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[nenjin]

An outside mediator that is trusted by both Israel and Palestine to act in their best interests but which is not clouded by the bias of this conflict is what is needed to make the peace process a reality. Unfortunately, no such mediator appears to exist at this time. Almost everyone has decided to support Israel against Palestine or Palestine against Israel. There is no powerful force which wants both groups to benefit from the end of the conflict.

Obama tried. Bush tried. Clinton tried. In the end, to me, it has always come down to an unwillingness to disagree with Israel in my mind. They can say they support Palestinian self-determination all they want...but until they're actually willing to penalize Israel for impeding it, nothing will change. Israel holds 95% of the power.

Anyway, none of that gives me a reason to be sympathetic to their desire to mortar and rocket the other side back. I am sympathetic to the violence they have to go through, which is exactly why I'm advocating the one thing that will actually end it. Emotional gambits along the lines of "you don't know what I've been through" don't work if they're trying to justify actions that result in going through even more of the shit that's making their life hell.

I imagine it's pretty hard to turn the other cheek when someone is shooting at you. Asking the Palestinians for patience and understanding is basically asking them to continue putting up with what they've been putting up with since the creation of Israel. That's a hard sell that gets harder with every body that hits the pavement. It's equally hard for Israelis, except they have the benefit of water, power, food, an economy and nice homes to dull the pain. The Palestinians have almost none of that. (Well, ok, actually, technically, Israel's economy is in the shitter. See: self-imolation in Israel.)

So asking them to be Christ-like is, to me, again, Western wishful thinking. Would we act any different as a country were we in their shoes? I don't believe we would.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Obama tried. Bush tried. Clinton tried. In the end, to me, it has always come down to an unwillingness to disagree with Israel in my mind. They can say they support Palestinian self-determination all they want...but until they're actually willing to penalize Israel for impeding it, nothing will change. Israel holds 95% of the power.

There is the rather large issue that Palestine doesn't trust US leaders at all because of how staunchly pro-Israel the US has been for the past 80 years. That Palestine's two major factions were killing each other from 2006-2011 did not help matters for Bush or Obama.

[kaijyuu]

Would we act any different as a country were we in their shoes? I don't believe we would.

Me either. Doesn't excuse it, still.

I would say let 'em at each other's throats if they want it so badly, like I would two children who wouldn't stop fighting, but A) since this is war, the loss of innocent lives is nothing to be brushed aside casually, and B) Nukes.


So we're left with advocating a currently impossible hope, while perpetuating a stalemate. Rock and a hard place.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I would say let 'em at each other's throats if they want it so badly, like I would two children who wouldn't stop fighting, but A) since this is war, the loss of innocent lives is nothing to be brushed aside casually, and B) Nukes.

More importantly, nukes and a not-so-subtle hint from Israel that if they ever go down in a conventional war no one will live in the Middle East for a century. That's more than MAD, that's a promise to deploy nuclear weapons. Not even the USA and USSR during the height of the Cold War ever made a promise to nuke the other if things got to a certain point.

[Wayward Device]

The sad facts are that the Israelis are going to drive the Palestinians into the sea no matter what anybody does, probably within the lifetimes of everyone reading this. They'll finish their transformation into just another homeless race like the Armenians or indeed, like the Jews used to be before the modern state of Israel was created. The pressures brought to bare against them aren't just those of physical main force and political maneuvering. The Israeli government makes it very easy for Palestinians to leave and almost impossible for them to return, leading to most of the best and the brightest getting the fuck out and making a life for themselves anywhere else. It really is just a matter of time. Israel can't get wiped of the map or regime changed without starting WW3, and its not like those options ever actually work well.

Maybe I'm being cynical, maybe the factions who do genuinely want peace, love and togetherness (and whether you mean in Israel, Palestine or the rest of the world, they are definitely there) will somehow overcome the all the hate and bring about a multinational apotheosis and create a new Zion where everybody loves there neighbor. But somehow I doubt it.     

[RedKing]

Additionally, there's still a lot of Cold War associations propping up the "Israel GOOD, everyone else int he region BAD" meme.
The Soviets backed Israel's enemies in the region, mostly because we were backing Israel (even though the Soviets also backed Israel at times) and we were initially far less pro-Israel than Europe (Suez Crisis ring a bell?).

Europe backed Israel out of guilt. We came to back them out of geopolitical strategy. Guilt fades over time (especially when you realize you're making up for one atrocity by turning a blind eye to another).

Geopolitics change over time too, but it's become too deeply embedded in our politics. We no longer need Israel as a strategic beachhead in the region, and we don't need to worry about fighting "Communist influence" in the region. We do need to worry about Islamist influence in the region, but backing Israel is perhaps the single worst way to combat that.

The ironic part is that in the 1940s and 1950s, most of the Arab world LOVED the United States. After all, we had no history of colonialism in that part of the world so they felt they could trust us much more than the Brits or French or even the Soviets. Even in the 1970's, the PLO targeted Europe, not the U.S. They still hoped the Americans could be some kind of neutral arbitrator. It really wasn't until the 1980's, when Reagan made Israeli security a US national security goal that things really went to shit.

