Comment by wolverine876
2 years ago
There is a well-established solution to conflict, called democracy. People fight it out in ballots and legislatures; they resolve differences by the universal rules (apply to everyone) in indepedent tribunals (courts; they all are guaranteed human rights.
It doesn't work beautifully or easily or perfectly, but it keeps a lid on things generally. Our recent abandonment of it is awful, and serves only the warmongers, hateful, and power-hungry - the people who benefit from the absence of things like universal human rights.
The well established solution called democracy generally concludes that people should be allowed to continue living in separate jurisdictions rather than being consolidated into one territory between "river and sea" for reasons of history and religious symbolism though.
As it happens, the Palestinians are slightly outnumbered in the area between the river and the sea, which means that when it crops up in the Hamas charter it's difficult to imagine that democracy is how they would seek to maintain control over the region, even ignoring recent history (And yeah, the same question marks about how exactly they would stay in power applies to all the Palestinian and Israeli groups before them that defined the "river and the sea" as the territories they thought their brethren should assume control of, as they pointedly focused on the idea of historical unity rather than self determination)
I'm sure there are people who sincerely believe in the position that a single state solution with some form of democracy would be best for the region and a moderating influence but I don't think they overlap much with the river sea border slogan people...
Yes, I didn't mean a one-state democracy (though I see how it could be interpreted that way). I agree about a two-state solution.
> As it happens, the Palestinians are slightly outnumbered in the area between the river and the sea, which means that when it crops up in the Hamas charter it's difficult to imagine that democracy is how they would seek to maintain control over the region
It's long been a basic assumption of experts that Palestinian's higher population growth would result in them having a much larger population in Israel than Jews. That's been a reason and incentive for the two-state solution: Israeli Jews would not want to be a minority in the 'Jewish state'.
The fact that the Israeli right wing has abandoned the two-state solution raises the question of what they intend. Clearly they don't intend being a minority; what other plan do they have?
> It's long been a basic assumption of experts that Palestinian's higher population growth would result in them having a much larger population in Israel than Jews.
That may well be the case in future[1], but I don't think Hamas or even the considerably milder supporters of "Palestine will be free" are proposing those river and sea borders on the assumption that it will remain a predominantly Jewish state for a couple of generations. Perhaps not all of them have in mind Hamas' October approach to the demographic imbalance, but I don't think the solution they're imagining involves leadership being chosen by popular vote either.
Israel's right of course, aren't any more democratic in saying essentially the same thing (the slogan seems to have lost currency, but you'll hear them arguing tha Gaza is part of Israel and they're not saying that because they think everyone there should have a vote in the Knesset)
[1] the other problems with such predictions is that both groups have large diasporas but if votes occur along sectarian lines then only one of them controls passports, and perhaps less darkly there is the possibility that relative population growth is outpaced by younger people becoming less interested in historic conflict dynamics (which seems to be the case in Northern Ireland)
That democracy evaporated very quickly in Gaza.
So an essential solution hasn't worked everywhere every time. Should we abandon it? Should the founders of the US quit after the Articles of Confederation didn't work out? Later after the Civil War?
You're asking israelis to take a huge risk and with minimal ROI - why should they?
I believe we should start with 2 states, and maybe after trust is rebuilt we can look into unionizing them.
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The Civil War was what happened when trying to create a two state solution.
Once Mr. Trump is elected, you may consider democracy done for in the US. So it will probably be the answer to your questions.