Genuine question, which might look disingenuous
As we all know, the only position on Israel/Palestine which can possibly be held by reasonable, normal, liberal etc people is the "Two-state solution". This comes in various flavours, depending on how much land you want to end up in each state and how you want it configured, but the underlying idea is the same across the board; some form of statehood for the West Bank and Gaza, that's where the Palestinians live, and that's yer lot.
Could someone who holds this position (I know that there are a lot of you) explain to me what happens to the people in the UNRWA refugee camps under this situation? There are about four million of them, so it's not at all clear that there's room for them in the literal, as opposed to economic/social sense, in the new putative state. And the idea of having them hang around indefinitely in their camps is not really one which I'd regard as consistent with any long term goal of peace.
Presumably, the implicit position of the "two state solution" is that a) with respect to the land that the UNRWA clients believe themselves to own in Israel, they get screwed, and b) we sort of hope that they grow up and get used to this fact, then slink off and become ordinary Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese etc (which implies c) that Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are cool with this, which is presumably also not the sort of thing that should be taken for granted).
This does rather seem a bit tough on them, doesn't it? I only mention this because God knows, people who take the "one state solution" get it right in the fucking neck from their opponents, rhetorically, because said single secular state would not have a built-in ethnic minority (or "would lead to the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state", which lots of careless people take as having established that anyone who advocates a one state solution is a genocidaire). The 2SS seems to me to have a similar problem built into it, of about 80% of the magnitude in terms of headcount. "Everyone knows" that the eventual outcome is a two state solution, but it looks to me like it might be the ubiquitous proposition which looks too good to be true because it is.
Update: Just to make it clear, I don't have a solution at all.
Very much playing Devil's advocate for a bit, what distinguishes Israel/Palestine from every other bit of ethnic cleansing and border redrawing that took place after the last century's world wars (with the possible exception of Kashmir)? That Russia is still occupying a historically German city (Kaliningrad, my arse), or Izmir/Smyrna, don't seem to be live political issues anymore, beyond a small and dwindling band of right-wing nationalists.
ReplyDeleteYes; in all honesty the "screw the refugees" point of view is almost certainly what will end up happening and might not even be the worst idea from a historical perspective. But it would do good to recognise that this is actually the plan; or at least, it might make the 2SS liberal faction a little less self-righteous.
ReplyDeleteI suppose one could argue that while it's true that (a) the Israelis wanted a bunch of Arabs to clear off in '48 and encouraged them un-gently to do so, it's also true that (b) the Palestinian refugees expected to roll back in in the baggage train of conquering Arab armies, and were happy to see the new Israeli state smashed. So, in historical fact, it's somewhere between expulsion (in which case the refugees would have an absolute moral right of return) and treason (in which case, they morally lose rights of citizenship). Given that it's a mixed bag, a settlement can fairly insist on a limited return to the new Palestinian state plus a whack of compensation for those who can't come back. Jordan, Syria and Lebanon have to accept that they absorb refugees permanently, as the delayed price for attacking Israel in the first place.
ReplyDeleteIf you're looking for something lighter for a Friday afternoon - which occasionaly you used to do - you could try, as a parlour game, listing all the peoples (in Europe or elsewhere, as you wish) who do not possess an independent state of their own.
ReplyDeleteHow precisely can you be guilty of treason against a state which has been created without your consent or without even consulting you? And how on earth did you become privy to the thoughts and expectations of three quarters of a million people in 1948 so as to arbitrarily decree that they have lost the moral rights of citizenship? Obviously Palestinians who remained would also have hoped that the Zionist project would be defeated, have they too lost this moral right?
ReplyDeleteHow precisely can you be guilty of treason against a state which has been created without your consent or without even consulting you?
ReplyDeleteI don't remember anyone consulting me or seeking my consent before they created the UK. YMMV.
What's the doggerel? Treason never prospers/ For when it succeeds, none doth call it treason?
ReplyDeleteYou missed the second line, which is "what's the reason?"
ReplyDelete"I don't remember anyone consulting me or seeking my consent before they created the UK".
ReplyDeleteHowever, if a group of people arbitrarily declared that the area of the UK you live in was to become a new ethnically defined state without consulting you or seeking your consent, you would presumably object to this and be somewhat bemused to be accused of treason when you did so?
Aren't the refugees one of the 4 core issues in the two-state-settlement, the other three being borders, security and the status of Jerusalem. As such, the allocation of refugees would have to be explicitly dealt with in the negotiations, and its my understanding that of the four issues above, the refugees problem isn't the hardest for both sides to agree on. I think Israel would take a small number, the Palestinian territories would take a larger number, and the various Arab states would absorb, and give citizenship, to another proportion.
