It might be interesting to see if a re-run poll got different results.
Would need a better poll IMO. Iād call myself a Palestine sympathizer and an Israeli sympathizer. Both are accurate for me and both require way more nuance than A/B/Neither.
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Really, the mess is one that isnāt really conducive to being shoehorned into a simple set of polling options.
Even so, it might be interesting to see if the distribution of results has changed.
I dunno.
Awful terrorism is awful. This reels just like 911 did.
Itās easier to understand than 911 was, but that doesnāt make it feel better.
Itās also tied up with the ME in general. Which has its isolated, impoverished, theological, dictatorships, several of which dream of genocide or world conquering. So not great!!
But otoh, it seems like obviously Israel never needed to be created in a place where itās unwelcome. And it doesnāt need to grow beyond its borders either. So, at least in the abstract, I donāt have sympathy for their politics. But I do have sympathy for their dead.
Of course itās also a holy land, which doesnāt compute for me since Iām an actuary.
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One could say the same of all nation states in the Americas.
Significant Jewish immigration to Palestine started about 100 years ago, itās not like they just showed up a few years ago.
I guess it depends on the nation-state, but I donāt think the typical founding principle is to split it in half by warring religions.
The founding principle of America and all other nations states in the Americas was to displace any indigenous population. It just happened long enough ago we tend to ignore it.
I guess you could argue that no nation should have been founded then? I donāt know.
From that perspective, the UNās failure was in not displacing enough Arabs.
Makes me wonder, which other countries have operated by Right of Conquest lately? Russia taking over part of Ukraine, of course. And China has been staking soft claim to disputed territory, but nothing egregious.
South Sudan would be the most obvious new country after their civil war. Following that in time thereāre a pile of small seceding countries from larger ones but I know little about them.
I canāt think of a case analogous to Israel since then, where a country (despite some legitimate historical claim) was just made, because we own the guns so deal with it. At least with, for example, the US vs. Native Americans, there was some pretense of alliances here and there over a duration of time, as we slowly stripped away their land and freedoms (intermingled, of course, with wars and genocide).
This has always been the part that I have a problem with.
When you raise legitimate points against Israel and its behavior you immediately get a dozen organisations and individuals calling you an anti-semite and drowning out any kind of discussion.
Until enough people push back against this behavior I donāt expect anything to really change.
Thats why in my view this will only end when the entire world forces a compromise, similar to what happened in South Africa.
With the latest crisis, we seem to be heading in that direction.
Iād bet against this. Maybe before Iraq/Afghanistan but āthe entire world forces a compromiseā just means the US does 90% and the rest of the world tags along. US public opinion is a long way from enforcing a compromise militarily. Let the EU have a turn.
Agree that it will be hard. But dont see how it can be another country.
Its the only country Israel has to listen to. EU can also come onboard, but it just doesnt have the same influence.
Ultimately, this will take a lot of money which is were the ME folks would come in (SA, Qatar, UAE etc)
The main sticking point (and yes it is a big one) is that the Palestinians would have to be relocated to a new area with the appropriate infrastructure.
This is really the root of it. Itās a ME problem and none of the ME countries care to help. Israel listens to the US because weāve committed to defending them militarily, thatās a loooong way from enforcing some āUNā (i.e. US) peacekeeping mission.
The real solution is a ME country welcomes in the Palestinians, but theyāve been unwilling.
This is so far from being a US problem.
The Arabs/Palestinians rejected the initial UN proposal since they felt that they received disproportionately less land than their population %
Are the Arab countries unwilling to take Palestinians or do they not want to leave their ancestral homeland? I would think it is the former.
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Right. And if the UN had just kicked all the Arabs out of Palestine, in the same way that colonialists kicked indigenous populations to the curb in the prior century, then there would have been no Palestinians to reject anything.
Anyway, intentionally splitting a nation was a recipe for a civil war.
This is because anywhere the Palestinians start living, they tend to cause problems. When Jordan annexed the West Bank and offered Jordanian citizenship to everyone living there, the Palestinians eventually attempted to overthrow the Jordanian government and assassinate the leader. (see: Black September) Jordan allowed the Palestinian fedayeen to leave Jordan and relocate in Lebanon. Once in Lebanon, the fedayeen caused a civil war in Lebanon. So at this point no country wants to allow the Palestinians in because itās an extreme risk.
Thatās most of subsaharan Africa, it got cut up based on colonial lines, not the lines of who lived there.
Quite a bit of the Middle East as well
Well, from the war game scenarios that I have seen over the years, quite a few WWIII ones start with a serious conflict in the ME that spreads out.
We should all be concerned that the US is giving too much leeway to Israel for this campaign. Supplying Israel with Iron Dome missiles is one thing (and 100% correct), but giving them even more offensive weaponry is quite another when they are actively bombing a highly densely populated area. Half of which will not be Hamas sympathisers (at a minimum). Israel is committing war crimes here and the entire Arab world is watching.
The conflict in Gaza is now spreading to the West Bank. Right-wing settlers are now attacking (and killing) Palestinians there in revenge attacks while the IDF looks on doing nothing.
The US needs to stop this and quickly.
The further this goes, and the more people die in Gaza and the West Bank, the higher the probability that other ME countries and entities will get involved.
Once Hizbollah gets involved, then there will be no stopping this conflict. It will spread to the various countries and factions.