Scrutable

When discussing the conditions for peace, people seem very keen to talk about eradicating Hamas, which is clearly an important aspect of peace between Israel and Palestine. As we all know, impoverishing an entire people, destroying their homes after imprisoning them for decades, killing ten times as many of them as were killed on your side - these are all thankfully key ingredients to a long lasting and sustainable peace, with no prospect for the resurrection of support for terrorism.

What people seem less keen to talk about is how Israel keeps electing far-right governments. Netanyahu shouldn't be anywhere near power, but they keep putting him there. Which is obviously a reaction to the threat posed by Hamas. But until both sides stop with c.nts in power, there won't be peace. Unfortunately, the existence of c.nts on the other side creates more chance of having c.nts on yours.

So, by all means, have a ceasefire or raze the place to the ground. Stop right now or kill everyone in Gaza, as some pro-Israelis were quoted in New York as saying should happen. Allocate responsibility for another batch of unnecessary Palestinian deaths to Israeli cruelty or Hamas cruelty. Occupy Gaza or don't occupy Gaza. Bring in an Arab peacekeeping force or a UN peacekeeping force or an Israeli suppression force.

None of it matters, ultimately, if peace is to happen. With things as they are, destroying Hamas will simply bring about the creation of a newer, crueller, more determined anti-Israel terrorism group. And that will cause Israel to keep electing far-right governments. And that will continue the subjugation of the Palestinians. Which will continue support for whoever replaces Hamas.

A lot of terrible, awful stuff on both sides is going to have to be swallowed down if people are going to stop killing each other and instead build a lasting peace. When something goes wrong, people will need to react calmly rather than with rage. And that isn't going to happen with the current lot.

El Pollo Diablo wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2023 9:34 am What people seem less keen to talk about is how Israel keeps electing far-right governments. Netanyahu shouldn't be anywhere near power, but they keep putting him there. Which is obviously a reaction to the threat posed by Hamas. But until both sides stop with c.nts in power, there won't be peace. Unfortunately, the existence of c.nts on the other side creates more chance of having c.nts on yours.

Hamas grew as a movement during the period of the 2nd Rabin administration - when peace accords were being negotiated.

So what?

Millennie Al wrote: Tue Nov 07, 2023 1:28 am

Bewildered wrote: Sun Nov 05, 2023 3:10 pm If I gave someone a gun and they shoot someone with it, they are just as guilt of the murder as if they had made the gun themselves or stolen it from me. However if I did give it to them knowing what they would do or just recklessly ignoring a significant risk that they might then I am also to blame, at least in part (how big depending on details). Similarly I think you can blame reckless speech that stokes fear / hate / resentment in part while still holding the perpetrator just as accountable as if it had not been a factor.

However, there's a critically important difference. If you give someone an idea, I can give them a competing idea. If you give them a gun, there is no anti-gun that I can give them that will take it away. Furthermore, in discussions of "hate speech", it is very rare that people are merely passively exposed - normally people seek it out deliberately, which very much makes it their own responsibility to properly evaluate what they hear.

And quite apart from the principle of Let a hundred flowers bloom, if you like that approach.

Nah it’s exactly the same, give them a gun as well and they will both be too scared to use it. Or if one does, the other can shoot the bullet out the air.

Couldn’t resist the joke but what you are talking about here is not really relevant as we were not discussion banning speech or hate speech laws, just blaming people exercising free speech in negative ways. Your argument is certainly a reasonable point if I was using the argument in that way, but I wasn’t and it really belongs in some debate about hate speech laws or where you draw the line.

El Pollo Diablo wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2023 9:34 am What people seem less keen to talk about is how Israel keeps electing far-right governments. Netanyahu shouldn't be anywhere near power, but they keep putting him there. Which is obviously a reaction to the threat posed by Hamas. But until both sides stop with c.nts in power, there won't be peace. Unfortunately, the existence of c.nts on the other side creates more chance of having c.nts on yours.

There is a common observation that when people are electing politicians for the purposes of facing up against or negotiating with an "other side", then people have an increasing tendency to elect representatives with a more extreme position than they, on average, hold. The common explanation is that if a negotiation or face-off ends up roughly half way between the positions of the two parties, then you take it nearer where you want it by having someone more extreme representing your position. Whatever the real reason, there is a tendency to polarisation in politics in many places.

