60-Year Mortgage . . . Of BLOOD Bwa Ha Ha!
Daniel Larison’s post, “This Is Winning?,” is entirely reasonable given that I didn’t completely explain what I meant by “This is Israel winning” last night. It also came up in comments. So, what am I claiming that Israel is “winning?” The war that began in 1947 for control of the entire territory west of the Jordan River.
The long view is that prior to 1947, Israel’s founding generation squabbled over whether to claim all of the territory that today comprises Israel, the West Bank including all of Jerusalem and Transjordan; claimed everything west of the Jordan River; settled for as much as it could get and since then . . .
Israel is the only state in the region that has gotten larger. Considered as an institution, Israel has spent sixty-plus years adding and consolidating its control over the territory it wanted in the first place. Forget personalities and political factions for a minute. There were certainly people who were sincere about “land for peace,” just as there were certainly always people opposed to it. There are Israeli liberals even today, and G-d Bless ‘Em. But as a system, Israeli history is expansion into the territory the Founding generation considered part of Israel and incorporating it into Israel proper. This happened formally in the case of East Jerusalem (annexed in 1967) and the Golan Heights (annexed in 1981), and informally every single day in the West Bank. Israel signed the Oslo accords in September 1993. That year there were 111,500 settlers in the West Bank and 152,800 in East Jerusalem. By the time of Camp David, those numbers were 193 thousand and 172 thousand respectively. There is no year since Israel began the settlement program in 1972 where the settler population in the West Bank, East Jerusalem or the Golan Heights shows a decline. The settler population of Gaza increased every year too, topping out at 7,826 before theunilateral withdrawal in 2005.
Viewed institutionally and leaving moral questions aside, it counts as a triumph of grand strategy. Israel bought off Egypt with Egypt’s own territory. It convinced Jordan to bow out, and plain beat Syria like a rodeo clown. Lebanon could be broken any time and was, and the Lebanese were always falling all over themselves to help. At this point, Israel has also destroyed the ability of the Palestinians to mount any consequential resistance of their own. Just as Hezbollah couldn’t occupy a single Israeli exurb in a trial of a thousand years, no Palestinian organization can stop Israel from planting its flag on any particular spot of the West Bank for so much as a week.
For all practical purposes, Israel has its original goal, formal control of all of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan, within its grasp. Because it’s not completely insensible to global political reality, it can’t just annex the West Bank and be done with it, but it can plainly add any given piece of the West Bank to itself at any time. Roughly ten percent of Israel’s Jewish population lives in the West Bank or East Jerusalem. They’re not moving back. Israel does have to finesse the public-relations of the process, but the public relations are subordinate to the process. And Israel has to deal with the demographic issue: there are all these darn Palestinians. Everyone thinks that eventually Israel has to make nice with them somehow. Israeli actions suggest that Israel thinks it just needs them cowed and poor. And while a visible expulsion would look bad for the cameras, there’s always “encouraging” Palestinians to emigrate over time. (A commenter downblog claimed today that it’s illegal for Palestinians to emigrate, but this does not appear to be the case.) Israeli nationalists simply do not believe in an inevitable demographic doom.
That’s what I mean by “This is Israel winning.” Any large, political-military enterprise is going to have its ebb and flow. The Israeli conquest and consolidation of what we still quaintly call “the Occupied Territories” has involved tactical setbacks, occasional overreach and strategic withdrawals. The trick is not to get caught up in that. The long view is, Israel wanted control of all the territory west of the Jordan, Israel got control of all the territory west of the Jordan, Israel continues to cement its control over all the territory west of the Jordan. Everything else is details.
Turkey is not going to war for the Freedom Flotilla. It took all of a day for the United States to conclude a deal whereby Israel gets to investigate itself. The Iranians are either not trying to get nukes, or if they do get nukes will be very careful with them. The Iranians will fuck you up, but never at any substantial cost to themselves. Israel can levy a substantial cost on Iran any time it wants. The Palestinians can’t do more than annoy and neither can Hezbollah.
On the other side, frequently foreigners make sad faces. I am thinking that Israel counts this among the acceptable costs.
You can consider this anything from a travesty of justice to the fulfillment of God’s Divine Plan. But it sure looks like “winning” to me, on its own terms.
Comment by Sasha —
June 2, 2010 @ 12:00 am
Your position is very thought provoking but it does not really take into consideration that while they may have the land, the don’t have peace.
