Israel's survival

It's almost not worth arguing about though. It doesn't really affect the situation today which can only be solved by the re-secularisation of Israel, the end of apartheid in Israel and the end of the bantustanisation of the remaining palestinian areas of the West Bank and Gaza strip.

As for today many arab states passively or actively oppose or fail to recognise the existence of Israel.

so, in other words, it's all israel's fault?

no, it's all the Palestinians' fault. how dare they want to live free in their own country?

It is my understanding that the founders of israel up until as late as '48 always envisaged Israel as a place where the indigenous population could coexist with the jewish influx but gradually as the 20s and 30s progressed the statements became more colonial in nature. I wish I could find one of my histories of Israel because they have some great quotes from David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Weitzman, Theodor Hertzl, Moshe Dayan and the like saying things along the lines of, 'the arabs will welcome the jewish influx because it will bring progress'. Which is almost a version of the 'white man's burden for Israel, the sustaining premise for the later british empire. From that colonial beginning has grown today's apartheid system, largely brought on by the de-facto annexation of the West Bank and Gaza strip and the inability to recognise that the Palestinian arabs don't wish to go and live in some other arab land they want to live in their own land, just as much as the jews do.

It's far from being all Israel's fault, Britain, the US, France, the Arab nations all have had their parts to play in the fuckup that is israel. What I was trying to express is that it is futile trying to re-fight the battles of the past. Instead we should concentrate on the problems of now and the unresolved issues brought up by the past.

Any settlement at the very least should include:

Due compensation for any lands or property lost by Palestinians, (in much the same way that european jews have been compensated for property appropriated by the nazi government and by other subsequent governments and organisations). This is assuming Palestinians will not be given the right to return to land long since developed by Israel.

Normalisation of relations between Arab nations and Israel

the return of the Golan Heights to Syria.

Appropriate sharing of water resources in the region.

What seems to be obvious is that a state comprising the west bank and Gaza, even including all of the pre '67 areas. Even going back to the partition lines of '48 does help. The only viable state is a state comprising Israel the west bank and Gaza to be inhabited equally by Jews and Palestinians. If this is going to happen then some things are going to have to change and 'Greater Israel/Palestine' will have to loose some of the trapping of Jewish state hood, not least the right of all Jews to 'return' to Israel.

You can't kick the Jews out, you can't kick the Palestinians out so they have to get along and orthodox/fundamentalist wackjobs on both sides are going to have to deal with it.

Israel's development on a less ethnically driven course is more or less inevitable as the percentage of non-Jewish people living there rises due to immigration and demographic factors. You can't really talk about a "Jewish State" when a third of the population are not Jews.

btw Ed - top marks for mentioning water resources... this is the politically unexciting topic that is perhaps the key to the whole issue.

Israel also needs to heal its internal differences as well, since the 70s, or even the late 60s, the consensus that Israel was a secular state Jewish in character has been breaking down, largely because significant sections (ultra-)orthodox Jewish community is trying it's hardest to destroy this consensus and make the state more
Jewish in a religious sense rather than Jewish in a cultural/ethnic/national sense. One must not forget that the chain of events that got us here (i.e the destruction of the peace process) was started by a Jewish fundamentalist bullet in Yitzak Rabin's heart.

Admittedly most of my arguments for a unified state are from an unrealistically idealistic position but I do believe that the only way for true peace in the Levant is for the Jews to give up the idea of a singularly Jewish state in return for a peaceful and equal existence in the land they call there own.

Seems to be the thread to drop this essay on Zionism's collaboration with the Nazis in the run up to the formation of Israel.

https://mouinrabbani.substack.com/p/zionists-nazis-and-the-holocaust