This is a common explanation for why the Northern Irish largely now elect the DUP and SF to represent them, and the more moderate UUP and SDLP who were previously influential have been all but wiped out. The median unionist is pro-Good Friday agreement, but the DUP is against it, ie, more extreme than the median unionist.

My own observation would be that polarisation is more likely to lead to an intractable dispute. Fortunately the DUP were not the dominant unionist voice when the GFA was negotiated.

bob sterman wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2023 10:03 am

El Pollo Diablo wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2023 9:34 am What people seem less keen to talk about is how Israel keeps electing far-right governments. Netanyahu shouldn't be anywhere near power, but they keep putting him there. Which is obviously a reaction to the threat posed by Hamas. But until both sides stop with c.nts in power, there won't be peace. Unfortunately, the existence of c.nts on the other side creates more chance of having c.nts on yours.

Hamas grew as a movement during the period of the 2nd Rabin administration - when peace accords were being negotiated.

Wasn’t that a time when the PLO was pulling back from violence?

It's worth pointing out that Netanyahu's coalition didn't get a majority of the vote, and got their Knesset majority due to being better organised and having fewer parties than their opponents, meaning their votes more efficiently translated to seats. One of the many, many reasons PR is a sh.t system everyone should reject.

EACLucifer wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2023 2:50 pm It's worth pointing out that Netanyahu's coalition didn't get a majority of the vote, and got their Knesset majority due to being better organised and having fewer parties than their opponents, meaning their votes more efficiently translated to seats. One of the many, many reasons PR is a sh.t system everyone should reject.

Whereas with FPP, you can get polarised outcomes with a smaller number of parties, like in Northern Ireland and the USA. That's why FPP is a sh.t system.

But in fact all voting systems are sh.t systems. There's mathematical theorem, known as Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, which proves that there is no ideal voting mechanism whenever there are at least 3 choices. For every voting system, there are distributions of opinion where the voting system produces unfortunate or inconsistent outcomes. And this of course leads to incentives to engage in tactical voting in many voting systems, so we can't even know what the true distribution of opinions is. It's not just a theoretical curiosity, it's a common real world situation.

So, having established that every voting system is sh.t, but remembering Mr Churchill's fair observation that not voting is even worse, what we must do is consider what is the most practical in the situation.

El Pollo Diablo wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2023 9:34 am None of it matters, ultimately, if peace is to happen. With things as they are, destroying Hamas will simply bring about the creation of a newer, crueller, more determined anti-Israel terrorism group. And that will cause Israel to keep electing far-right governments. And that will continue the subjugation of the Palestinians. Which will continue support for whoever replaces Hamas.

A lot of terrible, awful stuff on both sides is going to have to be swallowed down if people are going to stop killing each other and instead build a lasting peace. When something goes wrong, people will need to react calmly rather than with rage. And that isn't going to happen with the current lot.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but its not the case that a successful peace process is dependent upon both sides having leaders who are moderates. The opposite is more likely to be the case (even if it is somewhat counterintuitive).

A peace process has to involve those parties that in terms of politics or fighting have a de facto veto and can derail the process. If the hardliners aren't involved and they have a constituency within the population then the risk is that they'll just wreck anything that the moderates can agree upon.

So if there is to be a meaningful peace process the Israeli right wingers and the Palestinian militants would need to be at the negotiations (along with others). Note that I'm not specifying that it has to be Hamas or Netanyahu. But whoever can carry their constituencies.

Why would they even do that? It wouldn't be out of a sense of altruism. But hardliners can negotiate peace while motivated by self-interest.

Woodchopper wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2023 3:44 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2023 9:34 am So if there is to be a meaningful peace process the Israeli right wingers and the Palestinian militants would need to be at the negotiations (along with others). Note that I'm not specifying that it has to be Hamas or Netanyahu. But whoever can carry their constituencies.

Why would they even do that? It wouldn't be out of a sense of altruism. But hardliners can negotiate peace while motivated by self-interest.

