Why Israel Is Doomed Unless It Makes Peace With the Palestinians
Ryan Cooper – The Week
It is the fate of Zimbabwe that the people of Israel should remember, as random stabbings of Israelis have sparked a spiral of government reprisals and counter-reprisals. Violence is the inevitable result of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. And while Israel may be able to maintain a grip on power for many years to come, without a true settlement it will lose eventually…
The problem for Israel is that, if an insurgency were to arise, the brutal tactics necessary to defeat it would turn the country into an international pariah state and lead to eventual economic devastation….
A Palestinian protester uses a sling to hurl stones towards Israeli troops during clashes near the Jewish settlement of Bet El, near the West Bank city of Ramallah on Oct. 18, 2015. (Reuters)
Israel continues to enjoy the extensive support of the United States, most critically in the form of a U.N. Security Council veto. But this cannot be counted on forever. The longer Israel continues the occupation, the weaker the political foundation of this support. Increasingly extremist Israeli officials have deeply damaged the U.S.-Israel relationship of late…. And Israel is already widely disliked across most of the rest of the world.
Inside the Mind of Israel/Palestine
The Daily Beast – Maajid Nawaz
As somebody who used to be an Islamist, once rejecting Israel’s right to exist and wanting to fight against it, what follows is a conversation I have had in my own head over many years. This will be an uncomfortable conversation for many to read. For that I apologize, but welcome to my head: …
You usurped our ancestral land of Palestine. You imported foreigners from Europe to take our villages. In your wake you left millions of us homeless and stateless. You have ignored multiple UN resolutions that specifically categorize you as an occupying power, and that recognize our right to nationhood. You took 60 percent more than the UN originally promised you in 1948, and still now occupy many areas beyond the so-called 1967 green line….
People sing and dance with Israeli national flags in downtown Jerusalem on Oct. 18, 2015 (Reuters)
[I am an Israeli. This will make you angry. Allow me to explain to you why we are so uncomfortable with you.]
Before the 20th century, there was no such identity as “Palestinian.” You were Arabs living in the Levant. We gained UN backing to declare the state of Israel in 1948. Arab states declared war against a UN-backed Israel in 1948, and lost. Jordan and Egypt then took control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip respectively. Why didn’t they grant you citizenship then, or declare a Palestinian state for you when they had control? Instead they declared war against us in 1967, and again in 1973, trying again to take our UN-backed state from us. They lost, every single time, and we took the West bank and Gaza instead. This was war…. We do not deny your right to statehood now, but till this day you deny ours. We cannot negotiate on those terms.
Secretary of State John Kerry’s statement on Israeli-Palestinian violence:
Mismanaging the Conflict in Jerusalem
Nathan Thrall – The New York Times
The unrest has been sufficiently alarming to induce Secretary of State John Kerry to announce a visit to the region. But it has not brought Israeli leaders to rethink their insistence on never relinquishing East Jerusalem, which includes the Al Aqsa compound, a site also revered by Jews as the Temple Mount….
Yet the Jewish public’s mood is shifting, as it did during the second intifada. It was during the worst month of those four horrific years, in March 2002, that pollsters found peak Israeli support for the territorial concessions proposed by President Bill Clinton in December 2000, including a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem with sovereignty over the Al Aqsa compound. Last week, about two-thirds of Jewish Israelis surveyed in a poll said they wished to separate from the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, excluding the Old City.
Yet if they succeed only in ending the unrest, they will have merely restored the stasis that gave rise to it. This is what Israelis call “managing the conflict.” …. But what does seem guaranteed is that most Palestinians will continue to believe that if the occupation is cost-free, there will be little incentive to end it. Mr. Abbas and Mr. Netanyahu have taught them that.