Will lots of electricity be lost in transmission? Also, this article is very scant on information, why is this project mutually beneficial for Greece, Cyprus and Israel? I understand a bit the other commenter who thinks it's in order to poke Turkey in the eye.
“In 2015, the EAC generated a total of 4,128 GWh of electricity consuming 947,226 tonnes of fuel costing €288,632,000. Maximum demand in the areas controlled by the Republic of Cyprus reached 939 MW. A total of 2.0 GWh of the produced electricity in 2015 valued €240,000 ended up in the area occupied by Turkey and no money could be collected for it.”
I guess that might stop once Cyprus can export power to the EU (but I also wonder why they would produce such excessive amounts of electricity. Could be to keep the peace, because they promised the UN, or something similar?)
The amount that couldn't be collected is less than 1% of the total generation. So my guess is it's due to decades old infrastructure where lines just happen to cross over to where the dividing line ended up. Something similar happened in Berlin, where two West Berlin train lines happened to pass through East Berlin briefly, and were allowed to continue to do so even after the wall went up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_U-Bahn
I can easily see the utility deciding that it's easier and cheaper to just let a small bit of power get stolen than incur the costs of changing that infrastructure, as well as the PR costs of cutting off that power. Overall grid losses are likely to be 5% or so anyway.
> Certainly with more and more power coming from renewables that can’t be switched on or off at will, that’s a gain for all.
Just today there was a story in the news here in Norway how the windmills in Sweden is causing a massive price disparity between north and south of Norway, due to lack of transmission capability.
These days the price disparity can be over 50%, and Sweden is planning to massively expand their windmill generation up north.
Yeah, our "north-south" infrastructure is behind and it will take about 20 years to fully resolve, sorry it impacts you Norway!
:)
Sweden has an interesting problem where we want to build more wind power, but it can only really be done in the north at scale, but then the transmission capacity down south is missing, and that's where all the consumers are!
For offshore wind farms, typically only very long export cables are HVDC, or long interconnector cables. Inter-array and export cables up to around 100km or so are AC.
Those two examples are rather small. Not even at the level of supergrid interconnectors proposed, or built elsewhere.
Technology improves and its availability and costs change.
In this case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulated-gate_bipolar_transis... which appear everywhere from induction cooking fields/plates in household appliances to power electronics in electric cars and locomotives, upwards to so called smart- or super-grids(in their endpoints/substations). I'm sure there are even more applications of the enabling IGBTs which I'm unaware of.
Saltwater is a very poor dielectric between wires (it is a high resistance conductor actually). An AC line would have a low efficiency because the dissolved ions transport a leak current between the wires. Around a DC line, electric field just generates an ion gradient once when powered on (and assuming the insulation doesn't experience electrolysis).
Long AC lines in air also have a finite resistance between wires, but it is much higher and not much of a concern.
They can work without a return wire. It sounds like this system is designed to be able to work that way in case of faults:
>The use of two HVDC cables will provide the link between all four sites. The use of two cables constitutes
the bipolar operation of the project. A return path through earth, however, is provided in order to allow for
the reinstatement of rated or half-rated power transfer through converter switching, in case of faults and
disconnections of one of the two 500MW elements of the converter, or one of the two HVDC cable
links.
What it creates is induction currents in the surrounding water, with dissolved ions being pulled this way and that, against drag of the water, as the fields vary.
On DC lines, fields don't vary (much) so induce negligibly little currents.
In fresh water, there are fewer dissolved ions, but not none. Losses are less.
In perfectly pure water, small losses would come from swinging water molecules to point this way and that. Raindrops hanging on AC transmission line wires consume negligible power.
Pure water has self-dissociation, so it always contains small amounts of ions (that's why pure water has a pH and pOH of 7). Butthe dipole moments of H2O molecules dominate theinteractqiqo
Those purport to operate on the ions themselves, supposedly to favor one kind of crystallization pattern over others. In lab conditions, a permanent magnet is said to work equally well, presumably interacting with the ions as they flow past.
From what I have been able to determine, nobody has shown that such a gadget works with any reliability. I.e., it might work under certain circumstances, but there is no way to know if your water and pipes match such a circumstance without buying. And, the prices quoted seem badly excessive. There is probably not more than $5 worth of parts in there, if in fact there are any.
Personally, I would not buy one. You could experiment with a permanent magnet, but it would be hard to know if it was helping or making it worse.
A somewhat similar sort of gadget is supposed to actually work, on diesel immediately before injection into truck engine combustion chambers, to produce more complete combustion.
Greece, Cyprus and Israel are natural allies in the geo political oneupsmanship that is the middle east. Israel provides the technology and protection to execute this maneuver.
Israel also just signed a bunch of peace deals. With this network easily expanded to those countries.
So long as Israel plans for a future where such arrangements get rescinded, they could safely operate an energy market across the middle east and parts of Europe.
Could be a good counter way to counter russian oil, and pave way for a very lucrative post-oil society. Middle eastern countries have a lot of solar and empty land for energy-storage. With many of these middle eastern countries having the capital for large green-tech investments.
> Any ranking of military capabilities on virtually any dimension puts Israel in a higher tier than Greece.
Those rankings are accurate when looking through the lens of "how many offensive resources do they have", but when you say "on virtually any dimension" I think one needs to also take geography into account.
For example Switzerland is also ranked well below Israel, but good luck invading the Swiss on their home turf.
The Swiss thing is a weird one because anyone who actually wants to invade Switzerland is probably going to be mad enough to just start bombing all the civilians with nerve gas or similar. The Swiss air force for example consists of some F-5s and some regular Hornets so I wouldn't bet on them for long either.
Outside of germany and poland most jews died in greece in the Holocaust. Salonika had a vibrant jewish population in early 1900s and now virtually no jews live in Salonika. During ottoman times greeks and jews were fierce enemies and killed each other in many occasions in Istanbul, Smyrna, Alexandria and Salonika.. Jews, mostly loyal to ottamans during the greek independence war were punished (aka murdered) by the greek army in many occasions.
Outside of germany and poland most jews died in greece in the Holocaust.
"Most" as a percentage, not an absolute number. There were approximately 60.000 Jews who were murdered from Greece which amounts for 87% of the total Jewish population in the country. Hungary had some 500k loses, Poland 3M, Romania at least 200k, Soviet Union 1,3M etc.
It is true that in the Ottoman and Czarist mercantile cities, ethnic riots did involve Jews and Greeks, sometimes against each other. I should have specifically said Jewish and Greek armies.
Israel could do Greece a favor send some IDF forces to play as the Turks and war game a land invasion on the Thracian border. It would be a useful exercise for Greece because Israel's infantry capabilities map closer to Turkey's than to Greece's.
The islands need connections to have a stable grid. Crete for example has maxed out its capacity to produce from renewables and needed new cables to export to the mainland. For this reason it still runs an oil plant. Islands in general are a very hard case for renewables.
The project that is meant to "poke turkey in the eye" is the EuroMed gas pipeline which is a different project.
But to be fair, turkey is welcome to join both forums, although this will probably mean that they will have to accept the application of international law in their maritime borders
Israel has a complicated relationship with Turkey. The current islamist ruling party in Turkey is anti-Zionist and are keen on showing solidarity with the Palestinians.
On the other hand Israel and Turkey have mutual regional enemies and have collaborated both economically and militarily. Turkey manufactures and uses the Israeli Popeye missile under license, and I'm sure there are other collaborations I'm not aware of. Israeli teams have helped in earthquake relief efforts in Turkey. Historically the Jewish population of the Ottoman Empire were loyal subjects, because Ottoman hegemony provided them with security against their Arab neighbours.
So I doubt the Israelis are primarily doing this to spite the Turks, they're not exactly best buddies and it's useful to have leverage, but it's not in their interests to antagonise Turkey unnecessarily. I think it's just a matter of Israel looking after their own best interests in terms of energy security.
To be honest Greeks and Cypriots making life better for themselves doesn't have to be inherently a slight against Turkey either. I think the geopolitical dimension of this is over-baked.
I expect the cables will be quite fat (physically) which reduces their resistance. Also, by increasing the voltage, you decrease the current for any given power, which decreases the resistive losses. So yes, there will be some losses in transmission (as is the case for literally all power transmission methods), but engineers clearly consider this and design around it.
HVDC cables are very efficient physically. Haven't dived into this cable's details yet, but you can push 1.5GW over two conductors roughly 5" in diameter each.
The reserve, Leviathon, is the largest amount of natural gas discovered in the world in the last decade and is located in approximately 5,400 feet (1,645 meters) of water, about 130 kilometers offshore of Haifa and 29 miles (47 kilometers) southwest of the Tamar discovery.
It would certainly make sense for Israel to get into the generation business and sell power to others. The country is too small to otherwise make use of 16 trillion cubic feet of NatGas for personal consumption. I was also under the assumption they were building a gas pipeline to Europe.
