How to peacefully disband The Illegimate State of Israel

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Except some of those people moved there after having established a few hundred years somewhere else first.

And, again, the land isn't even that good with all factors considered.

And ignoring holy books...because nothing in reality should be based on holy books.

There is no peaceful way to resolve this conflict because neither side will budge. At this point, people in support of either side are just wasting their time trying to figure out a way to fix the problem.

Perhaps sometime in the future at least one side will stop acting like a child and the conflict will end, but I won't hold my breath.

s

I really do see a relatively achieveable way to end the conflict. Israel should life the population of the West Bank and Gaza strip from martial law, cease the embargo around Gaza, stop illegally building settlements in the West Bank, cease demolishing Palestinian homes, and give Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza full citizenship rights in Israel. Effectively, the one-state solution. The easy way to expediate this is for the US to threaten a withdrawal of aid to Israel.

Sure, there are plenty of scenarios that could potentially end the conflict, but at least one side has to be willing to compromise for it to work.

It's pretty clear that just won't happen any time soon.

Jerusalem would belong to no country, or to three countries at the same time. Private property would hopefully not be transfered, only whom to pay taxes to and stop worrying about a war to take it over.


We could also nuke it so that nobody fights for it anymore.

Destroying Palestinian homes is the best way to discourage suicide bombers. Individual Saudi officials secretly smuggle money to the Palestinian government to offer to take care of a guy's family if he agrees to go blow up a bus or a checkpoint or something, so destroying everything a dead suicide bomber's family has is the best deterrent they have to date. As for full citizenship rights, that would involve giving citizenship to terrorists. Not to mention they would want Palestinian citizenship and no Israeli. As for withdrawing aid, that's not likely to happen. There are influential people in the US watching Israel's back.

"If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more ‎violence. If the Jews put ‎down their weapons ‎today, there would be no ‎more Israel"
-Benjamin Netanyahu

"Peace of us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all out war, a war which will last for generations."
-Yasser Arafat

It's the most effective thing Israel could come up with before they built the wall. If a guy knows their family is going to be far worse off if the blow themselves up, then you can keep the number of suicide bombers down to the young fanatics. If it becomes a big enough problem in a town, you lay waste to the town and not allow new construction materials in. Then everybody is worse off for their trouble and Israel slowly gets to eliminate places to hide and launch rockets from. The Palestinians could knock it off and their standard of living would eventually go up, but if they want to behave and live like cavemen, then Israel will have to oblige.

Right, because targeting innocent children has worked so well in the past.

Wait, no it didn't. It was just met with retaliation. Imagine that...

Just like the Great Plains are for the aboriginal North American tribes. Sure.

ruveyn

If I had a nickel every time I have been accused of stealing native land...

The Israelis get a sheckle several times a day. They won their land in a fighting war, fair and square.

ruveyn

Then why should the Israelis turn over their most holy city?

Jerusalem is holy for Jews, Muslims and Christians.

The Muslims consider it the 3rd most holy site, and Jerusalem is the Jewish People's first most holy site.

Let's put down a few fundamental markers:

1) Eretz Israel cannot be described as illegitimate. While you may disapproved of the means by which Britain disposed of its mandate after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the process created a entity which has all the hallmarks of a legitimate nation state. If we accept that revolution can create a legitimate nation state such as the USA, we can accept no less in the process that led to the creation of Israel.

Now, you can argue that the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is illegitimate, but an illegitimate action does not serve to illegitimize the entire nation. I don't care if you are Jew. Being one of us does not entitle you to resort to hyperbole and falsehood as a means to make a political argument.

2) The Jews are a distinct people. We have a unique religion (Judaism) which is practiced by a substantial number of us. We have two unique languages (Hebrew and Yiddish) which are intrinsic to us and shared by no other cultural group. We are an ethnically closed population because of our traditional of matrilineality.

3) The people who we call Palestinians are Hashemites. They share a religious tradition with other Arab and non-Arab populations, and they share a language with other Arab populations. They are ethnically congruous with the other Hashemite populations (primarily in Jordan, but also in Iraq).

Now one fundamental difference between Palestinians and Jews is that in the absence of Israel, there is no country on earth to which Jews, as an ethnically closed population have a connection. All Poles can trace their heritage to Poland. All Maori can trace their heritage to Aotearoa (New Zealand).

Yet, in the absence of a Palestinian state, such a country still exists for Palestinians: the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

It also bears noting that no such independent nation called Palestine has ever existed, historically. There are several references in antiquity to a regional appelation for Palestine, but the sovereignty of the territory during this period lay either with the Judeans (Jews), followed by the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans (who actually applied the name Syria Palestina to the region in 135, which may be the first application of the name "Palestine" to a political division).

With the fall of Empire, the region was successively under the control of the Byzantines, the Caliphs, the Ottomans and the British. But never, in its history, has it ever been under the sovereignty of the Hashemites.

Now, all of that being said, I the time is long past where Jordan could serve as the homeland for the Palestinian people. That ship has sailed and the only prospect for peace rests with a two state solution.

You seem to suppose that a single, secular, pluralist state could exist. I think that view is naive.