I think that the situation in Ireland is worth looking at. For some seven hundred plus years the British have controlled most or all of Ireland while the Irish have endeavored to drive them out. Now their area of control has been reduced to a small part of it and the writing is on the wall; within our lifetimes the British occupation of Ireland will come to a de facto end.
These attempts at land grabs pretty much only work if the newcomers are willing to slaughter those who oppose them and marry those who are left behind. It helps enormously if there is no written record to preserve grudges and no religious division to prevent inter-marriage. I have often thought that things might have turned out differently with regards to Ireland if lust and greed hadn’t induced Henry to break with the Catholic Church.
Comment by Thoreau —
June 2, 2010 @ 12:11 am
I agree that in the long term Israel is going to bump up against demographic barriers. However, the long term can be very long. In the short to medium term, Israel can win a lot of things that people in the political and security establishment want to win. The medium-term interests of elites are not always the same as the long-term interests of the country, but “the country” does not make decisions. Elites make decisions.
Comment by Sasha —
June 2, 2010 @ 12:32 am
Well, sure. It’s taken the Irish almost a millennium to drive the British off and they’re still not there yet.
I don’t know if these situations ever really resolve themselves. This playbook has been used many times: make things difficult for the locals and offer other people (who often have very little) land at cheap prices and the opportunity to lord it over the locals; create facts on the ground and unclear titles and achieve what? A country with endless strife and little prospect for peace.
This may suit the ruling elite but I wonder if the average Israeli truly understands what he is signing up for.
Comment by JC —
June 2, 2010 @ 1:20 am
Very, very trenchant analysis. All other commenters should start from this post, and work their way out from here.
Comment by Jonny Scrum-half —
June 2, 2010 @ 8:33 am
Very interesting post. I had focused previously on the demographic problem facing Israel and decided that it was bound to lose, sooner or later. This post certainly gives me reason to reconsider. Either way, though, it’s becoming more and more clear that the Israel-Palestinian question isn’t going to be resolved amicably. There will be a winner and a loser.
Comment by Jack Crow —
June 2, 2010 @ 9:06 am
The Israelis don’t need, and frankly don’t want, “the peace.” The country is now organized as a perpetual warfare garrison state.
It cannot have peace anymore than the US can (though the US is too large to function effectively as a garrison state).
Comment by Joe S. —
June 2, 2010 @ 9:46 am
Contra Thoreau, Israel is not a country where elites (as we understand ‘em here) make decisions. Moneyed Israelis are not very powerful. The Israeli “new class” is not very powerful. Internationally-connected Israelis are not very powerful.
Instead, the power in Israel is in the hands of an unholy alliance of beards (akin to American theocrats, but far stronger), Russians, and the small-penis hypercompensatory brigade (read “gun nuts” in Murkin, or “Brooklyn” in Israeli.) It’s very much like our Republican party: a coalition of losers committed to ressentiment-based political eschatology.
These groups are not operating in the interest of Israeli elites, who basically want to live generic international elite lives, much like the readers of ye humble blogge. The Israeli elites do not want to live in South Africa. Heck, many of them left South Africa. The people running the show glory in pariah status, each for their different reasons. The beards want their ghettos. The small-penis brigade seeks the scorn of elites. The Russians? Damned if I know.
Comment by Nell —
June 2, 2010 @ 9:47 am
At the bottom of the other Gaza thread, a commenter analogizes Jim’s ‘Israel is winning’ statement to saying in 2006 that the U.S. was ‘winning’ in Iraq. I wanted to object there, but found it hard to express the distinction I had in mind, and now am glad to have this post’s clarification.
No one would have found Jim, or me, saying then or now that the U.S. was ‘winning’ in Iraq in the sense in which the war cheerleaders used the expression. But from mid-2002 onwards I repeatedly expressed my conviction that one of the fundamental objectives of the assault on Iraq was to establish long-term U.S. bases there, and I was pointing out in 2005 and 2006 that that objective had been largely met. I also found it difficult to believe we would ever give those bases up.
In fact, I still don’t believe that we will, and I expect that the withdrawal of the majority of U.S. troops from Iraq, even if it happens on the schedule announced by Obama last year (very doubtful by itself), will leave behind 50,000 or more in those big old bases, particularly the air bases. “We” will be there functionally forever, as we have in almost every other place on the globe to which we’ve deployed troops in the last sixty years.
