Can you think of one reasonable way to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

It would be a help – anyway, it couldn’t hurt – if people could let go of grievances from the 13th Century and before.

Since both sides are quoting mandates from God, I think you may have to have a sit down with bigger players than you might be prepared for.

Just bomb them and get it over with.

@SvetlanatheGreat I said REASONABLE, mind you.

@kenmc Why can’t it be both?

Unless they can somehow develop a secular government in charge of Jerusalem, it ain’t gonna happen.

If I had a reasonable solution for this centuries-old land dispute, I’d be eligible for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

I don’t think the God thing is a driving element in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conflict is driven more by nationalist fervor than religious fervor Though religion seems to always come at as a motivator in these types of conflicts, so I don’t mean to downplay it. But more than that, it’s about land too.

There always is a reasonable way but being mere humans, both sides are incapable of implementing it. If elements on both sides will just agree to disagree, have diplomatic talks for a thousand more years so be it…without KILLINGS…then maybe some enlightened compromise would happen.

The last few decades have been packed to the brim with reasonable ways to solve the conflict. They aren’t sticking.

@filmfann Modern Israel is distressingly agnostic. The problem is that the Palestinians don’t want a secular government, but rather control of the entire region.

@Nullo Palestinians don’t want a secular government, but rather control of the entire region.

So the people that have settlements being illegally built on their land are the ones that want to control the entire region?

@kenmc Yes, they are.

OH MY GOD THE IRONY.

Palestinians are probably a little like the Kosovo’s Albanians: Muslim, but kind of European-ish in outlook (if not strictly western European-ish), yet socioeconomically not so well off. The countries around Israel don’t want them either. Religious fundamentalists in other Muslim countries don’t want them – frankly, they’re too liberal – but are happy to use them as a sword against the Israelis and the western powers. IIRC, Egypt, as part of a detente with Israel, was shooting them when they sneaked in from Gaza.

It is essentially a disagreement about ownership of land. Both sides should respect UN resolutions in the matter.

Resurrect the Enola Gay (only joking…....)

Unfortunately, as long as there are groups like Hamas, that only want the total destruction of the Jewish State, peace will never be realized. It really doesn’t matter what Israelis do…they will always be under attack or threat by the radicals.

I’m curious when arabs will give up all the land they conquered throughout the centuries….north africa, etc.

@rawpixels Is there a movement in African nations to push out the Arabs who were not indigenous to the land? I would guess parts of Northeast Africa did have some “Arabs” native to those lands. Or, who did not technically conquer the lands? I have very little knowledge of the history. My married surname, if you wikipedia it, shows the people having lived in parts of Africa and the middle east, it’s a Jewish name, the name is not black African.

I think we should let them all kill each other and stay out of it. The fathers of our country told us to stay out of foreign affairs and I think they are right. When they come knocking on our door, then we can blow them away. As far as 9/11, we should have gone over there and leveled their country – but since Americans don’t have the stomach for it anymore, we should just stay home.

@Skaggfacemutt Do you care about the civilians at all?

@JLeslie So, you’re saying Jews were not native to the land called Israel?

@JLeslie No, I am not a humanitarian. If we decided to try to pick the Nazi’s out of the civilians in WWII, we would still be there. It’s like picking knat sh** out of pepper.

As much as I hate hearing about leveling a place, bombing the hell out or annihilating everybody, I do understand the frustration and the misguided logic of destroying something you can’t fix if you can’t afford to ignore it. It’s quite a human reaction yet inhumane in my view. I also noticed that comments have been made concerning who owns which land and when and how and why. It matters but you can’t go back 6000 years into the past for land title issues if you are serious about finding an acceptable solution. Hence, this could go on for a few hundred more years if no big bomb gets detonated. I prefer the few hundred more years, heck another thousand! I just can’t imagine killing kids. Aren’t they the whole point?

@mazingerz88 You are very insightful. That is really how I feel (if you can’t fix it and can’t ignore it, then blow it up!) I realize my opinion is inhumane which is why I always make a point to say that I am not a humanitarian.

I see the world as “them against us” and really only have alliegence to the USA and the American people. Everyone else is dispensable. And that is the big difference between the mindset of someone like me, and the humanitarias who see the world and the human race as one big, happy family, and want to feed, clothe, and protect everyone. It is a noble idea but totally unachieveable. The cost alone would be prohibitive.

