is simply in the complete control if it's borders through the blockade, and is starving a foreign nation to death. I also agree on that it doesn't occupy West Bank either, it's colonizing it and annexing it piece by piece. The term occupation should be relinquished in the context of this conflict, as in either case Israel does not follow the definition set by the word "occupation".
I actually disagree with you on this, DarkCrawler. While both Israel and the Palestinians have done a damn good job of splintering Hamas/Gaza from Fatah/West Bank, treating them as mutually exclusive political actors is faulty -- and would be a huge victory to the right-wing Israelis, who have been trying to orchestrate this sort of situatiion for the last five decades.
Gaza and the West Bank are still quite connected, both in spirit and in reality. Half of the rockets launched from Gaza during the 2008 lull, for example, were in response to Israeli assasinations against groups in the West Bank. Israel regularly performs sting operations against Gazan terrorist cells based out of the West Bank, and visa versa. Artists and musicians from Gaza frequently try to smuggle themselves into the other territories in order to perform. Despite the fact that they essentially have two different governments, the people in the West Bank and Gaza still consider themselves unified by Palestinian nationalism, and injustices against one territory are often met by a reaction within the other.
I will grant you that the situations within the West Bank and Gaza are incredibly different, and the problems endemic to each will require very different solutions. HOWEVER, trying to isolate Gaza from the West Bank and negotiating with them as wholly separate political actors will not work -- not until the Gazans adopt Gazan nationalism and the West Bank Palestinians West Bank nationalism.
Not claiming a direct comparison or anything, but at the early stages of North Korea/South Korea conflict, the Korean people were very unified as well. Over the years they became more different. If Israel continues to restrict the movement between the two, the same thing will happen to Gazans as well.
Saw this link this morning. It make me hopeful.
Though I agree with this:
India had hundreds of millions of people rebelling against British rule, ten times the population of the United Kingdom, riding at the wave of WWII freedom movement. The Salt March had tens of thousands of marchers moving a distance three times that of West Bank from North to South. It was something that could not be ignored by anyone. Similar things could be said about the U.S. Civil Rights movement and the March on Washington, when 300,000 people gathered to show that in large numbers, they could not be silenced. Or the Baltic Way, where two million people formed a massive human chain spanning 600 kilometers across the Baltic states.
When anyone thinks of a peaceful fight for freedom, it is the largest gestures that everyone remembers. Nobody would remember Rosa Parks without the Montgomery Bus Boycott that she sparked.
But how do you march when you don't have a freedom of movement? How do you gather people when there are checkpoints at every entrace to a city (sometimes inside a city as well). Do you mobilize a single city? Al-Bireh is the largest West Bank Palestinian city, and it has only 38,000 people. And no way will the IDF let such a huge number of people to go anywhere at a same time. What could they boycott? Israel's economy is not dependant on Palestinians in any fashion. They have walled them into their own communities isolated from others.
I suppose Israeli Arabs could do something, but They don't exactly have the greatest history in demonstrations, what with the IDF and police constantly beating them up. They could boycott things, but due to the disenfranchiment of them in the economy and political progress they don't have monetary or political pull in anything.
I suppose they have to think of their own way of peaceful resistance, one that could serve their unique situation. I can't think of any past way of protesting that would work in their current one. Though I have to admit that Palestinians haven't really tried large scale peaceful demonstration. The Indian Independence movement lasted twenty years, the Civil Rights movement went on for thirteen.
Of course, at the current rate of growth there will be 1 million settlers in West Bank in year 2023, and 1,7 million by year 2030...
I suppose it's pretty useless to try to predict this though. You never know what will set off the spark. Nobody could know about Gandhi or MLK beforehand.
And Disney World is nowhere in sight.
As Gandhi pointed out elsewhere in the article, India wasn't exactly a hot-bed of non-violence initially.
These things grow from somewhere, they aren't just there from the begining. The fact that the movement is starting up, and the fact that PA officials have been coming out to show support, THAT is incredibly important here.
Even if you (the general you, not you personally DC) think that Israel is the evil empire, this is STILL a good sign, because if Palestine goes non-violent, and Israel continues to behave exactly the same, then there would be no argument for continued international support.
Pretty much mirrors my opinions about Gaza/West Bank in a better researched and argumented fashion. The separation between those two areas is the greatest thing Israel could have prayed for as far as stalling peace process goes (and by praying I mean actively causing it, pretty much).