This is in one sense ruinous to us as a nation, in the effects on our economy and social structure and democratic functioning. In another sense of ‘us’ — those whose wealth and power depend on keeping the whole financial/military/intel apparatus going as it has been, and those who don’t benefit quite so handsomely but believe that no other arrangements are possible — the “force projection” into the giant oil fields is an absolute necessity. And they’ll sell that necessity as they’ve done for the last sixty years, by way of induced fear, even as they take apart the last shreds of the social compact and force an austerity regime on the bottom two-thirds of the country.
For Jewish Israelis to have their ever-expanding suburban developments, the first-class citizens of Israel must be willing to continue imposing their apartheid/bantustan model, and our government must be willing to fund and back whatever cruelties and outrages the settler colonials inflict. We’ve been largely acquiescent for forty years, and now that the unspeakable is becoming slightly more speakable, it’s quite possibly too late.
But it may not be. And whether it is or not, there are powerful reasons not to just throw up our hands. (To be clear, I don’t believe that was Jim’s intention, but the analysis may well have that effect.)
Comment by mpowell —
June 2, 2010 @ 10:40 am
The difference in comparison to the Ireland situation is that Israeli settlers are displacing Palestinians from lands, just at a slow pace. And even if the Palestinian population is growing if they can be pushed around territorially, the land grab can become permanent. The problem with Ireland is that the British wanted to rule the Irish. Taking the land is easier in the long term.
Pingback by Eunomia » This Is Winning? —
June 2, 2010 @ 10:57 am
[...] Jim Henley clarifies what he meant in a follow-up post. As far as control of the West Bank is concerned, he is [...]
Comment by Jordan Cartilla —
June 2, 2010 @ 11:10 am
Just looking at the geography of the thing – and really, I know virtually nothing about this conflict – I find the settlement/military base concentration on the borders of the West Bank both interesting and – once you think about it it a little – predictable. The constant pressure from the borders of the region allows for fewer and fewer places to flee except outside those borders. Of course whether it is planned that way I have no idea; but that’s a narrative you could explore just by looking at this map.
Comment by matthew h —
June 2, 2010 @ 11:19 am
Fine analysis, unqualifiedly.
Ok, pedantic qualifiedly. If one includes the Revisionists, the founding generation wanted the EAST side of the Jordan as well, and they are the ideological ancestors of the current and Likudnik right. In fairness, the mainstreamers of the Right, as opposed to a few of the beards, have written that off, that very writing off suggesting that under the right circumstances, they will bend to real constraints.
Comment by Nell —
June 2, 2010 @ 11:20 am
@Jordan C: Maps that include water resources make a narrative of their own. Topographical ones showing concentration of arable land another. Location of Palestinian communities large and small, yet another.
The narratives that can be read from these different maps are reinforcing narratives, for the most part, but there are a number of different dimensions to “successful” settler colonialism that have driven the Israeli settlement/military post/closed highway/etc. planning.
Comment by Patrick D —
June 2, 2010 @ 12:36 pm
Great summary, Jim.
Another issue that doesn’t get much attention is intra-Jewish demographics in Israel. Orthodox, Safardi, and Mizrahi Jews have higher birthrates than the more secular Ashkanazi who are also showing more interest in emigrating. That likely means Israeli politics will continue to skew more religious and tribal as time passes.
Comment by Thoreau —
June 2, 2010 @ 12:40 pm
Great, two antagonistic populations, one with high birthrates but kept poor and oppressed, the other dominant and the fastest-growing segment is the most militant. Both in a place with scarce water.
Yeah, this will work out real well.
Comment by Patrick D —
June 2, 2010 @ 12:43 pm
Sasha,
The difference between Ireland and Israel is that Irish Protestants and the British have an exit route to Britain. Aside from those Ashkenazim who can claim citizenship in Western countries, Jewish Israelis don’t have an out.
Comment by mds —
June 2, 2010 @ 12:54 pm
Actually, that’s pretty easy. They want to live in a more prosperous social democracy, as opposed to Russia. The far-right Orthodox organizations hitting up Christian Zionists in the US for funds to relocate Russian Jews thus secure the political fealty of yet another bloc. Never mind that many of them open up butcher shops offering pork once they get to Israel; the point is temporal power, not religious purity. The Russians are actually fairly rational actors in this. Think of the traditional patron-client relationship.
