RSS Feed MenuAndrew Sullivan has some cool maps on his site today showing the contraction of Palestinian land from 1946 through 2010.
He could have made the series even more impressive if he’d started in 1922, when some 2/3rds of the Palestine Mandate was shaved off to make the Kingdom of Transjordan.
You know what else would make an impressive series of contracting maps? A map of the loss of German land to Poles and others that compared the boundaries of Germany in 1914, 1920 and 1945.
Hungary could tell a similar story.
I suppose the moral of the story is: If you want to keep your lands, don’t start wars. If you start wars, don’t lose them. And if you start wars and lose them – as the Palestinians and the Arab states did de jure or de facto in 1936, 1947, 1967, 1973 and 2000 … well, don’t expect a lot of sympathy afterward.
DFL // Mar 11, 2010 at 4:57 pm
What David Frum writes is true. But it is also true that if you win wars you’d better expect resentment from the people you defeated. Even in America, the South was monolithically Democratfor a century due to their common hatred of the party of Lincoln.
LFC // Mar 11, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Israel pulled out of the Gaza as a tangible concession to the Palestinians and it failed miserably. They walled in the Palestinians in the West Bank and it worked.
Since unilateral concessions failed miserably, but unilateral control of their borders worked, what lesson do people really expect Israel to learn? Maybe “pull back and open your borders and let’s see what happens?” I don’t think so.
Israel now seems determined to slowly define their own borders using settlements and fencing. While I would love to see a two-state solution, I no longer see it as a viable possibility. There is nobody credible on the Palestinian side who can or will try to work out that solution and even if they do, the population has been raised to believe that Israel must be destroyed. That pretty much makes any settlement that could be negotiated useless. The Palestinian population would never follow.
kevin47 // Mar 11, 2010 at 5:19 pm
“But it is also true that if you win wars you’d better expect resentment from the people you defeated.”
I think it’s fair enough to say that Israel fully expects the resentment. The question is whether we are going to give any weight to that resentment.
JimBob // Mar 11, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Demographics will doom Israel as they slowly become a minority in their own country. South African all over again!
Independent // Mar 11, 2010 at 7:40 pm
JimBob, one word that defeats your prediction: aliyah.
In 2009, it was up 17-19%, depending on your source. There’s no shortage of jews who wish to return to Israel –especially if they have immediate access to the welfare state privileges that socialist country provides and terrorism is kept in relative check.
aliyah, JimBob. aliyah.
sinz54 // Mar 11, 2010 at 8:33 pm
DFL: But it is also true that if you win wars you’d better expect resentment from the people you defeated.
Not necessarily.
The United States has gotten comparatively little resentment from the Germans, the Japanese, the Sioux, the Arapaho, etc. (How many Japanese terrorists have attacked America to avenge Hiroshima?)
Know why?
Because those peoples accepted their defeat.
The Palestinians have never accepted their defeat, for two reasons: One, their Muslim ideology tells them to be patient for a thousand years if necessary. Two, their oil-rich patrons have continued to fill their heads with a lot of false hopes.
And the Palestinians have a point.
As they watch how the West prostitutes itself for Middle East oil, as they watch a string of American presidents going to kiss the rings of the Saudi kings, the Palestinians have every reason to hope that the West will be humbled by their Arab partners. And then they can face Israel on more equal terms.
That’s a ray of hope the Sioux never had.
No foreign powers went to bat for them.
Carney // Mar 11, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Brilliant analogy and riposte on Frum’s part here, putting things into perspective.
JimBob // Mar 11, 2010 at 11:01 pm
CIA report: Israel will fall in 20 years
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=88491§ionid=351020202
Ehud Barak warned yesterday that unless Israel helped create a Palestinian state, it would end up losing its Jewish character or becoming undemocratic “and we will turn into an apartheid state”.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/ehud-barak-defies-benjamin-netanyahu-on-threat-to-israel/story-e6frg6so-1225824120520
kevin47 // Mar 12, 2010 at 1:09 am
So, what motivates the anti-Semites who post here? Is this a concerted effort? Also, why aren’t any of the left winger condemning the nonsense coming from the various Bobs?
Carney // Mar 12, 2010 at 9:51 am
Why does there have to be a “Palestinian” state? Why not just hand Gaza over to Egypt, and whatever chunks of the “West Bank” to Jordan. Both have been fairly effective in crushing Islamist crazies.
LFC // Mar 12, 2010 at 10:26 am
So, what motivates the anti-Semites who post here?
Anti-Semites? Really? What blog comments are you reading? They certainly aren’t the ones posted above.
DFL // Mar 12, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Anti-semites on this thread? Who? Ironically, I was reading George Orwell’s compilation of “As I Please” columns in the shower this morning an even in 1944 he found it curious how easy the term anti-semite could be used to smear.
And sinz does have a point. The Germans and Japanese accepted their defeats in World War Two pretty amicably. However, the trouble begins when nations not only do not accept defeat but plan revenge. Germany after World War One is a prime example. Even the France after the Franco-Prussian War is an example. And even the hopelessly overwhelmed Indian tribes stew in resentment.
Carney // Mar 12, 2010 at 3:28 pm
The interesting thing about Germany post World War 2 and France post 1871 is that both ended up with sizable portions of their country outside their borders. That is a guaranteed formula for instability.
World War 2, in a most brutal fashion, ensured via ethnic cleansing that there were no more Germans east of the Oder-Neisse line whose interests a politician could champion. (Austria had had a long enough existence as a separate entity to have developed a national feeling.) More broadly, centuries of warfare in Europe resulted in borders that more closely than ever conformed to the ethnic realities on the ground. A Europe of nation-states contributed greatly to stability and peace.
The major cases were there is or was still instability are the exceptions (Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, etc.) where borders loop together people who want to live apart, or slice through people who prefer to live together.
The secret to peace is self-determination resulting in nation-states. Most conflicts in the world result in a failure to have observed this principle.
ratgov // Mar 12, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Don’t we all know how this is going to end? It seems to me that unless some compromise between the Israel and the Palestine’s is hashed out that placates the population that Jerusalem is going to be hit with a suitcase nuke in the next 20 years. You can’t stop it.
DFL // Mar 12, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Even a relatively conservative group like MEMRI believes that Palestine will have an independent state one day when the Palestinians prove to be mature and peaceful enough to be permitted an independent state. That time has not come yet. And that state will not include East Jerusalem. As Germany forever has lost Pomerania, so has Palestine lost East Jerusalem. But I am sure Israel will allow visits to Muslim Holy sites if the Muslims behave.
Independent // Mar 12, 2010 at 9:14 pm
JimBob at #8 writes: “CIA report: Israel will fall in 20 years”.
CIA report: Saddam has WMDs. That turned out to be reliable, no?
agentprovocateur // Mar 13, 2010 at 12:16 am
How, exactly, is someone antisemtic because he points out Israel’s demographic time bomb? As for ideas like…
“Why does there have to be a ‘Palestinian’ state?”
“But I am sure Israel will allow visits to Muslim Holy sites if the Muslims behave.”
…well, if these are at all representative of the Israeli position (not that I think they nor am I claiming such), don’t expect peace anytime soon.
There Was A West Wing Episode About This, Me Thinks « Around The Sphere // Mar 17, 2010 at 6:38 am
[...] David Frum at FrumForum: He could have made the series even more impressive if he’d started in 1922, when some 2/3rds of the Palestine Mandate was shaved off to make the Kingdom of Transjordan. [...]