In 2002, it would have taken 20.

As did the nazis. They strongly felt their survival was at stake, and they had no choice but to do contemptuous things. Quantitatively I’d say the nazis had slightly less reason to worry for their survival, and the things they did were worse. No qualitative difference, though.

But this sort of talk does no good whatsoever. It merely inflames passions, it persuades people who vicariously feel the israelis’ terror not to listen. It confirms them in their long-term-suicidal beliefs.

If we look at the question in terms of who’s justified and who isn’t, we cannot possibly get any result better than genocide. While the israeli responses are not justified by any rational standard, still many of them feel a religious obligation to hold that land. They could not move to, say, alabama even if the USA gave it to them. And since they have to stay, they feel a natural obligation to survive. So they will respond with utter viciousness to any threat. We can expect this to continue until all but one side to the conflict has been genocided. This is the result we should expect from the approach of deciding who’s right and who’s wrong.

We need to look at it without morality. Regardless of right and wrong, the israelis are there and they aren’t going away, and they aren’t going to accept palestinian neighbors. Regardless of right and wrong, they are a deep embarrassment to the USA in the world community and particularly the arab and muslim worlds. The USA is better off if neither israelis nor arabs get genocided. The USA is better off if nobody in the middle east or anywhere else gets nuked. We are better off if something good happens for palestinians that doesn’t anger israelis enough that they sabotage it. And any solution or even palliative would have to be imposed from outside.

I think we should develop the political will in the USA to ask the palestinians if they’re willing to become a protectorate of the USA. If they vote for it, they get a deal something on the order of guam or puerto rico. The IAF is no longer allowed to do airstrikes. Probably we’d better set up a no-fly zone over israel and palestine, and the israelis could sell us their planes. We’d open the border to jordan—israel can’t afford to do that because their first priority is making sure that palestinians never get an army, but with the US army occupying the place that wouldn’t be an issue. With things like that we would be liberators for them, and with any luck our army would really be welcomed. Our soldiers wouldn’t be trying to police them, they’d be primarily protecting them from israelis.

We would build sewage treatment plants for the palestinians. Currently palestinians can’t afford to build their own, and the israelis of course won’t spend the money for dirty arabs, and so palestinian sewage is contaminating israeli groundwater.

If palestinians could travel with US passports like citizens of guam and puerto rico, that would change things around some. Most palestinians don’t have the money to leave, but also if they did leave they might not be allowed back. If they knew they could come home, more of them could go be guest workers elsewhere and send money home. That would reduce the water shortage.

There’s the question where the border should be. One good rule would be, follow the 1967 border except where israelis have a population density above 5000 per square mile. Let israel keep those areas but swap worthless land elsewhere for them. we’d want to build some sort of wall or somesuch that defends in both directions.

In the short run, israel wouldn’t be “negotiating” water rights with palestinians, they’d be dealing with us. We would have a goal to reduce the number of permanent residents of both israel and palestine—there simply is not enough water. It’s absurd to have so many people trying to live there.

No solution can come from justifications about who’s wronger. Any solution must be imposed from outside, and should focus on finding things people can live with despite the old and continuing injustices.

Dude. Chill out. It’s exactly this kind of thing that makes me reluctant to discuss this.

But if you sincerely want to learn about the right of return issue (as opposed to yelling at strangers about it online), here’s the deal:

All the stuff about it being insoluble, the Palestinians wanting to use it as part of a Clever Plan to destroy Israel, etc. is bullshit. The outlines for an agreement have been clear for quite a while, and understood and agreed to by the PA. They’d be:

• Israel accepting the Right of Return IN PRINCIPLE (Palestinians can’t agree to anything without this)

• IN REALITY, the actual return of refugees to Israel proper being subject to Israeli approval, with some agreed to ceiling (Israeli can’t agree to anything without this)
• Which is fine, because only 10% of Palestinian refugees want to return to Israel anyway

For more details, I suggest you read:

1. “The Truth About Camp David” by Clayton Swisher, especially pp. 281-82:

Malley, who attended most of the refugee talks, noted that Palestinians were not asking for a full right of return. What they wanted was recognition of the right of return in principle, after which they would agree “to take into account Israel’s interest.” For the Palestinian negotiators, this was a gigantic concession…After Camp David some Palestinians conceded, off the record, that Arafat had been willing to accept a limited right of return…so long as the Palestinians received recognition of that right and a viable state…

2. These four columns by Palestinians and Israelis, particularly the bottom one by Yossi Beilin, one of the chief Israeli negotiators under Barak:

Regrettably, the refugee issue has become “proof,” as it were, of the “fact” that it was impossible to reach an agreement between the Palestinians and Israel, even at a time when Israel was headed by a particularly moderate government. This claim, however, is quite simply untrue. The talks at Taba were the best ever held between the parties, and the closest ever to reaching an agreement. Were it not for the fact that the talks were held at such a late stage, on the eve of elections in Israel for a new prime minister, it would have been possible to complete the Israeli-Palestinian framework agreement at the Taba talks.

3. This column by Uri Avnery

4. This 2002 op-ed by Arafat

5. This 2003 Palestinian poll of refugees on the right of return

Now, based on prior experiences with other people, I have no expectation you’ll actually read any of this. But I’m happy to be surprised.

