Israel/Palestine

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(Thread IKs: Main Paineframe, Irony Be My Shield, punishedkissinger)

Beefeater1980: Sep 12, 2008; My God, it's full of Horatios!

Two groups of people want the same land and are willing to murder the gently caress out of each other to keep it. Morality doesn�t come into the picture. Whoever has the advantage from time to time is going to be the oppressor and inflict lopsided casualties. That happens to have been Israel since it was founded but the moment their power slips it won�t be.

If you�re in the middle of this, well done if you can look past that and keep trusting the other side despite the million reasons not to; the only way this stops happening on an infinite loop is when everyone else is so sick of the bloodshed that they start listening to you and your counterparts on the other side ~~and don�t assassinate you like they did the last few guys~~. Or one side successfully genocides the other but that seems unlikely because it hasn�t happened in 75 or so years of trying.

For those of us watching from a distance, I think the only thing to do is feel sick at each atrocity, be welcoming to anyone who manages to GTFO, and otherwise mostly keep quiet.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2023 17:23

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# ¿ Jun 3, 2024 05:38

Beefeater1980: Sep 12, 2008; My God, it's full of Horatios!

ronya posted:

Some prognostication:

- Iran cannot hope to match the reconstruction funding postwar Gaza would require from Saudi/UAE/Kuwaiti/etc. donors; that was a dynamic after the 2008 crisis too, although it seems plausible that Israel will not permit Hamas to continue governing Gaza at all this time. So Hamas/IJ/successor org seem inevitably set to swing back into the Saudi camp.
- the evident instruction to engage in grab-and-run kidnapping seems clearly modelled on the lessons learnt from the Shalit episode from the Hamas side; conversely Israel would surely absorb also that this cannot be continued. So, bloody ground raids seem inevitable. Whether or not Hamas or Israel walks away from said raids thinking it was worth it is anyone's guess
- the West Bank still seems apathetic; news shows no big protests?
- assuming Netanyahu does not wriggle out again (a big if, granted), a successor government would be well-placed to reward a pliant PA with West Bank concessions, with the mountain of bodies in the Gaza Strip indicating non-weakness and to satisfy the post-attack domestic bloodlust (contra 2008). In a sense this is the logical takeaway from the failure of the right-wing strategy of propping up Hamas in Gaza as to show that Palestinians cannot be trusted with unilateral withdrawal - to do the exact opposite. Eventually Abbas (age 87) will have a succession crisis but that's the next problem, not the current one
- other elements of Netanyahu's foreign policy will remain: Israel will have to reward Egyptian and other Arab leaders for politically costly cooperation, not rely on the US to reliably do so on its behalf, and to limit involvement in Syria to opposing Iran
- back in the 2000s there was a conventional wisdom that peace processes have to ratified with referendums or elections; I suspect take #2 would simply dispense with it today to no sharp protest (I have a hot take that the 2016 Colombian referendum has shaped a lot of thinking globally here: peace is too important to gamble on the possibility of a 2% defeat based on fundamentally unserious objections). More concretely, Israeli observers with optimistic outlooks on democratization have been as disillusioned as everyone else post-Spring anyway.

(I paid more attention to these analyses ten years ago; would be happy to hear any alternative forecasts)

Get out of here with this actual analysis partner, it�s hot takes wall to wall.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2023 18:59

Beefeater1980: Sep 12, 2008; My God, it's full of Horatios!

Discendo Vox posted:

$343 million in 2022, 50% higher than Germany in second place with $202.

In all candour, that�s pretty small when weighed in the balance against �unconditional support for Likud�.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2023 10:13

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