The two states created, Israel and Palestine, will be side by side, and will probably maintain the hatred that many Muslims and Jews feel for each other. The conception of a Palestinian state includes the proviso that the Palestinian state should have limited armed capability so that it could not attack Israel. If a divorced couple were forced to live in the same house side by side the hate which led to the divorce would probably be preserved.

However, the hate is not pervasive nor is it necessarily permanent. Jews have lived and prospered in the Arab world. The great Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides, thrived in the Muslim world after escaping Almohad persecution in Muslim Spain. In spite of great persecutions in the Christian world Jews have also lived and prospered there. The great Jewish scientist, Albert Einstein, thrived in the Christian world after escaping Nazi persecution in Christian Europe.

The solution is for Israel to become a democratic state. A democratic state must have equality in law among its citizens. Any state based on a particular religion or ethnicity cannot also be democratic. The definition of democracy has changed through history. Ancient Athens which excluded women, slaves and foreigners (a foreigner in Athenian terms might be one whose family had lived in Athens for generations but whose ancestors had a non-Athenian origin) from the vote was not a democracy in modern terms. A democratic state cannot allow slavery as the US did before the Civil War. A democratic state must have separation of religion and state. It must not favour nor denigrate any religion or the sect of any religion that follows the law. A democratic state must have a public school system which does not separate students by ideology, race or religion. While US schools were segregated by race the US was not a democratic country. Students in a democratic, integrated school system can grow up together, learn together and discuss their differences. When they reach adulthood they can work together and marry each other if they choose.

Effectively what you are saying is the Democracy is about treating people as equal in law. The problem for Israel has been that Judaism, (in common with most religions) is a diverse constelation of different sects all with strongly held beliefs. Thus Haredi Jews could be regarded as operating as a state within a state. One could argue that as part of the Holocaust heritage they have been given a favoured status within Israel - many of the men are full time scholars and largely exempt from conscription.
Thus the problem is not merely about treating Arabs equally it is also about treating the Jews equally - it is hard to imagine that Israel will be able to reach that point.
I suspect that this is a problem without a solution.

I can't say that I care, but I find it amusing that some anonymous old codger on OLO pontificates on something that some of the best brains in the world haven't been able to solve in all the time Israel has been a state.

The basic issue to resolve this conflict is return.

Palestinians are dispossessed.

Even with a series of brokered peace talks there has
been no real progress towards implementing either a
two state solution or a democratic state in Israel.

Israel authorities expropriate Palestinian land and
carry out home demolitions on a regular basis most
commonly to expand existing settlements and build new
ones.

Checkpoints and Israel's Separation Wall further hinders
Palestinian freedom of movement.

Israel is totally in control of the Palestinian territories
and the fact of total Israeli control of 100 percent of
Palestine is precisely and fundamentally why you can't and
won't have a resolution to this conflict unless things
change.

ttbn,
This is a discussion forum.

Is Mise

Well, get discussing instead of just grunting at me.

Contributing to the problem is the United States
not using the power at its disposal to influence
Israel to change its behaviour.

The US continues
to preserve and fund the oppressive military
regime. When the US superpower does not raise a finger
against the regime violence invariably becomes more
attractive to those who have few other means of
upsetting the status quo.

The former Israeli defence minister Moshe Dayan once
said:

"Our American friends offer us money, arms, and advice.
We take the money, arms, and we decline the advice."
These words have become even more significant in the
decades since they were spoken.

A peaceful partition of Palestine is achievable.
But it won't happen without outside force and
pressure on both parties. The suffering will continue
to be inflicted.

Dear ttbn,

The best brains in the world are quite able to solve the problem. However, since the best brains in the world are not in power in Israel or the United States they can just suggest solutions which will not be brought into play.

Dear David F.,

It would be so good if those brains were able
to devise a strategy for the future to attain
a new regime of equal civil and political rights
for all who live under Israel's rule.

There is a Jewish story about the Wise Men of Chelm:

Background: the people of Chelm are said to be the "wisest" in the world because following the world's creation, an angel was sent on an aerial mission to distribute wisdom in this newly-created world. However, when the angel flew over the hill of Chelm, his sack of wisdom was caught in a tree-branch and torn, so the wisdom spilled out and Chelm received 9/10 of all wisdom while the rest of the world received only 1/10th.

So the town of Chelm had a beadle and one of his roles was to wake up the congregation every morning to come to the synagogue for the early morning prayer (that of course was before alarm clocks were invented).

Now the people of Chelm loved their beautiful clean, bright white snow, so they had a problem when the beadle's footprints spoiled it.
Thus they assembled a committee of the wisest, who sat down for seven days and seven nights to discuss the town's problem. Finally the committee arrived at a solution:

"When the beadle does his mornings rounds to wake up the congregation, let him be carried on a platform by four strong men, so his shoes do not touch the ground and spoil our beautiful snow"!

