>If it was simply to get their own state surely they could have achieved it by now
The PLO has accepted a two-state solution since 1981, for nearly 44 years. This is what Avner Yaniv called the "peace offensive", and is especially dangerous because it weakens Israeli attempts to deny a Palestinian state. The solution to this is simple: provocation to encourage extremist elements. Of course in 1982 Israel went a bit further and used provocation to set a precedent to invade Lebanon in an attempt to destroy the PLO entirely.
>Which means returning to their original homes (I don't see how you could do that without throwing out the Jewish 'colonists').
This is not what the right to return is. This is what Amnesty has to say about return:
>Where possible, Palestinians should be able to return to their original home or lands. If this is not possible -- because they no longer exist, have been converted to other uses, or because of a valid competing claim -- they should be allowed to return to the vicinity of their original home.
"Valid competing claim" includes the modern-day owner of the home.
So Amnesty decides for the Palestinians what the right of return means? Nice. Yeah, sounds super realistic that's what Hamas means when they talk about the right of return.
Even more concerning is the Israeli tech industry's role. For example, this is what is said in a Hebrew article about Bright Data (formerly Luminati), which AFAIK owns one of the largest (legal) pools of residential IP addresses and is demonstrably capable of making a massive amount of fake social media accounts for the purposes of scraping at scale (translated by Claude):
>The Israeli company Bright Data developed the TrendTrack system for promoting social intervention in support of Israel, providing tools to identify, report, and respond to posts gaining traction on social media. As a company specializing in global collection of public information from the internet, Bright Data has extensive infrastructure and public data collection capabilities. Based on these, they rapidly created massive databases that form the foundation for the new system, which aims to assist Israeli advocacy efforts during this difficult time.
Interestingly the same company also helps in investigation of state-sponsored influencing campaigns of Western adversaries (China, Russia, and Iran).
>Israel doesn't want to control Gaza. Israel want to coexist peacefully with it and has been willing to go very far and take risks to achieve that.
I think it's good to apply Mearsheimer's realist thinking here, and the intention is obviously clear that Israel does not want peace with Gaza as that would require recognition of a Palestinian state as the PLO had wanted since the 70s, which is a non-starter. Instead, as Israel has recognized, it is in its best interest to ethnically cleanse Gaza, either through outright murder of tens of thousands of civilians or rendering the strip uninhabitable to force the Gazans out. Many Gazans live in tents since their homes were destroyed by the Israeli military, and I doubt Israel will allow for any meaningful reconstruction once the war on Gaza is over, and will probably welcome the remaining Gazans fleeing the inhospitable conditions.
This will probably also open up space for new settlements in Gaza that many politicians have already started proposing.
You have to realize that most Israelis (~75%, and this figure includes Arabs) are in favour of the war, and IIRC half are in favour of expelling the Arabs altogether. I don't think we'd see much objection to this course of events within Israel itself.
>The fact that Jordan and Egypt has not seen a single attack after they stopped attacking Israel is well known.
It is interesting you mention this, because during the Israeli occupation of the Sinai penninsula in 1967, Egypt attempted to resolve the issue diplomatically, mediated by Gunnar Jarring. Their request was simply the Sinai in return for recognition of Israel and cessation of hostilities. Israel refused these conditions. Egypt eventually attacked in October 1973 and (much to Israel's surprise) was able to retake enough of the Sinai to call Israel's military domination into question. I think Rabin said that Egypt was enough of a threat that it needed to be neutralized, which is what the Camp David Accords did. It was literally through attacking Israel that Egypt was able to achieve the diplomatic solution it wanted from the start.
>Israel wanted Gaza to succeed and forcefully removed their own people
The Palestinians materially gained nothing from disengagement (in fact, they were blockaded and bombed during Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense despite the "disengagement"), but the Israelis were able to alleviate enough American pressure for a peace process that could potentially result in Palestinian statehood. Not to mention a costly military occupation could be stopped and Jewish settlements in one of the most densely populated regions of the world (i.e. a disaster waiting to happen) could be dismantled.
I don't think benevolence towards Gazans had any role in the decision for disengagement, considering the overall Israeli indifference towards the suffering of the Gazans.
>Last time it was on the table the deal was so good PLO realized it could be forced into a real two state solution with peace and permanent borders.
