How did 109 become 131?
How can it be one state when West Bank, Gaza, and Israel are unwilling to resolve their differences to join together? What is your formula for bringing them together?
Discussion
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The Romans achieved this. The Mamelukes and Ottomans as well. No mystery to it.
Decentralised governance, respect for property rights, and due attention by the higher levels of government to settling such disputes as arose between communities.
The rivers of Western aid have instead incentivised the opposite behaviours, flooding Israel with unearned money only when they initiate large-scale violence. It won't be simple or quick to reverse the harm we have caused with our "aid".
Happily, the native traditions can be built on. I was heartened to learn that the PLO / PA government reserves a seat for Samaritan Jews, and always has.
Fix the incentives => fix the cultures.
The Romans under Theodosius I and Theodosius II:
a) banned interrmarriage between Christians and Jews
b) legally excluded them from serving in public offices- civilian and military.( exception was tax collection)
c) Made conversion to Judaism illegal.
Under Justinian the Byzantine Romans continued to legally ban the construction of new synagogues.
With the Ottomans, Jewish communities were expected to pay the jizya- a protection payment levied on a non-muslim for living in the Ottoman Empire.
Not to mention:
a. the Damascus affair of 1840
b. The 1828 Baghdad massacre of the Jews
c.1864 massacre of Jews in Marrakech and Fezin Morocco
d. Targeting of Jews in Libya between 1860 and 1897- where synagogues were ransacked and Jewish individuals killed.
On the Mamluks, they don't fair any better especially as the state over time became increasingly brutal in its treatment of non-Muslims under its rule.
The 'Samaritan Jews' are a tiny religious group- that is used as more advertisement of 'dhimmitude'. A better way to examine if the government of West Bank is actually capable of being tolerant, is if they would be happy to accept Hindus and Buddhists having similar rights to others in their society.
Also the 'Samaritan Jews' have been in conflict with mainstream Judaism, and have been for a long time. So much so, that the Samaritans aren't recognized as Jews but as a separate religious grouping. West Bank giving them representation means nothing. They have no real power to speak of in the West Bank.
With all that being said the idea you can just drop a concept such as decentralized governance for example, into that region and expect it'll work is wrong. The biggest reason is the culture. Decentralization- especially in the modern era, is borne out of the Anglo-Protestant dissenting movement. Different cultures even if they're share some similarities produce different results.
In Israel the government cannot be decentralized because it is 'expected' to protect Jewish communities in that land. That's why the overwhelmingly majority of land is controlled by the government, leading to a situation where people get land on a long term lease.
Theodosius and Theodosius II set up no bureaucracy to enforce those laws, so they were "demonstrative" only.
The Ottomans didn't until the very end of their rule, relying on the "millet" system of community self-rule. Two massacres a thousand km apart is strikingly peaceful compared to Europe at that time, and proof the system worked,
Decentralised governance is assuredly not an Anglo-Protestant thing, it has deep roots in Middle Eastern pastoralist cultures.
To be honest, that shows a shocking lack of familiarity with the region's history.
Israel's state-centered land ownership via QANGOs is a very colonial-era imposition.
How demonstrative was it, if an emperor such as Theodosius II prohibits a certain people from getting into lucrative public office, and under his reign there was "...significant instances of anti-Jewish violence, often led by Christian bishops in cities such as Alexandria and Edessa."
The Byzantines, whilst they didn't build a Nazi style bureaucracy to go against the Jews, instead they just banned them -for the most part, from joining the imperial bureaucracy.
Modern day calls for decentralized governance in the Middle East seem to romanticise the ancient pastoral communities. And it always made to look like it's the solution for the problems in the Middle East. That is a mistake, as whenever there is talk about doing it in a practical sense , it means federalism. Federalism- especially in its modern form comes out of the Anglo Protestant dissenting movement, always ends up producing a "..severe allergic response" to people in the Middle East " because it is always seen a gateway to separatism and challenges to territorial integrity.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3947268
Please see a recent example in Syria of how calls for federalism are perceived by the locals:
In any case decentralization means many things to different people, but the idea of federalism just ends up getting rejected in favour of integration, as in the case of the Iraqi Kurds.