In most cases, such as two countries or two or more political parties in the same country who are going to war against each other, we have no reason to throw American lives and American money at it.

Agree on not throwing American lives. I have in my desk an issue of the washington post with two full pages showing the faces of those 20 somethings who got killed in Iraq. I look at them whenever I feel I’m not being productive with my life. There is more than one way to be innately American. I celebrate that and always think right or wrong it is the freedom to be right or wrong that makes this country great.

@rawpixels I guess it matters how far back you go. I have heard that human beings all started on the African continent? So, that would mean we are all African. If Egypt had some Jews back BCE, but were not claiming it a Jewish land, not conquering it, but just living there, then when other groups came in during more modern times, were the Jews who have been there considered to have as much right as black Africans? Jews wandered all over those parts, I assume that was true for all semetic races? No idea though, I would have to look it all up.

By the way, I don’t think the Jews get Israel because they were there first, I think they get it because it was legally given to them. I realize if we think all groups get back all their land, that I might have to give my house to the Cherokees. Fair is fair. The Palestinians need their own state, I support that. My hope is if they have their own place to call home and are prosperous they will live side by side with Israel. One of the Israelis on this site, who I respect enormously, is even for splitting the city of Jerusalem, which I know many people are not fond of. The majority of Israelis want peace, are willing to give up land, but there are some of course who differ. My fantasy would be for Israel to be a completely equal opportunity place where Palestinian Israelis felt at home, and that Israel is as much their country as the Jews amd other citizens, but it seems that is hard to acheive. Although, I would guess if there is ever a two-state solution, there will be Palestinians who maintain their residence within Israel. Probably will depend on what typw of government the Palestinians set up.

I don’t think demands like, “Well, you’ve been here for three generations now, but now you have to leave,” are very tenable. Likewise for the millions of Palestinians, who have been in Palestine/Israel for time immemorial.

@bolwerk It is hardly considered ‘for time immemorial’ when that particular piece of real estate has changed hands many, many times just in recorded history: Jews, Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arab (a caliph), the Crusades (can’t really consider that conquering though), Ottoman, Egyptian, British. These are just the major changing of leadership or occupations of the area.

The only way to settle this dispute is to have religiously neutral leadership in the area, but that is not going to happen. I believe the average person just wants to live peacefully and have a few certain inalienable rights such as freedom of religion. The political leaders are more interested in power and control, and the religious leaders are more interested in a theocratic type government.

@optimisticpessimist: well, they’ve been there through much of that. They weren’t always ruling the place (actually, probably rarely), but they were there. If you believe the Bible and some other sources, Palestinians are descendents of the Philistines. If that’s true, they really have been there for an incredibly long time.

@bolwerk… and there has always been a Jewish population in the region even if they weren’t always ruling the place.

@optimisticpessimist: so? The millions of Ashkenazim who poured in are obviously postwar, their resettlement from Europe and other places is the primary reason this issue exists. Of course, they may be distant kin to more ancient inhabitants of that region themselves (not to mention the modern Palestinians).

The Israelis and Palastines have a lot of issues. Both of them want the same thing – a thing that can’t be shared and can’t be split. So someone has to win and someone has to loose and there’s no warm fuzzy solution. That’s life.

@bolwerk “so?”...was my point exactly about your statement of the Palestinians being there for a long time.

The only solution I see is not a viable solution. That is a country which is neither Palestinian nor Jewish but with a completely secularized government where both Jews and Palestinians (amongst other races and religions) can live with freedom from persecution due to race or religion. Neither side is willing to give up that amount of control or power. It is understandable to a certain extent as neither side trusts the other and there exists no truly neutral entity to ensure the complete secularization.

@Skaggfacemutt: That sounds like a cop-out. If 8.2M New Yorkers – representing nearly every ethnic and religious group on the planet include large numbers of Jews and Muslims – can share 304.8 mi² of land without constant retaliatory bombings and missile attacks, I don’t see why several hundred thousand fewer people can’t find a way to share 8,522 mi².

@optimisticpessimist: and they’ve been there…a long time, no? You haven’t refuted that. The Ashkenazim have been there in large numbers for only a few generations – which IMHO is enough to say they have some entitlement to stay. Still, it’s impossible to ignore that much of the issue is the encroachment of European-descended Jews on traditionally Palestinian territories – not encroachment by Jews who have been in the region for longer periods of time and have, by many accounts, enjoyed peaceful relations with their neighbors (at least until more recently).

