Israel: Turn Right for the Abyss

[Stavros]

Two partisan views that fail to address how Israel reached this point in its history where mass murder is its only policy, or how and why Palestinians who succeed at so many things fail at politics. Not quite a dialogue of the deaf, but with enough contentious nonsense to suggest a rational comprehension of what is happening now, and what might happen over the next year is buried under a ton of verbal rubble out of which not even a corpse of truth can be found that is worth resurrecting.

FH Hinsley, in Power and the Pursuit of Peace, asks you, re the origins of the First World War, to contrast an occasion with a cause- the assassination in Sarajevo was the occasion, but the cause lay deeper, in the ambitions of the European Empires: a framework that can help explain the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. An intelligent perspective you won’t find here, but here it is.

[Stavros]

I am not surprised that Netanyahu has rejected any claim to a Palestinian State, he has opposed it his entire life.

The problems:

a) if Israel's Govt in its present form rejects any version of a Palestinian state, what does it want for the Palestinians? Set aside the blood-curdling elimination proposals of some of the Cabinet, and you have to ask: if Palestinians are to live, where are they to live?

b) if Palestinians and their supporters do want a Palestinian state, where will it be and who will live there? Will the eastern border be the River Jordan? Where will the Southern border be, in fact, where will any borders be, if, for example, Israel's security needs mean it will not stop policing the borders with Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon?

In a Palestinian state will there be any Jewish Settlers, eg, those who have created the illegal settlements since 1967? If they were to go, where would they go?

c) are we looking at a proposal that means, in effect, two states which do or do not allow its citizens to travel freely one from the other, including Jerusalem of course, which offers job and education opportunities to all?

d) My proposal remains on the table: no two state or one state solution, but a Confederation of Israel and Palestine, modelled on Switzerland. Equality for all.

Right now it seems nobody wants to talk about it, and no doubt Hamas with its insane violence and hatred is shaping the debate as much as Netanyahu's Fascist fantasies. But without a sane alternative, there is no sanity, no peace, only war, and the misery of war.

[Stavros]

No surprises that Netanyahu has declared 'the war goes on', even as he struggles to keep his wartime coalition government together. The problem is that Fascists don't know the meaning of compromise, and regard negotiations as appeasement, though Netanyahu is as usual, treating the US President with contempt on the basis he can rely on a lobbied Congress to meet his demands. For Netanyahu the White House is an irrelevance.

Given that Netanyahu attends the annual 'celebration' of the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 which killed 91 people including Arabs, the British who worked there (it was the HQ of the Mandate authority) -and Jews, 17 of them, does it mean Netanyahu sees the Hostages as a priority? No. Would it benefit him if they were murdered? For sure, it would justify even more punishment than the Palestinians have suffered so far.

All going to plan -trash Gaza, make life there impossible, paving the way for the expulsion of the population, for I don't see any other conclusion on his agenda.

Netanyahu rules out ceasefire deal that would mean Gaza withdrawal | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian

[Stavros]

I think it was a mistake for South Africa to launch a court action arguing that Israel was committing Genocide in Gaza, just as I do not agree with the argument that Israel is practising a form of Apartheid in Gaza and the West Bank.

In the latter case, Apartheid intended to re-locate Africans in the Cape and the Transvaal to their own 'Homelands' or Bantustans, in effect autonomous states, something that Israel has never contemplated in either Gaza or the West Bank.

What Israel has is a form of segregation that began with the first Aliyah in the 1880s when the first 'Colonist Farmers' arrived to discover that the land was not empty and undeveloped, but populated and farmed. The first Colonist Farmers avoided interacting with the Arabs as much as they could, and as the Jewish population grew over time, so they were able to create an economy separate from the Arab, and I daresay the Arabs were not that interested in interacting with the Jews, so that for the best part of a century the two communities have led parallel lives.

What has changed since 1967 in particular, is the extent to which successive Israeli governments have backed away from the logic of offering the Arabs equal citizenship and equal rights, just as the Palestinians have tended to reject anything that looks like they are willing to give up some cherished hope of independence from Israel. The Peace Treaty of 1993 might have worked if the Israeli Govt had been willing to trade land for peace in actuality, but Rabin was murdered soon after and with that the next generation of leaders rejected peace in favour of war.

