Dear Rhian,

«Mostly, I agree with his concluding paragraph, especially “neither side will be able to uproot the other, not now and not ever”, and “both sides must come to their senses and begin a reconciliation process to mitigate these impediments and move toward peaceful coexistence”.»

I was disappointed when the author spoke of only two sides, each with fixed beliefs and goals, as if this was a black-and-white, zero-sum chess game. It is not. There are many more than just "two sides".

I do hope that no group is uprooted, but I cannot be as sure about it like the author and yourself - I think that anything can happen.

Already one side is being uprooted - they are the liberal Israelis who despair and emigrate from Israel in an ever increasing stream, leaving behind the fanatic Messianic Jews to gain a stable majority and uproot the rest.

Most onlookers think of the war in Lebanon as a Jewish-Arab conflict, but I believe it to rather be the result of the Israeli internal conflict, along with the cooperation of Nasrallah who must prove that he is still politically relevant in Lebanon.

How can you conceive of "peaceful coexistence" when the "two sides" cannot even have peace within their own "camp"?

Dear Yuyustu

My hope for lasting peace comes from my – perhaps idiosyncratic – view that there are many parallels between recent history in Gaza, and Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, especially between Hamas and the Nazis.

At the risk of invoking Godwin’s law:

Like the Nazis, Hamas’ ideology is violent, totalitarian, misogynist, anti-Semitic, and contemptuous of liberal democratic values. Like Nazism, it is grounded in a deep (and not totally unfounded) sense of historical grievance, amplified by economic chaos and virulent propaganda. Like the Nazis, Hamas enjoys broad popular support. Hitler won an election in 1933 and Hamas in 2006. In neither case, of course, was a subsequent election held – the fascists/Islamofascists entered the door to power opened by democracy and closed it firmly behind them. But Hitler enjoyed broad popular support in Germany up to and through most of WW2, as Hamas does even now in Gaza according to pollsters. When Germany was finally defeated, the loss of life and destruction of homes, business and infrastructure and economic collapse looks similar to what will be left in Gaza when his conflict ends.

So far, so bad. But when Hitler lost, the Allies realised that to prevent something similar happening again they had to address the root causes of Nazism. There were no reparations forcing Germany to compensate for war damages as had happened after WW1 – quite the reverse. The Marshall Plan poured billions into rebuilding devastated Europe. Millions of ethnic German residents expelled from Eastern Europe were accepted into Germany as full citizens (no perpetual “refugees” with a “right of return” there). Reconstruction was not just economic but social and political.

There’s a good summary here:
http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/germany-1945-1949-a-case-study-in-post-conflict-reconstruction

From the ashes, West Germany went on to become perhaps the most prosperous, free, and successful country in Europe. Something similar happened in Japan.
http://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/japan-reconstruction

I hope that when this conflict ends the world will come together with a new Marshall Plan for Palestine. History cannot be rewritten – which I think is Alon’s point – but maybe the good as well as the bad bits can repeat.

You're all a bit twisted.
It's a been a U.S policy of a number of presidents going back to way back when to help rid the land of Arabs.
I remember this one video with FDR (I think it was him) was openly stating we can't get rid of them all at once, had a big map and everything.

In literally 2 minutes, I find this.
http://x.com/themarcksplan/status/1789159420653383724/photo/1

AC

So a transcript of the recollections of a fairly random conversation between a government official and FDR in the early stages of WW2 is proof of an enduring conspiracy involving every US president since to “rid the land of Arabs?” That does seem a rather long bow.

Do you also think the USA is secretly committed to resettling Jews in Columbia, as the transcript also suggests?