I think the best way to describe the world\u2019s response to the latest Gaza conflict is: confused.\u00a0 Who won?\u00a0 Who lost?\u00a0 What did people die for?\u00a0 With the right optic, the conclusions are really quite simple.\u00a0 It\u2019s a lesson as old as the Iliad: wars are not fought over land or money, they\u2019re fought over RIGHTS.\u00a0 The land and money are just spoils.\u00a0 What Israel achieved in this latest episode was the right to do as it will with the occupied territories.<\/p>\n
But let\u2019s back up a bit \u2026 47 years, to be exact.\u00a0 When Israel was REALLY surrounded by sworn enemies on all sides.\u00a0 Enemy governments, with militaries, ready to invade and quash the adolescent state from all sides.\u00a0 The only way to stay alive was to wage a pre-emptive war and push their armies back to safer borders \u2026 annexing Sinai, the west bank of the Jordan River, and the Golan Heights.<\/p>\n
Taking the land, in that case, was the easy part.\u00a0 They took over the territory so they could demilitarize them and give them some breathing room against invading armies.\u00a0 But what to do with it?\u00a0 What to do with the people?\u00a0 This is where we see how important rights are.<\/p>\n
Since 1967, Israel has been stuck in a quandary.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t want to annex the territories, since that would mean granting citizenship to predominantly Arab areas, thereby diluting Israel\u2019s Jewish identity and sovereignty.\u00a0 A double-whammy considering the outright hostility of local Arab states to Israel.\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t just catch-and-release, since that would defeat the purpose of the entire war.\u00a0 So the solution was to just maintain them in some limbo where those living in the occupied territories became refugees.<\/p>\n
Now when it comes to refugees, the UN has some jurisdiction.\u00a0 And this is the same UN that equated Zionism with Racism in 1975 \u2013 it wasn\u2019t exactly friendly to Israel.\u00a0 Israel basically had to suffer the next 47 years dealing with Intifadas, Arafats, a UN that both funded the refugees and readily condemned Israel for its treatment of these refugees at every chance it could.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the other Arab countries refused to grant them citizenship within their own borders.<\/p>\n
Indeed the whole \u201cPalestinian\u201d cause originated in 1967 as a political move against Israel.\u00a0 Where the Arabs couldn\u2019t win militarily, they would win diplomatically.\u00a0 They would goad the refugees to make life as difficult as possible for Israel, and as soon as Israel was forced to respond militarily, they would rush in and call for an immediate end to Israel\u2019s \u201caggression\u201d.\u00a0 A UN friendly to their agenda made sure Israel had no choice but to comply.<\/p>\n
And so It would take several decades \u2013 the Camp David accords, 9-11, an Intifada, Israel\u2019s exit from Gaza, the Arab Spring – to shift the winds of diplomacy into Israel\u2019s favor.\u00a0 The president of the USA no longer talks about Israel as an \u201capartheid state\u201d but talks about its \u201cright to security\u201d.\u00a0 Jordan has dropped its hostility towards Israel, even the UAE talks about the need to normalize relations with Israel.<\/p>\n
But what really sets this conflict apart from the last few is that this is the first one since the Arab Spring and subsequent crushing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.\u00a0 General Sisi has blown up the tunnels leading from Egypt into Gaza, making them completely blockaded.<\/p>\n
So where once Hamas and Gaza had open support from the Arab world, they now were cut off with no way to survive.\u00a0 This is why they unleashed such an irrationally suicidal mission against Israel \u2013 they had no other choice.\u00a0 It was a Hail Mary (so to speak) in hopes that they could spark enough sympathy for their plight that Egypt or somebody similar would break the blockade.<\/p>\n
Instead, whereas in previous conflicts other Arab countries would rush to their aid, this time they stayed back.\u00a0 Yes, we heard of the anti-Semitism and demagoguery flaring through Europe and Turkey and the like, but the relevant fact is no government offered them any official support.\u00a0 No military aid, no diplomatic pressure.\u00a0 The words against Israel were just words.<\/p>\n
So, when Netanyahu says Israel came out victorious, what he means is that Israel set out its mission \u2013 Operation Protective Edge \u2013 and completed it as fully as possible with no need to scale back or cancel.\u00a0 This is a first.\u00a0 To go any farther than that against Hamas would have required invading with ground troops, and that was never a part of this mission.<\/p>\n
This implies Israel now has other rights.\u00a0 And you hear the conversation around Jerusalem shifting to reflect it.\u00a0 For the first time, people are openly discussing programs to help the refugees emigrate to other Arab countries.\u00a0 It\u2019s still in hushed tones, but give it time.\u00a0 The US is preparing a motion in the UN for an international effort to demilitarize Hamas.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Israelis are clamoring for more to be done.\u00a0 More will be done, for sure.\u00a0 The irony of Bibi\u2019s \u201cdecrease\u201d in popularity is that people veered towards his RIGHT.\u00a0 They wanted him to go in immediately and finish them off.<\/p>\n
So give it time. \u00a0Already Netanyahu went and annexed the 1.5 square miles associated with the kidnapping of the three teenagers: a bold move that asserts Israel’s new confidence in its security position. \u00a0The opposition has been vocal — but only a voice.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a ground invasion, a feasible program to incorporate the occupied territories into Israel, abandoning the \u201ctwo-state solution\u201d or the \u201cright of return\u201d: these things were all unheard of just two years ago.\u00a0 Expect to hear these more and more from here on out.<\/p>\n
These are the rights Israel has fought for, and won.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think the best way to describe the world\u2019s response to the latest Gaza conflict is: confused.\u00a0 Who won?\u00a0 Who lost?\u00a0 What did people die for?\u00a0 With the right optic, the conclusions are really quite simple.\u00a0 It\u2019s a lesson as old as the Iliad: wars are not fought over land or money, they\u2019re fought over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[32,34,167,45,169,168,170],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":288,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions\/288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}