Not a genocidal war, but a war of attrition which is intended to make life for the average Palestinian either difficult or impossible, through a raft of measures from cutting off the water supply on the West Bank for two weeks every summer, from the personal insults and threatening behaviour Greeks and Armenians in the Old City experience almost daily, mostly from the Settlers; to the demolition of homes, the imprisonment without trial of adults and children, the withholding of tax revenues impoverishing the Palestinian Authority, and at a more extreme level the attacks on Palestinian homes in the rural West Bank, often of Bedouin forced to abandon their way of life, only to be hounded or even murdered out of their homes by armed settlers, of the kind sanctioned by the US today (Feb 2nd).

Just as in Gaza Israel is demolishing apartment blocks, with the aim to prevent anyone returning to live there, the tactic today is the same as it has been for more than 50 years, while some in the Israeli Govt openly declare the Palestinians must be forced out of the country altogether.

This is not genocide, and it is a pity that critics of Israel do not base their judgments on the actual history of Israel and the Palestinians, just as the weakness of the PA has been a tragic let down for the Palestinians on the West Bank, giving the 'virile' Hamas the aura of strength, even as this extremist group attempts to change the agenda using the violence that has achieved nothing in over 100 years. Ignorance and emotion don't make a good case in Court. It is even worse on the streets.

[Stavros]

Two articles which I think are worth reading.

The first is an intense look at the history and structure of Hamas, and goes some way to explaining how the decision to launch the attack on October 7th came out of the rift in the movement between its military wing in Gaza and the political leadership based in Qatar that developed after 2007. It goes some way to arguing that in 2006 and for a time after when Hamas won the elections in Gaza, it spoke with a more moderate tone, was prepared to negotiate with Israel, in effect behave as its 'parent' body the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt had done over the years when it abandoned the 'armed struggle' to integrate itself into Parliamentary politics there.

That said, the kind of Govt Israel had in those years was never going to negotiate -not openly- with Hamas, and maybe they knew that. Either way, the military and militant Islamist faction began to dominate Hamas and use money from Iran and Qatar as part of a long term strategy to develop a significant military capability with greater facility than the more or less useless missiles lobbed into Israel over the years, but clearly it miscalculated the impact of its attack on October 7th, both in terms of Israel's response, and the lack of response from its supposed allied in Lebanon, though I don't know they counted an intervention in Red Sea shipping by the 'Houthi' movement in the Yemen which has complicated the conflict and given it a dimension Hamas may not have wanted.

Ultimately, Hamas is another version of the Revolutionary Islamism which has its roots in the failures of the liberal trend evident in the late 19thc through to the 1950s, that Albert Hourani examined in his classic book -a book few people read these days- but in this case has doomed its future in Gaza as a Governing authority, be it by the ballot box or the bomb. Satloff, writing in October 2023 is right to present the current war as the most serious since 1948, but evidently did not expect Israel to lay waste the most of the Gaza District, so far from thinking Hamas might be a spent force there and some other form of political authority run the District, it is now not clear if the District can sustain any significant population, the question 'Where are these people to live?' being as yet unanswered by Israel. Similarly I doubt even Satloff imagined that at this stage Israel would be losing friends rather than making them, while he might also not have considered the possibility that Israel may go bankrupt as the costs of the war escalate, with another unanswered question being that of compensation though there will be no re-building in Gaza if it remains a waste land.

Lastly, both articles fail to locate the current conflict in the wide context that was provided by the end of Ottoman Rule in 1918 and the creation of Palestine by the British who at the time made it clear they did not believe the Arabs capable of ruling themselves 'under the strenuous conditions of the modern world' as the Mandate so famously and insultingly put it. The Statehood that was given to multiple successors to the Empires in Europe was never offered to the Arabs, and they have never forgotten it, while for some a Palestinian State is thus the logical correction of an historical wrong, though as yet nobody knows where this State will be, let alone how it intends to function.

For those reading this thread, I do hope you will take time to read these two articles.

