TSAHAL MUST GET A BLOODY NOSE

 

(Source: LeMonde, 2023)

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(Here's two messages recently published on X, about the Gaza War.)

 

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First message - November 2, 2023 - 14 h 24

The Jewish-Palestinian problem started during the time of the British mandate over Palestine, a territory that used to be a part of the Ottoman Empire. The mandate was given to Britain by the Society of Nations, a regulatory institution that existed before the establishment of the United Nations.

In 1948, the victory of Israeli forces during the war of Independence sowed the seeds of everything that happened since: the creation of a Jewish state, first, but also the concurrent creation of a vast population of expatriates and refugees still leaving outside the new country's borders.

It must be said here that the Palestinians who lives inside Israel proper are in a very different situation, compared to those leaving outside it. They are Israeli citizens and, as such, they enjoyed rights, and the ability to vote in Israeli elections. At the Knesset (Israel's parliament), they have their own parties to represent them, to express their needs and to defend their interests.

The 1948 situation was made a lot worse in 1967, with the Six-Days war. That conflict had the result of giving Israel the responsibility of managing a large Palestinian population, living in the Occupied Territories, areas of the old Mandate that Israel took from Egypt (the Gaza Strip) and from Jordan (the West Bank, including the part that was later annex by the State of Israel and became then known as East Jerusalem).

Here, it must be said that the case of the Golan, taken from Syria and annexed, is different, simply because its territory was not a constituent part of the British mandate over Palestine and its native population was therefore made up of Syrians, not Palestinians.)

So, the current crisis is the direct result of two Israeli military victories. Since then, Israel attitude toward Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories has shifted through time, going here or there, but always remaining between the two poles of neglect and repression. Now, the Palestinians of the West Bank are at best a pool of cheap labor and at worst a hostile population that must be gradually replaced by Jewish settlers. The best scenario, from the current government's point of view, would be for the Palestinians to move en masse to Jordan, leaving their lands free for Jewish resettlement. In the case of Gaza, it was, before the war, an open-air jail, essentially. Again, the government probably hopes that the war may incite the Gaza Palestinians to move to the Sinai if the Egyptians let them go there, again leaving their territory for Jewish resettlement.

The war may take many forms in the future and extend in many more places than only the Gaza Strip. It is beginning more and more clear, however, than only a military defeat may force Israel to eventually change its general policy and attitude toward the Palestinians. If Israel has the upper hand, nothing is likely to change in the difficult, complex, and painful relationship existing between Israelis and Palestinians in the last century.

Israel will not agree to live peacefully with the Palestinians and allow the creation of a Palestinian State alongside the Israeli State, unless it is facing defeat in the face. Only a defeat will bend Israel enough to push it out of its complacent attitude toward the plight of the Palestinians. There's no other way.

Then, if it does happen, if Israel accepts the long-needed and long-awaiting division of Palestine in two parts, one for the Israelis, one for the Palestinians, then peace might be possible in the Middle East, after a century of turmoil and blood.

Who, then, if it does happen, would engineer the whole normalization process, including the negotiations between the two parties, and act as an overall mediator and peacemaker? Probably Beijing, under the supervision of the United Nations...

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/why-netanyahu-must-go

 

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Second message - November 3, 2023 - 12 h 47

The initial attack by Hamas forces was horrendous and terrible. Killing civilians, including women and children, can never be seen or presented as something honorable. But something must be said about it: it was also the result of decades of neglect and mistreatment by Israel toward the Palestinian population in general.

The present situation, between Israelis and Palestinians, is so rotten that only a military defeat of Israel's armed forces can unblock the deadlock. Tsahal must suffer a bloody nose, but not an outright and complete catastrophe, potentially leading to an invasion of Israel by foreign forces and the possible large-scale massacre of innocent civilians such a thing may create.

That would be a tragedy, and not just for Israel, given the nuclear arsenal that country is known to possess. The Israeli government, if it is pushed to the brink and fear for the sake of its own civilian population, may choose, facing annihilation, to destroy dozens of Arab and Iranian cities all over the Middle East and North Africa, bringing death and destruction on an unthinkable scale.

That would be the scenario to avoid at all costs, of course. Still, the Palestinian tragedy is the result of two victorious wars by Israel, one in 1948, and one in 1967. Only a non-victorious war, from the Israeli point of view, may result in peace.

There is a precedent: the Yom Kippur war, in 1973, that opened the way to a peace settlement between Israel and Egypt (then, as now, the most powerful Arab country). The first days of that war started as an Arab victory that deeply shook Israel and forced it, eventually, to accept negotiations with its neighbors.

It was possible for the French and the Germans, despite at least three wars (1870, 1914-18, 1939-45) to achieve peace and establish normal relations, devoid of fear and resentment. The same thing is potentially possible between Hebrew-speaking Jews and Arabic-speaking Palestinians, in the long-run, given the right conditions, each on its own portion of the Palestinian mandate given by the Société des Nations (along post-1967 lines).

Let's go further. It may be that, after the current war, the Two-State solution became eventually a Four-State solution, since Gaza and West Bank are geographically separate, and since Jerusalem is a sacred place for the three great monotheistic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Because of that, the present territory of the present City of Jerusalem may possibly become an independent City-State, somewhat like Singapore, in order to placate the faithful of those three greats religions and avoid the pitfalls inherent to the fact of dividing a holy city or giving it whole to this State or that State.

Thus, in such a hypothetical scenario, the Gaza Strip (with or without Hamas), the West Bank (minus the present settlers), Jerusalem (both East and West, and maybe with adjacent Bethlehem, with its Christian Palestinian population) and Israel proper may become one day four independent political entities, possibly united in a custom union or in some sort of economic association...

The only remaining litigious item on the agenda, then, would be the Golan, a Syrian territory annexed by Israel following the 1967 war. The resolution of that problem would necessarily imply negotiations between Israel and Syria, one day... 

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/end-israels-gaza-illusionsaels-gaza-illusions?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=fatoday&utm_campaign=The%20End%20of%20Israel%E2%80%99s%20Gaza%20Illusions&utm_content=20231103&utm_term=FA%20Today%20-%20112017

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PLUS:  @charles.millar3 (Twitter)