Just to be fair, Israel itself is considered illegitimate by those parties. I doubt most democracies would let parties that are staunchly anti-state run, but Israel, for some reason, does.
Canada has a federal party since 1991, the Bloc Québécois, "devoted to Quebecois nationalism, social democracy, and the promotion of Quebecois sovereignty."[0] They're explicitly separatist by policy. Quebec's last attempt at attaining sovereignty was a provincial referendum in 1995 that lost by 0.5%. Had it succeeded, the provincial gov't was prepared to declare full independence the next day.
As a Canadian I'd also say that having such a party is a huge boon to the country. Separatists are going to separatist - your choice, as a nation, is whether to allow them to organize and have their voices heard within the system of politics or whether to force them to resort to violence and underground organization. Those underground separatist groups will always exist but giving formal political representation to the desire for separation (even if it isn't granted) can help defuse extremism and provide better methods for airing grievances.
The modern BQ is much more tame than the BQ of thirty years prior - they've mainly morphed into a party focused on franophone rights within Canada and the maintenance of QC labor rights. So while they specifically no longer represent that separatist movement as directly there are other groups focused on prairie separatism that are a better modern parallel.
Hadash is a communist party, first and foremost. But the Arab parties - Balad, Raam, Taal - they are advocating for Palestinian "right of return" and turning Israel into a bi-national state, therefore ending what we know as Israel today.
> hardly in the way that could be described as the destruction of the state
It would be a destruction of the nation-state of Israel as a state for the Israeli, predeominantly Jewish, nation.
> Abolishing Jim Crow in the south hardly destroyed the south
It certainly felt that way to them! Strongly enough that they fought a war over it. (EDIT: Nobody went to war over Jim Crow. They did over slavery. Jim Crow was basically an attempt to regain part of what was lost in the war. Put another way, even a war--alone--is not enough.)
That's the point. The single-state solution, practically, would require a war. I know we pulled out of Afghanistan. But I thought we'd have a bigger gap before another group of Westerners decided they like drawing borders in the Middle East, and that anyone who disagrees with them--including the people on the ground--should be violently forced to comply.
> It would be a destruction of the nation of Israel as the people of Israel see it.
Just like the people in my home states of Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee thought that ending Jim Crow would destroy them. They were wrong, just as the people of Israel would be wrong.
> It certainly felt that way to them! Strongly enough that they fought a war over it.
No war was fought over the end of Jim Crow.
> That's the point. The single-state solution, practically, would require a war. I know we pulled out of Afghanistan.
At the moment, probably. That can change.
> But I thought we'd have a bigger gap before another group of Westerners decided they like drawing borders in the Middle East, and that anyone who disagrees with them--including the people on the ground--should be violently forced to comply.
Those Knesset members are not asking western intervention to end their ethnostate.
> They were wrong, just as the people of Israel would be wrong.
They may be. Maybe India and Pakistan could peacefully reünify, too. I'm doubtful. But that matters less than the people there being very much more doubtful.
> No war was fought over the end of Jim Crow
Sorry, fair enough. Ending Jim Crow wasn't a credible threat to the South at that time. The war had already been fought.
> At the moment, probably. That can change
Sure. But sentiment has to shift before one can peacefully move borders.
> Those Knesset members are not asking western intervention to end their ethnostate
I've lost your argument. (Also, ethnostate and nation-state are practically synonymous.)
The war for a single state is already happening mind you, and westerners are already involved and influential in it. i disagree that there is now an option to decide now that we dont want to draw borders, only whether we're satisfied with the new borders or not.
Not a real argument, but I don't think I can come up with a real argument for your case, so fair enough.
Show me a single case where previously-warring nations peacefully unified (i.e. not through conquest or subjugation)? Poland-Lithuania and England-Scotland are the only two I can think of.
Because the counterexample--multiethnic nations that split along national-identity lines--is far more frequent since the age of conquest. Former Yugoslavia. Pre-Partition India. Sudan. Ethiopia. Algeria.
Multiethnicisim is hard. Where it works, it happened through immigration. Combining previously-warring nations under one roof is basically just assisted civil war.