The Road to October 7: Hamas’ Long Game, Clarified – Combating Terrorism Center at West Point

Regime Change, Israeli-Style | The Washington Institute

[Stavros]

The Basic Law that was passed by the Knesset in 2018 attempted to establish what the phrase a 'Jewish State' means in law and in the context of Jewish history, and was seen as an attempt to upgrade the Declaration of Independence of 1948, the basis on which Israel claims to be a democratic state that recognises the rights of all. The problems have been dealt with at length, not least because of a statement made in the Knesset after the original text of the law was amended-

"Upon presenting the reformed bill, Chairman Ohana stated: "This is the law of all laws. It is the most important law in the history of the State of Israel, which says that everyone has human rights, but national rights in Israel belong only to the Jewish people".
Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People - Wikipedia

How one distinguishes between National Rights and Human Rights is rather obviously not clear, while this detailed examination suggests enough sophistry to satisfy all but those who see in the Basic Law a difference between meaning, in legal terms, and Intent in political terms.
Understanding Israel’s Nation State Law (jewishvirtuallibrary.org)

The point of interest for me today, is that for all of Likud's declarations, the 'Jewish State' can't actually function without non-Jews, yet it is also clear that the foreign workers on which Israel is now dependent -notably in domestic service/care homes (mostly Filipinos), Agriculture (South-East Asia, especially Thailand), and Construction (India, other Asian countries)- do not, indeed, cannot have equal rights with Israeli citizens.

Moreover, in the case of the workers from India, it may not surprise anyone that there are no Muslims working in construction, and that the better relations Israel and India have, may be due, in part, to the civil war against India's Muslims that has been waged for some years now by the BJP and Narendra Modi, one of the nastiest men in world politics. They see a common enemy with which to make a common cause, though in India's case it is also a huge population of unemployed youth.

That said, Israel is hardly alone in wanting its National cake to taste good for its National people, while offering yesterday's crumbs to the 'guests' working their asses off, even when relative to their home economy, they are actually doing well financially. But follow the money, and those precious National Rights and all that waffle disappear down a rabbit hole of political hypocrisy.

As for the Palestinians, was there ever a clearer view that Israel just wants the lot of them gone, using whatever means possible?

‘We do not have many options’: unease over Israel’s recruitment of Indian labourers (msn.com)

[Stavros]

Chuck Schumer thinks Netanyahu has 'lost the plot' and no longer serves Israel's best interests...hmmm....when did Netanyahu ever do that? Schumer must surely know Netanyahu rejected the 1993 Peace Treaty -as did HAMAS- thereby signalling, along with Ariel Sharon at the time, that war was their preferred option -on the basis of course, they would always win.

But Schumer also advocates a 'two state solution' that has a 'de-militarised Palestinian State' --in other words, or maybe I got this wrong, Palestinians can have their own State but not their own army, so how do they defend themselves against anyone who attacks them? How can Israel be relied on to secure a Palestinian State? And where is this State going to be, who will demarcate its borders? Will there be free trade with Israel, free movement of people, free movement of capital and goods?

This is just lip service to a dead idea, from someone who should know better. I would write to him with my solutions, but I doubt he would read or respond to them. As for Netanyahu, I don't think he cares one way or the other what Schumer thinks.

The war goes on. The killing goes on. The roads destroyed; homes and schools (no child has gone to school since October last year) destroyed; shops and businesses destroyed; mosques churches cultural centres -destroyed. All according to plan.

Who has the courage to stand outside that wall that was build to create the Zoo called Gaza, and say 'Netanyahu, Tear Down this Wall, and Set the People Free!'--?

Not you, Chuck.

His comments are in this link

Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer calls for new leadership and elections in Israel because Netanyahu is an 'obstacle to peace' (msn.com)

[Stavros]

Well would you Adam and Eve it, here is Jared Kushner, the co-author of that business deal packaged as a new era in Middle East Peace (!) dubbed the 'Abraham Accords' -Jared, Dad and Brother all have financial interests to protect in Israel and the Illegally Occupied West Bank...

...offering an audience at Harvard his wisdom on Gaza- because Telegraph articles are normally locked behind a paywall, I have copied all of it here.

