Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
is worth a thousand words, then a good map is worth a million. Let's go to Palestine.
A little stage setting first: We'll start with who owned what in Israel/Palestine/Includingthewestbank (Heretofore known as ‘The Holy Land’) in 1945.
With the world just out of a horrible mess, the newly unpackaged United Nations proposed the Colonel's Own, Original Recipe 2 state solution in the Holy Land. These are the people on whom it was deposited.
Well, a bunch of neighbors with stronger cultural and religious ties to one of those groups than the other said we won’t stand for that shit and invaded in 1948.
But OOPS! that invasion didn’t fare so well, so they said Uncle in 1949.
Meanwhile, Europe wasn’t the only place going through anti-Jewish convulsions. About as many Jews were being run out of town throughout the Arab world as Palestinians would ultimately be from, well, Palestine.
After some on and off fighting in the 1950s, a seriously threatened Israel preemptively attacked her neighbors in 1967 and her neighbors said Uncle again.
Feeling pretty confident, Israel started “requisitioning” land in the West Bank.
Well, that pissed off her neighbors again and they attacked when they really shouldn't have. But alas, her neighbors had to say Uncle a third time
After calling so many Uncles, one and then another of her neighbors signed peace treaties with Israel.
That left the other two neighbors as the prime points of friction and Israel dealt with them quite differently throughtout the 1980s.
To further flesh-out the present context, here are a few more maps of themes or regions neglected in the synopsis above, such as:
The Gaza Strip
The neighborhoods of Jerusalem
And the all important, yet horribly under-reported, status of WATER.
So, who has offered insulting and retractable pittances, who has made impossible and unreasonable demands, who is guilty of duplicity, who is vested in lasting conflict and retribution? Well, pretty much everybody in any position of power at this point. Here’s what we’ve seen:
The Wye River Accords, 1998.
Augmented by the Sharm el Sheik Memorandum, 1998.
Subsequented by Barak’s Offer, 1998.
Arafat may have turned down quite the offer there. Although it would have been utterly unpalatable to two factions that ultimately have as much pull on him as he does on them.
Maps are quite malleable to your aims, so here are one and two other versions.
Then we a had a little thing about a war-criminal-Prime-Minister wannabe staging a high-profile leisurely stroll that was something, to the Palestinian sensibility, akin to, say, The Chinese Peoples’ Army marching, unmolested, up the DC Mall and ceremoneously urinating on the Washington Monument at the height of the Cold War. Then he got elected and said…
You don’t like that offer?!?
OK, fine then. Compare to the original plan.
Presently, the issue that will have the longest reaching (destructive) influence on security - much less civility - in the quote-unquote Holy Land is The Wall. This is in four maps - look at them all.
OK, that was quite a bit to put together. Please let me know if this is the kind of production in which you’d like the vice-apostropher to engage.
TrackBackHoly crap. This is fantastic, Froz. But posted at 5 am? You're going to be one ass-dragging monkey by the end of the workday...
Posted by: apostropher at August 12, 2003 09:30 AMNot truly as impressive as it looks; Fell asleep after reading a night-night book to Bert. Woke up in the wee hours and decided to continue blogging instead of playing mindworm maniac. Glad you liked it, though; it was a fun project.
Posted by: Froz at August 12, 2003 10:42 AM"instead of playing mindworm maniac"
Now there's a reference that's going to sail right past most readers...
Posted by: apostropher at August 12, 2003 11:31 AMColor this reader impressed, too. Now if only you had a single base map with a set of transparent overlays... that would've been cool. I'll expect that next time around. :)
Posted by: fiend at August 12, 2003 03:19 PMNice synopsis. One thing ought to be clarified, though:
Then we a had a little thing about a war-criminal-Prime-Minister wannabe staging a high-profile leisurely stroll that was something, to the Palestinian sensibility, akin to, say, The Chinese Peoples’ Army marching, unmolested, up the DC Mall and ceremoneously urinating on the Washington Monument at the height of the Cold War.
Anyway, you can see why I think that the metaphor was a bit imprecise.
Keep up the good work!
The "cermoniously urinating" part, possibly, because he didn't pull out his johnson. Temple Mount: #1 for Jews, Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa: #3 for Muslims, and Ariel Sharon "to the Palestinian sensibility": #1 personification of a Zionist plan execute their own "Final Solution" to the Palestinian problem. He's a war criminal for Sabra and Shatila in their eyes (even though the Lebanese proxies - I can't remember their name off-hand - did the actual raping and killing) and plenty of the far-far-right Israelis who support him (however reluctantly) make no secret of their desire to demolish the Mosques and rebuild the Temple. Jerusalem is Palestine's Capital in their desperate, humiliated hearts. They're watching demographic realities and an imbalance in the technology of violence, however, simply erode it away from them. The whole episode was staged to flame tensions, weaken Netanyahu in Likud and ultimately end the Barak Government. It worked. These two extremist camps play each other very well; they've had lots of practice.
Prefaced as it was by "to the Palestinian sensibility", I'll stand by the metaphor.
Thank you for noticing the post
Posted by: Froz at August 21, 2003 11:59 PM..."demolish[ing] the Mosques and rebuild[ing] the Temple" has never actually been a part of legitimate political discourse in Israel. Yes, of course there are some lunatics who use that sort of rhetoric, but it's so far from mainstream belief as to be quite laughable. No serious political voice in Israel actually believes that the mosques can or should be removed from the hands of Muslim Palestinians; to do so would simply be stupid: historically, religiously and politically.
BTW, I know it's quite fashionable lately, but I would suggest that you really think twice about using language about a "Final Solution" when it comes to Israeli-Palestinian relations. Aside from its inaccuracy, it is extraordinarily offensive.
Unfortunately it wouldn't be the first time I've offended anyone; I am fully capable of typing before I think. Please accept my apologies. It is true that the extremely radical Zionists' agenda in Palestine is closer in line with much other "ethnic cleansing" whereby populations are forcibly relocated. Hitler's agenda was mass-murder and the two are qualitatively different. Additionally, much of the relocation that has already happened, although I'm not justifying it, is simply the result of a demographic reality exacerbated by religious fundamentalism and I hope my collection of maps implied that. It is not only the Israelis who have screwed the Palestinians. Like I stated: "who is vested in lasting conflict and retribution?..." The radicals on both sides need it in order to verify their rhetoric, increase their support, and justify their actions.
I do, however vaguely, remember a few years back a Knesset minister (or are they called members?) making the same parallel with the "Final Solution" wording in a floor speech arguing against expanding settlements. If I recall correctly, it caused quite a silence followed by quite a stir. I will try to find the reference tonight; but I'm stretching back 10 years or so, so it may not be recorded in the digital ether.
Posted by: froz at August 26, 2003 03:51 PMThanks for the gracious response.
Of course there are extremists, lunkheads and creeps on both sides of this complicated equation; fortunately the idiots screaming "KILL 'EM ALL!" are generally not the ones who get to shape government policy. I still sincerely believe that MOST Jewish Israelis and MOST Palestinians want peace more than anything else. Hopefully everyone will eventually get it.
I do, however vaguely, remember a few years back a Knesset minister (or are they called members?)
Yep, "members". Unless s/he was a member of the cabinet.
making the same parallel with the "Final Solution" wording in a floor speech arguing against expanding settlements. If I recall correctly, it caused quite a silence followed by quite a stir.
Hmm, yeah, I seem to remember that too. Let me know if you find the reference.
Just as an aside, I think it's a real problem in the world of political debate that it's seen as an effective tactic to call anyone you disagree with a Nazi. Wish people would cut that out (and I would have hoped that members of the Israeli government would have the sense to know better).