Thread with 7 posts
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the thing that's very frustrating about israel is they chose to be in a state of constant war and then complain about how hard it is. their neighbours are probably never going to like them, especially with 80 years of bad blood, but they could be tolerated if they wanted to
everyone knows that long-term military occupations and apartheid states (i allow the reader to choose their preferred framing) are fundamentally unsustainable, and will lock you into eternal conflict and international condemnation, to say nothing of how it destroys the conscience
you are currently occupying a large territory with a population of a different ethnic group. do you:
A) allow it to become independent
B) integrate the territory and enfranchise the inhabitants
C) displace the population to imperial hinterlands
D) unspeakable worse version of C
the problem is that the status quo is ideal for them, because israeli politicians want the israelis to have all the power and the palestinians to have none, and the price the israelis pay for that is never experiencing peace; peace requires a mutually acceptable compromise.
and unfortunately they've engineered themselves a political system and political constituency that makes a realistic solution intractable. can't do (B) because then it's not a âjewish stateâ, can't do (A) because then they can't have the settlements.
i think some cynicism about western interests here is probably warranted. if they wanted a stable and free middle east, they'd stack the deck in the right way to make the two-state solution happen, but i guess they prefer the permanent state of war for strategic reasons?
a mutual has sent me this excellent image from The Economist which is a better expression of the trilemma than i can manage