Even if you were to believe that Northern Cyprus was an independent country, or part of Turkey, this cable passes through Israeli, Cypriot and Greek waters, to the south of the island
So it seems that Turkey wants to ignore Greek EEZ, which seems to be acknowleged by other neighbours including Egypt. From the limited maps showing it seems this pipeline never gets nearer to Turkey or even Northern Cyprus than to Cyprus or Greece, thus remains in their EEZ under the UN Convention on the Law of The Sea
It seems Turkey's view is that countries like Malta, Cyprus, Cuba, New Zealand etc can't have EEZs, let alone islands that are part of a country, like Shetland, Hawaii, the Aleutian islands, etc.
Now sure they can claim whatever they want, but with EU, US and UN against them it's rather moot.
Probably not too much. Turkey is already part of and synchronized to the continental European grid. Connecting Cyprus to it makes sense for them as well.
Cyprus is a member of the EU and has been recognized as a sovereign country by pretty much everyone already. The northern part called the TRNC and under Turkish control isn't however.
Which is mostly an advertisement. Probably the main author is linked to the Euroasia Interconnector.
Also note that there is little reference for the Greek part of the interconnector for which there was a great debate. Greece decided to create the part connecting Crete with Attica on it's own citing delays that cost Greece hundrends of millions a year because it is forced to operate diesel plants in Crete.
Also Greece also has the longest and deepest AC connection in the world under construction (2 cables connecting Peloponesse with Crete). One of the cables is already operational.
The person I was refering is Karaol. Even the top image that is described as his own work and is used in the main Euroasia site without any attribution. You can see the image in the main site here https://euroasia-interconnector.com/at-glance/the-big-pictur...
The article fails to address the controversy between Greece and Euroasia interconnector. The only reference I can find is that in the top image, the line connecting Attika and Crete became dashed at some time. Also Greece cited that Ariadne interconnector is a company with only 25k capital and no previous completed project.
Not really, that limit is only due to the wire resistance, which goes down with wire thickness.
There will be a delay of course, which is the cable impedance (inductance), mostly due to the speed of electricity not being infinite in a conductor.
A bit like there is no limit for the length of a stick you can push with your arm. There's only resistance if it's on the ground (push it in space to visualize a superconductor). It also has inertia (mass, which is inductance). And at longer lengths, you won't see the end move before the movement you impulsed has reached the end at ~the speed of sound in that material.
Now, to go a bit into the details:
A/C can also exploit "skin effect" where a high frequency A/C signal only travels on the outside of conductors. That way, you can make thinner conductors (just coat regular cables in an expensive conductor)... Up to a certain point, since if you need to carry more power, you need extra large cables, hollow ones, and/or multiple cables). That wastes part of the conductor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_effect
With A/C, you can also use transformers, but not with D/C, which has traditionally been an hindrance to high-voltage DC. You have to generate alternative current, or use boost circuits (basically charge a capacitor at constant current to increase voltage). Cutting power in high-power A/C is simpler, since you can do it when voltage crosses 0 V.
On the west coast of the US, we have a 3GW DC link between Portland (actually, The Dalles, a few miles from google's first datacenter) and Los Angeles. DC power transmission over long distances has less loss, and only requires 2 wires. Its 850 miles (about 1350km) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie
Oh come one, that's small box thinking, you gotta look at the big picture. LA has a larger electricity demand than portland and it oscillates in a different pattern than portland. In the summer, due to AC, LA needs more peak capacity. However in the winter, the equation flips and now Portland needs that capacity to heat homes. Keeping all that hydro in washington to support the comparitively teensy population of 650k in portland is a waste, especially when demand is needed down south and not in the north and vice versa; this line serves 3 million in LA and represents half the LADWP peak capacity. I'd argue cutting LA off would force more coal plants to open than what is needed to electrify portland today.
You misunderstood me a bit, though I was pretty vague. I was just remarking on how we have enough local, renewable power locally, and yet burn coal. We could easily get our power from hydro AND send the majority to LA, but instead we don't. Probably because LA is willing to pay so much more for it.
I don't know the political climate in Oregon about hydro, but it's starting to turn a bit in Washington. Dams are pretty awful for salmon and so much of our ecology is salmon-based as well as the culture/livelihoods of Native Americans.
I don't think anyone's seriously proposing getting rid of any of the major electricity producing dams though, just the minor old ones that are doing nothing of significance.
In raw economics terms, the price LA pays is lower than the cost of them opening their own coal plants, otherwise they would do just that. Therefore, it is for some reason cheaper to open a coal plant near portland (maybe closer to the coal source) and run a wire down to LA, than it is to come up with some other source of peak demand electricity for those 3 million people in LA who rely on this capacity. A private market does what is profitable, ultimately.
Maybe if we had public utilities, however, we would actually invest in 'unprofitable' nuclear energy and save our planet in the process, since we wouldn't be beholden to making shareholders a profit.
Fantastic and valid points, though I think pkulak also has a fair point in identifying that this big picture setup negatively impacts folks in Portland via air pollution and other side effects of more coal plants than would otherwise be required.
On the other hand, that energy has to come from some place and this set up negatively impacts someone no matter where the coal plant is located. Maybe the coal comes from the cascades and it makes more sense to put the plant close to the source, rather than somewhere near LA and have to freight in the coal from the mines and deal with those externalities that might be worse than simply running a wire to LA.
Power loss is a function of current. So major transmission lines use very high voltage to lower the current (and thus the power loss). Of course, there are losses at the transformer(s) the step the voltage up and down. Unsurprisingly, it's a very use-case-dependent engineering problem.
Not really. The higher the volts, the fewer amps and losses. So, if you can just get the voltage high enough, there's really no limit.
Not sure what the current highest volt transmissions are. Maybe a couple million volts on some DC lines? But I think that's good enough for hundreds, if not thousands, of miles of efficient transmission.
I have a geopolitical question I haven't been able to answer: Greece claims its EEZ includes Kastelorizo and extends near Turkish shores (which is unreasonable, IMO). Turkey claims islands have no EEZ, and Turkish EEZ extends below Cyprus and past all the Greek islands to about the middle of the Aegean (extremely unreasonable and counter to basically all of UNCLOS, which everyone else recognizes).
Greece, Cyprus and Israel agreed to construct the EastMed Pipeline[0], which crosses into the Turkish EEZ and even territorial waters. Does that run counter to the UNCLOS or not?
Also, please correct me if I got anything in my understanding wrong.
Slight correction, I don't think the EastMed pipeline would cross turkish territorial waters. Territorial waters only extend 12nm (22 km) from the shore. The pipeline would definitely not venture that close to the turkish shores.
There's a "nose" that drops down from Turkey, and the EastMed pipeline goes straight from Cyprus to Crete, so it would cross into that "nose". It says "territorial waters" there, so I'm confused as to whether that's so or, if not, what it is.
Indeed this is a rather confused map, the zones demarcated in that map are the EEZ(Exclusive Economic Zones). As they are claimed by Greece and Cyprus. Two hundred nautical miles from their shores or the middle line where they overlap with the Turkish EEZ.
The crux of the dispute though is that while that's how Greece and Cyprus interpret their rights, there is no provision in UNCLOS for handling overlaps, it only says there should be an agreement.
As far as the pipeline is concerned, I think the Greek plan would be to make the pipeline, a bit more to the south where Greek and Cypriot zones meet.
I think the owner of the continental shelf (the bottom of the sea under the EEZ), has the right to deny the installation of cables or pipelines. That's how I read paragraph 3 of article 79 of UNCLOS.
the eastmed is passing though what is greek and cyprus EEZ, not turkish. According to the UNCLOS (at least according to the reading that Greece does) turkey does not have a maritime border with Egypt because of kastellorizo.
That being said, Turkey has been invited to join the eastMed pipeline
Agreed, but from the images I've seen, the EastMed doesn't "dip down" under the Turkish EEZ (in the corridor between the Turkish EEZ and the Egyptian EEZ), it goes straight from Cyprus to Crete. Maybe the images are simplified, though.
This is awesome. The real loser in all of this is Lebanon. 30 years after the end of the civil war there, and 24-hour electricity is a pipe dream. People still rely on neighborhood generators that contribute to the already bad pollution.
The first time I ever went to Beirut over 10 years ago, I asked a partner of a large Civil Engineering firm
Me : "Why does the power go out all the time?"
The response: "There is no political will to fix this."
I didn't understand the reply. Surely there was immense value in economic development in doing this ?
I drew parallels to being in South America, particularly Ecuador, who had the same issue back in the 90's. That caused so much economic loss. I understood the issue was rainfall swings drove hydro power outages. They finally built extra capacity, and now brownouts are a thing of the past. Everyone benefitted.
But lebanon had no such luck. Why?
I didn't understand the undertones of what was being told to me. But the answer was there. It is a political issue, but not a question of will. Its a question of money.
The neighborhood generators now have cartel power over the generation of electricity. They have a vested interest in the government NOT producing cheap electricity for the masses. Anything that disrupts the status quo means their business is effectively over.
Full 360: The market response to electricity production during civil war, gave lebanon electric resilience (via power generators)...but now with regulatory capture, the incentives are only to sustain the broken model.