ReplyDeleteMany people (rightly) point out that it is appalling that the Arab states didn't absorb the refugees years ago. However, is it any less appalling that Israel doesn't re-absorb them? The only practical solution is by both sides agree to share the "burden", as it were. And I think that can happen. At least, of the barriers to an effective 2ss, this isn't the biggest one.
As such, the allocation of refugees would have to be explicitly dealt with in the negotiations, and its my understanding that of the four issues above, the refugees problem isn't the hardest for both sides to agree on.
ReplyDeleteWhich is to say, they would be explicitly screwed in the negotiations and it isn't hard for both sides to agree to screw them. I'm just pointing out that they do actually get screwed (as in, permananently deprived of their homeland) and it isn't on for people who shout blue murder about the equivalent problem for 1SS to simply glide over the fact that they're proposing the same thing for someone else.
Compare, the many comparisons of the "the rights of Israeli Arabs" with civil rights in Gaza/WB/the wider Arab world, which also pretty much unpersons the UNRWA camps.
Of course the most natural solution would be ban Zionism the way Nazism is banned in Germany, let the refugees return, and make all those who became citizens under racist "law of return" move back home and reapply for citizenship, if they wish.
ReplyDeleteBut if Zionism is to be tolerated, then the solution is, of course, to compensate the refugees, to buy them out. With hundreds of thousands of dollars in their bank accounts they will be gladly accepted by many countries.
Of course the most natural solution would be ban Zionism the way Nazism is banned in Germany, let the refugees return, and make all those who became citizens under racist "law of return" move back home and reapply for citizenship, if they wish.
ReplyDeletethanks very much for this contribution.
Sure, you're most welcome, and thanks for re-posting it, I guess.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember anyone consulting me or seeking my consent before they created the UK.
ReplyDeleteBut the English Parliament and the Scottish States General at the time were consulted, and agreed to it, which is why the anti-Unionist Scots who launched an insurrection in 1708 were regarded as traitors.
I'm not at all sure whether the Irish parliament was consulted in 1805, but then the outcome was a bit different in the long term as well. (Wasn't it, Mr Ben Gurion)?
But the English Parliament and the Scottish States General at the time were consulted, and agreed to it, which is why the anti-Unionist Scots who launched an insurrection in 1708 were regarded as traitors.
ReplyDeleteHmm. This is one of those bits where I get confused by the concept of 'people who think that ethnic nationalism, as opposed to a universal belief in individual rights, is something other than a moronic pile of toss', isn't it?
(capcha: 'latinish'. quod erat demonstratum, ish.)
Hmm. This is one of those bits where I get fed up with smug self-satisfied twats trying to be clever, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteJohn, I have no idea what you're talking about. Do your ideas about ethnic nationalism either help the poor buggers in the refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan find somewhere to live, or render the UK a rogue state? If not, why do you raise them?
ReplyDeleteBecause what matters is that the poor buggers in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan don't have anywhere to live, not that they don't have an ethnically homogenous state. The suggestion that 'peoples', rather than people, have rights is a mode of thinking that can only exacerbate this kind of conflict.
ReplyDelete"Just to make it clear, I don't have a solution at all."
ReplyDeleteA bi-national state.
And England hasn't been continuously importing Scottish Presbyterians into Ireland for the past 60 years.
The ethnic cleansing is ongoing, and Israel claims to be a modern state founded on rights. It and its people claim to be "of us,"and the US supports them as such, not at all the same way the US supports, say Saudi Arabia or Mubarak's Egypt.
Furthermore the only claim israel has on the land goes back 2000 years, as Ben Gurion put it
"We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?"
Israel was founded on a concept, facts came later. Whatever critiques you want to make of regionalisms and the nationalisms of micro-communities, the foundations in volkish mythology rather than homes and farms marks Israel as a modern invention and an anomaly at that.
I do not defend states based on ethnicity. I do not defend Haider's Austria or Le Pen's France, And I will not defend invented on a model of their vision.
It's not Israel's crimes that are the biggest problem for the rest of the world, it's the hypocrisy in saying they had "a right" to commit them. That's the root of Arab anger at the west. That's the root more than the crime itself!!
...it's the hypocrisy...
ReplyDeleteI've been unlucky to have Likudniks in the immediate family, and my impression is that all the bullshit in the media is not really what I would call 'hypocrisy'.
