VitalSigns posted:

So essentially we should tell Likud that they just need to delay the peace process for another 20 years, and the unconscionable crime will turn into "land open to good-faith negotiations", and if they can keep peace from happening for another 20 years beyond that then it becomes indisputably theirs and no longer open to negotiation?

VitalSigns posted:

But America does have the power to punish Israel, if it wants. So if America decides to actually do that, then that retroactively makes the settlements illegal?
Also I suppose that when Dow chemical killed all those Indians at Bhopal, it wasn't actually immoral or criminal at all since their executives managed to get on flights out of the country and escape punishment.

hakimashou posted:

Correct, as time passes, and Islamism doesn't become more popular among the governments of powerful countries, the violent resistance against Israel will only further harm any chance the Palestinians have to get what they want.

VitalSigns posted:

Don't you think this creates a perverse incentive against peace if we tell Israel "the longer you're able to delay and derail the peace process and continue settling, the better deal you'll get in the future"?

Dolash posted:

Has anything actually happened in regards to Israel and Palestine lately or are we just up to our balls in stupid circular arguing with idiots?

hakimashou posted:

Since "illegal under international law" is only a word about what America wants, America wanting something else would change what was legal and illegal, retroactively or any other way, by definition.

There really isn't anything else to international law besides that. Laws are only laws when you are punished for breaking them.

Dolash posted:

Has anything actually happened in regards to Israel and Palestine lately or are we just up to our balls in stupid circular arguing with idiots?

quote:

The Israeli government announced Sunday that it will be releasing this week $1.85 billion shekel (roughly $473 million) in withheld taxes collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA), according to Israeli radio.

"Israel decided to transfer the PA's tax revenues out of keenness to maintain political stability in the region and other humanitarian consideration," Israeli radio quoted an unnamed security source as saying.

On Saturday, Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Hassan al-Sheikh told pressmen that Israel will be transferring Palestinian tax on Sunday or Monday at the latest.

A day earlier, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah said that Israel has agreed to disburse withheld Palestinian tax revenues in their entirety.

He added that the Israeli government had agreed to transfer the funds – covering four months, from December 2014 to March 2015 – to his government.

He did not say, however, how his government had reached agreement with Israel or when exactly the funds would be disbursed.

Flowers For Algeria posted:

You have a child's understanding of international law and relations. Congrats.

hakimashou posted:

It might very well, but Israelis didn't crash planes into our office buildings, people chanting "allahu ackbar" did, and so, when faced with the choice between supporting our friends and supporting a different group of people doing suicide attacks and chanting "Allahu ackbar," real people are going to be a lot more likely to support their friends,

The point is, violence against Israel is just part of "Islamist violence against America and its allies" now.

And that can't lead anywhere good.

Isn't it time the Palestinians tried something else?

Gandhi and Dr King used nonviolence in their struggles, and they won.

Flowers For Algeria posted:

You have a child's understanding of international law and relations. Congrats.

VitalSigns posted:

So essentially we should tell Likud that they just need to delay the peace process for another 20 years, and the unconscionable crime will turn into "land open to good-faith negotiations", and if they can keep peace from happening for another 20 years beyond that then it becomes indisputably theirs and no longer open to negotiation?

Jack of Hearts posted:

hakimashou, do you believe that only defeated parties are obligated (in what sense? Morally?) to behave "honorably"? Is it that you think Israelis are incapable of honorable behavior, so that it's useless to expect anything of them, or merely that you believe unambiguously that might makes right?

hakimashou posted:

No, I have a very good understanding of it.

What is international law?

How is it different from the will of America and its allies?

Please be specific, especially where countries which aren't the US and its allies use international law to punish them against their will, taken broadly.

hakimashou posted:

What if we lived in a what if world?

Since "illegal under international law" is only a word about what America wants, America wanting something else would change what was legal and illegal, retroactively or any other way, by definition.

There really isn't anything else to international law besides that. Laws are only laws when you are punished for breaking them.

VitalSigns posted:

So essentially we should tell Likud that they just need to delay the peace process for another 20 years, and the unconscionable crime will turn into "land open to good-faith negotiations", and if they can keep peace from happening for another 20 years beyond that then it becomes indisputably theirs and no longer open to negotiation?

VitalSigns posted:

Don't you think this creates a perverse incentive against peace if we tell Israel "the longer you're able to delay and derail the peace process and continue settling, the better deal you'll get in the future"?