Well, once they re-establish a kingdom, and one of their priests takes a chance on declaring himself Messiah, perhaps Christian Zionists will fall out of love again. Especially if no teleportation beam appears to be forthcoming.
Comment by Sasha —
June 2, 2010 @ 1:29 pm
I think the biggest reason to consider Ireland is that this conflict has literally gone on for nearly a millennium. The fighting has waxed and waned but it has never truly ended. It might be too early to call winners or losers but I see that Jim’s take on this is valid.
Controlling land is controlling people. One of the reasons the Irish potato famine was so devastating was that the British owned, IIRC, almost 1/3 of the arable land in Ireland and that land was locked up in estates and not made available even in the midst of a crisis.
Comment by matthew h —
June 2, 2010 @ 1:43 pm
I think the biggest reason to consider Ireland is that this conflict has literally gone on for nearly a millennium.
Which is 10x the modern Israeli-Palestinian one. But it had alot more alcohol involved.
Comment by Terry —
June 2, 2010 @ 2:11 pm
What demographic problem? In the long-term, the Israelis won’t care if they have to resort to apartheid and dis-enfranchise Arab Israelis.
Comment by doubled —
June 2, 2010 @ 2:49 pm
This whole article is about how Israel has been looking after it’s own business of furthering Israel’s agenda, and you obviously think they are assholes for it. Fair enough, but that is what countries have done since the the dawn of civilized history. You must feel a Palestinian state should be allowed to persue their agenda as you state that the Palestinians can’t ‘mount any consequential resistance of their own’ due to those evil Jews (bombing discos and bus stops as a strategy can do that). Not once do you complain about the nadir that Arafat and his ilk dug for ‘their’ countrymen, about how he never led them to a state to call their own , but instead to the intifida which has claimed thousands of lives on both sides and has contributed to the lack of progress in peace while he stashed away billions for himself that his wife was so concerned about after his death. I don’t recall her worrying about the Palestinian people at all.
By the way , how many die when Israel expands it’s reach biulding settlements on contested territory? When blacks are redlined out of ‘territory’ to keep it ‘pure’ it is considered racist, but when Arabs want to eradicate Jews, to keep territory that they don’t even have sovereign power over, ‘pure’, it is self-determination.
Creating a viable state is hard, but near impossible when your whole reason d’etre is not your own societies success , but another’s downfall.
Comment by Mike —
June 2, 2010 @ 2:51 pm
Interesting but at best too simple and really flat out wrong.
Yes, there have been and are Israelis who dream of holding all the west bank but they’re not the majority despite the current government. After 1947 Isreaelis were content with what they got and made no claims on the west bank until the arabs provoked a war twenty years later. So much for the “grand plan” bullshit. The Israelis thought the arabs would come to their senses after ‘67 but it hasn’t happened yet.
Th relatively moderate PA and Hamas agree on the basic point of Palestine from the river to the sea. The arabs have rejected every offer of settlement ever.
Comment by Kal —
June 2, 2010 @ 3:51 pm
“The constant pressure from the borders of the region allows for fewer and fewer places to flee except outside those borders. Of course whether it is planned that way I have no idea; but that’s a narrative you could explore just by looking at this map.”
Good observation but, I think, wrong conclusion. The Israelis would be very happy for all the Palestinians to leave. They build on the borders for strategic reasons – to create “facts on the ground” that give them a claim to the land in between. Nell has more on some of the other criteria in settlement placement.
Comment by Kal —
June 2, 2010 @ 4:01 pm
“The arabs have rejected every offer of settlement ever.”
Now this is what’s really bullshit. It’s sort of true only in the technical sense that no final settlement has been reached; from that perspective you could say with equal truth that Israel has rejected every offer of settlement ever. Even there you’re on iffy ground, given Oslo.
But it’s not true that representatives of the Palestinians haven’t made offers liberals ought to be able to live with. The classic PLO position was one state with equal rights for Jews and Arabs; Arafat later modified that to accept a two-state solution. Hamas has now also essentially offered to accept a two-state solution, to the extent their theology allows them to; they will accept Israel only “temporarily” but they’ve talked about a truce in terms of decades.
Israel, on the other hand, has never offered a contiguous, viable Palestinian state with rights to its own water, air space, border control and security. The Palestinian starting position at Camp David was the ‘67 borders; if Israel offered a full withdrawal to the green line, even with only token compensation for refugees, Fatah would almost certainly accept that in a second. What Arafat couldn’t accept – as corrupt as he had become by Camp David – was a state with holes carved out of it for a bunch of the important Israeli settlements and crippling restrictions on its sovereignty. For more details I’d recommend Clayton Swisher’s book.
