Lunar
Atlas Superstar
Posts: 30,404
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« on: October 23, 2008, 02:29:36 AM » |
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So, Israel wants three things ideally:
To be a Democratic (human-rights-respecting), Jewish state that occupies the entire land of Israel.
* They can choose to be democratic and Israeli (geographically), but then they'd have to adjust to their Arab population (both in Palestine and Israel) that is rapidly growing relative to the Jewish population. This would require surrendering their long-term Jewishness (that's a word, crazy),
* They could choose to be Jewish and Israeli (geographically), but then they'd need to deny long-term democratic rights to other religions or violate other human rights (forcing populations out of the country and other generally illiberal actions).
*Or they could choose to be Jewish and democratic, but then they'd no longer be able to to hold onto their ideal of being Israeli geographically, which is important innumerable ways. Generally, both sides of the conflict consider many aspects of the country to be indivisible goods, like control of Jerusalem and various other holy sites. It's kind of hard to say that I'll get control of various holy sites on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays but you can get them on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and then we'll split Sundays, y'know?
I'm actually relatively pro-Israeli compared to everyone I've known except my ethnically Israeli roommate one semester. I'm not all about Palestinian rights, but I find this an interesting dilemma. I think Israel's a noble state that's forced to do unpleasant things because it has these three binary goods that it doesn't want to bargain over (symbolic territory, religion, democracy), and thus it's left somewhere in the middle of it all.
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