What do you think the US's policy towards Israel should be?

History Learner said:
I know you're Jewish and have ties to Israel, so I understand your prospective.
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Yeah, FWIW, in that post, I explicitly said that the Palestinians need the living space in the Jordan Valley more than the Israelis need it. Honestly, I'd be quite content to settle for something like the 2003 Geneva Initiative, but slightly more in favor of Israel (though with larger territorial compensation in Gaza to the Palestinians to compensate for this). This is the best shot at a fair settlement, honestly, and I think that the region has suffered enough bloodshed already. Would have been better to make such a peace 20 years ago, but better late than never.

FWIW, if it wasn't for the Nazis and them driving a lot of Jews to Palestine, I'd actually be rather ambivalent about Israel's creation and think that the Palestinian Arabs should be entitled to all of Palestine. But creating a Jewish state elsewhere, such as in Eastern Europe, would have simply left it exposed to the Nazis, and by 1947 there was already a large Jewish community in Palestine. So, I think that a peace based on the 1967 lines, but with mutually agreed land swaps as per the 2003 Geneva Initiative, is the best possible deal right now. FWIW, I actually view this as an Israeli concession since as I previously said, the Arab countries who fought Israel in 1948-1949 insisted that Israel's new borders be viewed as provisional rather than as permanent.
 
Kram said:
Because we haven't given hundreds of billions in aid to Egypt. We don't have the kind of conditionless support for them that we do for the Israelis.
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Ummmmmm we do actually send a lot of foreign aid to Eygpt and have for decades.
 
Knowledgeispower said:
Ummmmmm we do actually send a lot of foreign aid to Eygpt and have for decades.
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U.S. aid to Israel dwarfs that sent to Egypt and any aid to Middle East nations, by U.S. law, has to be matched with equal aid to Israel in terms of military aid. So, if the U.S. strikes a deal to provide say, F-35s to the UAE, we are required to give equal military aid to Israel to compensate for this.
 
I really don't have a lot of sympathy for the Palestinians.

They joined the side trying to genocide the other in a war and lost. They were given citizenship in friendly Arab countries and then attempted to take them over and lost. They were rejected by the countries that had given them citizenship and the world said they were Israels problem again. They rejected every peace deal they were ever given to instead continue to try and kill Israel.

If, at any point, they had decided to just... stop, it would be over. They are the aggressors in every conflict they've ever had and they burnt any bridges to allies they had themselves.

It's really hard for me to blame the people they tried to genocide for being more merciful than any other country in the middle east would have been. If they had done the same stuff to any other country in the area but Israel they wouldn't be a problem right now because they would have been wiped out.
 
In the grand scheme of things, i think there is simply no route to a stable peace for the foreseeable future. Not until islamism stops being a major fixture in Arab politics, and not as long as the situation is a part of greater Arab politics and cannot be affected in a predictable manner without taking that variable into account - the whole "Palestinians are a nation who needs independence and not just a part of Arab world" narrative has only started after 1967, after among Arabs all hope for solving the "Israel question" by military means was crushed by their military defeats in trying to do that.

The Arab countries of the region can sabotage peace deals easily, at this point so easily that in fact doing nothing would be enough. Namely, the Palestinian territories, over last decades, were so infested with islamist politics that it disturbs even these Arab countries, and made them effectively ungovernable by anyone reasonable and more merciful than Genghis Khan at least (someone less so would solve both the living space problem and militancy problem with one simple trick).

Hence such ridiculous situation that Israel probably would rather give Gaza back to Egypt than have it be an independent state just so that Egyptian police and military will take responsibility for keeping the locals from doing crazy terrorist shit, and the main problem is that Egypt doesn't want it because its full of crazy islamists ruled by a Muslim Brotherhood offshot, and goddamit they already have more Muslim Brotherhood islamists than the dollaro spending tourists feel comfortable sharing a country with, they don't want more.
Is there anyone who does?

Or in other words, you can't trust the main, militancy based governing organizations of Palestinian Territories to run the places if any hypothetical 2 or 3 state solution goes through, and not turn back to the main thing they are remotely competent at the moment they have any problem, no matter what kind of deal you arrange to make the split happen. Which is main reason why Israel doesn't, everyone know any lessening of international relations pressure resulting from it would be very temporary, more than overshadowed by the bad PR of the wars that would soon happen.
Unfortunately, Hamas and PLO don't seem to be planning on going anywhere. Well, PLO maybe, through being taken out by Hamas, but that's just more of the same problem if anything.

Quibbling over who should have which contested tiny strip of territory like the question of settlers, specific neighborhoods, small land plots etc is just a way for both sides to continue the charade of "peace process", remind their constituents that they are fighting for the interests of own side no matter what please vote for us, and pretend that the problems are in the tiny details, and not in the general situation.
 
You know it's times like this where I hope technology advances far enough that people can live in space, that way people that can't live with others, and want their own states can go on their own exodus and make their own nation.
 
History Learner said:
According to international law and the consensus of the international community, it is not and never will be.
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International law also said that NATO's 1999 Kosovo intervention was illegal, but NATO made it happen anyway while avoiding any punishment for itself as a result of this. I look at the reality on the ground rather than what international law says.

And honestly, I find it rather strange that international law would allow Israel to keep its territorial conquests from 1948-1949 but not to at the very least make West Jerusalem its capital.
 
WolfBear said:
International law also said that NATO's 1999 Kosovo intervention was illegal, but NATO made it happen anyway while avoiding any punishment for itself as a result of this. I look at the reality on the ground rather than what international law says.

And honestly, I find it rather strange that international law would allow Israel to keep its territorial conquests from 1948-1949 but not to at the very least make West Jerusalem its capital.
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Might Makes Right =/= Legality
 
History Learner said:
As Israel is a signatory of the UN Charter, they have absolutely every right to do so and hence why the overwhelming number of nations of the world refuse to recognize the claims of the Israelis to such.
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I don't recall the UN charter granting the UN authority to mircomanage where a country's capital is, that's a major intrusion on national sovereignty that no nation would ever tolerate.
 
History Learner said:
U.S. aid to Israel dwarfs that sent to Egypt and any aid to Middle East nations, by U.S. law, has to be matched with equal aid to Israel in terms of military aid. So, if the U.S. strikes a deal to provide say, F-35s to the UAE, we are required to give equal military aid to Israel to compensate for this.
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That should be changed. Israel is prosperous enough to survive and thrive on its own without much, if any, US military aid.

The US already did Israel enough of a favor by preventing a lot of ex-USSR Jews who wanted to move to the US from actually doing so, thus compelling them to move to Israel instead if they wanted to get out of the ex-USSR.

History Learner said:
As Israel is a signatory of the UN Charter, they have absolutely every right to do so and hence why the overwhelming number of nations of the world refuse to recognize the claims of the Israelis to such.
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The overwhelming majority of the international community also refuse to recognize Russian claims to Crimea either. What's your point?
 
Battlegrinder said:
I don't recall the UN charter granting the UN authority to mircomanage where a country's capital is, that's a major intrusion on national sovereignty that no nation would ever tolerate.
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Probably need to go re-read the UN Charter and associated case law then, because by signing up to it Israel agreed to exactly this by abiding by said Charter and allowing UN oversight. If Israel hates it, tough shit, either leave the UN or get over it because that's what you agreed to. Funny your love and respect of the Law goes out the door when it impedes on Israel's abilities, huh?
 
History Learner said:
Might Makes Right =/= Legality
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True enough, but there's a school of thought that argues that actions that are illegal but nevertheless legitimate in some way should not be punished. That's what the "illegal but legitimate" doctrine, developed after Kosovo, is all about.
 
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