It happens in the US too. 1br rents are like $2000 in LA. 3 bedroom 1500sqft starter homes are north of $1.5m even in the worst neighborhoods in the city. If you ask why rents and housing is so high, it's due to a a lack of political will to increase supply. It seems backward until you realize the majority of voters in local elections are homeowners, the council members in charge of unilateraly approving or disallowing development in their district are homeowners, and the lawmakers at the state level are also homeowners, all of which have a vested interest in achieving exponential gains on their assets.
I can't help but imagine how different this state would be if the governor of California came from a rental apartment, or from living in their car, and not the latest approved candidate from the old California political machine (Governor Gavin Newsom is a respected SF judge's son, Mayor Eric Garcetti's father was the LA DA for 20 years). Maybe political priorities would actually shift to the working poor rather than the landowning elite for the first time ever in California.
I think we should clarify what we mean by "lack of political will." The stakeholders who don't want (lots of government-supplied electricity | lots of low-cost housing) have plenty of political will. Their opponents also have a political desire, but a lack of political power.
"Lack of will" as a phrase suggests nobody feels like doing anything about it, when in fact, lots of people want to do different things and those with more power are winning out over those with less, regardless of which thing would be maximally beneficial.
This isn't a slight against you or the GP for using the phrase - it's just something that sticks in my craw when I hear it. Don't even ask me how I feel about the word "unprecedented."
Lack of will to disrupt the status quo is also the reason why many new builds in Indian cities like Bangalore/Hyderabad are forced to rely on the water tanker cartels instead of getting reliable piped water supply from the local municipal corporations.
The icing on the cake is that water tanker cartels steal from the municipal water supply in the first place.
as Argentinian , other south American country we have cities without energy next to power generation plants, and subsidizes for sector who don needed (residential downtown) but have political influence, i live in the richest and biggest cities of my country and i have subside transportation while,in the north who have a lot less resource pay the full tariffs only because my cities have more political influence in national elections.
Interesting insights. You get most of it right about Lebanon: Yes, you're right its all about money and maintaining the status quo. But its not so much about the neighborhood generators. To be honest, thats a bit low brow for Leb politicians. When we're talking about corruption its usually to the tune of $10s of millions. Case in point, look at the longtime central banker who funneled the nation's bonds through his brother's trading company and pocketed $300 million in commissions. [1] Now were talking real money.
With electricity, yes, its about vested interests - but its also about future interests. Who will control new power plants? New Power grids? New billing systems? Can we make sure that for each Sunni hired in this position we have 1 Christian and 1 Shia as well?
Which is exactly why you need to add feedback loops to the system (minimum wage, progressive taxation, etc), to prevent it from devolving into Bioshock.
Yes. When the government is too weak, or is government in name only, or is infected with "free market" true believers, it becomes the plaything of the great moneybags. Policy shifts towards "freedom" - i.e. the freedom to use the brute force of capital for personal benefit, disregarding the larger and the longer term outcomes and the greater good.
I often wonder if places like this are where real green energy revolution will start. Perhaps the greatest motivation for off-grid solar is not having access to a grid in the first place. The first targets in many wars are the power plants, plants fed by fossil fuel deliveries. A country powered by widespread small "gridless" solar power solutions would be very resilient in a crisis, much more difficult a target in a war. Maybe Lebanon can move forward without a reliable national grid.
I'm seeing it on the other side of the economic spectrum: rich people building vacation houses on green fields. Other than Texas, North America has a very dependable grid. But if your new house is more than a couple hundred meters from that grid an overkill solar solution will probably be cheaper than connection cost. So new vacation homes in the woods/mountains/coastline are installing solar for purely economic reasons.
That's what my parents did. When they built their lake cottage it was cheaper to tie in sewer and water, but the cost to tie in to the power grid was going to be over $30k at which point, they were cheaper to install a full solar system. So they did.
> But if your new house is more than a couple hundred meters from that grid an overkill solar solution will probably be cheaper than connection cost.
If this becomes a thing without charging non-users a flat fee for the electricity grid, then the grid will fall into a death spiral as renewables+storage become cheaper - namely, fewer people using the grid will increase the relative cost for each remaining user, encouraging them to go off-grid which further increases the relative cost of grid-attachment.
The grid is already in trouble in places where it makes little economic sense to keep it reliable (rural regions, especially California/West Coast).
The ex-Texas US grid is reliable because of economic reasons (especially industrial) and the Texas grid is not that reliable for economic reasons!
If you leave the interstate system and drive the state and national highways, especially east of the Mississippi River, you'll see industrial facilities all over the place in small towns and cities, etc. They consume a lot of electricity, so it is in the national interest to have a good grid. West of the Mississippi: go read the Bershire Hathaway annual report from a few weeks ago. Warren Buffett spends quite a bit of space writing about how and why they are spending billions on the future of the grid.
> The grid is already in trouble in places where it makes little economic sense to keep it reliable
This is why regulation is needed and competition on the lowest level of infrastructure a bad idea.
In Germany, we have a legal mandate (per §36 EnWG, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/enwg_2005/__36.html) for the dominant local utility to provide the core gas and electricity network upon which the customer can choose any utility to provide gas and electricity (with this utility then paying a set rate for using the network to the local utility). Additionally, §11 EnWG (https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/enwg_2005/__11.html) forces all network-operating utilities to keep their network operation "safe, reliable and free of discrimination" - and the authority BNetzA has the legal power to actually enforce this.
Events like the shoddy maintenance that led to a number of wild fires in California or the lack of winterization that led to the Texas debacles in 2011 and 2021 simply would not happen here.
Not sure why you are downvoted. Utilities are natural monopolies. It makes sense for one entity to provide the network. The risk is that the monopoly gets fat and lazy, but there are many examples of failures from both approaches.
And I also believe Germans would not produce or tolerate the California or Texas debacles.
Probably because I'm advocating for government owned or at least heavily regulated infrastructure.
> The risk is that the monopoly gets fat and lazy, but there are many examples of failures from both approaches.
Agreed (and California is a perfect example)... with a monopoly situation (and in "captive market" situations such as housing where people can't go without the services of the market) regulation agencys need teeth. Basically you want pitbulls, not poodles.
You are probably being downvoted because your argument is based on cost, but the connection cost is higher than going off-grid in the aforementioned example and centralized grids are vulnerable to tail risks that are decentralized systems are not vulnerable to, i.e. it’s cheaper till it ain’t.
Here in ZA the economy got screwed because nobody was prepared for the centralized provider (Eskom) to go down, which it did because of corruption and race-based quotas (BEE) firing senior white staff. Centralized orgs centralize risk and corruption.
>> without charging non-users a flat fee for the electricity grid
With hookup cost to a new property often measuring in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, the non-connection fee/penalty would have to be very high.
In pacific northwest, estimate 10-15k per electrical pole. Plus any necessary upgrades to the system. Plus easements. Plus maintenance costs. Plus cutting the trees. Plus then paying for power. ... A kickass solar rig and backup generator is very cheap by comparison.
Wow, check your decency bias. Having lived in California with rolling blackouts becoming normal in the last five years, it’s hardly fair to say that Texas has a uniquely bad electrical grid. Texas got hit by a freak weather event that people weren’t prepared for. We can have an interesting discussion about why they weren’t prepared and what could be done about it, but to imply that Texas grid is unreliable in general is just silly.
It's a nice idea. But does solar work in a densely populated city like Beirut where at least a quarter of the population lives? Or any dense city for that matter?
I would also add 'The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus' as a loser. Having to now take electricity from Turkey, further solidifying this horrible depending relationship.
There is no meaningful separation between TRNC and proper Turkey government. TRNC is a puppet government, kind of the same way Crimea government, the one which decided to hold a "referendum" and "decided" to join Russia.
It is awesome. Any project that improves daily life for any part of the Middle East is a way to show the haters that the world isn't waiting for them to come around.
They don't directly lose from Greece, Cyprus, and Israel cooperating further with each other. However, they are missing out on something they need, and this shows how Lebanon is diplomatically struggling to cooperate with other nations in the region to help them improve their infrastructure. This is the ideal project for them to join and help the Lebanese people, but unfortunately it's just another potential missed opportunity.
You got downvoted by others - maybe because your comment isn't super additive to the conversation. But the general sentiment is right. They have a strong control over the country no matter which way you look at it. They build parallel infrastructures to that of the state: different phone systems, power systems, healthcare, etc... so they are shielded from the corruption and complacency that happens in the government - all while contributing to it.
Hezbollah has a strong influence in the south of Lebanon, and consequently proportionate control in parliament, but the other half of Lebanon is strongly anti-Iran.
The civil war is over, but divisions and complexity continues.
-maybe because your comment isn't super additive to the conversation.
You are correct, but i felt i should draw attention to an issue i think is extremely serious. Also, there is the possibility to explore that Hezbollah may sabotage the project.
My understanding is most the aid given to Israel is spent on American military equipment. Israel is ok with it because they get free military equipment, and the US likes it because it funnels aid money to the military.
answering to your other comments as well,
Israel fulfils American interest in the area as I understand it. It is the best freedom-per-dollar the US can get, except maybe south-Korea. between all of American attempts to establish their dominance and their believes in the world, you pointed to one of their more successful investments.
for this topic. If you want to reduce the violence in the area of the middle east, joint local economical ventures are a perfectly good start. hopefully one day with Lebanon too.
disclaimer I'm Israeli.
