Thoughts on Palestinian statecraft
I don't see a way that Palestine could ever function as two discontinuous parts, and the complete unworkability of the concept makes it infeasible for anything other than a one-state solution to gain momentum in Palestine. In an alternate universe, Egypt might have annexed Gaza years ago, a clearer sense of direction would have emerged in the West Bank, and something of a functioning state would exist for the Palestinians. But of course, Egypt was and is quite opposed to any such solution. So, my basic proposal would be to turn Gaza and the West Bank into two separate, independent states with the latter carrying the namesake of Palestine. If Gaza turns out to be a problematic, belligerent state, then treat it like any other nation in that camp: sanction them, hold Gaza the state itself accountable (as opposed to a vague assortment of belligerents), use diplomacy to achieve piecemeal progress. Surely, any front against Israel would be significantly weaker as the priorities of the two nations inevitably diverge.
This to me seems like the only workable long-term solution, aside from Israel causing a bloodbath in hopes of establishing total militaristic dominance over Gaza and eventually annexing it.
The first point I'd like to make is that this is a continuation of colonialism which got us into this mess in the first place. Israel, Palestine, and regional interests must come to an agreed upon solution to avoid blowback decades later. No one in the West understands all of the history, cultural attitudes, and daily lived experience to be able to even close to effectively promote a solution.
This is definitely a source of problems for the working of a Palestinian state but the argument doesn't stand. There are many, many, examples of states that function with many exclaves, enclaves, third-order enclaves even.
The world should deal with Palestine and Israel directly, to help them come to an agreement and to punish any bad behavior (on both sides!) but otherwise we should leave the solution up to them and their neighbors. It's none of the western world's business how they find peace so long as we can help them find it
Punishment is a wrong attitude at any scale. It disciplines children sort of, but creates a lot of weird side effects and also the “good” results only extend so far as individuals with whom the child associates the punishment.
At larger levels, it serves to create resentment and mechanisms to cheat/avenge.
Promoting good behavior always works better.
Another problem with world politics today is who is “us?” So called western governments are rife with terrible actions and hypocrisy, governments and people around the world justifiably assume the worst about those governments interventions. Also bad is how ignorant the various populations are of their governments’ actions, and are thereby complicit.
A notable exception to that last bit: mainline organizations like the pcusa who are divesting themselves of apartheid supporting Israeli companies.
Effective community dynamics require certain forms of punishment, and I believe the situation to be more nuanced than your comment suggests. There is a substantial literature on how tit-for-tat actions, direct and indirect reciprocity, etc. promote reciprocity and cooperation in repeated interactions.
Often this is framed as a “generous” tit-for-tat, which (loosely) is closer to your idea of reciprocal promotion of beneficial behavior, but more basic mechanisms for defectors appear more effective than either form of tit-for-tat. Obviously, punishment all the time is not particularly helpful, and the literature accounts for the value of forgiving defectors occasionally too.
This article seems to have a decent summary of some forms of reciprocity: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3279745/
I think you, and that article, describe what has been effective for “covilized” humans for the last few millennia, but not what had been universally effective for all time, nor what might actually be best.
Perhaps the lessons don’t transcend human civilization, but I do not think they need to do so in order to be valuable. Arguably, the comment I was responding to, in discussing positive effects of encouraging good behavior, was already framing the issue within civilization implicitly, particularly with reference to children and this conflict.
Though I just cited one article, reciprocity and punishment have been heavily studied and written about in game theory and conflict resolution disciplines for a long while, and I believe cross-cultural studies are out there too. It’s hard to get around human nature or sociability.
I just don’t think the view that punishment, or at least direct reciprocity, has no role in promoting prosocial behavior has any validity whatsoever. Outside of the social/civilization context, my view is that there no point in engaging in a debate about what promotes “good behavior.”
Couple things. One, when I said civilization, I meant human organization as it has been practiced since wide scale agriculture was implemented and ideas about religion and politics were formed. There remain now, and were prior to this kind of organization, lots of different social groups which organize and promote cooperation lots of different ways, which don’t involve punishment.