A lot of Israelis have tended to think that they have done rather well out of an unresolved conflict, so they haven't had much motive to agree a peace. So, every now and then, there's an intifada, Israel violently suppresses it, and tightens the ratchet, with the stated aim to reducing the scope and risk of a future intifada. And that keeps them quiet for a while until they recover enough to go around it again. And the tightened ratchet, caging the Palestinians, taking more and more effective control of more of the West Bank, looks like progress for many Israelis, a useful return from the cost of repressing the flare-up.

This time Hamas managed to do a lot more damage to Israel than in any previous intifada. One question is whether that changes the balance of considerations for some Israelis who so far supported the repress-and-perpetuate policy. It now looks like the tightened ratchet, the stronger cage, was actually ineffective, and so Hamas succeeded in doing more damage to Israel than was thought possible. Maybe some Israelis might now consider repress-and-perpetuate too dangerous a policy.

But the general anger with Netanyahu seems to be about blaming him for having his eye off the ball, and letting Hamas do so much damage, rather than thinking it was a problem with the general policy of repress-and-perpetuate. They seem to think they can have a more careful replacement who will operate repress-and-perpetuate more successfully, from an Israeli perspective, rather than thinking that is a broken policy and they need a new one.

Which is why I think Israel is going in without a clear idea of how this leads to peace, because they are doing what you need to do for repress-and-perpetuate. And if some other better outcome is available, great, but without that they continue repress-and-perpetuate

It seems to me the likelihood that there is a willing partner for peace in Israel, at least on terms that are anywhere near what would look like a fair deal for Palestinians, is low. And actually you could have said that pretty much at any time since Israel declared UDI. Whenever it seemed there was an offer of peace available, it was never on terms that were close to what Palestinians could accept.

The nearest it came was probably Camp David. There's a common claim that Arafat turned down the opportunity for a good deal from Barak. Indeed that is pretty much what President Clinton said, so it is unsurprising that is much quoted and many people accept it as the truth. But as even the Wikipedia article says, it really isn't that simple. The observations disputing the Clinton view presented there are pretty strong. At a very simple level, without going into all the detail, no offer was ever written down. So how can you agree to something that isn't written down, especially in a conflict like this one? And then there's a bunch of really sensitive details which any deal has to be clear on, and those remained unresolved. The old Oslo game of agree some easier things and pretend the hard stuff can be dealt with later just doesn't work, as is well evidenced. If you sign up without agreeing the difficult stuff, which is important, it just becomes the point of perpetuation of the conflict, as happened with Oslo.

IvanV is giving a beautiful demonstration of one of Shany Mor's observations - that the idea that any bad thing to occur to the Palestinians is a consequence of Palestinian or other Arab decision making rather than entirely being a result of Israeli decision making is unthinkable.

If you actually want to learn about how we got here, I'd recommend this magnificent essay by the aforementioned writer

And meanwhile EAC demonstrates the opposite side of the coin, which is that to another large proportion of people, the idea that Israel has made any decisions or performed any actions which have escalated tensions with Palestinians is similarly unthinkable.

All of which, again, is simply describing the conflict, in which two groups of people, each with their allies, believe that their side has not done and cannot do any wrong, that all the provocation and harm comes from The Other, and therefore any response to that, any number of deaths of innocents, is just and necessary to further their goals.

No peace is possible whilst people insist on sticking to that cycle of harm.

El Pollo Diablo wrote: Fri Nov 10, 2023 10:45 am And meanwhile EAC demonstrates the opposite side of the coin, which is that to another large proportion of people, the idea that Israel has made any decisions or performed any actions which have escalated tensions with Palestinians is similarly unthinkable.

That's not even remotely true, but of course if I'm pushing against an echo chamber, you're likely to see where my views differ from that echo chamber.

To pick an example at random, the current government coalition's coddling of fanatic hilltop youth thugs.

But it is important to note that while Gazans have very legitimate grievances, Hamas is not motivated by trying to address these, but by the eliminationist ideology they have always held.

EACLucifer wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2023 6:52 pm IvanV is giving a beautiful demonstration of one of Shany Mor's observations - that the idea that any bad thing to occur to the Palestinians is a consequence of Palestinian or other Arab decision making rather than entirely being a result of Israeli decision making is unthinkable.