As for Hamas, they’re the rough equivalent of the settler movement, which clearly sees the Palestinians as subhuman obstacles to their ambitions. Hamas is more popular because the Palestinians live under much worse conditions than the Israelis. One can afford to be “generous” if you’re living a prosperous life and you think giving up some settlements (i.e., stolen property) might reduce the chance of terror attacks. Much of the support for terrorism that you find on the Palestinian side is, obviously, the result of the fact that Israel has forced Palestinians to live under a form of apartheid. Talk of wanting peace probably wears thin. Also, when Israel withdraws from territory unilaterally and not as the result of peace negotiations with a just solution spelled out and soon to follow, it gives the some Palestinians the impression that violence is the only thing that brings results. Not all Palestinian support for terrorism can be blamed on such factors. There is a hardcore element that wants an Islamic state over Israel and the occupied territories. Whatever the reasons, nothing excuses suicide bombing, but if you bother to read the reports of the human rights organizations such as Human RIghts Watch, Amnesty International, or B’Tselem you’d know that the majority of civilians killed in this conflict have been killed by Israel. Neither side has anything to be proud of, morally speaking. And there’s the problem with the rhetoric of a lot of Israel-supporters, Jim S. One hears a lot about the total inexcusability of terror, but it’s always about the inexcusability of Palestinian terror, not the inexcusability of terror in general. Plus history only seems to matter when we’re talking about the history of Arab attacks on Israel—bring up the other side of the story and all of a sudden stuff that happened 30 or 50 years ago (or a few months back) is just old news.

Now as for Iran, that’s another story. It makes me nervous when the head of a country trying to acquire nuclear weapons makes stupid, irresponsible, warmongering statements. I haven’t said anything about what to do about that, because I don’t know.

I assure you all, here in Israel (I am an Israeli Jew) we take this very seriously, and we take Ahmadinejad’s pronouncements very seriously. We do feel this is about our survival, and I haven’t seen one shred of evidence to suggest this feeling is definitely wrong.

Wanna bet that Iranian leaders are not mad enough to launch a first nuclear strike against us, knowing that all of our warheads will be flying back at them in retaliation? OK. You go ahead and bet. I don’t think we want to. I would be surprised if an Israeli surgical strike against Iranian nuclear sites would not happen sometime in the next few months, assuming no diplomatic or otherwise peaceful progress is achieved.

And what’s more, I will support such a strike while grieving for inevitable loss of some civilian lives, as well as loss of any project of pro-western reforms or political moderation in Iran in the coming years.

You can pooh-pooh crazy threats (rather specific crazy threats, too) of Iranian fanatics in power as a “generally hostile disposition” all you want. We do not have such a luxury.

The actual number of Palestinians who would want to actually move to Israel is a different matter. They can be offered other more attractive alternatives, if that’s so important.

I still haven’t seen the quote about nuclear bombing of Israeli cities. I don’t see why ‘wipe of the map’ would mean anything but dissolving the state and giving the indigenous people of the region the right to self-determination.

I suppose (I guess) he would want the Israelis with American and European background to return to their countries, but I don’t see any indication that he would want them to die.

As far as the cowardice is concerned I’ve noticed that not once have you actually responded to one of my main points. In the here and now, not in 1948, not in 1967 or any other time in the past there is still a major political force in Palestinian circles that does not call simply for the end of occupation of the West Bank and Gaza but for the complete elimination of Israel and for the Jewish population currently living there to be driven out or killed. Are the crimes of 1948 and the period immediately following justification for that desire? Because Hamas and Islamic Jihad between them have the support of far more than a tiny fraction of the Palestinian populace and that is their stated goal, in no way moderated in recent years. Not once have either of you replied to that point except to engage in a “The Israelis are bad too!” exercise.

I don’t think either side is proposing anything that will solve any problems. The Israeli West Bank settlements are an apparently intractable problem to peace and frankly I do support the idea of us withholding our aid to the Israelis if they refuse to see reason. A workable two state solution is the only thing that might bring peace but I don’t think it will satisfy Hamas or their supporters, including, apparently some of the posters here.

There’s a pragmatic reason you could give for not allowing a right of return for Palestinians—it’s not clear the fanatics in both communities could live together for more than a week before civil war would start. That one is plausible to me—don’t impose idealistic solutions that will likely lead to disaster. When instead people start talking about “the end of Israel”, what they seem to be saying without admitting it is that the ethnic cleansing of 1948 was justified. They don’t want to say it that baldly, because then you’ve got this little problem of explaining why it’s wrong for one group to use terror tactics, but not the other.

People should either be completely honest about the terrorism of both sides, or just stop using moral language they don’t really mean.

This seems so obvious that I wonder why it isn’t being pointed out more strongly. To my mind, Ahmadinejad is certainly a danger, a man of limited experience who might be willing to put his country on the path to martyrdom—but the proper U.S. response to him should be to make connections with more reasonable parts of the Iranian ruling class, who have every reason to ally against the guy.

Eventually, one hopes that regional peace talks would lead to the take down of the Israeli nuclear capability and the blocking of Iran’s.

That’s true, but based on what he’s written here, I doubt he could get it under any circumstances at all. In my experience with people like this, both the US and mideast varieties, there is no point to discussing anything with them. They are so deep into their imaginary, self-justifying version of history that nothing can bring them out.

For instance, look at what jim s said directly above. You could walk him through the reality of the right of return issue, but why? His understanding of the history overall is so confused that realistically you’d have to talk to him face to face for five years before you could maybe make some progress. But even that probably wouldn’t be enough; you’d likely have to make some field trips to the middle east.

So, I don’t think there’s much percentage in trying to help people with these types of perspectives understand things. Most of them don’t want to understand anything in the first place.

Also, let’s be honest. It was too late for Israel to be accepted by its neighbors the day it came into existence. How long did it take for its neighbors to attack? How many times have they attacked Israel? How many terrorists have they sponsored? And yes, those wonderful folks who blow themselves up in crowds of civilians are terrorists whose actions cannot be excused by anything. Period.