And that thing about Israel profiting off Gaza's territorial waters is spot on, and just another facet of it's colonialism. This is a pretty good blog about that issue:
http://fishingunderfire.blogspot.com/
I don't think Israel gives a damn about international support, not that they have a lot of it to begin with. They care about continued U.S. support. And with the cognitive dissonance you see exhibited in the typical AIPAC'er and Weekly Synagogue Newsletter, I doubt that even the Palestinians looking the part of peaceful oppressed minority would matter much.
I mean, I don't use this word much, but the baby-boomer Jews are brainwashed beyond repair when it comes to Israel. My mother, who is one of the more liberal and open-minded women I know, takes a hard right into neo-conservative racism whenever the issue of Israel-Palestine comes up. It's really a bizarre sight to behold, especially when she transfers immediately from a pro-choice, pro-single payer health care conversation into a "The Arabs are dirty murderers whose culture makes them anti-Semitic, vicious, untrustworthy, suicidal, and insane!" diatribe.
I'd be interested to see how Obama would react, though. He seems a little bit more willing to threaten the Israeli-American special relationship than any other president we've had in the last 4 decades.
Israel though? With it's dependency on high tech economy? With no particular natural resources and every country in the region hating it's guts? With it's educated, young, cosmopolitan population?
Man, would I want to be the leader of the left-wing political party riding off that wave.
I don't think it will happen under Obama, but it will happen. I don't know about the end solution yet, but there will be peace.
I've brought up J Street a few times throughout this thread. I've finally managed to get in touch with them about building a chapter on my campus. It is nice to have options that support Israel without supporting violence. keep in mind, J Street is just barely two years old, and as much as our emotions may push us to feel that things need to change this instant, these sorts of changes take time, if you want them to last (you can force change on people, of course, but then they just go back to their old ways over time)
Oh, and interesting words from Reuven Rivlin, the Speaker of the Knesset.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1166300.html
Never thought I'd hear a member of Likud say anything like that. I mean this is the same guy who didn't want Pope to speak at Yad Vashem because he had been a member of Hitler Youth.
Yeah, J Street is awesome
It would have been fun
@DarkCrawler: You'd be surprised about how many Israeli politicians agree with much of what you say.
hummusandkimchi.blogspot.com
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/FriedRice-1814/hero/11834264
I was having this argument with a group of babyboomers a month ago, who have voted Dem all their lives, but support AIPAC. What it comes down to, for them, is this notion that you can't let anyone see the chinks in your armor. Like I said, J Street is only two years old. We're talking about folks who support Obama on pretty much every other issue. Once the initial fear subsidize, and they are able to see through AIPAC's smear campaign against J Street, I predict you'll see a lot of boomers supporting them.
I think you're underestimating the racism at play here. Like when my mom says that we should let Israel kill Palestinians because of the Holocaust.
A good chunk of people on both sides of this argument are NOT RATIONAL. The difference is that irrational ones on the Palestinian side of the argument tend to use guns, while the ones on the Israeli side work through AIPAC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlUsiKfeDfo&eurl=http://areasofmyexpertise.blogspot.com/
http://www.ugo.com/movies/babylon-ad-video-gallery/?cur=vin-diesel-dungeons-and-dragons&morepics=1
Not letting a former member of the Hitler Youth who claims that the Holocaust was really about Catholics speak at the Holocaust memorial is considered nutty?
And I think you are overestimating racism here. Hatred of Palestinians isn't neccesarily irational, it is just antiquated. There WAS a time (fourty years ago) when the Palestinians were enemies of Israel living on the land of OTHER enemies of Israel, making declarations about destroying the entire state of Israel and taking all fo the land for themselves. That time has passed, and yes, some folks are caught behind in it, but it is better to encourage them to catch up to modern times than it is to write them off as a racist.
It is not like baby boomers think that the white race is superior. Baby boomers can actually remember a time when they themselves weren't considered white. They are not so much being bigots as they are stuck still fighting an old war.
Aside from the fringe religious zealots who will insist that international law should follow divine promises, I have never met a Jew, no matter how right wing, who did not agree that IF Palestine was peaceful, they deserved their own state. The issue that you face with the right is that so many of them believe that palestine will NEVER BE peaceful, making the point moot. That is why the non-violent protests excite me.
These people are wrong, but they are not entirely impervious to logic. They can be shown the error of their ways. In general, these same people support a ton of other very liberal stuff.
I was also surprised that she knew who Rachel Corrie was.
I would imagine she's kind of a big deal over there, a white wealthy woman who died a martyr for the cause
She was wealthy? Maybe. She did go to Capital.
I think they're more focused on the fact that she was an American.