VitalSigns posted:

So essentially we should tell Likud that they just need to delay the peace process for another 20 years, and the unconscionable crime will turn into "land open to good-faith negotiations", and if they can keep peace from happening for another 20 years beyond that then it becomes indisputably theirs and no longer open to negotiation?

Dolash posted:

Has anything actually happened in regards to Israel and Palestine lately or are we just up to our balls in stupid circular arguing with idiots?

Dead Reckoning posted:

That doesn't really address my point though. Either it matters how long ago the land was taken, in which case your statement would be correct, or there was some particular year before which taking land was OK...

Or it doesn't actually matter when the land was taken, in which case, either:
A) the entire nation of Israel (and anyone else who has ever settled conquered territory) is unjust and we can accept nothing less than its dissolution
or
B) the entire nation of Israel is unjust, but we're willing to be morally flexible about that.

Dead Reckoning posted:

That doesn't really address my point though. Either it matters how long ago the land was taken, in which case your statement would be correct, or there was some particular year before which taking land was OK...

Or it doesn't actually matter when the land was taken, in which case, either:
A) the entire nation of Israel (and anyone else who has ever settled conquered territory) is unjust and we can accept nothing less than its dissolution
or
B) the entire nation of Israel is unjust, but we're willing to be morally flexible about that.

Flowers For Algeria posted:

You have a child's understanding of international law and relations. Congrats.

ChairMaster posted:

I don't really care about whatever atrocities are happening in Israel right now, but I am genuinely curious, has America ever faced actual consequences for breaking international law? I can't think of a time it's happened but I don't always pay a lot of attention.

Dead Reckoning posted:

Lol, no. International Law, like the regular kind, really only matters insofar as someone is willing and able to enforce it. No one has the military wherewithal or economic will to compel us to do anything. Plus, most international law was codified during the period where western if not explicitly American interests and thinking dominated the international political system.

hakimashou posted:

Yup. For a law to really be a law it has to be enforced. Laws aren't some abstract or theoretical thing, they obtain their force by being enforced.

I am still waiting to hear about the last time an American was indicted and punished by an international court for breaking an international law. The idea is absurd.

Volkerball posted:

Volkerball posted:

eSports Chaebol posted:

This is the actual plan irl though.

Cat Mattress posted:

You don't have to tell them that; they're already operating under these premises.

My Imaginary GF posted:

What does justice have to do with anything? If everyone is unjust, then no-one is unjust because of how meaningless you've made the term.

Israel is a democratic nation and a workable partner with various institutional mechanisms to exert influence upon. Palestine is a developing nation with high levels of concentrated poverty. Is that just? Poverty exists, always has, always will, nothing to do with a concept of justice about it.

Baudolino posted:

Yeah why do People have such an impossible brigth view of human nature in this thread? People are going to want some revenge when this is over. Some kind of symbolic blood sacrifice will have to be made to appease palestinians and to show them that not only have they won, they are also safe.
Trail of tearsing the illegal Israeli occupiers is the bare minimum that will have be done to create any kind of lasting Peace. That`s what had to happen to East-European Germans living outside of Germany after 1945.

Ultramega posted:

Does hamas still even control gaza or has the PA basically become the only game in town?

Obliterati posted:

Just so's we're all clear the Europa Universalis solution is a vassal state, because gently caress 20k rebels spawning every deca-

Wait, hang on

Kajeesus posted:

There's a recording of Bibi literally saying "what we take is what we keep" in an unofficial meeting.

quote:

Their voluntary agreement is out of the question. Hence those who hold that an agreement with the natives is an essential condition for Zionism can now say “no” and depart from Zionism. Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy.

Not only must this be so, it is so whether we admit it or not. What does the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate mean for us? It is the fact that a disinterested power committed itself to create such security conditions that the local population would be deterred from interfering with our efforts.

All of us, without exception, are constantly demanding that this power strictly fulfill its obligations. In this sense, there are no meaningful differences between our “militarists” and our “vegetarians.” One prefers an iron wall of Jewish bayonets, the other proposes an iron wall of British bayonets, the third proposes an agreement with Baghdad, and appears to be satisfied with Baghdad’s bayonets – a strange and somewhat risky taste’ but we all applaud, day and night, the iron wall. We would destroy our cause if we proclaimed the necessity of an agreement, and fill the minds of the Mandatory with the belief that we do not need an iron wall, but rather endless talks. Such a proclamation can only harm us. Therefore it is our sacred duty to expose such talk and prove that it is a snare and a delusion.

