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I'm really bummed Israel gave back all of Sinai to Egypt. The nomadic tribes in that area already keep getting screwed by Egypt. Sinai is sparsely populated. I

I'm really bummed Israel gave back all of Sinai to Egypt. The nomadic tribes in that area already keep getting screwed by Egypt. Sinai is sparsely populated. I believe a lot of the [Egyptian] population left because of the Yom Kippur War. For my fantasy thinking of what could have been: Core principles of all this is Israel's amazing awe inspiring work of being able to turn any land into gold. Along with Egypt and the other Arab powers from 49 to 73 sucked. I mean they suck today too, but those were the major military fight time periods. Arab powers had no morals or principles to go to war at any point. Most of all, they never cared about Palestinians. Egypt kept losing. Egypt does not treat Sinai outside of the are close to Suez Canal well. 60% of Sinai is kept by Israel in the 70s and 80s. As a sign of good will soon after to get back closer to the current relations, Israel gives another 1/3 back. This leaves 40%. A whopping 9K sq miles. The equivalent of all of Israel + Palestine. 20% going to Palestine, possibly the nomadics in the area too. That increases Palestine's land by close to 100%. Possibly the nomadic tribes get in on this too. The increase for Israel is close to double too. The rest would be more buffer for Israel, more land for settlements, and more space for defensive and military purposes. Even if this is too much, even dividing these numbers all by half is still huge. If this was the case, it might be worth it to simplify things and close out Gaza as much as possible as it is now. With the right politics and incentives, a majority of the population can move to Sinai territory. Gaza is such a mess, with assistance from Israel and other countries, economically, the moved land would be easy to be better. At some point during this, Hamas or similar in Gaza would increase attacks. This gives an excuse to go through with this plan. If after all this, there's a population of ~20% of Gaza remaining there, like 350K people...I'm not sure what to do at this point. I'd think giving them Israeli citizenship (as Arabs) would be best. Not all 500K would be vetted and allowed. If 250-300K are, that's not going to tilt the demographics or politics of Israel in any serious way. That's at most 3.5% of Israel's population.

weatherlite 5y ago
I like the idea but what the Palestinians are fighting for isn't really a Palestinian land "somewhere". It's about returning to their old homes pre 1948. You could just as well say that Jordan is already majority Palestinian - so there's your Palestinian state, but that's not gonna end the conflict. The conflict is now religious as well. And it's about ego, and hatred, and pride, and envy. It's not something that's just waiting to be pragmatically solved unfortunately. We need to solve human psychology somehow.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Hm. From my anecdotal and looking into all this, this does not appear to be the case. I've talked to dozens of Palestinians from or in Gaza. Then add in the likely 100+ that people I know have talked to. Sure 2-300 people is still anecdotal, but if not a single one of them is fighting for what you are claiming, it's hard to believe that is actually true of the great population. You seem to be talking about shit that Iran stirs up. Hamas strips up, etc. Iran isn't Palestine at all. People who actually seriously care about Hamas' alleged goals, are not a large number of people. It also isn't as simple as saying "look this person helped with some violent initiative from Gaza linked to Hamas - they must be fighting for pre 1948 land". That's not true any more across the board. Not this amount of time later. My fantasy idea would have begun 50 years ago. In 1973 latest. There would be some 3rd generation people being born in lands in Sinai this decade now. Which Palestinians are you thinking of who are still fighting this pre-1948 home thing? -- > You could just as well say that Jordan is already majority Palestinian What does this mean? Jordan isn't Palestine. I have mentioned this multiple times. The Arab World surrounding Israel and Palestine give zero fucks about the Palestinians. They always have. Jordan's govt would rather get $10 than save a Palestinian's life. None of them have done any thing to show any sense of remorse for their repeated stupid pitiful war actions that ended up primarily hurting Palestinians. All the countries have had decades upon decades to do something, any thing. None have. Unless they hurt Palestinians even more (like Egypt). This Jordan example means nothing unless there's some sort of conflation of Arab [in power] across different countries are naturally "bros" of some kind. Which is not the situation.
  - weatherlite 5y ago
    > Which Palestinians are you thinking of who are still fighting this pre-1948 home thing? It's the publicly declared goal of Hamas, BDS, and most of the Palestinian diaspora. The PLO is an interesting case - traditionally they also never forfeited the right of return but Abu Mazen made some interesting claims around a decade ago about how he personally doesn't want to go back to his old home or something like that. Nevertheless, it seems impossible for any Palestinian leader to publicly forfeit the right of return. Its political (and possibly physical) suicide for anyone who tries that. The right of return is foundational for Palestinians, I find it surprising you haven't picked that up from talking to Palestinians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_right_of_return#Scope_of_the_issue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_right_of_return#Sc... "The majority of Palestinians consider that their homeland was lost during the establishment of Israel in 1948, and see the right of return as crucial to a peace agreement with Israel, even if the vast majority of surviving refugees and their descendants do not exercise that right" Now the even if the the vast majority do not exercise that right is speculation imo, and wrong. Many will exercise that right (otherwise why insist on this? it's a no go for any peace plan).