Punishment I understand to mean, doing something harmful or hurtful (or even unpleasant) to restore some kind of justice to the world for a perceived wrong. This is also known as the punitive theory of justice, and also talionic behavior. It appears this is what Israel is doing (and it is highly questionable that the people againt which theybare retaliating had anything to do with the wrong done them). And in my estimation, and those of others, it does little to promote overall good. There is a lot of research in the context of criminal justice and child rearing, as well as my own experience, that punishment does little to promote robust community oriented behavior and causes more harm along the way.
Game theory is a useful model in many contexts to describe outcomes we have seen. That doesn’t mean it is universal or ultimate, or the right framework to approach some of the worlds biggest and most intractable problems.
I am not making the claim that game theory is universally useful. It is absolutely relevant and important in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, though. I see no evidence as to why it would not be useful, especially given its ability to account for the complex intricacies of repeated interactions and network reciprocity.
Direct reciprocity and punishment as I discuss are distinct from talionic / retributive punishment as you mention. Those are (arguably) harsher subvariants of punishment that admittedly do not always have prosocial outcomes. The only value-add of my initial comment was that sometimes “promoting good behavior” involves responding with negative feedback to negative behaviors. Many (including, for what it’s worth, criminal justice papers) would call this “punishment,” even if the intent is rehabilitative. Blindly modeling prosocial behavior incentivizes defection, and that’s all I’m saying. I’m not making any stronger statement about the proportionality of the Israeli response. Perhaps we have been talking past each other if you have that narrowly-defined a view of punishment.
If you ignore tiny and/or low population pieces of land, there actually aren't many other instances of nations with chunks of discontinuous territory (ignoring islands). There's Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan/Tajikistan/Uzbekistan, Angola, French Guiana, Kaliningrad, and Alaska. The first three have had violent conflict, while the last two territories make up a relatively small percentage of the respective nation's landmass and/or population. Historically, the only example that would match the scale of Palestine would be West/East Pakistan, which of course was a massive failure.
Azerbaijan has violent conflict due to Nagorno-Karabakh, not because of the piece of Azerbaijan separated by Armenia. You also forgot Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, and France which were all violent places that traded land back and forth until they eventually found peace. Croatia was wracked in violence as recently as the 90's with its famous Dubrovnik region being discontinuous with the main bulk of the country. It's not fair to say that a lot of these places are peaceful, so they don't count while ignoring that historically they've been very violent points of conflict. Also, Pakistan and Bangladesh are separated by India which is a colossal subcontinent and have vastly different geopolitical interests - one being on the periphery of the Middle East and the other being on the periphery of South East Asia, not at all comparable to the scale of Palestine
Uncanny timing, but unfortunately not it appears.
Wow, uncanny indeed. I wonder if they’re serious, is it just a pretext for war or if Armenia agrees and allows a land bridge will Azerbaijan be satisfied?
I doubt it. Armenians have been genocide targets by their neighbors for a while now. It’s really gonna be death by a thousand cuts for them. They’ll give an inch and both Iran and Turkey (via proxies like Azerbaijan) will take a mile.
They’re basically in a similar boat as Jews and Kurds down there, but without the iron-clad support of the Western alliance to back them up. Russia sort of backed Armenia but people speculate they’re now punishing them for not supporting the invasion of Ukraine. The Kurds the US somewhat supported as part of our misguided attempts at nation-building in Iraq but never very strongly.
Lots of other minority groups in the region are also targets for elimination by the dominant Islamist and Arab nationalist ideologies, from Druze and Ahmadiyya Muslims to Coptic Christians. They’re just not quite big enough to have viable nations of their own.
Iran actually has much better relations with Armenia than Azerbaijan. No need to broadly paint the issue with a religious lens. Central Asia and the Caucuses are also not Arab or Middle Eastern.
Religion is a significant dimension in the conflict because religious chuvanism is the dominant ideology driving much of the conflict. It’s not getting an accurate picture without pointing out the ideology. That’s where they’ve been drawing the us/them line. It’s only now beginning to soften but not evenly across the region.
I don't think Russia is punishing Armenia. The loss of a frozen conflict through which to exert pressure sucks for Russia, and can't be walked back. Russia outright just doesn't have the troops to help.
Keep in mind the relative populations of Gaza and the West Bank. Roughly half the population of Palestine would be split between the two territories. I really don't think that's comparable to any other example in modern history.
Pakistan comes to mind, if you accept that Pakistan/East Pakistan were a real country and not more British lines on maps.
