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No Means No!
I think we should take the Palestinians at their word: they are saying “no” to peace and prosperity; we should say “no” to providing them any more help.
Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt should pack up their portfolios, hand-outs, graphs, easels, and charts and come home. The U.S. has spent far too much time trying to assuage a people that hates us, that is corrupt, and that holds the world hostage to their threats of violence and hand-wringing. It’s time for the U.S. to stop beating its head against the proverbial wall and let the Arab countries figure out what to do with the Palestinian people.
I’m serious. How long do we try to maintain the masquerade that there is any chance of bringing peace to the Middle East? The Palestinians refuse to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. They refuse to negotiate territory. They refuse to be accountable for the billions of dollars they squander away. They continue to pay support for families whose members died as terrorists.
In spite of their refusal to attend the Bahrain conference, and stating that any Arab country that does attend is a traitor, they’ve asked Arabs to give them $100 million per month to resist “pressures” from Israel and the U.S. And they have no desire for peace or resolution to the conflict:
Since rejecting the suggested partitioning, the 1937 Peel Commission, Arab leaders have thwarted the creation of an Arab state west of the Jordan River more than six times depending on whether one considers refusal to talk to mean refusing the possibility of a state. Thus, if anything is to be gleaned from the Bahrain conference boycott, it is that the Palestinian leadership does not have a genuine interest in bettering the lives of their own people—and perhaps that they are quite unprepared for actual statehood.
I suggest the Middle East countries and the U.S. take a whole different approach. Any money that they are prepared to pledge to the Palestinians should be used to defend Israel against the Palestinian terrorists. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar—all countries who have agreed to come to the Bahrain conference—should create a defense organization that demands that the Palestinians stand down. Terrorist attacks by Hamas and Fatah will undergo retribution from these countries, who will act in concert with Israel. The U.S. will not send our men, but we will provide whatever support we can.
At the same time, Caroline Glick’s ideas regarding the one-state solution can be used as a starting point for finding a way to integrate the Palestinians into Israel, or assisting them to immigrate to other countries. (Much data supports the premise that the Jewish population is growing more rapidly than the Palestinian population.)
It is time to demand an end to useless negotiations and support Israel in its efforts to bring peace and stability. Israel will more than likely experience violence, but if given the chance, I hope they would agree it’s time that they’re able to fully embrace their statehood
No means no.
Published in Foreign Policy
I would not say there is a universal sentiment, and what sentiment you find ranges from somewhat friendly to downright hostile. It’s complicated.
It’s important to understand that the Christian populations in that region date back to Roman times. And during those two millennia they have endured schisms (Marionite, Melkite, Monophysite), occupations, persecutions, forced conversions, and no end of foreign meddling in their internal affairs.
For instance, while the Christians did arrive at some terms of peace with the initial Muslim conquests, that left them rather delicately balanced. So long as the Caliphate was unified, things were stable, but when it fractured the entire area became a battleground. One caliph of Egypt, for instance, known as the “Mad Caliph”, leveled a good part of Jerusalem in the early 1000s out spite at being kept away from Damascus and places further north by a then-strong Byzantium.
A century later, the Crusaders often treated the local Christians as heretics, installing clergy loyal to Rome (the conquest of Jerusalem was horrific to all of the city’s citizens – Jews, Orthodox, and Muslims). In some respects, the local Christians welcomed Saladin’s reconquest a century later.
The Ottomans had a policy of treating all Christians, regardless of their race or language, as one big sub-nation, and so over time gave the Greeks in the north authority to appoint bishops in Arab areas. The Ottomans would not allow printing presses for centuries to Christians, but then allowed Protestant missionaries to bring them in (this backfired on the Ottomans because the Presbyterian missionaries started printing Arabic bibles, which tended to rekindle the very Arabic culture they’d been trying to suppress – both Muslim and Christian).
When the Ottomans were finally chucked out, the British and French mandates tended to continue to meddle in Orthodox churches, while showing favoritism to Protestant and Catholic proselytizing, Jewish investment, and treating the Orthodox sometimes quite badly.
The creation of Israel just further complicated matters – and the local Orthodox, Melkite, and Marionite Christians to this day feel they’ve just been under one foreign occupation after another, and given short shrift by Ottoman, European, and Israeli governments all.
With regards eschatology, which is one of the main reasons contemporary Evangelicals support Israel, the Orthodox have never held with those interpretations and do not at all see the creation of Israel as somehow fulfilling any prophecy of the end times.