@bolwerk I haven’t refuted it because it is true. The Jews have also been there a long time as well. Many other races have been there a long time. So what?

@optimisticpessimist: If it’s so what?, why did you even bring it up? The root of the conflict is the influx of Ashkenazim in the aftermath of WWII. It has nothing to do with how long there have been Jews have been in Palestine/Israel. Even religion is secondary to the real problem of nationalist feelings of entitlement and encroachment.

@bolwerk Because the people we are talking about can’t find a way to share 8,522 square miles! They can’t, they won’t, they refuse. They have been refusing for thousands of years. Call it a cop-out, but I can accept reality. Let them fight it out. May the best man win.

@Skaggfacemutt: I can buy won’t, but not can’t. These two groups in particular have been fighting it out for a few decades though, not thousands of years.

Whether it is “won’t” or “can’t”, the outcome is the same. If they were New Yorkers or even Americans, maybe they would be reasonable or decide that the bloodshed has to stop, but they aren’t. Any suggestion made here would work if we were talking about reasonable people, but we aren’t.

@bolwerk You were the one who brought it up… “I don’t think demands like, “Well, you’ve been here for three generations now, but now you have to leave,” are very tenable. Likewise for the millions of Palestinians, who have been in Palestine/Israel for time immemorial.” Sound familiar? It should. You wrote this prior to me joining the conversation at all.

I would contend there is NO reasonable way until certain conditions are met as indicated in my first posting…

There always is a reasonable way but being mere humans, both sides are incapable of implementing it. If elements on both sides will just agree to disagree, have diplomatic talks for a thousand more years so be it…without KILLINGS…then maybe some enlightened compromise would happen.

But @Skaggfacemutt nail it in saying you need reasonable people to get to a reasonable solution.

@bolwerk I don’t think the influx of the Jews from Europe os the only problem. Let’s say Israel was declared a state, sealed and approved by the UN, and the Jews did not emigrate to Israel in large numbers, do you still really think the Palestinians would be ok with the Jews having the land? Jews, zionists, had already been buying back quite a bit of the land before the decision following WWII. Which brings us to that nut jobs President of Iran’s point, why didn’t the Jews get a big piece of Germany, and other cooperating countries in the masacre? That Iranian President is a hateful horrible man, but I can understand why from the Arab perspective (I realize Iran is not Arab) they feel that land is theirs.

I have often wished we had given the Jews Wyoming or Alabama (random state choices) where they could live in peace and democracy. The US did not open all of its doors to the Jews who wanted to come, although many were able to come, and England, if I remember correctly, was happy to rid the country of Jews in their history, not to mention the incredible antisemitism in places like Russia, Latvia, etc. Really to bad more did not come to America, Israel is so successful in so many ways. Science, medicine, agriculture, and more.

I think the fight is more about land than religion for most. It is their home, their country, they have been there for generations.

I can’t understand why we had to maintain a geopolitical grip in the region back then. Now oil is a big factor I guess; but back then, again I don’t know enough history. I don’t believe for a second it was pure altruism to give Jews a home where they wanted it.

To the nut Iranian president, it is about religion, race and politics. It has no need for the land in Israel yet they inject themselves into this issue portraying itself as helping Palestinians regain their homeland. Personally I know it’s BS. Israel’s democracy is a threat to Iran’s ruling Mullahs obviously. It maybe about land between Israel and a few Palestinians but the majority support influences from rich Muslim countries with other agendas. Do these Palestinians know they’re being used as the tip of a spear or the cattle prod to push Israel out? Of course. So they’re complicit.

@mazingerz88 I agree with that, but there are probably a certain number of Iranians and Arabs who buy the reasoning the nut is giving, and others like him, the poiticians know better most like, stupid like foxes, but there are followers who are just plain stupid. Same type of shit that happens here in America.

Only probably? It’s staring at us in the face, the truth that there are more people who only not have established prejudices but are misinformed as well. I will cut them some slack since people tend to follow blindly than question what they are told. The dangerous ones are those who could see all the angles yet choose to let prejudices rule over them. These people do exists in both sides of any argument out there especially of one in a global scale.

@optimisticpessimist: Sorry, I just sort of assumed you had a point to make with your response to that. I guess you didn’t. My bad!

