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When two parties have serious, long term irreconcilable conflicts in interests, unable to reach bilateral agreement, it seems to me there's five possible ways it could go:
1 - Continue at loggerheads indefinitely
2 - One side totally capitulates, giving up everything the other wants
3 - One side compromises, giving up more things in the hopes of reaching a deal
4 - One side totally overwhelms the other, simply taking everything they want
5 - One side pressures the other, taking options off the table in the hopes of forcing a deal
Which of these are the worst options?
Which of them are, relatively speaking, the 'best'?
Seems to me that indefinite conflict with no resolution is the worst, possibly rivalled by one side unilaterally overwhelming the other depending on the ratio of long- and short- term suffering in each. Between the two of them, Israel could overwhelm the Palestinians, easily, and deal with any consequent outrage from the Arab world, and potentially the rest of the world too depending on the reactions of their major partners the USA and China... but they haven't tried to do that, at least so far. They're also not particulary uncomfortabe with indefinite conflict; their living standard is one of the highest in the world despite the rocket attacks and controversy.
The 'best' outcome would presumably be unilateral compromise to reach a deal, followed by a functionally equivalent outcome reached by pressure and coercion. The latter is probably the closest to the reality we're seeing, with encroaching settlements, evictions, disproportionate response to violence and so on. Granted, this course may become a total overwhelming of Palestinian interests in the long term, if no resolution is ever forced.
I suspect that at this point Palestine is never going to get East Jerusalem or a full retreat to 1966 lines. Maybe in 90s there was a reasonable hope of a deal which was relatively 'fair' to all parties, but apparently that wasn't possible in practice, and at this point the hard fact for Palestinians is that a bad deal is likely to be better than no deal at all. No amount of blaming or finger-pointing will change that.
So inasmuch as international opinion is likely to influence either side at all, what might a constructive attitude look like? Using platitudes, condemnations and hollow resolutions trying to get the stronger side to totally reverse their so-far successful policies and undo decades of effort, back to lines which likely still wouldn't be acceptable to many Palestinians encouraged and emboldened by that support? Or a more brutal pragmatism, recognition of the fact that any prospective deal will be worse than anything contemplated in the 90s, and will only keep getting worse the longer peace is resisted?
1 - Continue at loggerheads indefinitely
2 - One side totally capitulates, giving up everything the other wants
3 - One side compromises, giving up more things in the hopes of reaching a deal
4 - One side totally overwhelms the other, simply taking everything they want
5 - One side pressures the other, taking options off the table in the hopes of forcing a deal
Which of these are the worst options?
Which of them are, relatively speaking, the 'best'?
Seems to me that indefinite conflict with no resolution is the worst, possibly rivalled by one side unilaterally overwhelming the other depending on the ratio of long- and short- term suffering in each. Between the two of them, Israel could overwhelm the Palestinians, easily, and deal with any consequent outrage from the Arab world, and potentially the rest of the world too depending on the reactions of their major partners the USA and China... but they haven't tried to do that, at least so far. They're also not particulary uncomfortabe with indefinite conflict; their living standard is one of the highest in the world despite the rocket attacks and controversy.
The 'best' outcome would presumably be unilateral compromise to reach a deal, followed by a functionally equivalent outcome reached by pressure and coercion. The latter is probably the closest to the reality we're seeing, with encroaching settlements, evictions, disproportionate response to violence and so on. Granted, this course may become a total overwhelming of Palestinian interests in the long term, if no resolution is ever forced.
I suspect that at this point Palestine is never going to get East Jerusalem or a full retreat to 1966 lines. Maybe in 90s there was a reasonable hope of a deal which was relatively 'fair' to all parties, but apparently that wasn't possible in practice, and at this point the hard fact for Palestinians is that a bad deal is likely to be better than no deal at all. No amount of blaming or finger-pointing will change that.
So inasmuch as international opinion is likely to influence either side at all, what might a constructive attitude look like? Using platitudes, condemnations and hollow resolutions trying to get the stronger side to totally reverse their so-far successful policies and undo decades of effort, back to lines which likely still wouldn't be acceptable to many Palestinians encouraged and emboldened by that support? Or a more brutal pragmatism, recognition of the fact that any prospective deal will be worse than anything contemplated in the 90s, and will only keep getting worse the longer peace is resisted?