Comment by stjohnswarts
2 years ago
I don't know what the fix is but that's impossible. Israel has to stay a relatively united nation with a powerful military and nuclear power status or the Arab nations will immediately bulldoze it.
2 years ago
I don't know what the fix is but that's impossible. Israel has to stay a relatively united nation with a powerful military and nuclear power status or the Arab nations will immediately bulldoze it.
> I don't know what the fix is but that's impossible. Israel has to stay a relatively united nation with a powerful military and nuclear power status or the Arab nations will immediately bulldoze it.
Under the "canton" proposal, there would still be a national government in charge of the military, intelligence agencies, diplomacy, foreign trade, the currency, the banking system, etc. The "cantons" would primarily control local matters, schools, housing, family law, religious affairs, etc. So I don't think it would make much difference to military.
It would basically be transforming Israel from a unitary state (like New Zealand) to a federal state (like the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, Switzerland) - however, with the added factor that the top-level national subdivisions would be based on cultural factors rather than purely geographical ones – which would be a system more like that of Belgium.
You would wonder if there would be sufficient unifying factors for government to remain functional or it'll end in stalemate. At best leading to stagnation or at worst leading to near failed state. An example of how it could go wrong would be Lebanon. Also a certain faction could play the long game with end goal of constitutional change.
Something rather similar manages to work in Belgium. Sure, Belgian politics can be a crazy mess sometimes, but who would call a Belgium a “failed state”?
Regarding Lebanon-for all of Lebanon’s woes, it still survives, it hasn’t broken up into a new civil war; and for all the criticism of its political system, maybe its unique political system has been one of the factors preventing that outcome. And I think Lebanon’s biggest problem is that the national government lacks a monopoly on force, with sectarian political parties controlling their own militias beyond state control (of which Hezbollah’s is the most significant example.) I don’t think the “cantonalisation” proposal for Israel is going to lead to that, since all the versions of it I’ve seen have the military, intelligence, law enforcement, prisons, etc under the 100% control of the national government. Lebanon’s problem in that area is a leftover of its civil war; Israel is not going to have the same problem unless it has a civil war (which I still think is very unlikely)
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