Comment by Jon —
June 2, 2010 @ 4:07 pm
The arabs have rejected every offer of settlement ever.
And Iraq has WMD!!!!!
Comment by Eric Martin —
June 2, 2010 @ 4:15 pm
Creating a viable state is hard, but near impossible when your whole reason d’etre is not your own societies success , but another’s downfall.
This is not true of the Palestinians in general, or Fatah. Hell, even Hamas has come out recently stating that they are prepared to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Comment by willibrord —
June 2, 2010 @ 4:28 pm
Have the Israelis ever lobbied third parties or given them any incentives to accept Palestinian emigrants?
Pingback by 3 smart takes on the Gaza flotilla : The Reid Report —
June 2, 2010 @ 4:34 pm
[...] to Andrew Sullivan, The American Conservative’s Daniel Larison vs. Highclearling.com’s Jim Henley on whether Israel is “winning” with its bully-boy strategy. To summarize, Larison says [...]
Comment by Aaron —
June 2, 2010 @ 5:05 pm
@1: Minor nit:
Henry broke with Rome, he didn’t really break with Catholicism. It took Elizabeth I (with some prep work by Thomas Cranmer during Edward VI’s reign) to do that. Protestantism itself predated Henry’s spat with Rome (Henry had Protestant heretics executed even after the split).
And between Edward VI and Elizabeth I, of course, is Mary I, Queen regnant of both England and Ireland.
More than Henry VIII, the biggest factor in establishing (a moderate form of) Protestantism in England was probably Mary’s inability to produce an heir in the 5 short years she was Queen regnant, turning things over to the more Protestant-minded Elizabeth I. The rest, as they say, is history.
(Of course, none of this has anything to do with Israel and Palestine… except that Mary’s husband Philip had a claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem.)
Comment by mnpundit —
June 2, 2010 @ 5:16 pm
I can’t comment over at Larison’s and I will be damned before I register for anything labeled “conservative” so if you could please ask him: He says that eventually all of the US’s other friends are going to be so angry that the US will have to rethink uncritical backing of Israel.
I want you to ask him, why? Why does he think that? The Entire GOP would rather nuke the whole Muslim population of the world and stand alone with Israel than criticize them. The Democrats are marginally better but see people like Weiner who is clearly close to the GOP mindset on this issue.
There is no way the US will ever criticize Israel. Why does Larison believe it will?
Comment by alphie —
June 2, 2010 @ 6:42 pm
American support is immaterial to Israel’s survival…we’re not going to retake the land Israel “controls” now when it falls.
Comment by L2P —
June 2, 2010 @ 8:19 pm
I was the earlier commenter. AFAIK, there’s no evidence for increasing emigration of palestinians other than the wishful thinking of Israelis. Palestinians have been emigrating at roughly the same percentages since the 80’s; the absolute numbers increase, but only because there’s so dang many of them.
There is a real problem with emigration as any sort of solution. Almost all states the Palestinians could emigrate to only accept them as temporary residents. I’ve never heard anyone figure out a way out of that. Only a very small number of the 20,000 or so that emigrate are permanent.
Comment by weichi —
June 3, 2010 @ 1:03 am
@Mike:
You go way too far is calling Jim’s analysis “flat-out-wrong”. I don’t know what Isreali public opinion on the subject is, but let’s assume that you are correct that only a minority of Isrealies desire to control all of the west bank. It is nevertheless clear that a majority of Isrealies wish to maintain existing settlements in the west bank. So you might be able to weaken Jim’s definition of “winning” to “controlling a large part, but not all, of the west bank”, but I don’t think you can go farther than that.
Comment by Greg W. —
June 3, 2010 @ 5:22 am
This is the first time I have visited this website, coming to it from a link. Having visited so many sites over the past few days, and having read so many ‘articles’ and their reader comments, I wish to commend all here for such a reasoned and high level of discussion and debate.
One only has to look at the maps over the past 70 years or so and read the comments on record of the Zionist Enterprisers to understand what is going on. It is no secret that the plan is to control all of the territory from the sea to the Jordan River, sans non-Jews.
The Zionists have de facto control. Now, what happens to the native population? Currently, they are confined to reservations. Is this situation sustainable? Other possible ’solutions’: Liquidation or expulsion.