-- well, that much for this solution of enforcing a democracy (or a version thereof) on both groups of people who have no inclination for it whatsoever: yes, one problem would be solved - and four other new problems created! While here in Australia, David F. would be in the seventh heaven, the happiness-quotient in that section of the Middle East would be at an all-times low...

There will only be peace in the Levant when the so-called Palestinians finally come to realise they cannot have everything their leaders want. Then and only then will they accept the peace offered to them so many times.

Demanding that the only democracy in the region become more democratic (!!) while turning a blind-eye to the fascistic kleptocracy that rules the so-called Palestinians, is not solution.

"some anonymous old codger on OLO pontificates" I know of one far right anonymous old codger on OLO who does nothing BUT pontificate. Our silly old Hansonite. He still hasn't woken up that he got ripped off by the Corny Banana show.

Good discussion David.

Israel is wealthy, well armed and
strongly backed by western states.

It enjoys an exceptional international
status that absolves it of accountability for
whatever violations of law it commits.

The power imbalance between Israel and Palestine
could hardly be starker and it makes a mockery of
any peace plan not on Israel's terms, ever succeeding.

Independent journalist Antony Lowenstein tells Sky News
that the current Israel Palestinian crisis is "not a
conflict between two equal sides" with Israel being
the "occupier" and the Palestinians being the "öccupied."

"The context has to be seen of where this is coming from which
essentially is not just what's happening now." he said.

"I think a lot of the media gets overly focused on the question
of Hamas fires rockets - Israel allegedly fires back."

"This is an occupation. Israel has been occupying Palestinian
territory for over 72 years."

"The Zionist project that established Israel in 1948 had at
its core the aim of acquiring Palestinian land without its
native population."

"In the years of Israel's existence to
date, that aim never wavered. It led to the mass Palestinian
expulsion of 1947-9, the second mass expulsion in 1967, and an
ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing since then to denude the
Palestinian presence in the country still further."

If only a strategy could be devised where its thrust would
be to reverse Israel's attempt to annihilate the Palestinians
as a people and restore their rights. That would mean keeping
them on their land and enabling them to lead normal lives
instead of maintaining Israel's current apartheid state
structures. Through pressure a peaceful settlement is
achievable - but not just only on Israel's terms.

Lowenstein says, "Many Palestinians are rightly sceptical about
the Biden Administration sending someone to solve the conflict
because the US is in the pocket of Israel."

Dear Foxy,

"The Zionist project that established Israel in 1948 had at
its core the aim of acquiring Palestinian land without its
native population."

False.

Indeed as you say, by 1948 this was the dominant Zionist policy, but it was never a part of the CORE of Zionism.

Zionism, as founded by Theodor Herzl, originally intended to include the local Arabs and have them as equal members of the new Jewish homeland. Herzl believed that the Arabs would respond enthusiastically to his "enlightened" plans.

Zionist leaders, including Ben Gurion and Chaim Weizmann (Israel's first PM and president), initially strove hard to include the Arabs in the emerging new state, but alas, since 1929 the Arabs responded not with flowers but with knives and bombs, forcing the disappointed Zionists to forsake their romantic dreams and adjust their policy to suit the hostile reality on the ground.

Yuyutsu,

I suggest that you Google "Nakba," the catastrophe.

"Throughout 1948, Jewish forces expelled many thousands
of Palestinians from their villages, towns and cities
into Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt,
and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of others fled in fear."

"The purpose was to create a pure Jewish state, ethnically
cleansed of the original inhabitants who had lived there
for centuries."

"The creation of the state of Israel was the heart of this
cataclysmic historical event for the Palestinians - the
mass forced expulsion of people. The more than 50 massacres
carried out over the summer of 1948 by various Jewish
forces: the demolition of villages to ensure the refugees
could not return - all this is summed up in a single word
for Palestinians - NAKBA - the catastrophe."

"We must do everything to ensure they (the Palestinians)
never return ... the old will die and the young will forget."
said David Ben-Gurion, the founder of Israel 1949.

The young have not forgotten. The event is remembered every
year on May 15th.

The Jewish people have suffered horribly through the ages, particularly in the Christian world. The Nazi Holocaust was the culmination of centuries of Christian hate. Most people are not ennobled by suffering. They want revenge. Shakespeare said it well.

Shylock:

To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.

Dear Foxy,

You ask me to read about 1948.
By then, it is clearly agreed that no Arabs were wanted in Israel by mainstream Zionism.

