Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital

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This is beyond insane... obviously Trump is desperate for more war and conflict that the US can participate in because nothing else could come out of this unbelievably stupid decision.

 

I guess it took a kind of "courage" to stop feigning impartiality in this matter. As for "correct", it appears that there isn't a single country in the world except for Israel that agrees with that assessment.

 

Yea, that's pretty much what Israel has been doing all along. Too bad those pesky Palestinians kept getting in the way, but hey, at this rate Israel will wipe most of them out sooner or later so they won't be a problem for much longer. Just like the Native Americans in the US.

 

The world at large doesn't really care that much about Palestine, so the most that they've been getting is weak moral support against the aparthaid that Israel has enacted upon them. All in all though, that counts for very little apart from annoying Israel. The real problem is that Israel has never had any intention to make things even remotely right by the Palestinians, otherwise they'd have agreed on two separate states as that is clearly the only solution that wouldn't involve Israel keeping the Palestinians in a walled prison.

But naturally, the fear of eventual retaliation and attempts at taking back their land that Israel occupied is too strong, which is perfectly understandable. For Israel, clearly the only solution is either to maintain status quo and do everything in their power to decimate the Palestinians little by little, or kill them all outright, which unfortunately is not an option in this day and age.

It's very hard to expect any kind of sympathy for Israel when they're the root cause of the problem and also unwilling to really do anything to change the situation. It's not that they couldn't, it's that they don't want or need to with the US standing behind them.

 

Err, Tal, you seem to be completely ignoring most of Israel's modern history with that comment. Israel came into being as part of a proposed two state solution. The Jews were fine with that. The arabs were not. Then, all of its neighbors declared war on it, and had the immediate problem of losing that war. Oops.

Egypt blocked a crucial waterway, leading to Israel's campaign in the Sinai in 1956, which didn't accomplish much except to get a guaranty from Egypt to keep the waterway open.

Then, in 1967, Egypt decided to block the waterway again (Nasser was not necessarily a tactical genius) and Israel followed through on previous warning and decimated much of Egypt's military air strength. Egypt convinced Jordan and Syria to join in the fun, leading to Israel seriously kicking the crap out of them, and, by the end of that war, owing the Sinai, Gaza Strip, West Bank and Golan Heights.

That win led to some pretty large overconfidence, which got the Israelis a nasty surprise when they were attacked in 1973 on Yom Kippur. After initially suffering some pretty heavy losses, the Israelis quickly caught their collective breath and did significant damage to Egypt and Syria (to the point where the rest of the world got concerned that this could lead to a USA/USSR war as the combatants in the Middle East were superpower proxies). There was eventually a cease fire that led to an almost reasonable peace process (the 1978 Camp David Accords were probably the highlight of that).

During all of this, the Palestinians became the pawns of the neighboring arab states, who decided that they did not want any of the displaced Palestinians in their countries, even as they expelled their own Jewish populations. Even through 1989, Israel was still pretty committed to a two state solution. However, it is really hard to do that when the PLO, which is pledged to your destruction, is ostensibly in charge of the other potential state. Even so, in 1995, the PLO and Israel reached a tentative agreement on some Palestinian self government in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Palestinians ramped up their terrorist attacks over the next 8 years, and, despite (or because of) that, Israel agreed to a US proposed roadmap to a permanent two state solution in 2003. After that, you get some he said/she said about who started what, but, at least based on prior history, it sure looks like the Palestinians again ramped up their terrorism attacks and Israel responded accordingly. The Palestinians have been abandoned by their arab cousins and much of their current situation is of their own creation.

 

I guess it depends on how far back you want to go, given everything that's happened in 70+ years. What the Palestinians would be willing to accept today is likely different than 30 or 50 years ago. Feasible solutions can only be reached when also taking into account the current leadership on both sides as well as the current situation. Getting to the bottom of who is responsible for what is very hard when one side keeps engaging in terrorism while the other can basically do whatever it wants with no fear of repercussions from anyone. But I think that mostly focusing on the last 20 years would be more productive than on the 50+ prior.

I'm sure that you can understand that what Trump has done goes far beyond the symbolic, otherwise there would be no point in doing it. Trump claiming that "We are not taking a position on any of the final status issues including the final boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem" is obviously a bad joke fooling only those who aren't really paying attention when at the same time Netanyahu is proclaiming "... there is no peace that doesn't include Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel".

Obviously the Palestinians are far from blameless (or masters of political strategy), but do you honestly feel that this issue has ever been getting impartial and not heavily biased coverage in the US? Or that all the West Bank settlements are perfectly legal, as Israel claims, even though the rest of the world disagrees?

 

Every single report on this is biased in one way or another. There's blame aplenty to go around. No one is innocent.

You, however, said: "The real problem is that Israel has never had any intention to make things even remotely right by the Palestinians, otherwise they'd have agreed on two separate states as that is clearly the only solution that wouldn't involve Israel keeping the Palestinians in a walled prison."

My point was that your comment was simply not true. Israel has had the intention of a two state solution on quite a few occasions. The Palestinians (and the rest of the arab world) never wanted that solution.

If they do now, which I am still not quite believing, then they need to put up or shut up on that and fully make it Israel's problem to deal with. That is going to mean more than just the Palestinians saying they want it. It is going to mean that they are going to have to show it, that the neighboring countries are going to have to agree to it and help out the to-be-formed Palestine, and they are all going to need to ignore Trump, because he has no political chops at all and is a bull in a china shop. (Or, as John Mulaney says, a horse in the hospital.)

 

Eh, I was never convinced that in the past Israel really had the intention on agreeing to a feasible two separate states plan that would be acceptable to the Palestinians versus just negotiating on the off chance that the Palestinians give up and basically agree to their terms. But I'm not going to pretend that I know the details of all the past negotiations well enough to be able to say whose fault exactly it was that each and every one of them failed. It's probably safe to say that both sides are equally responsible overall. Israel does not want to give up as much as it would need to to appease the Palestinians and they don't want to accept anything less than what they feel that they're entitled to. If neither side is willing to give in more than the other, the conflict will never end.

 

When you enter any kind of negotiations with an absolute like that, you're not really negotiating in good faith but dictating terms. Especially with a city like Jerusalem, where thousands of years of religious baggage comes with the territory, you may as well declare failure in advance. If anything, history has shown that no one power can claim Jerusalem for itself and expect it to last.