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Refined Insights's avatar

Bravo. This is, by far, the best and most lucid suggestion on how peace could be attained between both parties. I had imagined the best case scenario to be a kind of North Korea, with a demilitarized zone strictly administered by a multinational coalition force rather than an Israeli occupying force, and then foreign aid to prop up Fatah and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

But this, this is much better for it understands that the true issue at stake is not land. Land is just land. It has no feelings, no history, no culture. No, the true issue at stake is the mindsets and mentalities of the people living on the land. Unless that is reformed somewhat, the hostilities will continue. For example, Israel withdrew entirely from Gaza in 2005. If this were an issue of land for peace, Gaza should have been pacified. Instead, merely four months later, they put a genocidal terrorist group in power. It's unlikely that if Israel withdrew from the West Bank, an even more difficult proposition, the outcomes would be dissimilar.

However, a few caveats to this cautious optimism. The first of course is the issue of religion. Religion is a curiously under-discussed aspect of this conflict but it's absolutely central. Religion means border disputes are recast as a theatre for total war, it means the actions of a few bad eggs on both sides inspire monomaniacal speeches. The Jews won't stop being Jews. The Arabs won't stop being Muslims. As such, my hope for a permanent solution is diminished. Children who are taught a fairer, more dispassionate history in school will then listen to imams and rabbis who whip up religious sentiment.

Western civilization is a secular civilization. As such, we look today with amusement at the barbarous conflicts between Huguenots and Catholics of medieval France or the epileptic convulsions of violence between Catholics and protestants in medieval England.

But in the rest of the world, religion is alive and well. Indeed, every major international event or conflict that has happened this year is animated by religious principle: Azerbaijan, a majorly Muslim nation, recently ethnically cleansed Armenian christians, the ongoing conflict in Burma between the native Buddhists and the Rohingya Muslims, India and Canada's diplomatic spat over the extrajudicial murder of a prominent Sikh( Sikhism itself is a separatist religion), ongoing herder-farmer conflicts in the Sahel between the farming christians and the Muslim rebels ( one of the several features of the Niger coup) and the proposed war by coastal, often christian African countries and the Muslim desert countries of the Sahel.

And finally, of course, Israel and Palestine, endlessly locked in the newest iteration of who are the rightful heirs to the holy city of Jerusalem.

In Japan and Germany, these dimensions did not exist. These were wars fought for ideologies. Ideologies may summon all of the vehemence of religions but their lifespans are short: the Soviet Union was a flicker of candlelight in Russian history for all of 74 years. Religions, in contrast, seem to keep going a lot longer. So I don't see this proposed future materializing especially as the demographics of Israel( ultraright judaists have the highest reproductive rates) and those of Palestine( birth rates may be falling but half Gaza's population are children growing up in an environment of radical islamism) do not provide much respite.

But if any well-intentioned attempts are to be made at bridging this divide, then this excellent proposal certainly ranks as the very best of them. It's not perfect. But it might be enough. In the affairs of men, that's something of a disappointment. In the affairs of men and their gods, it is nothing short of superb.

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EB's avatar

Tomas, congratulations on a wonderful series of articles on this most complex topic. I follow this subject but have learned much from your detailed review of the history. I agree with your hopeful suggestions for moving both Israel and Palestine beyond endless conflict, but I am not optimistic that there is adequate motivation to pursue such an agenda on either side. As you so clearly and depressingly showed, there are powerful elements on both sides that benefit from a continual state of violence and conflict. The examples of post-war Germany and Japan moving beyond their destructive ideologies are possible models for Israel and Palestine, but those two countries were only open to mass re-education because of the catastrophic defeat and destruction that the Allies inflicted on them. To extend your analogy, Israel and Palestine might each have to face total collapse before they became amenable to the type of re-education that you propose. Even if such mutual collapse would result in a better future for both people, it is difficult to contemplate life becoming even more difficult in the interim. After reading your entire series, and learning so much, I have little hope for, and no alternative suggestions on how to achieve, a peaceful future in that region. So sad to say this. Thank you for all the effort you invested in educating us all.

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