So the good news, i got unbanned from that sub that I got banned from. And one discussion today was how I see this crisis with Israel and Palestine ending. The following is my answer. But then, after I'm done, I'm gonna do some extra political commentary. One of the conditions of me coming back is I be mindful of the political environment, and I wanna be real with people about this one. This is my take, but I'm also gonna do further commentary on this take after it's done.
So this is how I see the current crisis ending:
Eh it depends on the circumstances but this is ultimately how I see it going.
The war will keep raging for months after now. Best case scenario, the Rafah invasion will be their last, final battle, where they can claim to have vanquished hamas or whatever, but i could see it going on after that. When does it end? Who knows. If they had their way, I bet they'd go ALL the way to the big G. But....they probably will feel mounting political pressure from the international community to rein it in at some point, and having to work within that political reality, they might back off eventually.
And then we'll get some "peace deal". It won't be a deal both sides would really agree to without smithers holding a gun to their back and saying everyone's happy. On the israeli side, it will be the US and the international community holding the gun, on the palestinian side, it will be the israelis themselves holding the gun.
This peace deal will have a lot of smiling and shaking hands, and document signing, and photo ops that will end up in future history books, but ultimately? It'll solve nothing. It'll be a 20 year armistice.
I'm of the opinion that these guys will keep going at it until one of them is dead. Even if we end this round of bloodshed, there will be extremists on both sides rearing to go and looking for an excuse to start up the fighting again. Just as, it seems like, despite all of the wars and peace agreements in the region, they never seem to stick, because many of the people on both sides don't want them to stick. The Israelis think it's their land, and they want it all. The palestinians think the same. And the most extreme voices will eventually win out.
We'll see Israel doing more settlements, and Palestine doing more terrorism, and eventually, these guys will start up and go at it again in about 20 years time. Much like the treaty of versailles of 1918 that ended WWI, the treaty we get here is a 20 year armistice.
Long long term, who knows. These guys might go at it until one of them DOES genocide the other. Whether a decline in the US led rules based order leads to the arab nations jumping Israel and eventually leading to the destruction of the jewish state, or the Israelis just killing off what remains of the palestinians through future rounds of warfare, it's possible that some sort of genocide is inevitable, and any peace established a false and shallow one.
Ideally though, maybe eventually the Palestinian groups will lay down their arms like the irish republican army did not long ago, and we'll finally have some sense of peace and cooperation in the region. However, given these kinds of blood feuds can last as long as literal centuries, we will be all dead, and our next reincarnated selves probably dead too before that ever happens.
Not gonna lie, I'm pretty cynical of the situation there. As I see it, the dominant voices there dont want peace, they wanna keep going at it, and eventually we're gonna have a war so destructive in the region that it HAS to stop (mirroring WWII in the west, with full on "denazification" equivalent for the losing side), or one side is gonna reduce the other side's population to the point it doesn't matter any more. I wish I could be more optimistic than that, but as a student of political science, and who knows history, I'm just...not.
Like really. I wanna make clear here I'm NOT endorsing this outcome, I wish there was a peaceful solution, but I don't think, despite our best efforts to do so, that we can broker such a situation. This is a conflict between two peoples of different ethnic backgrounds, different religions, and different values. They both occupy the same land, they both believe they have a legitimate right to the land, and until the two sides calm the frick down and moderate their stances, bloodshed in the region is inevitable. I don't think that our intervention will make a ton of difference, although it might temporarily force an uneasy peace to the situation both sides will just be rearing to look for an excuse to break. And yeah, that's just how I see it. Sorry for not being more optimistic.
Okay, so now, the more spicy parts. This, right here, sums up my view of the situation. I don't have a positive view. I have a very negative view. As I see it, this crisis is made up of two sides whose terms, if put on a venn diagram, would produce two separate, non overlapping circles.
These MFers don't want peace. Both israel and gaza, just want the land to themselves, and they want the other faction gone. And the fact that they're still fighting over it demonstrates to me neither side has given up yet. Both are bloodied Randy Marsh saying "I didn't hear no bell."
And this is why, on that sub, and on here, I've also been so cynical of the political situation. We westerners, we think we can just go in and force a peace on these guys. But here's the reality. These guys have to WANT the peace. You know, before 1945, and even after, in some parts of the world, warfare was constant. European powers would be regularly going at each others' throats. The French and the Germans fought in 1871. In the decades that followed, they were ITCHING for a rematch. Like, let's fricking go. WWI happened because these guys WANTED it. They WANTED a war. And they got a lot more war than they asked for. When the treaty of versailles was signed, the people who signed it knew it was a 20 year armistice. The terms were incredibly unfriendly to the germans, there was a lot of bitterness. Italy and Japan felt left out entirely as the US came in and just dictated the terms, and then didn't join the league of nations, and the agreement never stuck. The bitterness over the harsh terms of WWI gave rise to the Nazis, who promised to make Germany great again, and then they defied the treaty, leading to WWII, the true "war to end all wars", because after that wars just became too destructive to wage. Still, the war was fought to a point where the losers had to unconditionally surrender, and then the allies went through strict denazification and americanization protocols to make those countries "western."
Basically, the winners had to decisively win, and then so thoroughly destroy the ideology of their enemy that it allowed the winner's culture to thrive in its place. Now Japan and Germany are effectively westernized, and live their lives mostly by western standards, with western defense in its place. That's what it took to bring an end to war in Europe. Even then, there was always the threat of the cold war between the communists and the west turning hot, and i think the only reason it didnt was because it would be the end of the human race. Instead, Russia collapsed, Putin took over, and now they're doing whatever they're doing in Ukraine.