I'm not going to debate US politics with American but this page [0] shows me Israel is not exception in American policy. As I said before probably one of the few successful attempt to encourage a democracy.
I don't know what point you're trying to make with that link. The US normally sanctions countries committing human rights violations, it doesn't typically fund them. Israel is an outlier there.
I'm not sure what the point of that link was, either.
But I'd point out that America has A LOT of blood on its hands. A half million Iraqi's being the most recent, Vietnamese before that, and Koreans before that. Still going strong with drone strikes. Banana republics in central America, mucked around in south America. Proxy wars in Africa. Keeping the Middle East destabilized. The average American seems to support all of the above, which just means it will continue.
I don't want to say that America is an evil country, but it is the biggest and violates the rights of a lot of people (to say the least) in pursuit of its interests. It's an empire warping the world to its desires. Economically (as you mentioned), culturally, and militarily. That's what big powerful countries do.
I agree. I'd also add that America was created with the genocide of Native people, built up with slavery and we currently have the largest prison population in total and per capita of any nation on the planet. It's hard not to say that America is an evil country, if you're one of the many people it's hurt, it very much is.
Israel isn't particularly funded by the US. They receive a small amount of money from the US, as do about 100 other nations around the world, including several prominent nations that have historically disliked Israel (see: Egypt, Pakistan).
Israel is now one of the most prosperous nations in world history. Their GDP per capita will soon be among the highest of any nation. They passed Japan, Britain and France recently on that metric; next they'll pass Canada and Germany. They're entirely free-standing economically at this point and do not require US funding (even though the US will obviously continue to have deep economic ties with Israel, including militarily).
In 2016, the U.S. and Israeli governments signed their third 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on military aid,
covering FY2019 to FY2028. Under the terms of the MOU, the United States pledged to provide—subject to congressional
appropriation—$38 billion in military aid ($33 billion in Foreign Military Financing grants plus $5 billion in missile defense appropriations) to Israel. This MOU followed a previous $30 billion 10-year agreement, which ran through FY2018.
Israel and Egypt are always pointed to as recipients of greatest US aid. But that is only because the US military that is stationed in South Korea, Japan, and a bunch of other countries is not counted as aid. And all that military is very expensive, like in the tens of billions or maybe even hundreds. I don't know how much it costs to maintain an aircraft carrier fleet to protect the Arabs from the Persians.
And on a similar note, when comparing overall spending on the military, the perception of the size of the US military is inflated because in China and many other countries there's a draft, so they pay their soldiers next to nothing while the US has to pay theirs a prevailing wage, which is somewhere around the highest in the world.
The US has given Egypt $80 billion over the last 40 years, which is about what the US has given Israel over 70 years.
Of course the US gives Israel some money still, mostly related to its on-going military relationship with Israel in developing weapons systems and technology. There isn't anybody in this thread that doesn't already know that. And the US gives money to a lot of other nations too.
None of that negates what I so precisely worded to try to avoid this follow-up response. I failed unfortunately.
Israel has a $400 billion GDP at this point. As I noted, the US does not particularly fund Israel. US funding to Israel represents a now trivial part of their economic system. They do not require the US, they are free-standing.
> Of course the US gives Israel some money still, mostly related to its on-going military relationship with Israel in developing weapons systems and technology
This is the problem I have with funding Israel. We're literally giving them money to commit war crimes and illegal military action. We should be sanctioning them (if we want to be consistent), not funding them.
War crimes and illegal military action seem to very much be the preferred business of the American military-industrial complex. Most of the US foreign aid given to Israel can only be spent on purchasing US military hardware. The people who benefit from funneling additional billions into the MIC are the same ones that benefit from ongoing American military actions on foreign soil...
> Lebanon is a parliamentary democracy that includes confessionalism, in which high-ranking offices are reserved for members of specific religious groups. The President, for example, has to be a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim, the Speaker of the Parliament a Shi’a Muslim, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Deputy Speaker of Parliament Eastern Orthodox.
> Lebanon's national legislature is the unicameral Parliament of Lebanon. Its 128 seats are divided equally between Christians and Muslims, proportionately between the 18 different denominations and proportionately between its 26 regions.
I'm not sure where you heard that from exactly, but their unique confessionally-sharded politics mean claims like that often won't be deeply scrutinized within Lebanon. They won’t conduct a new census to check, multiple Muslim groups claim that they have the majority, and most observers who aren’t constrained by Lebanese politics think it’s closer to 30% Christian.
Why is it awesome? I don't think European countries should share energy grids with countries that does not respect human rights such as Israel and Russia.
Didn't I cover that in my comment? I feel that that is bad. But I also feel that the whataboutism argument is overused when it comes to Israel. We should minimize our incidental support of repressive regimes wherever they are found. Especially when we are explicitly called on to do so (see BDS) by those oppressed by such repressive regimes.
They took over someone else's land because of a cultural/religious belief that they need an ethnostate. I'm sure that they protect their citizens and their borders, and almost every country would say the same. That doesn't mean they didn't bring localized conflict upon themselves by disrespecting the rights of others.
Even if it used force to establish said borders in the first place? Israel as the nation we know today only came about fairly recently, and it was only established as a modern-day state in 1948.
All borders were established by force... Israel is just more recent, about as recent as every other nation in that region. Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and essentially every other nation in the region was formed around the same period.
The issue is that unlike other cases they were never left to their own devices and let sort their own shit out.
Tell me, when was the unification of Germany, and how did its borders get the way they are now? I seem to recall some unpleasantness with American and British planes.
Depends on which way the power flows. Perhaps if Israel becomes depended on European electricity some of its more offensive behaviors can be moderated.
Probably, everything you are wearing, plus your phone/computer, plus the petrol you put in your car come from countries that abuse human rights, such as china, Saudi Arabia etc.
That doesn't mean I (or the person you're replying to) agree with it. I mean I don't agree with US politics and their human rights violations, yet here I am, commenting on a US community on US-designed hardware and US-developed software.
"We should improve society somewhat."
"Yet you participate in society. Curious!"
A depth of 2.7km, didn’t the Mediterranean Sea dry out in one of the recent ice ages, that must have been quite an interesting place 2.7km below sea level, well maybe ~2.5km below sea level if the sea level was quite a bit lower.
Much higher pressure, I imagine it would have been a desert too.
Wouldn’t a higher partial pressure of Oxygen have opened quite a few new evolutionary branches?
its the most logical translation into english language of the government-mandated action that closes bank depositor windows at the start... or during a bank run... prior to a major currency devaluation.
This is true at least in french, portuguese, and spanish.
I understand the problem that a "bank holiday" in the US is actually used to identify a federal holiday.
I don't think this expression has been used a lot in recent times (in anglo nations) since there hasn't been hyperinflation in US, UK...but there is a record of such expression :
The expression "Bank Holiday" is actually really common in the UK - I would expect most brits to know it. We use it to refer to a public holiday in which the banks are closed, there are quite a few every year. It has very positive connotations here.
Wow, I'd like to hear more about the subsea cable [1] technology used. In terms of economics and geopolitics, this sounds like a win-win scenario. Perhaps necessity will force the eastern Mediterranean to re-emerge as an economic powerhouse. Southern Italy, Croatia, Turkey, and Egypt should pay attention.
> Perhaps necessity will force the eastern Mediterranean to re-emerge as an economic powerhouse
As a half Croat: sorry, won't happen. Croatia's economy is tourism dominated and will stay that way. There is a bit of agriculture and industry (especially shipbuilding), but nowhere enough to compete with heavyweights such as Germany.
For those out of the loop: the Balkans have historically suffered from brain drain - first during the Yugoslavia era where many fled/emigrated from realcommunism, then during the wars for obvious reasons, and now simply because Germany and other EU nations pay way better and those who don't find work in tourism find it elsewhere in Europe instead. Good luck finding a nurse on the Balkans... Germany has to recruit from the Philippines meanwhile.
The fact that Croatian (and other Balkan countries') politics are extremely corrupt doesn't help much either, it's really sad.
Regarding Southern Italy: similar situation re/ brain drain, plus the added complexity of having to deal with the Mafiya.
Regarding Turkey: Turkey already is an economic powerhorse and a regional hard-power leader - the early Erdogan years showed what Turkey is capable of. Unfortunately Erdogan turned into Erdolf and investors are pretty much shying away from Turkey as a result of the instability, not to mention that Turkey is directly adjacent to the Syria cluster-fuck.
The geography of southern Italy, Croatia, and Greece place all three at a disadvantage compared to continental nations connected via road, rail, and canal. The Mediterranean is a comparative advantage that can be leveraged. The natural beauty that attracts tourism can help repatriate the talented diasporas.
The question is whether brain drain, crime, and corruption are due to incurable pathologies or symptoms of transient disadvantages.
I've long held the conviction that tourism is a toxic sector. If it grows too large a share of GDP, so much talent, money, and effort is sucked into tourism and away from society which otherwise would have found better use for it.