If you actually want to learn about how we got here, I'd recommend this magnificent essay by the aforementioned writer

El Pollo Diablo wrote: Fri Nov 10, 2023 10:45 am And meanwhile EAC demonstrates the opposite side of the coin, which is that to another large proportion of people, the idea that Israel has made any decisions or performed any actions which have escalated tensions with Palestinians is similarly unthinkable.

All of which, again, is simply describing the conflict, in which two groups of people, each with their allies, believe that their side has not done and cannot do any wrong, that all the provocation and harm comes from The Other, and therefore any response to that, any number of deaths of innocents, is just and necessary to further their goals.

No peace is possible whilst people insist on sticking to that cycle of harm.

Shany Mor writes,

No, what is unusual about the Palestinian cause starts from the observation that many of those other nations built states on parts of historic homelands out of the ruins of collapsed multi-national, multi-linguistic, multi-confessional empires, and the Palestinians have not. This fact is not entirely their fault, but when given the chance to establish a state, they have rejected it time and again. This is because the principal grievance of the Palestinian cause, one revealed in those rejections of sovereignty and by rhetoric spanning generations, is not the absence of a desired nation-state but the existence of another one. The hierarchy of goals that follows from this grievance—no state for us without the disappearance of the state for them—has contributed greatly to the Palestinian predicament.

I observe quite a lot of mistakes on behalf of the Palestinian cause throughout the last 80 years. I will set out the biggest ones below.

But also, I find it hard to locate any time when actors on behalf of the Palestinians had a realistic opportunity to establish for them a state, at any time since terrible mistake of rejecting the UN plan in 1947, and I will say why I think that. Ultimately the reason that the Palestinians have not had those opportunities, is that Israel did not offer them. Except in 1947.

One small issue I have with the way Mor writes, which I feel obliged first to expose, is constructions like "and the Palestinians have not..." You need to be careful about who the actual actor is. The Palestinians have only briefly had the opportunity to choose their representatives to act on their behalf. And when that did happen, it soon stagnated into authoritarian and corrupt dictatorship. At other times, there have been people acting on their behalf, and it is hard to say if they truly represented the cause. I think most people at the moment carefully distinguish Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza. But actually it has been like that for nearly all the time.

Certainly in 1947, the Palestinians were offered the opportunity to establish a state, and "they" rejected it, and that was a huge mistake. The representative, the "they" at this point, seems to have been primarily the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. They didn't have a political structure at this point, they were a subject people of a UN mandate, which had not much thought about creating a representative body for the people under their rule. I doubt the Grand Mufti was thinking much about the interests of the Palestinian people in his decision.

After the 1948 war, the situation that emerged had Gaza under Egyptian control, and the West Bank under Jordanian control. Whilst that was a lot worse for the Palestinians than the UN plan that had been rejected, it was a lot better than anything that subsequently happened. The Palestinian people themselves, as a state on those small pieces of land, were unlikely to create a stable and secure state. So being part of a larger states provided that essential requirement of security and stability for a reasonable life. Actions taken on behalf of the Palestinians that provoked a change in that situation were mistakes. It only made things worse for them.

There were terrorist activities by organisations who came from among the Palestinians, many of them Palestinian refugees no longer in Palestine, but also to a degree locals. They were not satisfied by this situation, even though we now see it as the best outcome available. But probably worse was the willingness of some Arab countries to consider restarting the war they previously lost in 1948, in the hope of doing better. This provoked the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel took over Gaza, Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. As Shani Mor says

The Palestinians went from being a people defined by their dispossession at the hands of a hated enemy across a sealed border to being a people defined by their dispossession at the hands of a hated enemy that now also ruled them as an occupier. Unlike the larger Arab trauma of defeat, which was mostly bookended in time by the end of actual combat, for Palestinians, this remains a continuous trauma right up into the present.

So, provoking the Six-Day War was definitely a mistake. But I would say it was largely other Arab states that provoked that. It started with Israel bombing the Egyptian air force, because that is where they saw the risk coming from.