Likudniks I know are not stupid, and they don't like to suffer from cognitive dissonance, so you won't hear any bullshit from them in a frank conversation. It's a garden variety Nazi stuff: Jews are much smarter and much more talented than everybody else, Arabs are evil, Africans are subhuman, the Jews must take what they need and that's all there is to it.
So, all the irritating bullshit you read and hear is mostly propaganda for the external consumption.
I'm not talking about Likudniks. You're absolutely right about them. But their liberal "fellow travelers" are lying to themselves as much as they are to the rest of us. And that group includes Jews and their guilt-ridden sympathizers, who nonetheless were not quite guilt-ridden enough to offer them the a nice chunk of Germany to live in.
ReplyDeleteAnd the Arabs get no sympathy for having to put up with these assholes. All they get is contempt at worst or at best pity.
"Ratlosigkeit" Do you understand the anger that builds when your well earned moral indignation goes absolutely ignored by all "reasonable people."
When clear statements of fact are transformed into matters of opinion. When passivity and avoidance is the only response you get to statements of the obvious?
"He's standing on my chest!"
"Well..."
He's got a gun to my head!"
"Maybe if you we're shouting so much."
"They stole my land!!"
"where else could they go?"
And BB/DD for all your glibness about the binational state I don't think you're following the issue closely enough.
Old- Judt
The Alternative
New- Gershom Gorenberg: The Other Housing Crisis
Israel has never stopped extending control over the West Bank. It's moving towards a single state already. That's what Olmert worries about. In order to have two states you have to be willing to relinquish control, and Israel is not willing to do that. They're trapping themselves. And after 40 years of occupation don't even think about blaming the Palestinians for that. And as well we should be under no obligation to defend Israeli behavior. And yet we do.
And BBoy it seems I can't even post a comment on one of your threads at CT anymore.
Yes I became rude there. But stating the obvious over and over again and being ignored really does get annoying. And I still want to believe that people I talk to who claim to be intelligent and self-aware actually are; even while my argument involves showing that others who claim to he intelligent and self-aware are not.
I'm trapped by my illusions.
"And that includes Jews"
ReplyDeleteAnd that includes Zionists.
That needs to stay an important distinction.
I often wonder if the liberal fellow travelers (and liberals in general, liberals as a natural phenomenon) also exist mostly for the external consumption. Fulfilling the important function of concern trolling.
ReplyDeleteAnd BBoy it seems I can't even post a comment on one of your threads at CT anymore.
ReplyDeleteThis is true, you're totally banned - it wasn't my idea but I stand behind it as a collective decision. Sorry, but I honestly don't see it being revisited any time soon.
Meanwhile, I agree that the main use of the two-state idea is in bad faith arguments which tend to include the spectacularly dishonest phrase "everything they wanted", but this doesn't make the binational idea any better; it's very like (although much worse than) Northern Ireland, where the Ulster Protestants' genuine fears of becoming the victims of ethnic cleansing weren't at all ill-founded. What solved it in Ireland was basically economics; after ten years of the Celtic Tiger and RoI becoming a richer and nicer place than the North, being scared of it somehow became a bit silly and archaic. I therefore tentatively advance a long term peace plan based on Gaza offering massive tax breaks for Israeli companies willing to set up brass-plate offices there.
I've just had a rather strange argument with my other half over the presence of a bunch of Sainsburys' coriander grown in a West Bank settlement in our house ...
Ah. In other words, right in the middle of settling the plantation of Ulster the protestants already earned the right to claim "genuine fears of becoming the victims". Nice. Yes, we all should be greatly concerned about their fears; that's our first priority, really.
ReplyDelete"Sorry, but I honestly don't see it being revisited any time soon."
ReplyDeleteI'd never ask that it be revisited. The only way for that to happen would be for your roommates to come to the conclusion that they were wrong in the first place: that their arrogance outshines their intelligence about as much as I've said it has.
Fantasies of reason are not reason. That's simple demonstrable fact no less so than the moral and intellectual genealogy of Zionism. But reason is irrelevant if everyone agrees on what's reasonable.
And that's how we got where we are today, in so many ways.
All that happens if you discount your own capacity for unreason is that its presence goes unrecognized. Do you think any of your copains has any idea how much the foundations of their thought are less in the world than in the academy? So Henry loves G.A. Cohen because he confirms his assumptions and stops reading Jon Elster when Elster changes his mind. And Cohen's arguments these days amount to the proposition that living by example is too hard on the children.
He doesn't just to discuss the problem, he claims to solve it.