Who builds the next startup, starts a franchise chain or scouts investors to build a new machine, if you can always double your salary by serving rich foreigners?
> I've long held the conviction that tourism is a toxic sector.
It's sort of a Dutch disease [1]. I've seen it happening from afar to Barcelona, which was on route to become what Berlin now is in terms of IT/programming back in ~2005-2006 but the ever increasing rent prices caused by tourism put an end to that (plus the 2008-2010 crisis, of course, which hit Spain especially hard). I had expected the same thing to happen to Amsterdam, but it looks like it managed to hold up better.
Barcelona: Particulary sad. As a tourist one could sense the unworthiness of this proud city going thorugh this transformation. From something that stood on its own feet (rich, industrious history) and aimed at creating its own future (there are still some tech-giants left - although it feels like remnants of a once brighter outlook) into something dependent on wealthy foreigners, whether it is domestically unbearable rents or a battered public life because of agressive hawkers at day and aggressive thieves at night (which eye the tourists, but pollute the place for the citizens as well). I remember somewhere in the 2000s Barcelonians put out a map for visitors (domestic and foreign) of what kinds of robberies/con games to expect in what area. And then there was of course this guy: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/11/commuting-fro...
> I had expected the same thing to happen to Amsterdam, but it looks like it managed to hold up better.
Well... many of the German tourists only come to Amsterdam for smoking pot on a day or weekend trip, and the French additionally for a night in the brothels since sex work is banned in France, so all you need is a lot of cheap hotels with beds, no stuff like beach resorts or other... more high-class venues to deal with these people.
Additionally, over the last years many of the "coffee shops" (weed shops) have closed down - in the early 2000s there were 280+ in Amsterdam, now there are 166. The government wants to introduce a "weed pass" that's only for Dutch citizens to further crack down on weed tourism: https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/corona-coffeeshops-101.htm...
> The Mediterranean is a comparative advantage that can be leveraged.
How? There isn't much trade between Africa/Arabia and Europe other than oil, some agricultural products and used cars/outright waste.
> The natural beauty that attracts tourism can help repatriate the talented diasporas.
That's already the case in Croatia, many pensioners who worked in richer European countries retire back in Croatia because they can "live like kings" from pensions that would barely fetch a 1br micro apartment otherwise. For 500€ you can get a 75 m² flat in the center of Rijeka - in Munich that would be around 1500-2000€.
And those in working age... it's rare for them to return to their homelands for that reason.
> The question is whether brain drain, crime, and corruption are due to incurable pathologies or symptoms of transient disadvantages.
Neither, in my opinion. "Incurable pathologies" is bordering on racism, but it aren't "transient" issues on the other side. What's needed is massive amounts of wealth redistribution across Europe, combined with throwing the whole lot of political elites into jail (and that's also sadly valid for Germany, just look at Andreas Scheuer or the MPs who allegedly got huge kickbacks for anti-corona masks).
Basically Europe would need something like what the US did post-1945: a complete clean-up. Absent that, I'd also accept a revolution of the masses, but that isn't on the pipelines anywhere except in France...
How? Subsea power cables, optical fiber, and pipelines (?). Midsize autonomous ships providing a cost effective alternative to truck and rail transport. Promotion of English as the lingua franca. Policies that attract new talent and promote the free movement of goods and people between new coastal charter cities. Partnering with people in the same boat (or sea).
Adam Smith not only promoted specialization but also extending the "reach" of trade. Politicians have the power to ruin things but they only succeed when riding the coat-tails of talented makers. I'd focus on promoting the makers rather than punishing past ruiners. Nihilism is never the answer.
Which is also correct for Turkey. I'm just a data-point, but Facebook showed me that nearly everyone who can get a job and a visa will leave and, IMHO, not just because of Erdoğan. He was the reason I left but I decided to stay in Germany permanently for other reasons, and those other reasons are probably more clear to others now even before leaving the country.
Related: Turkey is not an economic powerhouse at all. You can't have such a fragile economy and still be called that. You think Erdoğan keeps poking at sensitive matters because he has power to do so? Those are just distractions.
Another parallel between our countries is that we both have "centrists" in power that are actually rather on the far-right... well, that happens when all young and progressive minds leave for greener fields. :(
You have two major political parties that have vied for power since the war, and only one of those of is of the right (HDZ).
And it has little to do with "progressive" minds, and everything to do with opportunity. I personally have known Croatians of all politics who have left the country due to lack of opportunity, not because they were progressive.
Also, leaving the country because of lack of opportunity becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The cables are well-protected, but if they are damaged - same as with HV overhead lines - there is protection circuitry on both sides that trips and shuts off the power. So it will limit the damage to the rest of the grid, but you probably wouldn't want to be scuba-diving next to the cable when that happens.
Underwater high power cables are a mature technology. The operators would have equipment distributed across the line to monitor the cable. Any shorts or opens would be detected and breakers would be used disconnect the section of the cable.
Unrelated but fun story about antagonists and undersea cables that I saw in some Cold War history book in college.
The CIA had cooked up a bonkers covert mission to send a submarine with an airlock right into the soviets’ top submarine harbor. There, divers were to place a tap an underwater data cable that fed the nearby submarine base—a crown jewel of Soviet sub deployment intel.
The CIA knew the cable passed through the harbor somewhere. But where?
To search the entire harbor for a tiny cable would have taken too long. The mission planners were stuck on this problem until one day one of the CIA planners is out on his personal boat. He sees a sign that says “WARNING: Undersea Cable” and has a moment of clarity.
They brought a translator, popped up the periscope in the Soviet harbor, and spotted an equivalent sign which they used to carry out the mission successfully.
For extra credit they had to go back to exfiltrate the data if my memory serves.
I think you're misremembering the part with the signs. The guy came up with the idea to look for a sign on the beach that forbids anchoring. They found it and the cable proved to be there. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Man%27s_Bluff:_The_Untol...
No, not really. In a war footing, the power plants themselves would likely be targets; the cables are fairly irrelevant. This sort of interconnect lets spikes in consumer demand get smoothed out.
The cables are extremely relevant: it is far harder to protect hundreds of kilometres of underwater cable, of which any part can be cut by a difficult to detect submarine, than it is to protect power plants.
There is no such thing as a perfect defence, against an enemy with unlimited resources. But it is much more expensive to attack an enemy's power plants with $1 million cruise missiles than it is to cut their underwater cables by dragging anchors over them. Also, you can plant bombs on underwater power lines and set them off later - that's a huge problem re: how much energy capacity could go down at once.
Anyway, we definitely can protect installations from stand-off weapons: CIWS systems like the Phalanx can shoot them down these days, and they're relatively cheap. It's not perfect protection - eventually one will get through - but it does raise the cost of a successful attack substantially.
The cables aren't critical, though. They're nice to have for peacetime, but given it hasn't happened yet it's clear each nation is able to at least function without them. In a war, there'll be bigger concerns than "everyone turned on their AC in Israel and we'd like to buy energy from Greece".
One of the biggest goals of the many undersea cable projects around the world is to enable much higher dependence on unreliable renewable power. They may not be critical yet. But they will be.
It, and any kind of infrastructure, would be a prime target - assuming that is what they want. But infrastructure represents value, destroying a country's powergrid and connections like that is only a thing if your aim is complete destruction.
Ideally, in war, you destroy their military, or at least damage it enough for the other party to concede and discuss peace terms, and leave the rest alone.
WW2 was, I believe, the last war where they went for complete destruction of infrastructure, industry, and civilians. The Allies firebombed Dresden and nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is estimated that 50-55 million civilians died in WW2, of which part due to disease and famine. No conflict since has had that high a civilian casualty rate.
That is the traditional way of bringing generators into sync, yes, but these links are nearly always DC links with inverters at each end. The inverter will be digitally controlled to distributed the DC power across the three phases in sync with the grid. So the two AC grids do not have to be synced.
AC runs into a problem with skin effect. At a certain point, making conductors thicker won't make them handle more current. DC doesn't have this problem.
Why AC? For a given power transmission line, higher voltage will lower transmission loss. Historically, it was easier, cheaper, and more efficient to get higher voltages with AC using transformers. These days, DC is still more complicated and expensive than AC, but the efficiency has gone up and the price has gone down somewhat on the DC side of things. And if grid synchronization is a problem and you're transmitting a lot of power, the benefits might outweigh the costs.
It is the opposite, high voltage DC is much better for long distance, because at such distances the powerlines themselves start acting as inductors with relatively large impedance.
I could be wrong, I'm not an expert, but as I understand it, DC's not inherently bad, it's just that you want a higher voltage and traditionally that is much easier to do with AC because you can use transformers to step up/step down.
Perhaps they should try and broker a peace with Israel like Jordania and Egypt have done. Access to the power sharing agreement could be an interesting bargaining chip for both parties. There is a lot to gain for Lebanon (more stable power, less expenses on the military) and also a lot of potential benefits for Israel (less threat from the north, overland (railway) transport possibilities to the European mainland).