But we also need to think about the Israeli actions, of occupying all of Palestine and more, and whether they perhaps might also have been mistakes. Occupying Gaza now seems to have been a terrible mistake. They would love to give it back to Egypt, but Egypt doesn't want it. And what are the reasons that Israel chose to occupy, for example, the West Bank at this point? A variety of ideas are offered. The thought that controlling that territory made it harder for Arab states to attack Israel. To repress the terrorism emerging from the West Bank more strongly than Jordan had done - though Jordan had certainly tried to a degree as it did not see that activity in its interest. Certainly there is a faction in Israel that sees it as Israel's historic land, and would like to take control of it for that reason; whether that was a large part of the decision, I don't really know.

Later, when Sinai was returned to Egypt, Israel would have liked Egypt to take back Gaza, but they wouldn't. It is also clear that Jordan will no longer take back responsibility for the West Bank, if that was ever an idea.

I set out my views on the Camp David negotiation in a previous post.

The intifada of 2000-5, the Al-Aqsa intifada, was a mistake. It resulted in Israel making things a lot worse for the Palestinians. Before, there was much greater freedom of movement for the Palestinians, much greater economic integration. But we must also ask whether it was a mistake by the Israelis to respond like that.

So, lots of mistakes by actors on behalf of Palestinians. And a lot of mistakes by Israel too, which compounded those mistakes.

But I don't see any moment since 1947 when when the Palestinians have been offered a plausible opportunity to establish a state.

Clearly that didn't exist in any form during 1948-1967, as Egypt and Jordan did not see it as feasible or likely that Palestine could be an independent state. And then it didn't exist at all from 1967-1990, until the Oslo accords. The Palestinians agreed to those, and so a kind of proto-state formed. But the problem with the Oslo accords was that it did some easier stuff, and failed to address the difficult stuff. And there was no progress after that. Because the difficult stuff is more difficult, and positions were very far apart. During that period, the elected administration of the Palestinian territories started its movement towards the utterly corrupt and authoritarian administrations we see today. But that is what happens when entities do not satisfy the difficult requirements for democratic stability. It is hardly the fault of the Palestinian people, any more than it is the fault of the Russians, etc, to be ruled by such a government.

People often say that the 2000-5 Al-Aqsa Intifada was a mistake for a different reason than the one I give, because it rejected the possibility of negotiating a peace and a Palestinian state. But I think it was clear by then that was not on offer. And Ariel Sharon had just replaced Ehud Barak as leader of Israel, and he didn't believe in it at all. And behaved deliberately provocatively. He certainly believed in keep-what-we-have-got and keep-them-quiet. And some might even deduce a cynical willingness to provoke so as to have the opportunity to grab more. So that is why I say the mistake of the Al-Aqsa Intifada was mainly that it gave Israel an excuse to tighten the ratchet, because that is what Ariel Sharon would do.

So there you are, I acknowledge numerous mistakes on behalf of the Palestinian people. But I struggle to locate true opportunities to form a reasonable Palestinian state that Mor claims "the Palestinians" repeatedly rejected, since the terrible mistake of the 1947 rejection.

And in my list of the main mistakes made on behalf of the Palestinians, I realised I forgot to list the recent egregious mistake of breaking out of Gaza to murder and kidnap a lot of Israelis.

https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/t% ... lmert-says

In an interview with FRANCE 24, Israel's former prime minister Ehud Olmert (2006-2009) said he believes Israel will be able to eliminate Hamas's military capabilities, but he expressed regret at Palestinian civilian casualties from the Israeli offensive and stressed that time was "limited". Olmert said Israel should offer to "start negotiations" on a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority immediately after conclusion of the war. He also claimed that no Arab country would agree to replace the Israeli army in Gaza after the war, which is why he advocates a NATO-led military presence that would usher in a transitional civilian administration before final talks over a Palestinian state. Olmert slammed Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, saying he had failed his citizens and boosted Hamas while weakening the Palestinian Authority: "He is in a nervous breakdown."