Since the land grab began in 1967, the so-called ‘Two State Solution’ has been completely precluded, and I have no idea as to why anyone would beleive that it is still a viable concept.
So, in the long run (whatever that may be), and given that neither reservations, nor liquidation, nor expulsion will be acceptable, that leaves only the ‘One State’ solution. But, of course, then Israel would no longer be the Zionist Enterprise.
Of course, the Zionists may well launch a few nukes at Iran, as war always has a way of changing the mix, and make all of the discussion moot and nugatory.
Comment by abb1 —
June 3, 2010 @ 11:28 am
American support is immaterial to Israel’s survival
It’s very much material. If today Israel becomes a subject to an economic blockade a-la South Africa, tomorrow all those Russians mds dislikes and many others will queue up for plane tickets. And poof, just like that, it’s gone.
It’s difficult to predict the future.
Comment by mds —
June 3, 2010 @ 12:09 pm
Actually, Joe S. seems slightly likelier to harbor a dislike for them. I pointed out that they’re immigrants taking a deal to improve their own families’ lives. Yes, given that the deal is one that empowers the ultra-Orthodox, in the long term it leads to a Palestinian genocide and an end to their own non-observant ways. But that lack of long-term thinking is nothing unique. Right now, things are better for them, and who can really blame them for expressing their gratitude? It’s the cynical, murderous SOBs manipulating their desire for a better life that I dislike.
Comment by mds —
June 3, 2010 @ 12:24 pm
And gad, Ha’aretz might be currently outraged at its government, but anyone still interested in that “epistemic closure” business needs to check out the Jerusalem Post, which is supposed to be the right-wing counterweight. Even those columnists who aren’t completely sure that this was handled in the best way apparently feel obligated to refer to the “flotilla jihadists,” with their knives, slingshots, and night-vision goggles. No, really. Slingshot-wielding jihadists. If The Onion had an Israel bureau, everyone in it would have committed suicide by now.
Comment by abb1 —
June 3, 2010 @ 12:58 pm
It’s the cynical, murderous SOBs manipulating their desire for a better life that I dislike.
Oh, I certainly agree with this.
But I thought (sorry if I’m wrong) I read you in Yglesias comments expressing a much stronger contempt for my (mostly former) friends, and relatives. Not that they (on average) don’t deserve it, but this is one subject where I tend to see a little more nuance than usual.
Comment by mds —
June 3, 2010 @ 1:12 pm
Er, well, it can be difficult to make clear that one can doubt the depth of ethnic and religious “Jewishness” of a group without blaming them for benefiting from the situation. It’s not like they were already lined up at an embassy demanding Israeli citizenship and a plane ticket. We’re talking about the Israeli Orthodox who are normally so nitpicky about whether someone is really a Jew, inappropriate behavior on the Sabbath, etc. Yet all that goes out the window when it’s time to import some poor people who will presumably express their gratitude at the ballot box. So, apologies if noting that many recent immigrants aren’t very Jewish by Orthodox lights seemed like contempt or condemnation aimed at the immigrants themselves. I’ll try to be more careful with my overheated rhetoric. (Yes, yes, I know.)
Comment by abb1 —
June 3, 2010 @ 1:46 pm
Well, I don’t think ethnic and religious “Jewishness” (whatever it is) plays an important role here.
Israel’s so-called “Law of Return” is based – officially – on Nazi Nuremberg Laws. It’s a purely racial concept. Orthodox rules are also (mostly) racial, but more restrictive, only the maternal line counts.
Genetics come first, all the cultural stuff is secondary, if even that.
Comment by Mladen —
June 6, 2010 @ 5:01 am
OK, what is worse; Palestinians emigrate to neighboring countries, intermarry with locals and infuse whole countries with intense hatred for Israel lasting centuries. Or, they stay where they are; Israel cannot do ethnic cleansing and still be called civilized country. That would last also for decades, and meanwhile even Africa will follow Asian’s example and become peaceful and prosperous. It’s not impossible to see Israel as epicenter of last large conflict on planet. But, other then two state solution acceptable to Palestinians, Israel can go for annexation and have about 40% of Arab citizens (by current numbers), no refugees included…
I do not think signing bad deal now would help Palestinians regain any territory later. Instead, forcing Israel to annexation and starting “breeding race” with Haredim would be lot more feasible solution.