Israel Palistine Conflict

[Dietrich]

Palestine and Israel should both allowed to exist but make Jerusalem an internationally owned territory to reduce the fighting. The Jews and Muslims fight because they both want to own the place. If neither own it and it's in international control they wouldn't fight over it it. 

 

This was tried after World War I with Danzig/Gdansk, the Saarland, and Memel. It didn't work.

 

The issue is that Jerusalem is inhabited by Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, not cosmopolitan "citizens of the world"; these are very real people with a very real idea of what they want to happen to Jerusalem, and most of them don't want it to be placed under international control. They either want it divided in half (like East/West Berlin) or annexed fully to their respective country, and the same could be said of the Jews and Arabs outside of Jerusalem. This idea seems nice from an outside perspective - if neither of them has it, then neither one can complain about the other one having it, right? - but nobody with any real stake in the issue wants this to happen.

 

Ideally, I think that Israel should dismantle its settlements (by force if necessary; settlers are criminals, not innocent people) and withdraw to its pre-1967 borders, allowing for a two-state solution; this is more than fair to the Israelis. Realistically, though, I think that the unfortunate fact is that Israel is the dominant force in Israel-Palestine, the settlements will only continue to grow in size and number as time goes on, and sooner or later it will be feasible for the Israeli government to force the Palestinian government to accept a one-state solution. The only way to prevent this is international intervention, but Israel is supremely secure under the protection of nuclear weapons and U.S. sponsorship, so that's extremely unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future.