(Yes, I know the influence of Hezbollah over Lebanese politics makes this development unlikely. I'm just saying it would be a good idea for both countries to get closer together. Source: I used to be in the military and served as a UN military observer in the region.)
Yes, I think people need to just accept that Israel is a part of the middle east and is not going anywhere. It's in everyone's best interest to become friendly with Israel, and that will help the neighboring countries prosper.
Is this a viewpoint special for Israel or does it also cover other countries with, let's say, complicated politics? Without comparing Russia, China, North Korea, Syria comes to mind.
I don't really see those as directly comparable. The problem most people have with the countries you listed is the specific regime in power. Depose the leaders, have a free election, and many of those complaints go away. The problem that many people in neighboring countries have traditionally had with Israel is its existence. You can't change the Israeli government in a way to satisfy those demands. It is more than just "complicated politics" for them.
That wouldn't provide any real solution to the region's political problems. Jewish people make up some 75% of the country. The only way to turn Israel into an Islamic state would be through conquest. The country would still have Occupied Territories except the map would be inverted.
Yeah, I can't imagine why all of us Jews aren't voting for the policy of an Islamic State in the Levant. That platform has obviously never been tried before, certainly not by the region's most disgustingly, genocidally evil terrorist group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
I thought it was obvious that I was both simplifying the situation and talking about the long term repercussions. I recognize that holding a national election tomorrow in North Korea wouldn’t result in any real improvement.
The important point is that Israel’s problems are largely detached from the flaws of its current leaders. Meanwhile the problems in the listed countries are often created or reinforced by their current or former leaders.
No, it's not special for Israel. It makes sense for nations to learn to live peacefully with their neighbors, especially when those neighbors are vastly more powerful than them.
But there's also a bit of a false equivalence here: Israel is a true democracy, which ranks significantly higher on lists of economic and individual freedoms than the nations you just named. Israel also soundly beat Lebanon in several wars, and Lebanon's conflict with Israel is rooted in religious hatred - it's not like Lebanon is taking a moral stand here. Hezbollah, which has run Lebanon for years, is an Iran-supported extremist / religious / terrorist group.
It contrasts with countries like China or Russia, where voting does exist, but major government leaders can ensure that they’re always re-elected and their policies are always enacted.
It means that all citizens (which includes many Arabs and Muslims) can vote and those votes are binding and not manipulated by fraud or threats of violence.
Yes but not all of them which is the problem. Ask poor Palestinians how democratic Israel is. It would be like if the US made laws specifically to imprison masses of black people and then say "we are a democracy, except for those who have been in prison".
The ones that can't vote in Israel are part of another nation (whether recognized or not) and they vote as part of that nation. A better analogy would be saying that Mexicans can't vote in the US (even though Mexican-Americans can).
I'm not sure it's clear that one is better than the other in general. For instance, I would be wary of a snap election after an event perceived as politically significant (e.g. a declaration of war, a major terrorist attack, etc.). Obviously, there can be benefits to building a government or coalition as a response to this sort of event, but it can also lead to transient or reactionary politics. When circumstances permit, I much prefer a more stable system such as a Switzerland-style executive council or otherwise stable administration with a fixed and limited term as long as there is sufficient oversight to deal with neglect of duties, corruption or incapacitation, etc.
I think this discussion is missing important facts:
1. The current ruling government forced these elections
2. the same prime minister was elected in all of these and he could not compile a government due to lack of mandate
The current ruling government (comprised of a shotgun marriage between two opposing parties) disintegrated, right?
My understanding of Israeli politics is that it's two major parties (roughly, conservative and liberal) + a few smaller bloc parties that generally line up with the same major party.
And that the math of this vs the majority needed tends to result in a larger number of elections.
I believe something similar tends to happen in Italy? And maybe Spain?
The flaw, in the sense that overly-frequent elections are unproductive to the business of governing, as I see it is matching a static legal mandate (a government must be able to compose a strict majority) with a variable system (number and size of parties), that leads to some edge cases that make the former difficult / unsustainable.
I'm American though, so I'm looking at this from our (probably to the rest of the world) crazy winner-take-all tilt.
It seems like parliamentary democracies would be improved by either (a) implementing policies and laws that ensure a larger number of smaller blocs, with which alliances can be made (preference voting?) or (b) having "deescalator" clauses if election churn happens, to lower the threshold required to form a sitting government (which then presumably ramps back up over time).
it is more sinister than that i believe.
i do not know about spain or italy but these frequent elections come at serious monetary cost in top of the slow down of governing.
at the same time the same prime minister is then allowed to extend his role past the legal limit of 2 (full) terms
It also applies to those other countries. You can and should offer harsh criticisms of a government when you think they’ve done wrong, but eliminationist rhetoric is pointless and self-destructive in the modern world.
How much of the influence to end the apartheid at South Africa was internal, how much was local, and how much was global?
I really don't know the answer to that. It's hard to say what kind of influence will work on the Israel apartheid, but a declared ongoing external war makes a strong impression that is an influence on the wrong direction.
I don't know that. Economic historians and others have to figure out exactly what caused the end of South Africa's apartheid system (my layman's guess is that it was a combination of multiple factors).
What I do know is that black South Africans begged us not to do business with their country until apartheid was abolished. Many of us (and even the US in the end) obliged and cut ties with South Africa. Palestinians are similarly begging us not to do business with Israel over similar human rights violations. We did (eventually) heed the black South Africans' call, so why can't we today heed the Palestinians' call?
Yes, most of them. The amount of land offered varied.
In particular check the Olmert peace offer from 2008 which offered Palestinians basically every single thing they wanted - but they refused it anyway (apparently because Abbas was too weak politically to make it happen, and Olmert did not want to go public without assurances from Abbas that it would actually happen).
(Not sure about the unconditional part though - why in the world would it be unconditional?)
Land provided with conditional use is not sovereign land. If the palestinians must continue to defer to israeli conditions on use then the land hasn't truly been returned.
The Olmert offering required the large settlements remain, which is an obvious non-starter.
As an Israeli living abroad I am torn on this. Not that I think Israel has South Africa level apartheid, but since both Israel and the Palestinians are up to their chins in the conflict and both wouldn't budge a millimetre a good kick in the ass towards one of them could lead to somekind of dialog.
As much as I disliked Trump and his actions in the area, at least he did something out of the ordinary that could have led to untying the mess. The latest "peace agreements" with Arab countries are probably a result of this and might lead to something in the future.
Unlike South Africa the level of religion extremism is too high on both sides to allow a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
"Explicitly jewish" could be a democratic state with jewish majority.
And it could be a jewish minority ruling over a non jewish majority.
Most Israel want the former. A hard core minority wants the latter.
The last few decades the latter set the tone because the dovish side of the map hadn't propose a viable course of action to change the status quo. The moderate majority is too scared and it lost faith in trying to reach a peace agreement again after the violence the last try brought, And the "death to israel" rhetoric of palestinian leaders.
So while the majority is pretty moderate, the perceived lack of partner basically put in power an extreme right minority. This might change as there's an undercurrent of population change, where the new majority might be less preoccupied with western values of democracy and citizen rights.
You are technically right, although currently it's a mixed bag. Many cite religious as the reason for not letting go of the land, others simple Zionism.
As for letting go of the entire country, there is nowhere else to go, as for giving the Palestinians what they want, just look at the trouble Gaza alone is causing, look how many innocent civilians (on both sides, mind) Hamas has killed. I don't think for the majority of Israelis it's ideological.
You're conceptually right, but the current right wing in Israel is very much centered around the concept of a united Israel rooted in Biblical reasoning.
Zionism might not be religious, but the political forces that would prevent relinquishing territories in modern day Israel very much are.
Trump's 'peace agreements' were mostly mutual defence signals (re: Iran) that paradoxically make the 'real issue' between Israel and West Bank even harder to solve.
Gulf states are more worried about Iran's intransigence than they are about the rights of Palestinians and that's where we are today.
Fifty something years of more or less the same type of international efforts didn't really work, that's why I think something extraordinary is needed.
Trump is not here anymore, but I don't think his efforts actually made the situation harder to solve, this is a misconception, they did push the Palestinians to a corner and they lost some Arab support, but it could have led to new negotiations where the Palestinians are pushed by this reduced support and Israel is pushed by behind the scenes threats from Trump to lose support.
The Palestinians nothing more than a play tool for other Arab nations, not just the Gulf states. Even their close neighbors, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, are not big fans
You are wrong, because trump didn't push israel to do anything.
So the Palestinians got nothing, netanyahu "proved" that being an asshile is how you get good deals.
And this situation get to fester while corrupting both our people.
So you're right I don't think Trump did anything to make it so much harder - however - he had absolutely not one iota of interest in helping to solve the Palestinian problem.
Trump's 'big gamble' on N. Korea for example does not apply to Israel in that way.
If anything Trump would 'end' the situation by caving to pressure to declare the occupations 'legal territory of Israel' or something along those lines.
I don't think he remotely understands the history or cares, he'll take what some of his wealthy buddy 'advisers' tell him about it.
I believe he would do it in a heartbeat in exchange for guarantees for financing on construction of a few buildings in NYC and Tel Aviv.