A few comments:

1) "If you think about even the construct, Gaza was not really a historical precedent [sic]. It was the result of a war,” he added.“But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.” People have been living in Gaza for thousands of years, and in this 'construct' was St Porphyrius, one of the oldest Christian churches in the region -a church was built here in the 5th century, the latest in the 12th century - before Israel bombed it -
Church of Saint Porphyrius - Wikipedia
‘We were baptised here and we will die here’: Gaza’s oldest church bombed | Israel War on Gaza | Al Jazeera

2) "“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.” --Repeat: "a little bit unfortunate" -makes you wonder what a lot would be.

3) "He suggested that establishing a Palestinian state “would essentially be rewarding an act of terror”.
A top priority for Israel, he said, should be moving civilians out of Rafah, and persuading Egypt to accept refugees “with diplomacy”.
In addition, he said the Jewish state should move displaced Gazans to the Negev desert in southern Israel."
--Does Kushner think Palestinians must accept being in a single state called Israel where they do not have equal rights, or any of the rights they would have in a State of their own?
--The Negev was populated by Bedouin Arabs, until Israel began forcing them to give up a way of life practised for thousands of years, so they could move in settlers -one wonders if Netanyahu thinks re-populating the Negev with the displaced from Gaza is a good idea, and needless to say, Kushner did not ask a single Palestinian living by the sea in Gaza if they would like to swap their Mediterranean home for a tent in the desert. And I doubt he asked a single Israeli who lives in the Negev if they will welcome two million new neighbours...

The man claimed he had read 20 books on the Middle East before his 'business deal' -some of us have read (and written some of the) more than 2,000 books, chapters in books, articles, and those atrocious pamphlets both sides used to and probably still do produce. What a disgrace to civilization.

You can judge, as here it is, without the photos or the graphics, or the reader's comments about which there should be the usual mental health warning as Telegraph comments are often shall we say 'out there' on the fringes of respectability.


Gaza’s waterfront property could be ‘very valuable’, says Donald Trump’s son-in-law

Jared Kushner advises Israel to move territory’s civilians out to the desert, ‘then clean it up’
Rozina Sabur, DEPUTY US EDITOR19 March 2024 • 9:02pm


Gaza’s waterfront properties could be “very valuable”, Donald Trump’s son-in-law has said, as he suggested Israel rehouse displaced civilians in the desert.
Jared Kushner, a former property dealer who served alongside his wife Ivanka Trump as senior White House advisers to her father, also told an audience at Harvard University that a Palestinian state would be “a super bad idea”.
“Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Mr Kushner said in a discussion chaired by Prof Tarek Masoud, Harvard’s Middle East Initiative faculty chair.
His comments emerged after an international early warning system set up by governments and NGOs determined that half the population of Gaza was on the brink of famine.

Israel’s planned ground offensive in the border city of Rafah could leave around 1.1 million people facing “catastrophic” hunger, the UN-backed food security assessment warned.

The West has struggled to respond to the looming humanitarian catastrophe, with US and European aid airdrop efforts criticised as inefficient by some international aid organisations.
Earlier this month, Joe Biden announced the US would deliver aid to Gaza from a floating pier, but that too is fraught with logistical and security challenges. A US military ship is en route carrying building equipment.

Speaking at Harvard, Mr Kushner said: “It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”
Asked about concerns that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, would not allow Palestinians to return, Mr Kushner said: “Maybe.”
“I am not sure there is much left of Gaza at this point. If you think about even the construct, Gaza was not really a historical precedent [sic]. It was the result of a war,” he added.
“But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.”
Mr Kushner also criticised “all the money” that had gone into the Hamas-run territory’s weapons stockpile and underground tunnel network instead of being used on education and innovation.
‘I would try to move people to the Negev’

He suggested that establishing a Palestinian state “would essentially be rewarding an act of terror”.
A top priority for Israel, he said, should be moving civilians out of Rafah, and persuading Egypt to accept refugees “with diplomacy”.
In addition, he said the Jewish state should move displaced Gazans to the Negev desert in southern Israel.
“I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there,” he said. “I think that’s a better option, so you can go in and finish the job.”
Prof Masoud asked if the proposal was something he would “try to work on”. Mr Kushner said: “I’m sitting in Miami Beach right now. And I’m looking at the situation and I’m thinking: what would I do if I was there?”