@JLeslie: kind of hard to say. Immigration may have been an issue for other reasons, but as King Hussein wrote in the 1950s, how does any country handle it when you immediately pour the equivalent of ⅓ of its population into it? But yeah, before WWII, Israelis were buying land. Afterwards, at least some of them were stealing land – surely another sore spot. Also, the more urban Islam of the Near East wasn’t as inherently hostile to outside cultures as today’s Wahhabi-funded and enabled Muslims (who you pay tribute to every time you fill up your gas tank). Even today, places like Morocco are relatively tolerant.

@mazingerz88: I’m not sure any Muslim country can be described as “rich” relative to Israel – perhaps yet another sore spot useful in anti-Jewish propaganda. They’re what cruder Americans call ni**er-rich, at most. The masters of the oil oligopoly in those regions, usually the rulers and their cronies, live like western rich people, while the general public is usually poor. The better off countries are more like Mexico than, say, France. Oddly, though, the billionaires in Saudi Arabia are very good at spreading their propaganda to places like Egypt.

@bolwerk Thanks. More apt if I wrote rich Muslim rulers and elites.

To me the only reasonable approach is to help the next generation achieve this goal, which means massive programs have to be implemented involving all children in 5th grade and higher. Regular student exchange programs have to be the norm which should also include all kinds of extracurricular activities such as joint sports teams, choirs, bands, orchestras, art groups and so forth.

Here’s a best practice example: Germany and France after 1945. The two countries were enemies for centuries.

We should realize though that Israeli-Palestinian conflict is far more complex, because there are two religions involved including extreme forms of them which wasn’t the case for Germany and France. In both countries the vast majority of people practice very moderate forms of Christianity. And the Age of Enlightenment was significantly influenced by both countries. There was already a lot of common ground.

Still the next generation of Israel and Palestine got a fair chance.

Apparently panties are the first step towards reconciliation!

The first step is to recognise that each side has a right to exist and to live their lives in peace. That should begin now. We cannot expect to teach our children to do something we cannot or will not do ourselves.

The second step is to recognise boundaries, where one territory ends and another begins and to respect those boundaries. Germany and France were never going to be at peace while they disagreed over borders.

It isn’t rocket science, but it requires people of moderation on both sides to make compromises, the anathema of extremists.

Couple of months ago I had this idea:

The EU sponsors an effort to built an Israeli-Palestinian secondary school and university in Cyprus. 50% of the campus land comes from Greek and 50% from the Turkish part. The secondary school is a boarding school for students for 3 years with 50% Israeli and 50% Palestinian students. The university will also enroll 50% each. There is no tuition. Housing and food is covered as well. Total number of students should be around 2000–4000.

EU will sponsor this 50% and the rest comes from private donations around the world. The schools will employ top-notch teachers and professors. There will be a strong focus on science and technology. The selection process of the students is very thorough.

Once these students go back to Israel and Palestine they will become multipliers.

The one-off and running costs will be less than 1% of the costs that arise from the ongoing unresolved conflict in the Middle East.

@mattbrowne Sounds good. It’s like the Seeds of Peace idea. The camp for Palestinian and Israeli students, well it is more than that actually. It is for areas arond the world in conflict. A friend of mine was a counselor there. He is Palestinian American, wound up marryng a Jewish girl.

@JLeslie – Very interesting!! Do you know how many of the students return to Israel and Palestine?

@mattbrowne I have no idea. My friend, who I speak of, was born in the US. I would think most students who come from overseas go back home, they are school age.

@mattbrowne My friend also had a Christian mother and a Muslim father, both Palestinian. Later, during the marriage, his mom became a Muslim. He spent part of his formative years being aised by his Christian grandparents. So, he was kind of more geared to trying to bridge gaps. His parents did not go to his wedding. To me the guy is as American as apply pie, but he certainly heard the Palestinian side of things regarding Israel in his houseold growing up. Neither he, or his wife are very religious.

@JLeslie – Thanks for sharing this. Another very effective strategy is implemented by this orchestra

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West-Eastern_Divan

run by Daniel Barenboim. We need 1000 orchestras like that. And 1000 sports teams etc.

Sorry I’m late to the thread but there is nly one solution. Clear everyone out of the holy sites and then nuke them to oblivion. That will probably get things moving forward now that there are no more religious disputes.