That turned out well... in any case, I think this is largely inevitable, assuming Gaza is not obliterated in this conflict. Hamas has already had rumblings about declaring independence from the State of Palestine, though that would annoy Egypt. To me, the increasingly likely solution is the West Bank under deepening Israeli control, either with Palestinian expulsion or oppression. Gaza becomes"independent" (likely blockaded for the foreseeable future) city-state and potentially the Palestinian state in its entirety.
I guess you could say the trouble started when the romans colonized Israel in the roughly 35-75 AD period. Back when Israel was a colony of the UK, the UK tried to maintain peace between ethnic populations and since it was all being governed by afar there was less reason for any group to be dominant (although it can sometimes be a decision made by occupiers to privilege one, such as the failed policy of putting Shias in charge of everything in Iraq.)
It seems now Israel became an ethno-state as a result of anti-colonial movement. If anything the UK contributed to that problem in that the Palestinians didn’t develop a home-grown system of government that was able to resist that.
I think this also pokes at the question of: what is ownership, especially that of land, anyway? People speak of land titles, the native and indigenous, international law and rules, colonialism and anti-colonialism, etc.
But really it's all handwringing around the bottom turtle: 'might makes right' — the true basis of ownership is power.
I think in general terms I'd agree with this approach to international conflict mediation, but in this specific scenario it's hard to feel any hope that a less-interventionist solution that is respectful of both groups' agency is going to do much good. There are a significant number of people on both sides of the conflict that explicitly want everyone on the opposing side dead. Not defeated, not relocated; the hardliners in either camp would happily see the other group exterminated.
This position is only further-entrenched with each hostile action taken. The Hamas attacks and the Israeli response to those attacks have likely both pushed people away from peaceful solutions and towards more violent ones. The scenario is a positive feedback loop of hatred, and while we have a few examples from history of those loops ending with a peaceful resolution, the overwhelming majority of such conflicts in the past have ended with a victory by one side or the other, and mass deaths on the losing side.
There is a valid point to make that a naive imposition of external solutions and order on the region is doomed to failure as it does not address the underlying conditions that cause the violence to spread. However, in this case the underlying condition is the simple presence of either group in the land they call their home, and an unmediated conflict will inevitably see one group or the other address that problem. If we, as the rest of the world, do not want to see that play out in 4K, then we have to be willing to do more than offer a neutral venue for discussion. We have to halt the cycle of violence to allow peaceful solutions the oxygen they need to take hold, and we need to do it until a few generations of children on both sides have grown up without the severe trauma and pain that is endemic currently.
Is this concept feasible? Possible? Who the hell knows. I'm pessimistic about the results even if the other world governments found an unprecedented level of spine to address the conflict. But - kicking back and saying "we'll help you hold talks" is doomed to failure, as it only takes the actions of one extremist group like Hamas to reset all the gains made and stoke the fires for another round of self-perpetuating violence.
I largely agree with what you're saying and appreciate that you acknowledge the several real-world examples of these types of conflicts working out, it is indeed possible. My arguing for a locally decided solution is not exclusive to your calls for intense foreign intervention. We could concievably station UN troops in the region for the entirety of the next generation to stabilize the region enough for actual peace talks to be made, from my stance of argument that would be fine so long as in the end the settlement is made by Israel and Palestine with consideration to their neighbors
That's literally the only solution. A gigantic UN peacekeeping force staffed by people from Latin America, Africa and other third countries. That's not going to happen, but it's the only thing I can envision.
Huh? My brain just warped. Almost reads like double-dipping. Like, "I have to take some responsibility but I really don't wanna"
I'm not trying to construe that the world should completely divorce itself from the conduct of other countries but at the same time the world cannot continue to dictate solutions from afar without buy-in from those affected by said solutions. Colonialism destroyed the Middle East and Africa by drawing false divisions and we are dealing with the fallout from all of this decades, almost a century now, later.
I guess what I'm saying is that we use the carrot and stick to help countries behave in a civilized and legal manner but that in the end we do not force participants to accept solutions that they are not willing to. If Palestine and/or Israel decides to swallow a bitter pill themselves then it's much more likely that they can learn to live with it. If another country comes along and forces them to swallow that bitter pill then they will probably resent it for years, and they do - just see what's happening today.
