Is peace between Arabs and Israelis a lost cause?

[angus]

Same with native speakers of Nederlandse and German.

Nah...written Dutch, yes. Spoken, no.

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What defines linguistic boundaries is, in effect, the custom to refer to speech a and speech b as different languages. Not that such custom has no basis in fact whatsoever, it's just that human nature is digital and human abstract concepts are analog.

platdeutsch.   should have clarified.  Bremerhaven was where I lived for a while, gives me a misimpression of the german language, I suppose.  that dialect has mostly died away anyway. 

I think the same holds for medieval English and medieval Frisian.

So Arafat's cousin has found peace, it seems.  The deepest peace.

[minionofmidas]

Same with native speakers of Nederlandse and German.

Nah...written Dutch, yes. Spoken, no.

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What defines linguistic boundaries is, in effect, the custom to refer to speech a and speech b as different languages. Not that such custom has no basis in fact whatsoever, it's just that human nature is digital and human abstract concepts are analog.

platdeutsch.   should have clarified.  Bremerhaven was where I lived for a while, gives me a misimpression of the german language, I suppose.  that dialect has mostly died away anyway. 

Ah yeah, an educated speaker of Platt will be able to understand both...which highlights the real problem with the mutual intelligibility concept.

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But did he find peace with the Israelis or fellow Palestinians? I was assuming the latter?

[angus]

"Wo ist die Metro?"  for example, in Nederlands is "Waar is de Metro?"  Seems easy, but yeah, once you get inside the Metro and see all those "LET OP!" signs you're probably wondering what they say.  good point.

In english we say "may he rest in peace" at the end of a requiem mass.  I suppose that's where I was going with my comment.  It was mostly sardonic.


do wat du vult, de lüüd snacht doch.

(do whatever you will, because you can't please everyone)

an old platt saying.  Probably not the most useful philosophy for World Peace.

[minionofmidas]

"Wo ist die Metro?"  for example, in Nederlands is "Waar is de Metro?"  Seems easy, but yeah, once you get inside the Metro and see all those "LET OP!" signs you're probably wondering what they say.  good point.

But we don't say Metro, we say U-Bahn.

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I got that, I was just spinning off from there...

[angus]

how far off topic is this?

okay, back on...  seems that just a bare majority say it's not.  I wonder what a scientifically-run poll of the interested parties (israeli and palestinians) would yield? 

I haven't seen such a poll, but Abbas won 62.3% of the vote in the election.  Given that Barghouti got 19.8%, it suggests the palestinians have a clear preference for what they perceive Abbas' view is.  Abbas was the one who fired Arafat's cousin, you'll remember, over allegations of corruption and blackmail.  So you can regard Abbas a hard-liner in terms of Moral Authority.  Sometimes that can mean "peace seeker" and sometimes not.  I'm not sure how the palestinians view him, other than the best alternative between himself and Barghouti.  Anyone have any poll data from Israel/Palestine on this question?

[ag]

Well, the Barghouti (Mustapha) who ran is, if anything, more "peaceful"  than Abbas.  That guy has never done anything violent in his life, if I recall correctly - he is a doctor and a democracy activist. You might be confusing him with the Barghouti who didn't run (Marwan, a cousin in Israeli prison, who actually might have won had he run), but they are politically unrelated.

Abbas didn't win because of anything having to do with the peace process, which was a non-issue in the election. He won, because he was a bureaucratic heir to Arafat. Since the true radicals didn't contest the election, it was, really, a non-election, with Abbas assured of victory from day 1. Barghouti's participation was his quixotic attempt to make it a democratic cotest, that's all.   

Abbas, actually, is less likely to be able to agree to any terms that would have been unacceptable to Arafat than the late chairman was: he simply does not have the authority to survive such an agreement. Remember - he was born in what is now Israel proper. Pretty much his entire personal base of support sits in refugee camps in Lebanon - he does not have anyone personally loyal in the territories. And, since any agreement likely, would not do much for the refugees outside the territories, he really has nobody who would be willing to support him in a crunch. He is only there because he is the heir to Arafat (and he was the heir to Arafat, in part, precisely because he does not have his own base of support, so was never a threat to Arafat), and he is a transitional figure, really.  Unless Israel somehow folds up and gives him everything, including the right of return, he is not, really, going to sign anything. He might stop the violence (as he is doing) - but it would be an armistice, not peace.

The Barghouti who didn't run is, actually, the sort of a guy who might negotiate real peace. Before the 2nd intifada he's shown he actually wants it (on some conditions). He is not averse to violence, but that, actually, makes him credible in the Palestinian eyes - he could sell the sort of the compromise, Abbas never would be able to. He is from the territories - his support is there. He knows Israelis well (for one, he speaks fluent Hebrew).  True, his knowledge, largely, comes from Israeli prisons, but between intifadas he was one of the crucial contact men between the two sides. He is not a real radical in his objectives and he is secular.  He might be unacceptable to Israelis at present, but if they really want peace, they should hope he (or somebody like him) does replace Abbas eventually. The alernative would be the shift of power to the non-secular camp (Hamas, etc.), which would delay peace by a generation.

[MaC]

Of course.  It was so ever since the Jews invaded, and even if they were indigenous, the religiosity of both groups makes violence and bloodletting a near inevitability.

I agree completely. 

[ag]

Of course.  It was so ever since the Jews invaded, and even if they were indigenous, the religiosity of both groups makes violence and bloodletting a near inevitability.