weatherlite 5y ago

I like the idea but what the Palestinians are fighting for isn't really a Palestinian land "somewhere". It's about returning to their old homes pre 1948. You could just as well say that Jordan is already majority Palestinian - so there's your Palestinian state, but that's not gonna end the conflict. The conflict is now religious as well. And it's about ego, and hatred, and pride, and envy. It's not something that's just waiting to be pragmatically solved unfortunately. We need to solve human psychology somehow.

skinnymuch 5y ago
Hm. From my anecdotal and looking into all this, this does not appear to be the case. I've talked to dozens of Palestinians from or in Gaza. Then add in the likely 100+ that people I know have talked to. Sure 2-300 people is still anecdotal, but if not a single one of them is fighting for what you are claiming, it's hard to believe that is actually true of the great population. You seem to be talking about shit that Iran stirs up. Hamas strips up, etc. Iran isn't Palestine at all. People who actually seriously care about Hamas' alleged goals, are not a large number of people. It also isn't as simple as saying "look this person helped with some violent initiative from Gaza linked to Hamas - they must be fighting for pre 1948 land". That's not true any more across the board. Not this amount of time later. My fantasy idea would have begun 50 years ago. In 1973 latest. There would be some 3rd generation people being born in lands in Sinai this decade now. Which Palestinians are you thinking of who are still fighting this pre-1948 home thing? -- > You could just as well say that Jordan is already majority Palestinian What does this mean? Jordan isn't Palestine. I have mentioned this multiple times. The Arab World surrounding Israel and Palestine give zero fucks about the Palestinians. They always have. Jordan's govt would rather get $10 than save a Palestinian's life. None of them have done any thing to show any sense of remorse for their repeated stupid pitiful war actions that ended up primarily hurting Palestinians. All the countries have had decades upon decades to do something, any thing. None have. Unless they hurt Palestinians even more (like Egypt). This Jordan example means nothing unless there's some sort of conflation of Arab [in power] across different countries are naturally "bros" of some kind. Which is not the situation.
- weatherlite 5y ago
  > Which Palestinians are you thinking of who are still fighting this pre-1948 home thing? It's the publicly declared goal of Hamas, BDS, and most of the Palestinian diaspora. The PLO is an interesting case - traditionally they also never forfeited the right of return but Abu Mazen made some interesting claims around a decade ago about how he personally doesn't want to go back to his old home or something like that. Nevertheless, it seems impossible for any Palestinian leader to publicly forfeit the right of return. Its political (and possibly physical) suicide for anyone who tries that. The right of return is foundational for Palestinians, I find it surprising you haven't picked that up from talking to Palestinians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_right_of_return#Scope_of_the_issue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_right_of_return#Sc... "The majority of Palestinians consider that their homeland was lost during the establishment of Israel in 1948, and see the right of return as crucial to a peace agreement with Israel, even if the vast majority of surviving refugees and their descendants do not exercise that right" Now the even if the the vast majority do not exercise that right is speculation imo, and wrong. Many will exercise that right (otherwise why insist on this? it's a no go for any peace plan).