To spell it out, an example could be sanctioning Palestine for terrorism and sanctioning Israel for settlement buidling and continuing to hold captured territory. This is a coercive measure that pressures both to find a solution while simultaneously avoiding enforcing a solution that either or both sides would ultimately find accpetable. A system of punitive and rewarding actions could be tailored to both deter bad behavior and reward good while slowly pushing both parties towards mutually finding and accepting some form of peace. I don't know if we could ever actually get there but any other solution will only delay consequences that the world will be dealing with decades later
I interpreted their meaning as, "the rest of the world has a responsibility to facilitate Israel and Palestine reaching a peace agreement, but should not butt in by dictating what the solution would look like".
Just because it's possible does not make it likely. Pakistan and Bangladesh were intended to be two halves of the same nation.
Enclaves and exclaves work just fine when they're small. They don't work when the populations approach equality.
That’s quite the statement. Other than Pakistan and Bangladesh, two countries divided by a massive country and in two completely separate geopolitical regions, can you provide examples?
I don't see this as either a viable solution nor something which would come close to solving any issues. There are many disconnected countries in the world, some of which are actively hostile to each other (e.g. Azerbaijan and Armenia). I cannot believe that the root of all Palestine's failure to attain statehood stems from trouble connecting the West Bank to Gaza. It was not reported as any of the reasons why Camp David summit failed or why Olmert's offer was refused. And that is not even considering the objections from Palestinian Nationalism.
I mean, why would Palestinian brokers advocate for breaking their country in two? Pakistan didn't seriously object to being made of two discontinuous territories if it meant a larger and theoretically more powerful state, but obviously it was ultimately their downfall.
The original Pakistan proposal was batcrap crazy. They settled for the weird, non-contiguous configuration because that was the deal they could get, but they’ve never not been sour about it. But in this configuration it would have been much more on par with India.
Sorry, off topic, but how was that disaster of a map meant to work?
I don’t think they thought that far ahead, but that map also covered basically all of India’s industrial base and most of the ports. The Hindustan part of the map would have had Madras and maybe Bombay (can’t tell from the resolution) and that’s it. If civil war did break out (inevitable) it would have been interminable and bloody.
Well Palestine hasn't given up on the idea that they are the rightful rulers of the entire region and that they can kill the Jews off. I guarantee that Palestine would be pushing/settling into Jewish territory if they had the means. So any deal that maximizes their land rights is good as they intend to keep trying to expand into the remaining Israel territory, so disconnected pieces will be reconnected eventually in their view.
The PLO recognized Israel's right to exist thirty years ago. Although I'm sure many Palestinians (including Hamas) do wish to kill Jews off, I don't think this can be said for all Palestine.
Maybe the West Bank is ready to normalize relations by now, I'm not sure of their current status. So I perhaps misspoke saying Palestine, but Gazans definitely view themselves in that light and would gleefully destroy everything Jewish. From what I gathered though, older Palestine would have been fine with disconnected regions (assuming they got a ton of land) because their plan was still to push Isreal out entirely. So peace would have likely been temporary anyway.
Having discontinuous territory may haunt Palestine further down the line in the future if they become a state. But I cannot see it making statehood more achievable for Palestine.
I think it would reduce the activation energy needed for the Palestinians to accept a two-state (or in this case, three-state) solution.
It’s not really clear how this is different than the current state? Hamas is the only party at the table in Gaza that anyone negotiates with, and they face sanctions. The West Bank is totally separate and mostly hostile to Hamas. It is for all intents and purposes a three state system.
IMO the problem is less geography (although some sort of connection between Gaza and the West Bank would be nice) and more having decent institutions and Palestinians feeling like they have meaningful agency.
My dream solution would be one where not only was there genuine democracy, but where decisions of government and how money is spent are made clear to all. There needs to be genuine rule of law, with a decent police force and judicial system. This benefits Israel as much as Palestine: if it is clear what decisions are being made, how money is spent and minimal criminal activity then gathering intelligence on a possible future attack is far easier.
Obviously this takes time; and Palestinians should be involved in their creation rather than feeling like this is being imposed on them. If aid and reconstruction is required, it should ideally go through this body; and in reply the state should be transparent on how and where it is spent.