There is the rather large issue that Palestine doesn't trust US leaders at all because of how staunchly pro-Israel the US has been for the past 80 years.

Not so much. Eisenhower essentially backed Egypt in the Suez Crisis, up until the Soviets threatened to land troops in Sinai to keep the Israelis from massacring the Egyptian Army divisions trapped there. LBJ didn't trust Israel. Nixon didn't trust Israel. We really were neutral or at best cautiously pro-Israel up through the 1970's. Reagan was the one who made the choice to markedly ally ourselves to Israel. Prior to that, Republican foriegn policy was isolationist and avoided entangling alliances like Israel and Taiwan. And since it was the Great Gipper who did it, all subsequent Republicans have mostly accepted alliance with Israel as a tenet of faith.

[Leafsnail]

Unfortunately, some of these settlements have been around for quite a while and could easily be classified as small towns. As the settlements lean more towards the ultra-orthodox than away from it, both removing them and letting them stay presents serious issues.

Maybe some of the settlements can stay, but at the very, very, very least they need to stop building new ones.

[Kilroy the Grand]

Personally I think Israel is a big bag of dicks. Conversely, Palestinians are also acting like a bag of dicks.

[Aqizzar]

Unfortunately, some of these settlements have been around for quite a while and could easily be classified as small towns. As the settlements lean more towards the ultra-orthodox than away from it, both removing them and letting them stay presents serious issues.

Maybe some of the settlements can stay, but at the very, very, very least they need to stop building new ones.

Of course, that's exactly what the Israeli party promises, or at least takes as a strong suggestion at every peace accord, before the coalition that sent them there is ousted and the bulldozers start rolling before the ink is dry.

[Dutchling]

Personally I think Israel is a big bag of dicks. Conversely, Palestinians are also acting like a bag of dicks.

This, basically.

The only 'solution' for the Palestine-Israeili conflict I ever see happening is Israel 'settling' all the Palestinians into the Mediterranean.

[Svarte Troner]

Israel exists, therefore I think it has a right to continue existing. And Israelis have a right to act in their own interest. Are we trying to abolish Communist China because of their human rights abuses? Are we trying to partition Turkey and Iraq because of their persecution of ethnic Kurds? I don't understand why Israel is some kind of special case when it comes to this. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians, but I think Israel should be left to figure this out for themselves.

[toomanysecrets]

A two-state settlement has been approved by the majority of the world for decades, the main reason for the conflict is the political elite don't want to end the tension: order out of chaos, Hegelian dialectic, whatever you want to call it.

We have to seperate the regular people from the political and military planners.  Just because the ruling elite are dicks doesn't mean the whole country is full of dicks.

The only solution is mass genocide?  Ok, Hitler.  Also, Dutchling, how and why would they transport all those corpses to the Mediterranean?  Did you know the settlements are generally moving eastward away from the Mediterranean?  Did you know the West Bank is actually on the east side of Israel?

[RedKing]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians, but I think Israel should be left to figure this out for themselves.

They've been left to figure it out for themselves for 50 years. Do you see UN peacekeepers intervening in the Occupied Territories?? Israel has been given more or less a free hand in figuring out what to do with Palestinians in "their" territory (even though technically, the Occupied Territories are not recgonized as lawful Israeli territory). Their response has been to herd them into overcrowded slums and then act indignant when they get violent after years of this treatment.

A better analogy might be South Africa and apartheid. No one directly intervened, but there was sure as hell international pressure on them to clean up their act. The ANC was once considered a "terrorist group", too. Now they're the legitimate ruling party of a unified South Africa.

I don't see why it HAS to be impossible that there could be a single joint state of Israel-Palestine, ruled by political parties composed of Jews and Arabs together with Jerusalem as the capital of a unified state. The main obstacles are the people on either side who absolutely refuse anything less than total victory for their side.

[Dutchling]

The only solution is mass genocide?  Ok, Hitler.  Also, Dutchling, how and why would they transport all those corpses to the Mediterranean?  Did you know the settlements are generally moving eastward away from the Mediterranean?  Did you know the West Bank is actually on the east side of Israel?

There is a difference between solution and 'solution'. What I meant was that I doubt there will ever be a real solution, which means the Israeli will probably continue to settle the Palestine areas which will mean that an independent Palestine state is very unlikely to ever exist as Israel isn't going to give up it's settlements.

[Aqizzar]

I don't see why it HAS to be impossible that there could be a single joint state of Israel-Palestine, ruled by political parties composed of Jews and Arabs together with Jerusalem as the capital of a unified state. The main obstacles are the people on either side who absolutely refuse anything less than total victory for their side.

The Israeli parliament does have one kinda legit argument against this, namely that if all the Palestinians in "their" territory had weight in the Israeli government, they'd vastly outnumber the Israelis, and we can be sure that wouldn't end well either.  So they pretty much have to pretend that Palestine is actually a separate country squatting on their land, because if they admitted Palestine into its governance and wanted to protect their control over the process, then it would be abundantly obvious how screwed up the situation they've engineered is.