demagogue on 17/11/2012 at 06:10

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Edit: well this is long (as usual), and I'd try to cut it some but don't have time, but I felt it worth posting anyway.

The history is something of a wash and it's better not to take a spin on it. This is my understanding from when I used to study it. The "original sin" (from the Palestinian perspective) of course was that the territory was "stolen" from the Ottoman empire by the British in the mandate -- not that the region felt itself "Ottoman", like you're saying, late 1800s-1910s they're still largely thinking in terms of "my village", and over there is a "Druze village", and over there a "Jewish village", but there was a sense with the mandate that now we're not being ruled over by Islamic leaders but Europeans. And from the Palestinian perspective it was the British that legislated a permanent Jewish/European state from the "outside". From the Jewish perspective, the biggest influx was during & following WWII, of course these people had just escaped death by the skin of their teeth and the territory was the only safe haven (interestingly British East Africa was another viable option for a time, undercutting some of the ground that "historic connection" was as important then as it is now), and under the circumstances they felt the only way for a people to absolutely avoid extermination was to have their own state. (Of course a lot of other groups also feel like that and they don't get their own state, the Kurds, West Saharans, etc.) They hardly felt themselves an extension of European colonialism considering the Continent had basically gassed them out and made no qualms that they were not Europeans that deserved any right to exist there at the time; and the only area on the planet Jews had always kept with them was "next year in Jerusalem", this connection to the land of Israel that had been one of the few unifying things for a perpetually place-less population.

It's hard to label a single "Israeli" position early on because there were different factions, like today, some (particularly the communists) wanted a single state shared with Palestinians, others thought it had to be a Jewish state (with a secular & religious version of this), but even this group early on was thinking in terms of partition with Palestinians, not displacement. Then you had the international community weighing in on the side of partition, largely (IIRC) because both the majority Israelis & Palestinians didn't want to accept a single shared state. So then you get the 1947 partition plan that Israel signed off on, which didn't call for Palestinian displacement, but just carved out the few Jewish pockets, the coast around Tel Aviv & the southern desert. It left Jerusalem to the Palestinians (another part of historic connection not being as important then as now). Then it was the Palestinians that rejected it, again thinking in terms of decolonization (this is 1948, India is setting the tone), Palestine is supposed to be getting its state returned from the UK, only to see half of it (to their perspective) "kept by Europeans to still control us perpetually, not even as colonial occupation anymore but with the audacity to call it their own state".

So then you get Israel's unilateral declaration of statehood in 1948. Then you get the surrounding Arab states invading (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon), ostensibly to "defend" the Palestinians rights, but everybody understood it was a land grab for themselves, which (if later history is a guide) would have been quite severe for the Palestinians, as they suffered as refugees in Jordan and Lebanon later (which had their own stability to worry about; Jordan has a sizeable unstable Palestinian minority, and Lebanon its own civil war brewing). The sense in which land felt "taken" from the Palestinian perspective had to do with the displacements village by village. Whenever you grow up in a village where your great-great-great-grandfather lived, and you are forced off the land by conflict and not allowed to return, there is an unshakeable sense that "my" land has been "taken", and the Palestinians call it their Nakba, or suffering. It's something Israel has never acknowledged as a wrong and something they should apologize or compensate for, even if unavoidable. And then from the Jewish perspective of course this was just an extension from their WWII experience, yet another peoples wants to exterminate their race, and this is a struggle for basic survival & their war for independence once & for all from the threat of genocide -- And remember this is 1948 when it wasn't at all certain the Jewish side could actually win, and the prospects of Jewish survival if the Arab states did take control was felt very dim. As I remember the story, this was also the time when you had European refugees coming in almost literally out of the Nazi concentration camps and E. Europe villages, getting off the ship in Tel Aviv, speaking who knows what language, and being sent right out into the field to fight largely with Nazi weapons.

Also IIRC many of the Palestinian villagers fled for security to the protection of Arab armies on their own; it was when Israel occupied their land that made it difficult to come back, because at that point Israel had just fought a war for its very survival. It didn't feel itself in any position to allow the groups that they felt had just tried to exterminate them back into their territory. They felt that had to build a buffer space between themselves and the surrounding Arab territories & refugees for the most basic security. Then the actual people of Israel took that on as almost a mandate ("We have to go to the borders or the borders will come to us!"). Of course Europe was going through the same thing at the time (East Europe was above all a buffer space for the USSR from Germany).

