My general position on most Israel/Palestine conflict

[desh]

If anyone's interested:

* I like peace. A lot. I dislike death, injury, and any situation in which innocent people cannot live safely and healthily.

* There are lots of innocent people in both Israel and Palestine.

* As far as I can tell, Israel and Palestine as national entities are both being idiots, each spending time during "cease fires" doing things in bad faith with the immediate or eventual goal of harming the other.

* Lots of friends of mine disagree with half of the above statement. They're all more intelligent and much more informed about this situation than I am. And they're all right, whichever side they're on.

* I'm an easily persuaded person in general; especially so with issues I'm much less informed about than the person trying to persuade me is. When I get into discussions about this issue, I almost always come out agreeing with whoever spoke last.

* Israel is much less important to my life than it is to most of the people I'm in Jewish communities with. I don't think Israel, as a land or a modern state (rather than as a concept or a history or a people), is particularly important to my life as an American Jew. And most of the individuals I know personally in Israel are both there temporarily and out of harm's way. (I worry about the rest, but I have fewer such people I know than most of my friends do.) I have even less invested personally in Palestine; I don't know anyone there at all.

* Therefore, I choose to stay relatively poorly informed about the issues going on in the region. Short term, I plan to continue to be persuadable about the issues, but long term, I plan to continue to stake out this moderate and apathetic stance. Frankly, there are other issues I care about more. How about the awesome poverty situation here in the country I live in?

* The one thing I'm sure about is that any opinion on the Middle East issues that disregards nuance and subtlety is automatically wrong.

Clear? Cool. Any questions?

Comments

[jdcohen.livejournal.com]

How about the awesome poverty situation here in the country I live in?

Or, if you are a student of Israel (and not just Israeli-Arab conflicts), how about the poverty situation in Israel? The second-class nature of Israeli-Arab citizenry? The growing divide between the Datim (Religious) and the Secularim (Seculars)? The growing violence within certain Ultra-Orthodox groups towards secular Jewish Israelis? The growing frustration and violence of the Settler Movement towards mainstream Israeli society? All of these will eventually (or do now) impact the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, but receive little or no media attention (at least, outside of Israel).

And Desh, I think you are right - both Israel and Hamas have been spending the last cease fire conducting themselves in bad faith with the ideals of said cease fire (Israel with its stranglehold on goods coming in through its border crossings to Gaza and Hamas with its stockpiling of more sophisticated and deadlier weaponry), but both are also responding to internal - as well as external - pressures. Israel is under pressure to reassert itself after the Olmert government spectacularly lost the public's confidence; Hamas is under pressure to prove its continued relevance as Gaza's political power since it has failed so spectacularly to provide adequate services and an economy for its people. And that's not even to mention Gilad Shalit and Hamas prisoners in Israel as bargaining chips AND as factors pushing the two into conflict.

However, this particular battle in Gaza boils down to just this: two dumb-fuck machismo organizations who care more about their perception in the eyes of their people than the actual lives of those people. Hamas is willing to see Gaza razed to the ground on a fucking PRINCIPLE OF RESISTANCE and Israel is willing to see dozens if not a hundred Israeli soldiers killed to prevent rocket fire that has so far only killed 5 Israelis (and that includes rockets fired DURING this current battle). It's all so maddeningly frustrating.

--Jeff

P.S. That said, I personally think Hamas is more to blame than Israel in this matter. Their philosophy is that if negotiating with the enemy isn't working, resistance will - and resistance means intentionally targetting civilians. Their demands to "renew" the cease fire were outrageous, even if Israel wasn't living up to its end of the original cease fire terms. Israel, for its part, doesn't target civilians - but also doesn't give too much of a shit if they get hit. If anything, while Hamas certainly has intent to kill civilians, Israel has a criminal negligence of civilian safety. And all of this while sporadic rockets were landing in Sderot DURING the cease fire, Hamas still issuing propaganda through television, radio, and schools putting forward the platform of Israel's demise, and Israel allowing limited aid, trade, and border crossing for workers from Gaza during this period.

I am thoroughly convinced that if Hamas were to be removed from power, Gaza would be much the richer for it. I am also thoroughly convinced that Israel attempting to remove Hamas from Gaza will either prove futile, will cost too many Israeli and Palestinian lives, will be a humanitarian disaster, or will inflict lasting damage on other Israeli-Arab peace processes for years to come. If Israel wants to remove Hamas, it must do so by proxy, either by a United Nations force (yeah, THAT'LL happen) or by arming and training the PA to do it themselves (which is actually much smarter, but not as likely since Israel is wary of training a Palestinian army, regardless of political affiliation).

[below-the-belt.livejournal.com]

I totally had a dream about you last night! Only your name was Josh, I guess you thought you were Josh Graham, and I had to keep saying "No! You're Jeff!" which of course just goes to show that even the most well-intentioned of us sometimes have a hard time with name changes.

I absolutely disagree that Hamas is more to blame - Israel has more power, and thus more responsibility/implicatedness. Also: Israel is a government. Hamas is not. Palestine does not have a military. Israel has a seriously kick-ass one, funded by Uncle Moneybags USA [and our billions of tax dollars every year]. And as US Jews who have a relationship with Israel [you and I - I covet Desh's position of feeling less connection with it, a healthy position I believe], it's our job to hold Israel [and the US] accountable - they are governments, accountable to their people [and funders - which is all of us who pay taxes in the US]. Hamas is not directly my problem. Do you know what I mean?

Also, Hamas hadn't killed anyone until the past few days [right? I think this is right], while Israel has killed 700 civilians. So who's really escalating the violence?

Jeff, I'm excited to discuss this with you. Thanks for the opportunity. Wheee.