The 43-year-old was an unpaid senior adviser in his father-in-law’s White House, and played a key role in brokering Mr Trump’s foreign policy approach in the Middle East.
While in the White House, he produced a 180-page Middle East peace plan that was three years in the making and included efforts to normalise relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

It was endorsed by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, but led the Palestinian Authority to cut ties with the US and Israel.
Mr Kushner’s remarks at Harvard on March 8 may give some indication of how Mr Trump will approach the Israel-Hamas war should he win back the White House.
Kushners will not serve again in White House

However, Mr Kushner and his wife have both kept a distance from Mr Trump’s 2024 campaign and have ruled out serving in a future Trump administration.
Israel has been waging its war in Gaza for more than five months following Hamas’s Oct 7 attack which killed about 1,160 Israelis, most of them civilians.
Around 130 hostages seized by the terror group are estimated to still be held in Gaza, including 33 who are presumed dead.
More than 31,800 Gazans, mostly women and children, have also been killed in the conflict according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Gaza's waterfront property could be 'very valuable', says Donald Trump's son-in-law (telegraph.co.uk)

[Stavros]

Kushner has complained his comments have been taken out of context. He has posted a video of his talk on X, and it is here, though I always feel a but compromised when accessing Musk's platform for the kind of Neo-Nazis who would one assumes, want Kushner thrown out of the country. Maybe Kushner should have posted this on Father-in-Law's Pravda Sozial? Whatever.

Jared Kushner on X: "Two weeks ago, I had an engaging discussion with students and faculty at Harvard @Kennedy_School on the conflict in the Middle East, and the need for open intellectual discourse on American college campuses. https://t.co/QjRdZS7jyR https://t.co/iYIgeo0vrc" / X (twitter.com)

[Stavros]

So many news items, so little advance.

-Biden complains to Israel, but the arms from the US keep going.
-Suella Braverman says there is no starvation in Gaza, Israel's bombing is precise and targeted. Doesn't explain why Israel has bombed schools, Christian churches, Mosques, cultural centres, and Roads, making the movement of people and goods more difficult than it was before.
-Allegations Israel uses an AI targeting system 'Lavender' -the one that killed the World Kitchen aid workers by mistake- are being denied, while others, of course, say it was indeed a targeted killing.
-600 legal experts have told the UK Govt supplying arms to Israel may be a violation of international law and should stop. The volume of arms is small, but it does include spare parts and other elements of the missile systems used by F-15 jets.
-One report claims Netanyahu wanted to instal a military govt in Gaza, but was overruled by the IDF.
-Another that the 'campaign against Rafah' hasn't happened and talk of it may just be threats.

What we don't know -where will the Palestinians of Gaza live? If they remain in Gaza, what form of policing will there be as law and order has been replaced by gang warfare in some if not all areas, HAMAS being now incapable of imposing order on the District.

Will Israel create a 'buffer zone' in the North to distance Palestinians from the Israeli border?

Given Gaza is in a state of collapse, what plans are there to revive it?

I take the view that from the start, the aim was to expel all Palestinians from the Gaza District, either to Egypt or to Jordan. The hard core Fascists in the Israeli Govt don't want anyone living in Gaza, or if they do, Settlers from other parts of Israel, with the long-cherished aim of the expulsion of non-Jews from the West Bank becoming less of a dream and more or a reality. Because Netanyahu has lost the plot. His containment strategy has failed, but with neither side interested or committed to meaningful negotiations, for the release of the Hostages, for an end to the war, for a post-war settlement, we are left with the bleak reality -

HAMAS and Likud rejected the 1993 Peace Treaty, opting for war. And that is what they have, even as we see them unable to use it to get what they want. And though Israel remains the stronger militarily, it is socially divided and facing, in the long term, the economic reality that it cannot finance this war indefinitely. As for the Palestinians, who knows what they want, when they remain ineffective, weak, lacking international friends and the resources to be anything other than second class citizens in the de facto One State (non-Solution that has existed since 1967.

The propaganda continues, the deaths roll on. And nobody is ashamed of what they are doing.