Thanks, Skip
That is complicated.
Is it fair to say, the modern evangelical embrace of Israel gives it prefered status. Also, tons of evangelical money ends up in Israel with massive tourism. Then there is the political clout evangelicals have (used too anyway) in Congress concerning the state of Israel.
And it’s just the short short version. I’m right now reading a history of the Antiochian church in North America, and there are several chapters of backstory on the patriarchal successions of Antioch and Jerusalem in the latter Ottoman period. It got quite messy indeed.
Whould you mind listing a couple of books that are trustworthy and good reads ?
A lot of what I know I’ve gathered from a pretty wide variety of histories over the years, but there are some dedicated history books that can be of help.
The one I’m reading right now is not one you can easily find, and it’s a book written by a church historian for other historians (seriously: half the book is the bibliography and appendices!). It’s called Ancient Church on Distant Shores, and the only place I know you can find it is here: http://store.antiochianvillage.org/Ancient-Church-on-New-Shores-P.html
Not even an ISBN number on the book – privately published by the Antiochian Archdiocese of North America.
Regarding the rest, there are a number of good histories out there on the Crusades, on Byzantine history, and Orthodox history. Kallistos (Timothy) Ware’s The Orthodox Church is a good place to start a general Orthodox history, but it’s more of a survey of Orthodox history as a whole, with chapters on different regions and epochs.
For histories of Middle-Eastern Orthodox Christians specifically, you need to go to some more specific sources, including more academic histories of the Crusades and Byzantium (as opposed to some of the popular ones, which often have agendas – popular histories of the Crusades especially tend to either present them heroically or demonically, when of course their actual history is far more human). I’ve not gotten this one yet, but I’m told it’s a good place to start, and from there you can rabbit-trail down Amazon for similar works:
https://www.amazon.com/Orthodox-Church-Arab-World-700-ebook/dp/B00JFQ8E6W/ref=sr_1_8?keywords=arab+christian+history&qid=1561487167&s=gateway&sr=8-8
Thanks, skip. I will give that last one a look.
I really am interested in an accurate account of the Crusades. That is what I meant by “trustworthy”. Historians without an agenda are rare.
I think the Arabs saw what the Palestinians did to Lebanon and will take a pass. Hussein threw them out of Jordan.
Proposal: Only US states should qualify for financial aid from the federal government, therefore any nation (or wannabe-nation) that requests financial aid from the United States should be invited to apply for US statehood first.
Looking to be educated: Are there examples of “forced major population moves” in, say, the past 300 years exclusive of those where Mohammedans are participants (on one side or the other) that ended badly?
I’ll let someone else comment on this, @slowontheuptake. I don’t want to do forced population moves myself. I think every effort should be made to integrate the Palestinians, unless they want to re-locate; then I think Israel might help finance their move.
No. The Soviets forcibly relocated millions at the end of WWII, and internally relocated millions more in the next decade.
The US Indian Reservation system is another example (Trail of Tears especially).
Now now, that is skipping quite a few steps.
First they should, as a complete first step, dissolve their current government in conjunction with acceptance of US sovereignty.
Statehood requires Congressional approval, but the historical process is that they have to pass a state constitution and submit it to Congress for approval.
Yes. In the immediate aftermath of WW2 a number of European nations forcibly expelled their German speaking populations.
31 Million were moved between 1944 and 1948. It is estimated that up to 2.5 Million died as a result.
Ah. The wife is 1/4 indian, I started in Quanah, the Indians should have leapt immediately to mind.
Thanks.
I didn’t know that! But from your link it sounds like the relocation was primarily of folks who had been in those other countries for years, not generations. But it hardly read like a peaceful restoration to their homelands.
The post WWII relocations were often of people that had been in those places for anywhere from hundreds of years, to a thousand years.
Part of the reason for the forced relocation was to remove one of the talking points the Nazis used to justify annexing neighboring populations – that the local national government wasn’t taking care of the German speaking minority.
Same reason Russia used to justify invading Georgia (country, not state) and Ukraine.
Until evidence to the contrary I will continue to assume that Middle Eastern peoples will support anything, no matter how ludicrous, embarrassing, unethical, or evil, that will damage Israel or kill Jews; the enemy of their enemy isn’t just their friend, it’s their darling.
It is a very bad idea to start a war and then lose it. The Palestinians have not yet learned that lesson.