The short answer to the question is there will be no Palestine in the west bank and Gaza
The longer answer is a two-state situation is now impossible unless Israel has the political and military will to forcibly remove over 500,000 non-Arabs from the west bank. It is important to understand that the settlers make up a significant part of the IDF and have access to all the IDF weapon, including aircraft. Any attempt to remove the settlers, many of whom are willing to fight to the death, would result in a civil war with a very tragic outcome.
So, Israelis now only have two other options (the status quo is completely unsustainable):
- (1) A single secular state (non-Jews and non-Muslim), where everyone is equal and the settlers either have to give up the land or the state will have to raise taxes and compensate the displaced people. Given the Arabs are mostly poor, the taxes would mostly come from the Jewish citizens. Over time as Jewish people leave because the state is no longer "Jewish" and the Arabs continue to have children, eventually the Jewish will be a large minority. Once dominate minorities never give up power willingly and always resent havering to give up power (current example = Sunni in Iraq).
- Fight to the death. This is problematic for the Israelis because contrary to the myths, they do not have the resources for a long term fight to the death. Wars require three things - cannon fodder (lots of humans to die for the cause), material to be destroyed and lots of wealth to pay for all the stuff. While Israel has a population of about 7 million, a significant number of those are dual nationals and as much as third of the people in Israel would flee any war (because that is just what humans do in war zones). While there would be some people that would move to Israel to fight, that number is probably very small. The Arabs have access to 10X the number of Israelis. Israel has no "magic" weapons and the world is awash in weapons equal to anything Israel has. Also the world has learned how to defeat the IDF by practicing on the USA. The bottom line is the probability of Israel losing is very high, although Israelis are blinded by immense hubris and delusion, so most will not see this until it happens in front of them..
Based on past behavior, I do not expect the Israelis to allow a single secular state but will choose to fight a losing war. In other words, their hyper-inflated egos will not allow them to compromise, so they will lose everything.
The short answer to the question is there will be no Palestine in the west bank and Gaza
The longer answer is a two-state situation is now impossible unless Israel has the political and military will to forcibly remove over 500,000 non-Arabs from the west bank. It is important to understand that the settlers make up a significant part of the IDF and have access to all the IDF weapon, including aircraft. Any attempt to remove the settlers, many of whom are willing to fight to the death, would result in a civil war with a very tragic outcome.
So, Israelis now only have two other options (the status quo is completely unsustainable):
- (1) A single secular state (non-Jews and non-Muslim), where everyone is equal and the settlers either have to give up the land or the state will have to raise taxes and compensate the displaced people. Given the Arabs are mostly poor, the taxes would mostly come from the Jewish citizens. Over time as Jewish people leave because the state is no longer "Jewish" and the Arabs continue to have children, eventually the Jewish will be a large minority. Once dominate minorities never give up power willingly and always resent havering to give up power (current example = Sunni in Iraq).
- Fight to the death. This is problematic for the Israelis because contrary to the myths, they do not have the resources for a long term fight to the death. Wars require three things - cannon fodder (lots of humans to die for the cause), material to be destroyed and lots of wealth to pay for all the stuff. While Israel has a population of about 7 million, a significant number of those are dual nationals and as much as third of the people in Israel would flee any war (because that is just what humans do in war zones). While there would be some people that would move to Israel to fight, that number is probably very small. The Arabs have access to 10X the number of Israelis. Israel has no "magic" weapons and the world is awash in weapons equal to anything Israel has. Also the world has learned how to defeat the IDF by practicing on the USA. The bottom line is the probability of Israel losing is very high, although Israelis are blinded by immense hubris and delusion, so most will not see this until it happens in front of them..
Based on past behavior, I do not expect the Israelis to allow a single secular state but will choose to fight a losing war. In other words, their hyper-inflated egos will not allow them to compromise, so they will lose everything.