He is as corrupt as he can be within the law, he will offer powerful people 'whatever' on a personal basis, in exchange for some personal gain be it populist or prospect of future deals.
FYI I don't think he had anything to gain on N. Korea but some kind of accolade, it's the only situation that didn't provide for considerably conflict of interest.
And yes, I agree that the Gulf States don't care that much about the Palestinians, but they do at least a little bit.
Arab(muslim/christian) citizens get full rights under law, vote like any jew israeli.
On the flip side, in the occupied territories the Palestinians (arab muslims/christians) don't get to vote, and are basically under military occupation.
So Israel is (was) willing to give equal rights to any one who accepts jews place in israel.
The last few decades are begining to erode this willingness. And I fear we maybe slipping to full apartheid.
Not that surprising though that someone who is trying to form their own country won’t get to vote in a country which they don’t recognize as having a right to exist and don’t want any part in.
We don't have a constitution per se.
We do have "fundamental laws" protected by an independent supreme court. The Israeli right wing is orchestrating a decades long campaign to discredit the supreme court and make it less independent.
So who knows what the future will bring.
Volunteers aren't conscripts. Surely you know this.
Non-apartheid-type governments by definition do not have laws that discriminate by race.
Both Apartheid South Africa and contemporary Israel had and have laws explicitly preventing an emormous fraction of their society from every getting near military hardware.
Again, for the same reason.
I personally couldn't care, but the OP was falsely stating that Israel had no race defined laws in common with Apartheid South Africa.
[They have a few more in common, but this was one example I chose].
You're arguing that the privilege of Arabs avoiding military service proves the Israeli government discriminates /against/ Arab citizens. If that's your strongest argument then I'm quite happy.
So why then put the extra burden of defending Israel on just the Jews? An act of unsolicted kindness?
Unless of course Israeli jews really, really, really want to avoid training generation after generation after generation of Arabs citizens in IDF tactics and technology. Every year, year-in, year-out.
Clearly not trusting people is very obviously a form of government sanctioned discrimination.
Which again, is also why Apartheid South Africa also didn't feel comfortable handing millions of young Zulu men (ironically) Israeli designed R4 automatic weapons.
The point though, is that it is weird to bring up a situation where arabs are being discriminated in favor of, as some sort of killer argument as for why israel is discriminating against Arabs.
It undermines the argument.
Use a different one if you want to make that argument, because that one is bad.
Because, they aren't being discriminated in their favour (except in the most immediate sense).
Rather, like Apartheid South Africa, Arab Israelis are being very, very clearly told that they cannot be TRUSTED in bulk with something like assault rifles in the presense of Jewish citizens.
Apartheid was not merely Jim Crow type laws - it was existential.
I deliberately chose these laws because they get to the heart of what an Apartheid state is.
> Because, they aren't being discriminated in their favour
On that specific point they are being discriminated in favor of, though. Please show the specific harm, of how not forcing someone to join the military but still allowing them to if they want, is harm, if you disagree.
If you have other examples of them being discriminated against, just use those.
> they cannot be TRUSTED
They are allowed to volunteer if they want. They aren't being prevented from joining. Instead they are only not being forced to, which is discrimination in favor of the people who are not forced to join.
You need to show an actual specific law that harms them, to support your argument. Not forcing people to join the military is a benefit, not a drawback.
There are basically no circumstances, where not forcing someone to join the military, is a drawback.
Edit: looks like the parent didn't even bother much research - Arabs aren't forced to do military service but they're welcome to do so:
> National service is compulsory in Israel, with some exemptions — three years for men and two years for women. This rule also applies to the country's non-Jewish Druze and Circassian communities.
> Muslim Bedouins, who tend to identify more as Israeli than other Arabs, and Christian Arabs can voluntarily sign up and each minority is represented by a couple of hundred members of the armed forces.
"Arabs aren't forced to do military service but they're welcome to do so"
Exactly the same situation in Apartheid South Africa. There were whole battalions of volunteer black soldiers. Hell, after 1981 there were even black commissioned officers.
But under no circumstances where they arming and training the 'enemy' wholesale - as you said before your edit 'to protect THEIR people'. (Telling choice of words there).
South africa also had water pipes, so your country is an apartheid country.
See? This is silly.
Israel is in a tough situation where there are civilians with relative who swear they want to kill al jews. Israel tries to be fair in this scenario.
A matter of fact is, non jews can vote, join the police the army and the country has laws that gives non jews the same rights as jews. There are scholarship for non jews, and even programs to make sure they are getting to be doctors lawyers etc.
Heck, there are non jewish judges (in the supreme court!), parliament members, and government ministers.
The situation is far from normal or sane, But this is very different than what the situation in SA was.
Now, all of this might change, as there are very dark forces that through the political situation in israel are trying to change israel from being a liberal democracy (at least striving to be) to become a theocracy/ethnocracy.
If they succeed, you might be right in calling israel an apartheid state.
Arab citizens are very much allowed to volunteer for military service and are given access to the same kind of weapons as any other soldier:
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rJVoNmyCP
It's true they are exempted from the draft, but I don't quite see how that constitutes discrimination _against_ them.
The point of calling Israel an apartheid state is of course not to claim that Israel is identical to what South Africa was. The point is to emphasize that it is the same racist and supremacist ideology that permeates both systems. In South Africa, you had white people (Boers) dominating and oppressing colored people. In Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, you have Jews dominating and oppressing Palestinians.
The Palestinians agreed in the Oslo Accords t govern themselves. They don't vote in Israeli elections, and Israelis don't vote in their elections (if they had any).
Israel denies citizenship, voting rights, and equal rights to Palestinians (who still have to live according to the law Israeli citizens decide because Israel controls their territory). And the entire basis for doing this is that Jewish people must be the ethnic majority in Israel. It's literally apartheid on ethnic lines.
Well anyone who ever visited the Israeli Palestinian border or ever had to go through a border crossing security check would see how obviously it is apartheid.
I'm sorry it hurts your feelings but real people are losing their homes and livelihoods every day to ever increasing Israeli settlement.
I've visited it numerous times. The label on it doesn't make it ok or not.
The issue is the circumstances there don't meet the factual criterion of apartheid. That's not a question of feelings. The fact the apartheid label is applied here while it is not emphasized or even applied to non-Jewish countries is a double standard. That fits the definition of anti-semitism.
They do meet the factual definition whether you like it or not.
If I'm Palestinian, I live my life completely according to the rules of Israel (because of the blockade and checkpoints and control of the territory). As a Palestinian, I also cannot vote in Israel and will never be granted the ability to vote in Israel, in order to preserve the ethnic majority of Israel. As a Palestinian I can also have my home taken away from me to make room for Israeli settlers.
I saw "Israel" in the title of this post and immediately thought "there is going to be a lengthy discussion in the comments, irrelevant to the subject of the post, where people argue about politics." Scrolled down, wasn't disappointed.
Ok, but please don't make the thread even worse with meta comments about offtopicness.
It's not surprising that an internet forum thread about Israel turns into a political, etc., flamewar—that's unfortunately the expected outcome. The important question is how to develop a site culture where that's less likely to happen.
True. Peace has been on the table for two decades but the expansion of settlements makes it very very difficult to deliver any kind of contiguous Palestinian State. Imagine trying to turn this map into a two state solution https://www.btselem.org/map.
In the past two decades Israel has given back complete control of Gaza to the Palestinians. They had one election 15 years ago. Hamas won on a campaign of abolishing Israel (“from the river to the sea...”). They proceeded to shoot thousands of rockets into major Israeli population centers - rockets that couldn’t have reached had Israel not given back Gaza.
While I don’t at all agree with the settlements, the truth is that’s a lightening rod point and the actual amount of land is a drop in the bucket. Israel has always been willing to trade land for peace. But both parties must want peace.
To those who would like to learn more, GP is referring to the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip, which, to quote Wikipedia, "was the unilateral dismantling in 2005 of the 21 Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and the evacuation of the settlers and Israeli army from inside the Gaza Strip." [0]
But did Israel give back "complete control of Gaza"? Here's another Wikipedia quote: "Israel maintains direct external control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza: it controls Gaza's air and maritime space, and six of Gaza's seven land crossings. It reserves the right to enter Gaza at will with its military and maintains a no-go buffer zone within the Gaza territory. Gaza is dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities." [1]
My own opinion on the matter is not contained within this post; just providing some more facts for the interested.
I think this is true, but I wonder why this olive branch of “right to exist” doesn’t also extend to the Palestinian government? Maybe the Palestinians need a stronger military force to establish their right to exist?
In the 90s, There was a majority of Israelis willing to give the Palestinians a state and recognition for peace and recognition.
This was met with packed buses being blown away in major cities by palestinian extrimists during negotiations.
This allowed Israeli extremists to take the reigns, and after three decades of hegemony managed to convince most of the Israeli population that peace is a dangerous pipe dream and any sort of compromise will be met with violence. And to establish facts on the ground which would make a palestinian state practically impossible without rooting out masses of Israelis from their home by force.