My parents blamed their troubles with my brother on lousy public schools, but sending me to one of the best prep schools in the US didn't help much. It did help bring home the significance of race and class in American culture, if only because of the neighborhood I grew up in. But if I hadn't grown up where I did the effect would have been much different.
But who needs particulars when generalities will suffice? If every case and every individual is no more than a token, then all that's required is a discussion of types. So ignore that last paragraph and stay with Jerry Cohen.
This is why legal philosophers see themselves as on a higher level than lawyers.
They're academics and theory is closer to god than practice could ever be.
"The Geneva Conventions were for the most part drawn up by lawyers and soldiers, and it really is unseemly for Walzer to go about patting himself on the back (and high-fiving his mates over “the triumph of just war theory”, odds bodkins) for being the only person morally serious enough to think about these ever so difficult questions, while reinventing the wheel, badly."
I hate pedants. I was raised to think of myself as an idiot. These idiots were raised to think of themselves as smart. The presence of such people in my life will never cease to rankle.
Back to business:
The issue for me is less a one state or two state solution per se but the sense that we are supposed to approve of the latter as ideal, or that Israel should be defended on high moral principle. The entire debate in the west begins on the assumption of Jewish moral superiority vis-a-vis the Arabs, when the only way such superiority can logically be said to apply is in relation to Christian Europe. As I said above the issue is less the fact of the crime as it is the continuing expression of contempt for the victim.
"We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault?"
No. And yet they are being punished by Europe and Europe's Jewish victims. And this is rationalized in the same way Henry Farrell rationalizes his own moral choices. Psychoanalysis and subtext for thee but not for me. Authority claims to speak for reason and self-awareness and self-doubt are deemed an obstacle to clarity.
It's not a question of Israel but of its continuing defense by the "enlightened."
I think you're overanalyzing, Seth. Various powerful individuals and institutions in the West support Zionism for various reasons (at this point in history), and justifications follow; it's natural; there's really a market of ideas out there and demagogical rationalizations are being produced as demand dictates.
ReplyDeleteA fair number of individuals are affected by propaganda, others (especially in the academia) simply respond to the incentive and suppress their heretical thoughts.
A garden variety totalitarian phenomenon.
On more thing, and then I'm out.
ReplyDeleteThis is the post I'm getting most of my hits off these days.
It's very much relevant to everything discussed above.
What solved it in Ireland was basically economics; after ten years of the Celtic Tiger and RoI becoming a richer and nicer place than the North, being scared of it somehow became a bit silly and archaic.
ReplyDeleteIt was a combo, really: NI's best and brightest (at least, the ones who could afford a ferry ticket) were fucking off, and the ones who couldn't were being given "things to do" by the you-know-whos.
I dunno if you were ever in Dublin in the mid-90s, but it was a weird mixture, changing year on year: in '96 it felt like a British 1976 on the outskirts, and spangly in the bits of gentrified Temple Bar. In '98, a bit spanglier still and lots of EU development signs around the place. By 2001ish, Temple Bar was no longer pristine, being coated with English stag/hen puke, but the roads out of town were being built.
(Good film to get a sense of the Tiger at its most tigerish: When Brendan Met Trudy)
Have you seen this Here
ReplyDeleteHe explicitly is making (as far as I can tell) that only the bad guys have to obey the laws of war claim.
-Asteele
I have, and IMO yes he is, and he pretty much explicitly admits that he's arguing backwards from his preferred result in Middle Eastern politics.
ReplyDeleteZazlofff's tag line.
ReplyDelete"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."
Pure rhetoric.
I think the plan is to wait, ignore the obvious signs of the growing problem, and then when we all feel really guilty for the damage we've allowed to happen, we find a country with no power in a region we need to destabilise, we send them all there, give them money and guns, and look the other way.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of this post and the occasional debates I hear over law, proportionality etc.
ReplyDeleteAll predicted on the assumption that law by being law is somehow a platonic form. I usually ignore these arguments, but this time I'll make the effort.
I've posted this elsewhere as well, since it's a simple illustration of the absurdity of that argument:
Imagine a beach and a small group of people sitting on and around a blanket having lunch. Another group comes onto the beach a few feet away and sets up a volleyball net between themselves and the first group. Then they start lobbing volleyballs over the net, that all go unreturned. When the count of unreturned balls reaches 25 the second group declares the game over and themselves the winners. But the first group refuses to move: they were never playing this game, they were having lunch. Another group arrives, friends of the second and wanting "their turn." They tell the first group to move so that they can play. A rule book is consulted and it is decided that the first group lost their game. The police are called and they are removed by force.