Seems pretty fair assessment.

jimbob wrote: Fri Nov 10, 2023 8:43 pm https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/t% ... lmert-says

In an interview with FRANCE 24, Israel's former prime minister Ehud Olmert (2006-2009) said he believes Israel will be able to eliminate Hamas's military capabilities, but he expressed regret at Palestinian civilian casualties from the Israeli offensive and stressed that time was "limited". Olmert said Israel should offer to "start negotiations" on a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority immediately after conclusion of the war. He also claimed that no Arab country would agree to replace the Israeli army in Gaza after the war, which is why he advocates a NATO-led military presence that would usher in a transitional civilian administration before final talks over a Palestinian state. Olmert slammed Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, saying he had failed his citizens and boosted Hamas while weakening the Palestinian Authority: "He is in a nervous breakdown."

Seems pretty fair assessment.

Pretty much on all counts.

What I can't see happening any time soon is anyone else stepping in to control Gaza during a transitional period, so we may well see an Area B type scenario for a while, though that isn't necessarily the worst outcome.

There's zero chance of Nato/western or Egypt/Arab forces going into Gaza. It wouldn't work for one thing, there's no way to keep the peace. And every potential country faces serious problems at home, from Trumpism to cost of living crises to general elections.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-67396773

Israel's scriptwriters are clearly getting their inspiration from the Kremlin. A spotless copy of a Mein Kampf translated into Arabic found being carried on the body of a Hamas fighter who'd apparently set up a base in a child's room. Presented by the president no less. Even Putin would probably find that a bit too on the nose.

WFJ wrote: Mon Nov 13, 2023 3:37 pm https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-67396773

Israel's scriptwriters are clearly getting their inspiration from the Kremlin. A spotless copy of a Mein Kampf translated into Arabic found being carried on the body of a Hamas fighter who'd apparently set up a base in a child's room. Presented by the president no less. Even Putin would probably find that a bit too on the nose.

You really think that it's far-fetched that a fighter for an organisation which seeks to massacre Jews - had a copy of a book by the leader of another organisation that sought to massacre Jews?

bob sterman wrote: Mon Nov 13, 2023 6:53 pm

WFJ wrote: Mon Nov 13, 2023 3:37 pm https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-67396773

Israel's scriptwriters are clearly getting their inspiration from the Kremlin. A spotless copy of a Mein Kampf translated into Arabic found being carried on the body of a Hamas fighter who'd apparently set up a base in a child's room. Presented by the president no less. Even Putin would probably find that a bit too on the nose.

You really think that it's far-fetched that a fighter for an organisation which seeks to massacre Jews - had a copy of a book by the leader of another organisation that sought to massacre Jews?

A Hamas fighter having a copy of Mein Kampf would not be surprising. But this particular copy, without a scratch or bloodstain, being pulled from the body of a Hamas fighter who had set up a base in a child's bedroom, and was carrying it around with him, is a bit less believable. For it to conveniently be found at a time when, even in the US, public opinion is turning against Israel due to the number of Palestinians, especially the thousands of children, they are killing by bombing their homes during the razing of Gaza, is becoming a little suspicious.

Mein Kampf is very widely sold in that part of the world.

Antisemitism is so normalised that there's even a menswear shop in Gaza named after Hitler, with the owner quite explicit he chose the name because Hitler was antisemitic.

WFJ wrote: Mon Nov 13, 2023 7:33 pm A Hamas fighter having a copy of Mein Kampf would not be surprising. But this particular copy, without a scratch or bloodstain, being pulled from the body of a Hamas fighter who had set up a base in a child's bedroom, and was carrying it around with him, is a bit less believable. For it to conveniently be found at a time when, even in the US, public opinion is turning against Israel due to the number of Palestinians, especially the thousands of children, they are killing by bombing their homes during the razing of Gaza, is becoming a little suspicious.

One Hamas fighter - in the north Gaza - of the many hundreds the IDF have killed - had a copy. Are you always this suspicious?

Reports both a weapons cache and evidence hostages were at one point held there found under the Rantisi Hospital in Gaza.

The IDF announced they have just entered Al Shifa Hospital - reports of Hamas placing command positions in and under this hospital go back as far as 2009 - and that they took with them medical specialists and Arabic speakers to try and mitigate the impact on those patients that couldn't be moved.

The BBC reported they were targetting medical specialists and Arabic speakers.

No wonder so many people have such a skewed idea about things!