Andrew Sullivan: US should institute a 2 state solution by force

[CountDeMoney]

West Bank and Gaza were never formally part of any state, which is one of the problems.  Their former owners were the Brits, who held them as part of the mandate.  They  are, as you note, hot potatoes that have burned everyone who tried to hold on to them.

Also interesting to note how neither Jordan nor Egypt never seem to get any anti-semitic Eurocriticism about their respective behavior towards the Palestinians on the borders of those territories.

[Sheilbh]

I think the challenge is more like that of the indeterminate border variety than the civil war variety, but if by "civil war" you mean African tribal-based civil wars due to the artificiality of the borders, then I suppose the analogy might have some utility.

Well there are elements of this.

Incidentally - I'm going to return to the civil war thing in a minute - has 60 years of occupation, initially by Egypt and then by Jordan, turned the Palestinians into one of the very few nations in the Arab Middle East?  In terms of nationalism the Arab variety I think focuses overwhelmingly on the Arab nation because, with the exception of Egypt (and maybe a couple of the North African states, maybe Yemen too - I don't know about them - and maybe Lebanon) no real Arab nations can be said to exist.  Jordan is, especially, a joke.  But so too are Syria and Iraq.  They're states but they're not nations.  Have the Palestinians a nation?

To come back to the civil war thing what I mean is not that it is like a civil war in its nature as a war or in the reasons for conflict; but that resolving it presents the same challenges as resolving a civil war.  Even with border wars the peace is regulated and enforced by two armed states who are able fight again if necessary and if not try and negotiate a more fixed border line (Iran and Iraq are currently doing this for example), so peace is sort-of guaranteed by the threat of a return to war. 

In civil wars, historically, the end comes when one side is destroyed, with the creation of other states, or with international guarantees on the peace deal.  Now that's because they share a country but I also think it's to do with the fact that you can't have two opposing forces regulating a peace deal.  You also have groups that have varying degrees of state legitimacy but that can derail a peace deal, that can try and bounce their own side into action or provoke the other and at the end of a civil war the lines between crisis and conflict are far more blurry than when you're dealing with two states.  Similarly in any two state solution I believe the idea of a Palestinian armed forces is already off the table, you have non-state, and almost state actors with varying motivations within both Israel and Palestine and I think you will have, after any peace deal, a very blurry line between when a crisis moves to a resumption of conflict.

As I've said I don't think Israel can remain Jewish and democratic and be occupying territory with several million Palestinians.  Therefore I don't support imposing a two-state solution but I do think that we should push for them and the PA to work out a deal and that international arbitration and peacekeeping in, for example, Gaza would help Israel and the PA.  If there's an international guarantee between the two sides it will help make them both engaged in a bit more like a normal bilateral deal.

[Sheilbh]

Anti-semitic Europeans would, because it validates Palestinian terrorism as "not really terrorism".

I don't think I've ever said that.  Terrorism is terrorism.  Not that that gets anyone very far.

Also interesting to note how neither Jordan nor Egypt never seem to get any anti-semitic Eurocriticism about their respective behavior towards the Palestinians on the borders of those territories.

I've criticised the Egyptians for the blockade of Gaza and the Jordanians for their expansionist conquest of the West Bank in this thread.  The difference is Egypt and Jordan can occupy Gaza and the West Bank respectively without threatening their identity because neither are designed a majority Jewish state, a Jewish homeland and neither are democracies.

[CountDeMoney]

Save it, Balfour.  I've already labelled you.

[Sheilbh]

Save it, Balfour.

I don't know what this means

[citizen k]

Save it, Balfour.

I don't know what this means

Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour

[Sheilbh]

Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour

I got that.

[Martinus]

I too am sick of the Israelis for their contempt for the interests of their most important ally, their continuation of brutalizing colonization of the West Bank, their shameless ethnic engineering in East Jerusalem, their pulverization of Gaza, the direct manipulation of domestic American politics by their ambassador, and on and on. And, yes, I'm also sick of the war crimes and theocratic insanity of Hamas, and the lame passive-aggression of the PA, and the inability of the Palestinian leadership to prepare for actual governance as opposed to the victimized preening and theatrics and violence they prefer to the difficult compromises required if we are to move forward.

This part I agree with, but the solution makes no sense. If you're sick of both of them, why the hell would you want to militarily intervene to forcibly separate them? Just cut them both loose and let them kill each other.

Well, if you separate political leadership from ordinary people who will be made to suffer (and are suffering now), then his proposed solution, while obviously costly (and not necessarily in the US best interest), makes sense.

I guess it depends on whether you think the US (or, more broadly speaking, the West) has a moral obligation to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe where it is possible, even though we are not guilty of it happening.

[The Brain]

What can CIA offer in terms of solutions? AIDS worked reasonably well against gays and Africans, surely something could be deployed against Jewrabs?