Two brief remarks: In the first place, if anyone objects that this point of view is immoral, I answer: It is not true; either Zionism is moral and just or it is immoral and unjust. But that is a question that we should have settled before we became Zionists. Actually we have settled that question, and in the affirmative.

We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not.

There is no other morality.

All this does not mean that any kind of agreement is impossible, only a voluntary agreement is impossible. As long as there is a spark of hope that they can get rid of us, they will not sell these hopes, not for any kind of sweet words or tasty morsels, because they are not a rabble but a nation, perhaps somewhat tattered, but still living. A living people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions only when there is no hope left. Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall, only then do extreme groups lose their sway, and influence transfers to moderate groups. Only then would these moderate groups come to us with proposals for mutual concessions. And only then will moderates offer suggestions for compromise on practical questions like a guarantee against expulsion, or equality and national autonomy.

I am optimistic that they will indeed be granted satisfactory assurances and that both peoples, like good neighbors, can then live in peace. But the only path to such an agreement is the iron wall, that is to say the strengthening in Palestine of a government without any kind of Arab influence, that is to say one against which the Arabs will fight. In other words, for us the only path to an agreement in the future is an absolute refusal of any attempts at an agreement now.

Main Paineframe posted:

It's pretty devious to take "Trail of Tears", a phrase referring to a genocidal forced eviction and forced relocation whose fame is and cruelty exceeds even that of the Nakba, and use it to refer to evicting illegal occupiers from land they don't own.

Besides, "we have to keep violently oppressing that ethnic group and keep the stuff we forcibly stole from them, or else they might violently oppress us and forcibly steal back the stuff we stole from them" is a blatantly racist sentiment. You're essentially arguing that Palestinians have to be hosed over because Israeli lives are worth more.


Officially, the PA controls Gaza, as Hamas has surrendered their authority and responsibility to govern to the PA. According to the PA, Hamas still actually controls Gaza and it's too dangerous to even set foot there. According to Hamas, the PA is refusing to take responsibility for Gaza and has been deliberately sowing chaos there because they don't want that bombed-out humanitarian disaster to be their problem and they'd prefer to make Hamas take the blame for it. I don't think there's an official Israeli position on it, and any given official will take whichever side benefits them politically at the moment.

In reality? I don't think anyone really centrally governs Gaza right now. Hamas has backed off on the whole "governing" thing since they are no longer able to do so, but the PA refuses to get involved in Gaza, so power has probably effectively fallen into the hands of the local bureaucrats and officials (most of whom have Hamas ties) in the absence of any higher guidance. It's a political hot potato right now, because neither the PA nor Hamas is capable of fixing Gaza's problems, but control of Gaza comes with being responsible for all those starving and freezing and homeless people living in the bombed-out wreckage - and taking some of the blame for not fixing those problems. It's an unfixable albatross nobody wants to take on, and an enormous humanitarian tragedy that can only be fixed by people who have no interest in fixing it.


Hakimashou's drivel has nothing to do with Europa Universalis in the first place. In that game, and many other such strategy games - much like in real life - winning a war against another country and gaining some territory does not grant you the right to expel all of that territory's inhabitants; the same people end up owning the land as before the war. The population remains the same and land ownership usually remains the same, it just has a different government in charge. Even if you engage in culture change actions to pacify the population, you're still just changing street names and enforcing compulsory education changes, not evicting the population en masse.

On the other hand, Haki thinks that winning a war means all the people who live in the losing country lose all their possessions including their land rights, while the winning country gains the right to confiscate everything and ethnically cleanse the population out of the captured land. It's absurd bullshit.

hakimashou posted:

If you had to choose, for some awful reason, between the life of your spouse or child or parent, and the life of a stranger, it wouldn't be wrong for you to choose one of the former.

Dead Reckoning posted:

Lol, no. International Law, like the regular kind, really only matters insofar as someone is willing and able to enforce it. No one has the military wherewithal or economic will to compel us to do anything. Plus, most international law was codified during the period where western if not explicitly American interests and thinking dominated the international political system.

hakimashou posted:

Yup. For a law to really be a law it has to be enforced. Laws aren't some abstract or theoretical thing, they obtain their force by being enforced.

I am still waiting to hear about the last time an American was indicted and punished by an international court for breaking an international law. The idea is absurd.