But Zionism did not start in 1948 and I was referring to earlier events.
The reason I responded to your earlier post was that you wrote there:
"The Zionist project that established Israel in 1948 had at
its CORE the aim of acquiring Palestinian land without its
native population"

My point was that keeping the land free of Arabs is NOT a CORE aim of Zionism, but rather a later policy - and that point still stands.

The direction of Zionism in regard to the local Arab population was reversed between the years 1929 and 1936: before 1929 Zionism wanted the local Arabs to remain and be part of the Zionist project, while after 1936, and certainly by 1948, Zionism no doubt wanted them out.

Why so? because, from a Zionist perspective anyway, call that naive if you like, the Arabs disappointingly and unexpectedly failed to behave themselves and instead of showing gratitude for and welcoming the Jews who come to uplift them from their squalid poverty and ignorance into modernity, technology and hygiene, they stabbed and bombed the hand that fed them.

Dear Yuyutsu,

Referring to your post of Wednesday, 7 September 2022 10:59:02 PM the Arabs sound like some of the followers of Trump.

Good Morning Yuyutsu,

" The creation of Israel was a violent process that
entailed the forced expulsion of hundreds of
thousands of Palestinians from their homeland to
establish a Jewish majority state, as per the
aspirations of the Zionist movement."

"Before 1947 and 1949 at least 750,000 Palestinians
from a 1.9 million population were made refugees beyond
the borders of the state. Zionist forces had taken more
than 78% of historic Palestine, ethnically cleansed and
destroyed about 530 villages and cities and killed about
15,000 Palestinians in a series of mass atrocities,
including more than 70 massacres."

" Though May 15, 1948 became the official day for
commemorating the NAKBA, armed Zionist groups had launched
the process of displacement of Palestinians much earlier."

" In fact, by May 15, half of the total number of
Palestinian refugees had already been forcefully expelled
from the country."

"Israel continues to oppress and dispossess Palestinians to
this day, albeit in a less explicit way than during the Nakba."

"The roots of the Nakba stem from the emergence of Zionism
as a political ideology in late 19th century Eastern Europe.
The ideology is based on the belief that Jews are a nation
or a race that deserve their own state."

"From 1882 onwards, thousands of Eastern European and
Russian Jews began settling in Palestine pushed by the
anti-Semitic persecution and pogroms they were facing in
the Russi9an Empire, and the appeal of Zionism."

There's more at:

http://aljazeera.com/features/2017/5/23/the-nakba-did-not-start-or-end-in-1948

"There is not a single place built in this country that did
not have a former Arab population."
"Israel must be like a mad dog - too dangerous to bother."
( Moshe Dayan).

Good Morning David F.,

The speech that appeals to me from Shakespeare's
" The Merchant of Venice," is the following:

"The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes..."

But the "quality of mercy" falls on deaf ears.
Just like the brockered attempts at peace
negotiations with Israel.

Perhaps if we had more Portia-like minds advising the
negotiations, solutions may be found to reach
better conclusions - than those currently available.

yes, let's link to Al Jazeera to get an unbiased and fair view of Israel.

In the same way, I remember how we all used to rush to Pravda to get an impartial view of Soviet policy....</sarc>

Dear Foxy,

Most of your last post continues to discuss the events of 1947-1949, as if you never read the content of my reply to you.

Zionism made some mistakes, no doubt, but don't we all?
Here we just had Philip Lowe declare that interest rates will not be raised until at least 2024, but was then forced by world events to raise them 2 years earlier.

Similarly, Zionism, since its inception in the 19th century, considered the local Arabs as brothers and equal citizens of the future Jewish state, believing that these Arabs will be overjoyed to be freed by the Jews from colonialism, Ottoman corruption, poverty, ignorance and backwardness. Zionism honestly sought to embrace the local Arab population and raise them along to the 20th century. Until 1929, no Zionist foresaw even in their wildest dreams that possibility of incoming Jews having to kick out and/or oppress the local Arabs. But then, who could foresee in advance the rise of Hitler and the cooperation of certain Arab leaders with him?

mhaze,

There's plenty of material available both on the
web and in libraries and book-shops. Go to
a variety of sources - to get
what you're after. Try not to be selective.

I'm sure you'll be able to provide us with
what you want.

You've really shone in the past
with the "unbiased" links you've given all of us
concerning Trump, Pell, Porter, to name
just a few. You can of course try Britannica, Wikipedia,
Cambridge University Press. Or if you choose to be
daring - there's always Antony Lowenstein, E. Pappe,
and many others - including the diaries of David Ben-
Gurion

mhaze,

You might learn something from the book:

"The ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," by
Ilan Pappe.

Prof. Pappe is an interesting man.

Yuyutsu,

Do your research on the topic.
I shall be happy to continue this discussion
with you once you've done that.