Hey, after everything that has been revealed about the dude the Pope can go fuck himself, but the stated reason just seems a bit wierd to me (I mean, every German boy was pretty much a member of the HY).
Still, a prominent Likud member supporting one-state solution?
Now what will be interesting is watching what amounts to civil war as the setllers refuse to give up their annexed water control back to the farmers in the West Bank.
Oh, there will be blood with settlers no matter what. Either when IDF has to go to active offense in removing 500,000-1,500,000 (just depending on how many decades will pass before peace is achieved) settlers who have been used to the government bending backwards to accomodate them in every possible fashion, or when they have to unleash riot police on them when they violently protest having to live next to Palestinians without walls, fences and soldiers. Same thing with Hamas - either they get PISSED for peace negotiations with the "hated Zionists" and most likely losing Jerusalem, or they get PISSED for not getting their very own Islamic theocracy.
Two-state or one-state, right-wing on both sides will go apeshit. The demographics, geographics and politics are just too skewed for either side to get what they want on a two-state solution, and well, one state solution forces them to live in the same country with their worst enemies.
So avoiding pissing off the insane sides on the conflict isn't really a justification for either solution.
I swear someone had some good links on that 1 or 2 Israel threads back.
when it happened in Gaza, what they ended up doing was getting together and issuing an official statement that they would go peacably, but individuals retained the right to resist if they so chose.
and so Israel sent in MPs to forcably remove them.
settlers threatening violence doesn't mean that Israel is going to cave and let them get away with that
A one state solution will never work. If your argument for one is that the PA and Hamas are incapable of leading, then Palestine just needs new leadership.
Here is the most recent one I can find, this month.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1164189.html
Usually they just attack Palestinians when they need someone to take their anger on to.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=settlers+attack&itemNo=1166210
However, I want people to realize how near-impossible eviction of West Bank settlers is, both from a political or a military viewpoint. The largest such effort Israel has done is the unilateral Gaza disengagement plan - around 9000 settlers. The IDF put around 50,000 troops into this operation. 30% of the settlers left completely voluntarily.
For the rest, Israel had to not only contend with resistance from the settlers, but also over 5000 "mistanenim" or "infiltrators", outside supporters of settlements who came in there with the select purpose of fucking IDF's shit up. There were violence, people barricading themselves, people attacking (and killing) Palestinians, setting fire to cars, demonstrations turning violent, and so on. There was even some resistance from IDF personnel.
However, IDF, and the world at large however considers this to be a successful operation. They expected worse.
Now let's go to West Bank. These aren't Gaza settlers, small in number, under constant threat of attacks. There are WB settlers, in MASSIVE numbers, some of which have been born in the property, some of which have been living in there for decades, have their own municipality representation, vote in elections and so on. They have been supported by the government throughout the entire existence of Israel. These ARE their homes, even though illegally gained. They will fight back with the same determination that you or I would fight back if someone tried to take us away from our homes.
Now imagine the scale of the operation required to forcibly evict FIFTY TIMES the settlers that were evicted from Gaza. Even if only one percent of said settlers would resist IDF violently, they would still have to contend with five thousand violent and dangerous people to contend with. And in Gaza, only 30% of the people left completely in peace. I'd say the percentage would be much, much smaller in West Bank.
Consider the largest military evacuation operations in history. Dunkirk, Operation Frequent Wind, Hannibal. These have been naval or airlift evacuations, not ground operations. And notice that they were evacuations. Not evictions. The people wanted to leave. In this case they do not.
To evict 9000 people from Gaza, Israel needed 50,000 troops. Five times the soldiers compared to settlers. To evict 500,000 people from West Bank, in an operational area hundred times the size of the area IDF operated in disengagement...if we go with barefaced multiplication, it would need 2,500,000 troops to achieve the same odds. That's fifteen times the size of active personnel in IDF, five times the size of active personnel AND reservists, and roughly equivalent of EVERY Israeli, man or woman, fit for military service.
At the barest minimum, Israel would at least need to mobilize it's entire army for this operation, and I don't think it would be enough. Keep in mind that this is probably the most experienced army in the world as far as eviction and evacuation operations go, and they still needed a third of their armed forces to evict 1.7% percent of the settlers in the territories.
Oh, and I'm not taking on account the internal resistance coming FROM military. Religious people are joining IDF at a even more increasing rate and ultra-right wing sentiment is relatively big there. Lately a growing number of soldiers are refusing to evict Jewish people from settlements.
