"...You constantly rely on the Jew's recapture of 'their spiritual and ancestral homeland after so many centuries'..."
Indeed I do, George; not as a Legal argument, but as an Emotional argument; designed to portray the visceral, emotional investment of Judaism in the recapture of the Holy Land.
"...without once telling us why Jews alone, among all nations of the world, should be allowed to reconquer lands their ancestor's pillaged thousands of years ago..."
Actually, George, I've done just that, time and again, over time, but, my own response is:
The Jews ruled the Holy Land for more than a thousand years, before they lost it.
The West has given Israel a 'free pass' pertaining to the recapture of the Holy Land
as a penance for perpetrating and allowing the Holocaust - a collective purging of guilt.
The Muslim-Arabs of Palestine are simply in-the-way.
It is not strictly Legal in all respects.
It is not strictly Fair in all respects.
But 'Fair' and 'Legal' have very little to do with emotion-laden Western Penance and Guilt-Purging, and the realizing of 1900-year-old Jewish dreams of re-taking their old Homeland.
It is, however, strictly speaking, Reality.
A Reality that is not going to change.
Unlike a great many of our pro-Israeli colleagues, I do not bother to fuss overly-much about International Law, which is only sporadically and inconsistently applied over the globe and across the decades.
I focus upon Reality, and whether that Reality is likely to change or not in the foreseeable future.
Personally, I do not see 'change' in that context, within our own lifetimes, or well beyond.
"...you also repeatedly fail to mention the fact that Arabs have been the majority in historical Palestine for the most recent millennium..."
I am fairly certain that I have addressed this elsewhere, repeatedly, over time, but, just for grins-and-giggles, here it is again, my own amateurish, pissant opinion on the subject...
I do not 'fail to mention' prior Arab ownership... as a matter of fact, I'm perfectly comfortable acknowledging it without bias or excuses.
I acknowledge that the Jews of Palestine - both Sabra and immigrants - were buying-up land left-and-right from the Arabs for decades - and that eventually the Arabs grew alarmed at the large increases in land that the Jews controlled and the (by then) visibly shrinking amount of land that the Arabs controlled, and, at that point, The Troubles began.
I also freely acknowledge that the Muslim-Arabs of Palestine fled in huge numbers, and were also ejected in fairly sizable numbers, from their lands, at the time of the 1948 Declaration of Israeli Statehood and Independence, and that once the Muslim-Arabs had abandoned their lands, and sided with the invading Arab-neighbor armies, that the Jews had all the excuse they needed, to seize those Muslim-Arab lands as spoils of war, with their ownership permanently transferred to the Jews.
I further freely acknowledge that the displaced Muslim-Arabs of Palestine were never allowed to return to those lands, because the Jews realized that, once blood had been spilled on a grand scale (as it was in 1948-1949, and beyond) that the Arabs could never be trusted again, to live amongst the Jews, on newly-seized Jewish lands, in peace.
I do not pretend that the seizure of land was 'legal' or 'fair', and I do not burden myself with complex exercises in the applicability of international law precept A or B or C, or matters of precedence and jurisdiction, or any of that.
I merely contend that the Jews took those lands away from the Muslim-Arabs of Palestine by force of arms and sustained and expanded upon them by acquiring other spoils of war through victory on the battlefield after Muslim-Arab neighbor-states had threatened or attacked the Jews, and that the Jews are never, ever going to give them back.
Vae victus.
Woe to the vanquished.
Although it's far less demanding, intellectually, and although I, too, enjoy a good rumble over the legalities and jurisdiction, etc. in connection with The Troubles from time to time, I don't burden myself with an over-reliance upon something that isn't fully operative within the domain of Reality, as it pertains to Israel, given The West and its multi-decade, multi-generational 'Mea Culpa' being extended to the Jews. Maybe The West will grow tired of it in another 50 or 100 years and stop cutting Israel so much slack, but, by then, the Israelis will probably have recaptured all of Eretz Yisrael and it won't matter any longer.
"...As far as birthrates are concerned, it seems likely there will be millions of Jews and millions of Arabs living between the River and the sea for generations to come..."
And that is where we differ. I see the West Bank and Gaza being flushed of Muslim-Arabs within the next 20 years; pushed across the borders into Jordan and Lebanon.
From the Israelis' vantage point, it's the only thing left to do, in the long run; I don't think there are any other answers that can be sustained over time.
And, yes, we've all been through the 'that will never be allowed' point and counterpointing before; some folks hold that the Muslims would never permit that; I perceive that the Muslims won't be able to stop it, and, in the end, are tired of shedding blood for the Palestinians; call it Donor Exhaustion; they want this over as much as most others do.
"...Neither nation will be able to impose radical politics via the ballot box, and the IDF isn't likely to become an equal opportunity employer any time soon..."
That is why the Arabs won't have a crack at the Israeli ballot box. They will be held outside the borders (literal and figurative) of Israel and never attain a common citizenship. It's not fair, but that's the way it's going to play out, I believe.
"...There's less than a snowball's chance in hell that an apartheid state will be tolerated in Palestine in place of a one or two-state solution, and maybe some Jews are going to have to learn they are simply not that special or go back where they came from."
There will be no need for an Apartheid State if the Muslim-Arabs of Palestine are expelled across the borders into Jordan and Lebanon.
With no large-scale population other than Jews-Israelis within the borders of Eretz Yisrael, the internal barrier-walls come down, and all traces of Separation Between Warring Internal Factions disappears - goodbye, misplaced charges of Apartheid.
That solves all of the Israelis major Internal Problems and Future Prospects for internal tranquility.
It cuts the Gordian Knot.
With only minimal risk and blowback if done piecemeal, and for very little long-term cost and much long-term advantage, in the final analysis.
A lot of folks think that's a prediction that is entirely full of shit, or crackpot at best, and serve-up protestations of 'genocide' or - at the very least - ethnic cleansing of a geographic area - with this last bit (cleansing) closer to the truth than many other descriptions.
Can't say as I blame 'em for either discounting the possibility, or playing the 'cleansing' card during the course of an argument, or hoping-against-hope that it won't come to that, for humanitarian reasons.
It
IS radical, isn't it, and doesn't 'sit well' with a lot of good people of all political persuasions, but, in the long run, Expulsion is
NOT Extermination, and can be softened by providing Wergeld (pay-off money) and logistics and humanitarian assistance to the very people that they are Expelling.
Unfortunately for the Muslim-Arab Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, when you get right down to where the bear shits in the woods - when you get right down to the bottom line - Expulsion and Annexation is the
ONLY Trump Card that the Israelis
CAN use, in order to
WIN the poker game.
And there's far too much at-stake, from the Jewish perspective, to contemplate
losing the game.
Or so it seems, to this observer.
I could be entirely full of shit with this prediction, but, I gotta tell ya the truth, I think it's going to come to that, and sooner than most folks would believe possible.
It's the only answer that completes the recapture of Eretz Yisrael and makes the Jewish State sustainable and defensible in a long-term multi-generational sense.