What I'm saying is Israel and Palestine might have to go through a similar process. And that's the BEST case scenario. Worst case, they just wanna kill each other and this blood feud can't be ended amicably. Which brings us to other examples to learn from, from history. In the late 1940s, when we founded Israel as the British relinquished many of their colonial holdings in Africa and Asia, we founded A LOT of countries. And a lot of them were drawn poorly, throwing different ethnic groups that had tensions for centuries before this into power struggles with each other. Which is why much of Africa and Asia have been a hotbed of warfare since. We basically decided to come in, we broke these guys up from fighting by having a colonial power just repressing them all, and when that colonial power leaves, internal tensions flare up again and we see these guys genociding each other. It happens all the freaking time in that part of the world. And then we westerners think we gotta take it on ourselves and break them up because genocide is wrong. Don't get me wrong, it IS wrong, but what are accomplishing here? We break them up, it doesnt end the hatred, and this crap is just gonna continue again.
Another example, this from from the East. What about Yugoslavia? It was part of the USSR, and then after the USSR broke up in the 90s, they basically had a free for all full of genocide that eventually ended with a seven state solution. But yeah, these guys were repressed by the soviets for like 70 years, and then when they finally got the opportunity for independence, all these different groups try to kill each other. And once again, we have to be the ones to break them up.
And that's what I feel like the pro peace people here want. They want the west to come in and break them up, and stop the fighting, but here's the thing. We cant make them stop long term. The fighting stops when THEY say it stops. And that's where Biden is totally impotent right now. The anti war left wants him to broker a cease fire, but how? Any agreement israel would agree to, palestine wouldn't, and vice versa. Who are we to be the ones to break them up, what are we the world police? I thought the peaceniks didn't want us to be that.
Yes, we arm israel. israel is an ally and country of strategic interest to the US. Sadly, one party of this conflict is within the western community, and while we are trying to keep a muzzle on them because genocide is unbecoming of us, we're having limited success here. And part of the argument is if israel stops, hamas won't. And they're not entirely wrong. So they wanna kill hamas, but killing hamas means basically total warfare in gaza with civilians being offed by the tens of thousands.
You know, at some point, I just throw my hands up and give up on these people. Why do we care? It's their fight, it's their battle, who are we to meddle more than we have to? Why does the left decide to make THIS THE key issue for Biden to accomplish? Biden cant reasonably get a cease fire. Netanyahu is thumbing his nose at Biden at every turn, and Hamas is just as psycho as they always are. And here's the thing about hamas. They dont care either. life is cheap for them. They're using their people as human shields, and Israel is forced to commit great war crimes just to get at them. it's a no win situation.
But yeah. This conflict is something that we cannot stop. And I've given up on trying. That's why I'm so cavalier on this situation, and that's why I'm to the point of just doing the whole bethesda "well which faction in this intractible conflict would i rather survive?" Because that's how low my standards are. I hate to be to the point of gallows humor and that level of cynicism, but here we are. I just feel so hopeless on this conflict that I wish, as Americans, would stop fixating on it. I wish the left would stop making it their cause to die on their sword over. I wish we would just drop it, let the pieces fall where they may, and let it go. Because even if Biden somehow brokers a deal, it'll go exactly as I outlined above. It's a 20 year armistice. You think I'm making it up with the smiling and the document signing and the hand shaking? Just look up the Camp David accords, negotiated by President Carter. Look at the Oslo Accords, negotiated by Bill Clinton. Tons of photo op moments on google images. That's exactly what I'm referencing there. Look where we are now.
And here we are, in 2024, these guys are still massacring each other, and it seems like the peaceniks want another peace deal. While it would be nice, I mean, who can be against peace, but again, these MFers wanna kill each other, we get them to all come to the table, they sign the agreement, and then things go back to business as usual until the next blow up. When will that occur? Could be in 10 years. Could be in 20. Could be in 30.But I hope you guys realize by now, reading this, that we've been here before. We've had the forced peace agreements, the guys standing on the stage, signing a peace of paper, shaking hands, and then it doesn't accomplish a darned thing. Because at the end of the day, both factions want what they want, and neither really care. They just wanna kill each other. In the overall grand scheme of things, we're talking decades to centuries out, I suspect one side will destroy the other. Either that, or a conflict will happen where we see one side just offer the other such a defeat that the losing side is forcibly absorbed into the winning side. Either that or maybe, if we go along enough, we'll have some sort of peace through other means. Maybe it will be like the IRA laying down its arms after centuries of warfare with the British. Again, on time scales long enough anything could happen. Maybe the current order will collapse, some new empire will rise in its place, and oppress both of them. Who knows. THis conflict has been going on since before I was born. It will keep going on long after I'm dead. it's the gift that keeps on giving.
And yeah, that's my more uncensored take on it. Maybe people like their coffee a little less black here, but I'm just keeping it real with you guys. That's how I see it, and that's why I'm also so dead set on defending Biden here and ripping the anti war left. Because what does fixating on this solve? NOTHING. It's just screwing up our country too. Let them so what they wanna do, I wanna focus on what we wanna do for ourselves. All pinning this on biden and calling him genocide joe is doing is screwing up his reelection chances. And we have a fascist who wants to overturn democracy and ban porn and abortion to beat. So let's do that, and leave that whole bloody conflict behind.
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