And I didn't even go into compensation there. Evacuation compensation to the settlers cost Israel about 1 billion dollars. In this case, the number would be about 50 billion dollars. This is not counting the cost of the massive military undertaking it would take to remove all those people from their settlements.
One state solution will be difficult. A two-state solution will make the Israeli Defense Forces take a collective dump in their pants. Israel would need to make so many concessions to Palestinians to create a working Palestinian State (evacuating settlers would be the tip of the iceberg) that it would probably lead to civil war. Or they will give too little concessions and the newly born Palestinian state will become a failed state because it can't support itself.
A working two-state solution is in impossible by every possible metric you can think of. Military perspective, economical perspective, political perspective, stability perspective, all of it points to one thing. Massive failure. I could write a similar wall of text about every factor involved.
Oh yeah, the best thing here is that that wall of text above?
That's if they would start doing it right now. By the current growth rate, in two decades the number of settlers is close to two million. That's when things would get really difficult. And I want to say that the above isn't some nightmare scenario where every settler will rise against the IDF. It's applied with the same level of resistance and troop numbers as used in the Gaza evictions, only scaled to the number of settlers in the West Bank.
The US can assist them in this matter. We can send our millions of dollars of aid in the form of CS grenades.
It's only neccessary in a two-state solution. In a single state solution they could be made into normal municipalities where everyone could live and work with, incorporated into the Palestinian towns and cities that they are right next to. No settler only roads, no checkpoints, no walls, fences or anything like that.
Now policing in West Bank is left to the IDF (who 99% of the time takes the side of the settlers). A joint Palestinian/Jewish police force applying the law to both groups of people would be a much better enforcer in the area. Don't get me wrong, it won't be easy even then. I'd say even in the best possible scenario we'll still see a settler version of KKK harassing Palestinians, and attacks from radicals like Hamas - but really, is that much of a change from these days? The meaningful difference to the previous situation is that they would be committing those actions against their own country and their own countrymen. A mother of two who commutes daily from Ramallah to Jerusalem and whose children go to school is much less inclined to hide a rocket production center in her basement then a poverty ridden widow in Gaza whose both children were killed in an Israeli air strike.
I mean, when was the last time you heard about terrorism from Israeli Arabs? Despite all the shit heaped on them by the government, they still aren't resorting to terrorism. Despite all the times Israelis were killing their relatives in their numerous wars, they never started any internal resistance. They know that even though their situation is bad, the situation of their fellow Palestinians in West Bank or Gaza is ten times worse. Give someone a taste of normal life and freedom and they are much less inclined to support radicalist actions.
Both solutions are extremely hard to make to work. Only the two state solution is impossibly hard though. Well, nothing is impossible, I guess. If the entire U.S. Army lands down to Israel to assist the Israeli Defense Forces in the evictions they could probably pull it off...the military side that is. Everything else couldn't be solved by bullets though.
The bigger issue is the amount to support the settlers have is politically threatening. Israel has taken a decided demographic turn to the Orthodox in the last decade.
Never mind the amount of support they are starting to get amongst the military.
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/World_News_3/article_6621.shtml
Here is a very good account by an IDF major about the level of emotion involved in the Gaza disengagement.
http://www.israelnewsagency.com/idfisraelprsoldierdisengagement77480824.html
Here is pictures of an aftermath of the eviction and destruction of very small settlement.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/israeli_settlements_in_the_wes.html
Here is what happened when they tried to simply block them from approaching a Palestinian village.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3878508,00.html
Multiply all that shit by a million and you begin to get what a West Bank disengagement plan would entail. And it can't be done piece by piece either. That would only inflame the remaining settlers and give them time to prepare and maybe arm themselves. It can't be done in phases, because by the time you have removed some settlers you have more coming in and volunteers who aren't even intending to live there fucking your shit up.
There is a reason why the Gaza disengagement plan took as many active soldiers as the Six Day War, in about the same timeframe. Both were offensive operations needed to be fast. So would the hypothetical West Bank eviction operation be. Stalling isn't an option.
I'm guessing that the current coalition will use rising tension with Iran/Syria as the fear factor now that Hamas has been pretty much beaten and Gaza has become the worst place on planet. West Bank under military government hardly poses a threat, so with no Palestinian terrorism to blame, you got to look at the Arabs outside Israel's borders.
Or alternatively they can use Israel's acceptance into the OECD as a sign that they can succeed in something. Yay for creating speshul rules for Israel again! I only hope that we extend the invitiation to Iran, Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Syria since all of them have a smaller percentage of people living under the poverty line and to my knowledge none of them economically blockade the equivalent of a third world African nation.