The Ottoman millet system was a means of integrating different confessional groups under their rule, not as a way to devolve power to minority groups.
For example "... non-Muslims were under the jurisdiction of Islamic courts..." and the "claim that non-muslim communities had their courts is...a case of misrepresentation."
Under the Ottomans, there was to be no other law outside of Islamic Law, that was allowed to be administered because it would "...conflict with the authorities of the Islamic courts." The autonomy of minority groups was restricted, and to the extent there was 'freedom' in was minor areas-religious affairs, education and family law', that the central Ottoman state didn't think it was profitable to interfere in.
In essence the real intention of the millet system was '...to secure the loyalty of the conquered non-Muslim peoples by binding their religious leaders to the Ottoman state.'
https://archive.org/details/islamicsocietywe0001gibb_r0l3
https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa56660/Description#tabnav
By "the locals", you mean population segments who have bought into 1800s-style european Romantic nationalism after incessant propaganda.
Other than that, we agree...and all of these systems were less bigoted, less divisive and less racist than modern Israel is internally.
Never mind how it treats its non-citizen subjects and neighbours.
The Middle East can do better, and always has except when Westerners pour aid $$$ in to reward the worst actors.
The last 150 years of the Ottoman Empire was an ever increasing nightmare for minority groups such as the Assyrian Christians, Jews, Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Shia Muslims etc'.
The idea that minority groups would want to go their own way is not propaganda especially as the Ottoman state post 1770, was a mess. It was incapable of preventing a foreign invasion whilst also engaging in massacres on its own subjects.
How would you compare Israel's system to its neighbours? How do those nieghbours deal with minority religious groups? Do their neighbours offer naturalization to individuals who are a part of minority religious groups?
Now we're reaching some common ground.
Yes, especially from the 1850s, the Ottoman Empire changed, centralised, and bureaucratised, adopted elements of European nationalism into its ideology, and became a lot more like its Absolutist Western peers. This was resisted internally, and gravely weakened the society's ability to resist outside forces.
Ottoman successor states (Israel's neighbours) have undergone the same process since WW2, with funding and encouragement from the US, former USSR, and "Bretton Woods" international institutions. And frequent coups and invasions whenever they stalled or changed direction.
The US government (with partners Turkey and Ukraine, and billions of dollars in "aid") managed to overthrow Syria's unpleasant government and replace it with a literal Al Qaeda head-chopper.
Said head-chopper has had sanctions lifted for the first time since 1979, and is recieving funding from the EU, for being a fawning Israel admirer and promoter of fitna.
Blaming native Semites for Western policy outcomes is antisemitism.
You referred to Israel's system as being racist and divisive.
Which neighboring country would you say has a system that you would hold up as being neither racist nor divisive?
How does that neighbouring country deal with minority religious groups?
Does it offer naturalization to individuals who are a part of minority religious groups?
On the Ottomans:
Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and Syria took place between 1798 and 1801.
The modernization reforms started in 1839.
The empire was already weak, as it suffered from a similar problem the Byzantine Romans experienced, having to be in conflict with multiple rivals on multiple flanks.
On Syria:
Assad's government was always going to fall. The question was when his government would collapse not if. He only 'won' the civil war because of the ground troops provided to his side by Iran.
Assad from 2019 onwards essentially became in practice, the mayor of Damascus. He couldn't control Syria.
Ahmed Al-Sharaa is not a friend with Israel.
He broke away from both isis and Al Qaeda. He is at war with both of them. In particular Isis have said recently their conflict with him is on the level of methodology, creed- essentially between Islam or 'democracy'.
You are repeating yourself, Augustus. And without being able to rebutt any of my points.
I am very glad I seem to have inherited the "intuitive grasp of compound interest" without the "self-pitying hypocrisy".
I reworded the questions because it seemed to me that you didn't even come close to answering my questions the first time around.