The catch is, when you have all these forces playing out haphazardly, borders crystallize in without any forethought of the interests involved; unlike having negotiated borders. Actually all of the decolonizing countries had problems with borders, which is why the general rule was to keep the colonial borders or borders after a conflict, uti possidetis ("as you possess")... which (for better or worse) played into setting a status quo for whatever borders came out of conflicts too. Then you get the later border splurge in 1967 & occupations of West Bank, Gaza, and Golan, setting another baseline which is historically rather arbitrary but part of that uti possidetis tradition that both sides can use for negotiations (baseline for landswaps, etc).

Uh, was the land stolen from the Palestinians from which they were unjustly displaced and not allowed to return to their own villages? Were the Jews doing only what they had to do to avoid total extermination, using land that they had a historic connection to, and even offering the Palestinians a generous way out that they rejected? It's like two separate narratives that both make sense in their own context, and you don't make progress locking yourself into one without seeing the other. But it's even better if you take a realist view over the whole history, there are just motives & events, & recognize how both narratives are going to see events play out from their own perspective. Then you can think about how to bridge the two practically to at least have some normalization. Palestinians want their nakba tragedy acknowledged & respected, even if they aren't allowed to return. Israelis want their right to existence and security acknowledged & respected, even if they recognize Palestinians have a right to their own state.

Edit: Naturally anybody feel free to correct or respond to anything. This was by old memory yo.

SubJeff on 17/11/2012 at 08:30

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faetal, you can insist Israel is a racist state all you like. Fact is, it's not.
Now I'm not a fan of this guy, but he has some interesting things to say sometimes.

Watch this

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1dvwgjDAT8&feature=youtube_gdata_player)

DDL on 17/11/2012 at 09:50

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That does sort of take the "well they started it" attitude, and it also takes it slightly out of context. If you were blockading your neighbour's house so he had to subsist on the barest of amenities, but he had a stockpile of rocks, would you be altogether surprised if he used those rocks against you?

Yesterday morning there was an Israeli PR guy justifying the aggression because "it's terrible to live in a place where you don't know if your children will be coming home alive"...without a shred of apparent irony.

"They started it" is just an unhelpful (and indeed basically nonsensical) argument to justify atrocities committed by both sides. It really doesn't matter who started it, if indeed you can say ANYONE truly started it. Arguing over which atrocities are more atrocious is also pointless, especially since the conflict is so asymmetric.

And finally it seems a bit shortsighted to say things like "Just stop shooting fucking rockets into the heavily armed country right next to you", because that ascribes a level of organisation, mandate, and conscious dedication to palestine that really isn't there. Yes there are dickbags firing rockets from within civilian areas, but that's because they're incredibly angry (see "they started it") and that's basically all they have left. They may get votes, too, because...hell, what else IS there? This is a nation that by this point has known basically nothing but conflict, to the extent that it can barely be called a nation at this point.

There are also tons of non-aggressive, non-rocket firing civilians (and lots of children) who are dying because of dickbags sabre-rattling.

But you could turn almost all of that argument around and apply it to Israel, and it would still be equally valid. The only difference is Israel is vastly better equipped. There are still tons of non-aggressive, non-militarised civilians (and lots of children) who are dying because of dickbags sabre-rattling.

And nothing prolongs a conflict like avenging dead children.


It would just be nice if people focussed on where we could go from here, rather than trying to work out who is most at fault. Obviously you could just wait until one side wipes out the other, but that's a non-ideal solution. In terms of listening to reason, I'd put money on the Israelis being the best bet there. Someone has to swallow their pride first and be the bigger man, and really Israel is the only one of them in a situation to do that (lessening sanctions and landgrabs would be a start).

As it stands, it's very hard for either side to really play the victim card when they're both such fucking dicks about it.

Independent Thief on 17/11/2012 at 10:00

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Not so sure about that-I think Ashkhenazi Jews are primarily descended from east and central europeans that converted to Judaism in the early dark ages. I doubt they actually have more than 5% of Hebrew dna if any at all. Not to mention in 70 AD the temple in Jerusalem was leveled to the ground by Titus, which also just happened to contain the genealogical records of the Jews at the time, meaning we now have no way to determine who is descended from who even if they were actually descended from the Jews in biblical times.

Phatose on 17/11/2012 at 11:06

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OK...so, how many of those lone militants have they caught and brought to justice?