I agree completely. 

On both sides the secular forces are by far the strongest: either Labor or Likud in Israel, Fatah and PLO among the Palestinians.  They religious are on the ascendant on both side, but historically both sides are led by secular sociallists.

[angus]

Abbas, actually, is less likely to be able to agree to any terms that would have been unacceptable to Arafat than the late chairman was: he simply does not have the authority to survive such an agreement.

optimistic fellow, aren't you. 

[ag]

Abbas, actually, is less likely to be able to agree to any terms that would have been unacceptable to Arafat than the late chairman was: he simply does not have the authority to survive such an agreement.

optimistic fellow, aren't you. 

Actually, I am optimistic - Abbas is not anything long-term, he is a transitional figure, we just have to wait (not too long) for a generational change in leadership (on both sides, probably).  And Abbas can do tactically useful things while he is there - he might be able to keep the level of violence somewhat down (hey, Sharon got settlers out of Gaza - I'd call you nuts if you told this to me couple of years ago).  As long as the generation change does not bring crazies to power, on either side, we'd still have progress.

[Hitchabrut]

Of course.  It was so ever since the Jews invaded, and even if they were indigenous, the religiosity of both groups makes violence and bloodletting a near inevitability.

We are "indigenous," in comparison to the Palestinians.

Most Palestinians, actually, have Jewish (or even pre-Jewish) origin - the population movement from the Arabian Peninsular wasn't that large, so most Palestinian Arabs are actually offspring of the converts to Christianity and, much later, Islam. On the other hand, there have been a number of well-documented cases of conversion into Judaism during the diaspora centuries (the three best documented cases of mass conversion were in Yemen, in modern Turkey and in the East European steppes, but there were, probably, a lot more - Christian sources from Spain and Gaul complained about Jewish proselitism through the early middle ages, and there is evidence that Jewish missionaries were quie successful),  so it is not as if your random Israeli Jew is guaranteed to have an ancestor who lived there in the times of ancient Israel. In fact, it is not unlikely, that a random Palestinian's origin of 2000 years is actually more "local" - though I fail to see why that would matter (nor how one would test the hypothesis either way).  You are talking about close cousins - some that stayed and converted, others that left and kept the religion (or even joined the tribe later). 

The key error of Zionism was that the founders chose to ignore the local population.  100 years ago Palestinian Arabs didn't have much intelectual leadership: the area's civil leaders were Turkish, Muslim clerics were, largely, Arabic with an Arabian pedigree, and Christian priests were Greek.  The Palestinians, were, mainly, farmers, without much stake in any existing order. Had the founders of Zionism chose to actually see them, it would not have been hard to declare an ideology of "Semitism", making them leaders of the joint struggle for a Palestinian-Israeli state. In fact, "digging up" the ancient Jewish origin of the local Arabs would have been a lot less fanciful than doing the same for Ethiopians or Indians, or even some Yemenis and Russians. In the absence of competing leadership from within the Palestinian community, a void could have been filled.

Instead, the founders chose to take elements of Palestinian culture (including food - I still laugh when I hear of falafel as "Jewish": sorry, when and where I grew up my great-grandmother made gefilte fish and farshmak, and nobody's heard of falafel; I still hate the taste), but to ignore Palestinian people.  Well, they aren't a mirage and aren't going to disappear, unless somebody is willing to engage in a "final solution". They didn't "come" from anywhere else (mostly). They don't have anywhere to go: they myth of a single Arabic nation is just that - a myth (let me put it this way: Palestinians are to Egyptians what the French are to Italians - mostly the same religion and speaking the language that was the same 1500 years ago).  While the Arabs may choose to stick to the myth, it has few practical consequences other than the preservation of the Koranic language as the written lingua franca (in the same way the long-dead Latin was used through the Middle ages in Catholic Europe).

The good consequence of the last couple decades is that Israeli Jews have started to recognize Palestinian existence, while the Palestinians have been recognizing Israeli Jewish existence. Both sides are still uncomfortable with the mutual discovery, but it is a natural precondition for peace. It will happen (unless one side simply exterminates another - a thing so awful that one fears to contemplate it).

Genetics says otherwise about conversion into Judaism. Palestinians could very well have up to 1/4 Jewish ancestry, but I believe that its population is mostly of Idumean origin.

[ag]

From what I've seen, you take the genetic study you like - you get the result you like (and there is no agreement whatsoever on interpreting any of it).  Given our miserable lack of knowledge of local conditions there 2000 years ago, even when one can agree on formal evidence, the interpretation is up to whoever does the interpreting (in particular, our actual reliable knowledge of the local population back then is near nil).

As for cases of conversion - these are well-studied and well-documented (or, at least, as well-documented as anything whatsoever having to do with the issue).  All the genetic studies can confirm is that a sizeable proportion  of ancestors of certain groups of modern Jews seems likely to have come from the area. Anything about "Idumeans" - about which we know even less than about the Jews - is pretty much a nice story: we barely have any independent evidence of their existence and a few inscritpions to attest that they might have spoken some distinct language; ascribing any relationship to them is a wild speculation. Claiming to distinguish the genetic offspring of two poorly identified, closely related and likely intermingling groups from 2000 years ago is pretty much intellectually dishonest.

Not that it matters for any reason of plausible relevance.

[John Dibble]

I would say causes are generally lost when most people give up on them, and I don't think we've given up on attempting to get peace between these groups so I don't think it's a lost cause.