All of this is to argue that the Arabs ought to be immune to the twists and turns of history. As if the non-Arabs of the Byzantine empire and of the Persian empire had not be conquered and exploited by the new Muslim imperialists, or the Caliphate of Bagdad had not been destroyed--literally--by the Mongols and Iraq laid more or less fallow for seven hundred years as part of a Turkish slave empire. Much is made by modernists about the shortco0ming of Christian civilization, but little about the new "Roman" empire of the Ottomans depended as much as the original on continuing conquests, and died when it met the growing power of Europe.
Anyone wanting to have a good view of what Palestine was like in the 19th Century has only to read Mark Twain's "Innocent's Abroad." to see how much the Jewish "invasion" materially profited the region. If one may gauge by the condition of today's Arabs lands without the benefit of oil, the none may guess how well anAeab Palestinian state will fare under the present leaders. "moderate." or radical. As the case of Vietnam attests, menwho know nothing but war seldom makes good rulers in peacetime. An engineer may become a terroist, but seldom a terrorist an engineer. .
As I noted in my original post, I’m not arguing about the relative moral standing of the various parties to the dispute (one side or the other as a right to exist as an independent state on its own territory because it represents a more desirable political and social arrangement) but from a strictly practical standpoint.
30 years ago it was not uncommon to meet Israeli Jews who were convinced that the Palestinians would eventually realize that they were much better off living under a reasonably efficient and humane Israeli occupation than under the inefficient and inhumane alternatives which were the likely results of self-rule.
We’ve seen how that theory works out.
This of course is the conundrum of “national liberation” movements, as noted in the responses to my post they are often poorly ruled once they achieve “self-government”, in large part because revolutionaries make poor peacetime leaders and ideologues make poor managers, and the result is by most “objective” standards life is often worse than under colonial rule.
But that doesn’t change the fact that since around 1960 the chaos of self-determination has been generally perceived as more legitimate than the stability of colonial rule, and I can’t see any reason why that’s likely to change in the near future - even if we reach the point where some sort of international stewardship of failed states becomes the norm I think will almost certainly be exercised via local leadership was substantial autonomy rather than administration directly supervised by non-citizens of the country in question.
As for the ebb and flow of local authority I think the time frame of Israel’s establishment is very significant: IMO there’s a possibility that had “Israel” been established immediately post-World War I it might have been able to attain “legitimacy”, equally clearly it could not have been established at all on anything like its current terms after about 1960. These are the time frames that matter politically in the 21st century, everything prior to 1945 is essentially irrelevant to the current situation except as “historical underlying factors” not immediately relevant to possible current solutions.
Given this situation, I’m deeply pessimistic about the possibility for Israel’s survival, not only as a political entity but literally in terms of the survival of the population.
One of the ironies of Israel - a state to design to ensure the safety of Jews - is that it is increasingly becoming one of the most dangerous places to be a Jew - essentially Israel has achieved the compaction of a substantial portion of the world’s Jewish population into a very compact “target set”, and I think we can be virtually certain that for example their people the ISI who dream of diverting Pakistani devices to third-party actors. It takes only three modest sized nuclear weapons to decimate the civilian population of Israel - and while the death of 20 or 30 million Muslims in the inevitable retaliatory strikes may be deterable in the case of state actors, it’s clearly an attractive exchange to be some Islamic militants.
This is longer-term the problem with envisioning Israel as a successful garrison state - how you garrison against the possibility of a small handful of nuclear weapons being smuggled into your country as part of a really professional operation run by a competent foreign intelligence service?
The answer is, perhaps you can’t.
So when I look at the alternatives, they don’t seem very attractive: 1) you have a highly unlikely resolution via a two state solution policed (or enforced) by external actors (it’s essentially impossible to negotiate an agreement between two parties one of whom has nothing to lose and one of whom has everything to lose), or 2) you have the gradual moral degradation of Israel into a country that must contemplate the imprisonment or explosion of a large number of its own citizens as well as possible ethnic cleansing in its expanding security zones, or 3) you have a second great modern Jewish Holocaust and the attendant retaliation.
To me the way this seems most likely play out as:
Israel’s international support drops lower and lower in response to the steps a majority of Israeli citizens feel are equired to preserve their political and territorial sovereignty, until eventually Israel is faced declining markets for its exports and perhaps declining American aid.
Life becomes increasingly economically difficult for most Israeli citizens and Israel begins to divide into two camps: one of them fiercely determined to preserve Jewish political authority in Israel at any cost, and one which increasingly sees little future for their children under such conditions.
Emigration by the latter group starts to increase, led by young Israelis who move abroad for better educational and economic opportunities and at some point reaches a tipping point - many initially intend to return to Israel on a permanent basis, but fewer and fewer actually do so.
The United States becomes the primary destination of Israeli emigrants, and at some point the balance of Jewish political influence in United States tips away from unconditional support of Israel as the sole American commitment and increasingly and toward facilitating immigration of Israeli Jews into the United States to join those already resident here.
At some point this will become an extremely contentious political issue within Israel, which will probably be resolved in favor of those who wish to remain, economically disadvantaging those who continue to leave, which in turn creates a greater and greater division of international Jewish opinion into two camps, and which further reduces international support for additional steps seen by the remaining Israelis as necessary to provide security.
As the demographics of Israel change, the secular nationalists and the more nationalistic religious parties increasingly come to dominate Israeli policy, this evokes increasing nationalism and militancy in most surrounding states.
By this time I suppose the rest of the world is going to be pretty much entirely in a “pox on both your houses” state of mind with regard to both the Israelis and the “Palestinians” - who may well have been ejected by this time into neighboring countries against the wishes of both the Palestinians and their new hosts - and I wouldn’t even try and predict what happens from that point forward, except that the good alternatives are not pretty and the bad alternatives are pretty horrific.