[Fate]

Iran is the final solution. Glass the Jewrabs and world peace will ensue.

[Malthus]

This isn't even remotely like a "civil war". There is no conflict within Israel; Israel in no way resembles Lebanon or former Yugoslavia. What this is, is Israel occupying bits of other countries (Gaza=Egypt; the WB=Jordan) that contain populations so fractious and ungovernable that their former owners don't want them back. 

Agre about the civil war aspect - the mere assertion of it strikes me as somewhat suspicious.

West Bank and Gaza were never formally part of any state, which is one of the problems.  Their former owners were the Brits, who held them as part of the mandate.  They  are, as you note, hot potatoes that have burned everyone who tried to hold on to them.

Unless I'm mistaken, that is not entirely the case. It is true that the Brits held them under Mandate, but they were arguably parts of Egypt and Jordan, respecively, after the Mandate ended.

On the WB:

The country was under British supervision until after World War II. In 1946, the British requested that the United Nations approve an end to British Mandate rule in Transjordan. Following the British request, the Transjordanian Parliament proclaimed King Abdullah as the first ruler of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan. Abdullah I continued to rule until a Palestinian Arab assassinated him in 1951 as he was departing from the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Jordan occupied the area of Cisjordan now called the West Bank, which it continued to control in accordance with the 1949 Armistice Agreements and a political union formed in December 1948. The Second Arab-Palestinian Conference held in Jericho on December 1, 1948 proclaimed Abdullah King of Palestine and called for a union of Arab Palestine with the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan.[39] The Transjordanian Government agreed to the unification on December 7, 1948, and on December 13 the Transjordanian parliament approved the creation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The step of unification was ratified by a joint Jordanian National Assembly on April 24, 1950. The Assembly was comprised of 20 representatives each from the East and West Bank. The Act of Union contained a protective clause which persevered Arab rights in Palestine without prejudice to any final settlement.[40][41]

Many legal scholars say the declaration of the Arab League and the Act of Union implied that Jordan's claim of sovereignty over the West Bank was provisional, because it had always been subject to the emergence of the Palestinian state.[42][43] A political union was legally established by the series of proclamations, decrees, and parliamentary acts in December 1948. Abdullah thereupon took the title King of Jordan, and he officially changed the country's name to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in April 1949. The 1950 Act of Union confirmed and ratified King Abdullah's actions. Following the annexation of the West Bank, only two countries formally recognized the union: Britain and Pakistan.[44][45] Thomas Kuttner notes that de facto recognition was granted to the regime, most clearly evidenced by the maintaining of consulates in East Jerusalem by several countries, including the United States.[46] Joseph Weiler agreed, and said that other states had engaged in activities, statements, and resolutions that would be inconsistent with non-recognition.[47] Joseph Massad said that the members of the Arab League granted de facto recognition and that the United States had formally recognized the annexation, except for Jerusalem

On Gaza:

According to the United Nations' 1947 UN Partition Plan, proposing a partition of the British Mandate of Palestine, the areas of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were to become part of a new Arab state. However, the Arab members of the UN stated that the plan was unjust and contrary to the UN Charter, and that they would not abide by it, presaging the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. (See also Proposals for a Palestinian state.) The "All-Palestine Government" was recognised by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, but not by Jordan or any other country in the world. However, it was little more than a façade under Egyptian control and had negligible influence or funding. Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip or Egypt were issued with All-Palestine passports until 1959, when Gamal Abdul Nasser, president of Egypt, annulled the All-Palestine government by decree.

Both quotes are from Wikipedia, but the facts are not really in dispute.

Summary: in both cases, it is the fall-out of the aborted UN partition plan. The notional existence of a Palestinian state was given the nod, but only in the most prefunctory of manners, and that soon abandoned; Jordan formally annexed the WB and the king of one declared himself the king of another (an annexation acceded to by the UK); Egypt maintained the legal fiction of a "Palestinan" government until it was abolished by Nasser. 

[Grallon]

...Jewrabs

So apt!  Both groups are stiff-neck bastards - dixit God.




G.

[Malthus]

...Jewrabs

So apt!  Both groups are stiff-neck bastards - dixit God.




G.

Personally, I think there is nothing more hilarious than ethnic slurs. 

Now, about those folks in Quebec ...

[grumbler]

Unless I'm mistaken, that is not entirely the case. It is true that the Brits held them under Mandate, but they were arguably parts of Egypt and Jordan, respecively, after the Mandate ended.

Certainly the Jordanians and Egyptians argued this, but their assertions of sovereignty were just that, and their legal fictions that the peoples of these lands were forming governments to ask for Jordanian and Egyptian rule are not credible (and are no longer maintained).

[grumbler]

Personally, I think there is nothing more hilarious than ethnic slurs. 

Now, about those folks in Quebec ...

Quepuquois?