This is not true. I am not interested in whatever labels the Israeli or Palestinians might ascribe to their agreements. There has never been an instance where the PLO was offered something that resembles a modern, economically and politically independent nation-state. The closest was in 2001 under Bill Clinton, but Israel refused the conditions set by Clinton while the PLO accepted them.
>Let's also for completeness include that PLO want to eradicate Israel, and are brazen enough to have it in their official charter.
Again, much like the Likud party's own charter, from a realist perspective this is irrelevant. What's relevant is what both parties are realistically capable of doing, and the balance of power clearly favours Israel.
> ed, it is in its best interest to ethnically cleanse Gaza,
That was not Israel’s policy back in 2006. Hamas had zero interest in coexistence or the wellbeing (or lives) of the people living in Gaza. The current situation is a direct outcome of that.
I mean.. yes, if the only choice is between removing the entire population of Gaza and giving it back to Hamas it’s not that surprising that most Israeli’s are picking the first option.
I don't think the evidence favors this conclusion. Their actions immediately following 2006 suggests they definitely had quite a bit of interest - they enforced a ceasefire after 2006 (also punishing other groups that attempted to break it), and according to former President Carter were willing to accept a 2-state solution if the Palestinians democratically approved it. This was all put on hold after Cast Lead, which aligns with the Israeli policy of denying a two-state solution.
The only piece of evidence I can think of that counters this is Hamas' charter, which IIRC calls for the creation of a Palestinian state in all of former Mandatory Palestine which would imply the destruction of Israel. But even then, based on the pragmatism demonstrated above (and the openness to a two-state solution), the Hamas leadership were rational enough to realize this goal could not be achieved.
I think tourism, especially in countries that rely on tightly controlling the experience, can tell you very little about the function of the country itself.
I've had many people say the same to me about Nepal, ignorant of the high youth unemployment rate, the corrupt politicians, the complete lack of any basic infrastructure (schools, transportation, electricity, etc.) in some areas, or the astronomically high number of people leaving to work as migrant labourers in countries that are the absolute worst in the world when it comes to labour rights.
None of these problems are visible to you as a visitor. This is especially true if you stick to areas that are heavily trafficked by tourists which tend to be rich enough to cater to their needs.
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amritananda 1 day ago | parent | context | flag | on: Bhutan, after prioritizing happiness, now faces an...
I think tourism, especially in countries that rely on tightly controlling the experience, can tell you very little about the function of the country itself.
Fully agree. Much of these observations were from peering out of the van we were in, or casual chats with our guide/hotel employees etc. Coming from Mumbai, there were some “telltale” (If you can call it that) signs. For example do people heat the house, or do they only heat themselves? If home heating, is it electric or burning wood or some other fuel? A lot of homes reminded me of the chawls and 2 storey tarp “kuccha” homes.
IMO also a good exploration of the ethnic cleansing of Lhotsampa and the subsequent hardships faced by the refugees is The Lhotsampa People of Bhutan, edited by Venkat Pulla.
China's Great Firewall is known actively detect and block most VPN protocols and things like SSH tunneling. There are custom protocols designed to camouflage traffic, but they require apps (e.g. Shadowrocket for iOS) which are, surprise, unavailable on the Chinese App Store. IIRC the same sort of blocking also happens in Iran as well.
Program synthesis is also pretty much equivalent to generating proofs of propositions by the Curry-Howard Isomorphism. There was a post from a few days ago about using ML to generate proofs in Lean. I'm sure there's ongoing research to do the same thing with synthesis (which imo is probably going to be more effective at pruning the search space than brute force).
The PLO has accepted a two-state solution since 1981, for nearly 44 years. This is what Avner Yaniv called the "peace offensive", and is especially dangerous because it weakens Israeli attempts to deny a Palestinian state. The solution to this is simple: provocation to encourage extremist elements. Of course in 1982 Israel went a bit further and used provocation to set a precedent to invade Lebanon in an attempt to destroy the PLO entirely.
>Which means returning to their original homes (I don't see how you could do that without throwing out the Jewish 'colonists').
This is not what the right to return is. This is what Amnesty has to say about return:
>Where possible, Palestinians should be able to return to their original home or lands. If this is not possible -- because they no longer exist, have been converted to other uses, or because of a valid competing claim -- they should be allowed to return to the vicinity of their original home.
"Valid competing claim" includes the modern-day owner of the home.