Dear Yuyutsu,

Thank you. I usually disagree with you, but I have also learned from you.

This always happens. Foxy relies on the most biased of sources to provide confirmation of what she wants to believe (Lowenstein? Holy cow!) and then when bounced on it, exhorts others to seek out more unbiased sources, without ever showing evidence of practicing as she preaches.

For those truly interested in unbiased research....The Rise of Israel: A History of a Revolutionary State by Jonathan Adelman

mhaze,

The book by Jonathan Adelman that you cite -
"The Rise of Israel," has been described as
"openly biased." and "just plain bungkum."

It was reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2012.

" I came to this book in the hope of finding a well argued
discourse on the creation of the State of Israel. I am not
a Jew and I am not an Arab. I have a MA in Modern History
from the world's second oldest university and try whenever
possible to assimilate information from all sides of an
argument - in order to make an informed judgement."

"My concerns about this book were raised in the introduction..."

"Reading on the author told me that in 1948 many of the
Arabs who left did so of their own accord - only 500,000
in total compared with the 700,000 in most versions.
He told me that the 1937 Peel plan was accepted by the
20th Zionist Congress, whilst failing to inform the
reader of the facts around this - both Ben Gurion and
Weizmann are on record as accepting the partition on the
basis that it was a temporary border for later expansion. -
a fact hidden from the rest of the world."

"Again the Camp David 2 proposals, which closely
disadvantaged the Palestinians, are portrayed as an Israeli
peace offering which Arafat refused point blank. Here he
ignores the facts and actually quotes the land exchange formula,
omitting the 10 year delay that was in the deal."

"This by is all in the first 20 pages. At this point I put the
book in the bin."

"What I find so disheartening about this is that the whole
conflict from the 1880s onwards is riddled with lies and
propaganda on both sides - and the lack of a solution is
largely down to the now ingrained mistrust that this has caused.
Meanwhile both Arab and Jew continue to die. I don't think that
any book which perpetuates this is worthy of print."

Yes Foxy, that's how you do research. Find someone (an anonymous Amazon reviewer, struth!) who'll tell you why you shouldn't read information you don't want to be true.

Really Foxy? Quoting anonymous Amazon reviews? Anything to avoid contrary views.

mhaze,

Pot, kettle, black.

The sources you have used in the past have been questionable
and supported your views - be they in support of
your much admired former US President Trump, Cardinal
Pell, Christian Porter, and any one else you thought
worthy. Before you critique others - look at the sources
you provide before tarnishing those of others.

Your derogatory reaction to independent, investigative
journalist, author and film-maker, Antony Lowenstein
whose knowledge of Israel is highly respected was
to me - concerning.

Lowenstein has written for The New York Times, Haaretz,
The Washington Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sun-
Herald, The Bulletin, The Australian, to name just a few.
His books have been on reading lists for students
throughout Australia.

Be that as it may - I can't help wondering if you've read
the book by renowned Israeli historian Prof. Ilan Pappe -
"The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine."

Prof. Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to
demonstrate that from its very inception a central plank
in Israel's ideology was the forcible removal of the
Indigenous population. His book is indispensable for anyone
interested in the current crisis in the Middle East.

BTW: Prof. Pappe supports a one-state solution which envisages
a unitary state for Palestinians and Israelis.
He was born in Israel - but due to death threats, he and his
family left Israel and he now lives in the UK and teaches
at the University of Exeter.

"The sources you have used in the past have been questionable."

Question what you want. But I have never stooped to using an anonymous Amazon reviewer who wasn't even a verified purchaser to justify my desire to decision to ignore alternate views.

mhaze,

Deny all you want. The critic in question was a verified
purchaser he'd read the book and was offering an
alternative view none of which you simply refuse to
accept. He did go into detail about the material in the book.
Thus it is a case of - pot, kettle, black.
You have no credibility when you expect others to comply
by rules that you yourself don't follow.

In any case - if you and I are at loggerheads over these
issues - we both should be able to better understand why
there's not much hope for the Israel/Palestine conflict
being resolved any time soon.

Enjoy your day.

"The critic in question was a verified purchaser "

That's straight-up wrong. But you'll never understand it and why it matters.

That is just your opinion.

And you have no idea of what I do or don't understand
especially considering your past and current records
on this forum of getting not getting things right.

If a reviewer has purchased the book, Amazon attached a notice to their review saying they are a verified purchaser. Its not a statement of opinion, its a statement of fact. I'm sure that'll elude you.

Amazon is well-know for having reviewers give bad reviews to books they don't want people to read. Seems it works in many cases, or at least one - no names mind you.

Yes - . The same applies to the publishers whose reviews
of this particular book were only favourable.
We can read all sorts of things into why things happen
to suit our own views. But having some evidence would make
it more credible.