Imagine yourself on a slowly rising platform, already high enough above the ground that jumping off will hurt a good bit. Imagine the platform is slowly getting warmer as well. Staying on the platform allows you to avoid short-term pain, but it involves increasing discomfort from the heat, and ultimately will make the jump more painful.
That, essentially, is Israel’s predicament. The platform of course is the policy decision to subjugate and oppress the Palestinian people. The hope is that somehow these people will one day come to accept their subjugation. Will they? Hardly.
It’s been almost 70 years since the 1948 war. Palestinian resistance efforts over time have grown more intense, as the tactics of Israel to maintain the subjugation grow more extreme.
Nope. The Palestinians are not going away and they’re not going to throw in the towel.
Can Israel make the jump off the platform? Does it need the help or cooperation of the Palestinians or the U.S., or any other player on the world stage? Not really. For example, Israel unilaterally could declare Israel proper, the West Bank, and Gaza one state, with equal rights for all. Alternatively, Israel could agree to pull out of the West Bank and lift the naval siege of Gaza. Would it be painful to jump at this point? Of course. In the short-term, it would be far more painful than staying on the platform.
Now, think of how much less painful Israel’s jump would have been immediately following the ’48 war. It could have allowed the Palestinians it wrongfully drove out the right of return, rather than stealing the homes they fled. Or, Israel could have recognized a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza immediately following the ’67 war, before it placed 500,000 settlers in the West Bank and made the mess it has of Gaza.
So, what if Israel waits another decade or so to jump. By then, the platform likely will have gone from warm to hot. Jumping may no longer be a choice. Think of the demographic changes that will occur: More Palestinians; fewer Jews. Think of changes that may occur in the region. Israel’s ability to stay on the platform was helped by last year’s coup in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood might not have been as friendly to Israel’s massacre of Gaza. A decade from now, Egypt’s Sisi and other autocracies in the hip pocket of the U.S. may have been dethroned, causing more difficulties for Israel.
What will happen to U.S. support of Israel as the years go by? Although there are Christian supporters of Israel in the U.S., it’s the AIPAC crowd that’s driving the U.S. agenda. The AIPAC crowd has a huge problem. It’s dying off. And those young Jews of today who are filling the ranks of Jewish Voice for Peace and J Street, where will they be a decade from now? More established. Wealthier. More influential. A decade from now, it won’t be political suicide for a member of Congress to speak out against Israel. What then? What if the U.S. stops using its veto power at the U.N. to protect Israel? Feel the platform rising?
What happens to Israel’s platform as the ability of the U.S. to dominate the world scene declines?
What about BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement? It doesn’t seem to be going away. Will it continue to grow stronger? Will it reach critical mass within the next decade? What does that do to platform temperature?
What will Israel need to do to contain the nonviolent resistance in the West Bank? Already, Israel is engaging in tactics, including torture, that would not be tolerated if they were more widely reported. If the nonviolent protests intensify, what will Israel do?
The bottom line? The platform will not stop rising. Each time Israel reneges on a commitment, as it did with its commitment to loosen the siege of Gaza after the 2012 confrontation, it raises the temperature of the platform. Each time Israel commits an atrocity in the West Bank, the platform gets hotter.
And at some point, that platform could get so high and so hot that Israel won’t have a safe way off.
Israel’s Slowly Rising Platform
Posted on September 14, 2014 by Bob Lord | 1 Comment
Correction please: it’s the “HAMAS’s Slowly Rising Platform”
Gaza literally flattened; 2000 Gazan’s (and hopefully included some Hamas leaders) killed; their economy in shambles; no visible cohesive administrative authority; a population totally at the mercy of Israeli’s overwhelming military power, AND YOU PRESENT ISAREL IMPERILING ITSELF ON A RISING PLATFORM?????
That platform analogy is equally unfathomable as Hamas and Gazan’s claiming victory after getting bashed?
The Gazan’s are under a pressure cooker of their own choosing, and will continue to be so as long as they remain a primitive vengeful and savage peoples.
The sad and unpleasant truth about the Israeli and Palestinian conflict is the clash of primitive desert peoples thrust from their deserts where they kept to themselves, and now faced with the realities and overwhelming sophisticated world, and unable to cope.
Add to that, the real enemy of the Palestinian’s are the rich Arabs who sold land to the Zionists and then left the Palestinians without a place to go to while the Jews paid triple the value of land AND cared for displaced land tenets.
The unflattering truth about the fact that the Israeli handling of the Palestinian conflict has been with compassion from a sense they are dealing with a primitive peoples, nevertheless, dangerous primitive peoples are not allowed a free pass!
The bottom line Mr. Lord, it is not the Israeli’s who are on that platform, but the Palestinians, and headed for oblivion unless they become part of the civilized world.
I don’t think Israel is able to get off the “platform”, as you describe it. Israel is as much a state of mind as it is a physical entity and I don’t see them ever giving up and surrendering by giving autonomy to the Palestinians. Despite it’s small size it is still a very powerful country because it has quite a few nuclear weapons. If thier existence is threatened, I am fairly certain they would use them in a first strike capacity.
Iran currently poses a great threat to them because Iran is in the process of developing nuclear weapons. Everyone familiar with the manufacture of nukes knows that the centifuges Iran acquired from the Soviets are used for processing weapons grade uranium/plutonium and not nuclear fuel as Iran claims. Iran has alread stated it will bomb Tel Aviv with the first weapon it makes, so I expect Israel to respond first when the day comes and Iran produces their first weapons.
From a practical matter, since using the nukes will make them more of a pariah in the world than they already are, I could easily see them deciding to eliminate the Palestinian problem – including the ones in Jordan – at the same time. This is an extreme scenario, but when Iran develops it’s nukes, THAT will be an extreme scenario, as well.
Anyway, I don’t think Israel has the opportunity to make amends and defuse the ill will the Middle East holds towards it. I don’t think there is a diplomatic solution available to them anymore. Israel will either live or die based on a military solution; which means Israel’s future is limited because the sword is a tenuous solution to anything.