Mostly the ones where multinationality has been reduced to a different set of cuisines. If you look around the Middle East region, then every multiethnic state there has had civil wars recently.
It’s borderline bigoted to force your values onto a completely different population that’s Islamist, tribal and radicalized. After Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza people thought it would be a good idea to hold elections there. Hamas, the Palestinian equivalent of ISIS, won. There haven’t been elections since. In the West Bank, no PA elections since 2005 because the PLO feared Hamas would win there too.
> name all the democratic states which have Arab culture
This is a genuine pro-Israeli argument. It’s not a valid anti-Arab one.
How many extraction-economy former colonies have successfully democratised? (Extraction being the sole or overwhelming economic sector.) Because that’s the common link between e.g. Central Asia and the Arab world.
Sorry, I meant to just characterise the argument, not its speaker. The absence of Arab democracies doesn't have a well-established predictive mechanism that would allow us to predict a Gazan democracy should fail. It does highlight a unique aspect of Israel in its region.
For rule of the people (democracy) to work, certain base values and education are necessary. I implore you to research this, it is discussed often by both Arabs (who understand Arab culture) and Westerner scholars (who do not).
Sure, no problem, I actually had this conversation with somebody a few months ago. He's an Israeli Arab, not a Gazan Arab, but they are both Sunni Muslims. The conversation was in Hebrew, though I often speak with Arabs in Arabic as well. I spend much time interested in their culture and language - Israelis and Westerners know almost nothing about them.
Firstly, legal authority lies only with God. Not with man, as in Jewish and Christian societies (his comparison, not mine, and yes he mentioned Christians for some reason even though his town does not have Christians). There is no decision of man about what is permitted and what is not - even if the majority in a democracy want it. Allah has revealed what is good and just for man, even though he emboldened man with other desires and temptations.
Another problem with democracy in Arab society (not Muslim society as the previous paragraph dealt with) is how would voting even work. Two women's votes would be needed for every man's votes. He specifically said that this is an Arab problem, not a Muslim problem. And he says that women should not vote anyway, nor should children whose father is still alive, because they can only vote for who the father or husband says. Secret voting does not change that.
Another problem is Jews will manipulate the voting, or the results. Or any voting results the party doesn't like, will be blamed on Jewish intervention. I think he means Israeli intervention but those are his words.
That's just from some store owner I was talking to. You can choose to decide that he doesn't represent anybody. But he is a Sunni Muslim who lives a half hour drive from Gaza city.
I understand all this very well. What I don't agree with is that the solution to this problem is to not give them any say in their government. The solution is education, and that doesn't happen when they're starved and bombed. Analogously, the slaves freed in the US Civil War were mostly illiterate and had been kept so by law. It is very difficult to run a democracy with an illiterate electorate, but nobody would suggest that we just throw up our hands and give up on having the government represent the will of the people.
hamas killed or tortured into submission all opposition in gaza.
palestinian authority stopped having elections as well. because hamas will win. latest polling (in link that i sent you in other thread) shows hamas polling at 40+%
got mistaken with previous polls. hamas not 40+ but 30+. 10 points higher than fatah and in case those that don't know who they vote for, won't vote - i guess hamas gets majority.
But PA promised to France/UK/Canada/Australia that Hamas wouldn't be allowed to participate in elections, so...
Thank you. I don't have a sense for the credibility of the poll.
But taking their numbers at face value, we have 58% of Gaza residents saying Hamas was incorrect to launch its 7 October offensive. (Surprisingly, 59% in the West Bank say it was correct. That's problematic.)
Problematically, too, is the 2/3rds of respondents in Gaza who oppose Hamas disarming. Based on this survey, which again, I have zero ability to judge in terms of accuracy, there would need to be a long civic transition to democratic self-rule while new political parties are given a safe space to form and grow.
They are not parties considering Israel illegitimate nor are they calling for the destruction of Israel. They are parties calling for a two-state solution, and consider the globally-recognized-as-illegal settlements as illegitimate i.e. they call the ever expanding borders of Israel as illegitimate.
If you were to make them illegal, you're basically legally disenfranchising 25% of Israel's population.