The Israeli left kept warning of this scenario, because the end game is either a non democratic jewish state, or a civil war torn single state. This cost the traditional Israeli left (the labor party) to be almost electorally eliminated during these 3 decades.
Now the hegemony opinion is that no peace is possible, and the Palestinians are to be basically ignored.
Yeah, I have no idea what the answer is. But if the Palestinians somehow all of a sudden had a massive (and well-organized) military, they couldn’t be ignored and settlers would see it in their interest to leave voluntarily. Then maybe peace could happen. The asymmetry of the military situation means that one side is desperate and the other side sees no reason to compromise, and therefore you have a low level conflict forever which is not actually good for anyone.
They are ignored as they've proven again and again that their words are not worth the paper that they sign, that they cannot be trusted. That they are as corrupt as an entity could be. That they are unwilling to make hard compromises ... nay ... any compromise whatsoever. Even when compromise enables them to declare "victory" and free their people from a lifetime of violence.
The conflict will continue until one side realizes that it has been utterly defeated. This hasn't happened yet. They have been defeated. They just don't want to admit it.
> I wonder why this olive branch of “right to exist” doesn’t also extend to the Palestinian government?
The right of a homeland for the Palestinians has been recognized since before Israel was even granted statehood by the U.N as part of the two-state solution.
Note Palestinian’s situation isn’t just due to Israel. Neither Egypt nor Jordan really “want” Palestinians either. Palestinians refugees in Jordan often face as bad or worse discrimination as those in Israel. Egypt could welcome the people of Gaza but don’t either. In contrast after Israel declared itself independent most Arab states in the Mediterranean ejected their historical Jewish inhabitants (roughly equal to the number of Palestinians at the time), and the state of Israel accepted them (it had incentives too to do so). But in short it’s a much more complicated issue than just having a stronger military and Palestinians are victims of more than just one state or political expediency.
Palestinians are victims of an imperialist pan-Arab politics that sees the removal of non-Arab sovereignty from the region as fundamentally more important than ensuring democracy, civil rights, or economic development for all Arabs within Arab nations.
No, not really. You're suggesting more capability for violence will secure their freedom. I'm noting the observation of facts at hand suggest the opposite.
Does that mean reducing the Israeli military would also help?
The goal is for both the Israeli and Palestinian states to exist and for there to be peace. An Israeli hegemony over the Palestinian state, with settlers and all, certainly doesn’t help that, and it may be a rational goal of the Palestinian state to become too much of a nuisance to be ignored. If peace means subjugation, I think many Palestinians probably wouldn’t be okay with that. The Palestinians are seeing a lot of “might makes right” arguments right now about why they should just accept subjugation.
Given the two wars of survival the Israelis have fought in the past 50-ish years it seems very likely that it would reducing their military would reduce the freedom and literal existence of the Israelis.
For the Palestinians, perhaps reducing the Israeli would increase freedom in the short term. In the longer term, in the absence of Israel, it seems more likely they would end up dominated by either larger neighbors like Lebanon by Syria or experience low-freedom autocracies like Egypt, Iraq, etc.
Who said anything about eliminating Israel? Why eliminate EITHER side? I think a two state solution makes the most sense, but right now the one state Israeli right wing has the upper hand and a near monopoly on violence (and let’s not ignore there has been plenty of targeting of civilians, including retribution). This doesn’t seem to be a great argument about how freedom-loving the State of Israel is. An autocratic (or ethnocratic), low-freedom Israel snuffing out the Palestinian state doesn’t seem preferable to me whereas a peaceful two state solution seems like it could be super awesome for both sides if they can just get over themselves.
And if one can understand why Israel would fight for its right to exist as a state, then why should it be surprising that the Palestinian state fights for the same reason?
Instead, the argument is that the observable fact is that continued violence has not helped the palestinian cause.
It simply has not worked.
That's not a moral statement. It is simply the descriptive truth that violence for decades has not helped their cause, and therefore it probably won't in the future.
But the violence by the Israeli military DOES seem to have worked! Israel exists and no serious person doubts that Israel will continue to exist for quite a while because of it. So why would violence help one side more than the other? Probably because one side is much more powerful than the other. Hence my asking about whether a stronger (and more organized) Palestinian military would help.
Yeah, ain’t no angels in this conflict. It’d be doing the world a favor to move everyone out and then sow the ground with highly radioactive waste making it entirely uninhabitable for hundreds of years, denying it to everyone. So much blood spilt over a bit of land no bigger than Massachusetts (and much of it desert).
To take this thread further off topic, i feel like there's some remarkably not-hot-headed people in this thread so maybe I can finally get an answer to a question that's been bothering me a long time:
Why do some Israelis build settlements? I mean, in the middle of what used to be Palestinian-controlled land? What's their goal? Also isn't it super risky/scary?
It seems to me to just be a needless provocation but that makes no sense, why would anyone risk their family's safety just to provoke? I'm clearly missing some key insight.
Originally, security
. Israel’s economic and population core is contained within a region as wide the distance from your average small city to a suburb. It’s also geographically a low plain. It’s called Gush Dan and looking at a map is helpful for understanding how extreme this geography really is.
The land on the Palestinian side of that border are hills. Prior to when Israel conquered that land in 1967, Arab militants/terrorists would take pot shots at and occasionally kill drivers of cars and busses driving along roads in this region. It’s really that small, single digit miles wide. Apparently school busses were a favorite since they are large bright targets.
The settlements were originally limited in number and designed to offer the Israelis opportunity for physical security. This is still the case today when the preferred weapon of militants/terrorist is missiles.
After 1973 when the Right came to power the settlements adopted a religious connotation. They were massively expanded as a conscious effort to absorb the entire West Bank. Since then the problem has only deepened.
Over two thousand years ago there were two kingdoms called Judah and Israel. Judah encompassed the southern West Bank and Israel the northern West Bank. These kingdoms were destroyed and became part of the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and the Roman empires. The modern State of Israel claims that it is the spiritual successor to these kingdoms and that it therefore has a right to the same territory that these kingdoms once encompassed. Furthermore, Judaism's holy book, the Torah, describes how God gave his people, the Israelites, this territory. Many Israeli Jews believe that they are somehow related to the ancient Israelites.
While many Israeli Jews (likely a majority) acknowledge that the West Bank is "occupied", technically, according to international law, for the above reasons, they insist that Israel has a legitimate claim to it. The West Bank is in Israel commonly referred to as "Judea and Samaria" because those are the names used in the Torah.
The goal of the settlements is to create "facts on the ground" to make it harder for future governments to relinquish the occupied Palestinian territories. As Israel's former prime minister Ariel Sharon phrased it: "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many [Palestinian] hilltops as they can to enlarge the [Jewish] settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." This is precisely why it is considered a war crime for an occupying power to transfer parts of its civilian population into occupied territory.
Most Israeli settlers live in settlement blocs and it is not dangerous for the setters to live in them. A smaller number of settlers are religious extremists and they establish "outposts" - settlements built without explicit permission by the government. These settlers are often well-armed and coordinate with the Israeli military. Palestinians, on the other hand, are for the most part not allowed to own firearms.
The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin is said to have been the most successful political assassination in history. It changed the tide for real, in the way that the assassin strived for.
Yup, I agree. Same for the Israelis who want peace shouldn’t be pushing for settlement and subjugation of the Palestinian state. Extremists on both sides don’t want to compromise on their visions.
Yeah, if I wasn't abroad for my PhD I'd be voting for the Labor Party this election. They've got a new party head who's taking a stronger stand against Netanyahu and the pro-settlement Right than the other parties.
I do really wish my people's country could come up in the news without people breaking out in Zionism Derangement Syndrome in the comments, insisting genocide refugees are colonizers and racism is when we don't force minorities to fight in the army if they don't support the state. It brings to mind that academic crank who once said Israeli soldiers are racist for not raping Palestinian women. This kind of ZDS is why Netanyahu keeps winning -- it's all Israelis and Jews hear from people in other countries, and it affects our discourse.
I don't want to get into the rest of your argument, but just wanted to say that based on my reading of history, pretty much all of the borders on Earth "were a colonization project from the start".
Which is why Poland and Germany constantly fight over the border that was imposed post-WWII (20th century, yes) and the population displacement that took place at that time, right?
It's really easy to declare things as black and white. It's seldom accurate.
(Important note: a large fraction, a majority depending on how you count it, of Israel's population are descendants of Jews who were ejected from other Middle Eastern countries after the establishment of Israel? Are they to be considered "colonizers" in your framing?)
> a large fraction, a majority depending on how you count it, of Israel's population are descendants of Jews who were ejected from other Middle Eastern countries after the establishment of Israel
This is not modern history. Yes they are colonizers. By your logic, anyone could just invade Africa and start a country there since all humanity's ancestors descended from the region.
> It's really easy to declare things as black and white.
Colonization and genocide are actually pretty black and white. Israel is violating international law and committing human rights violations.
Just to make sure we're talking about the same thing: we're talking about the mass ejections of Jews from various Middle Eastern and North African countries in the 50s, 60s, and 70s of the 20th century, right?
And if that's not modern history, then how is the establishment of Israel at the same time modern history?
> Yes they are colonizers.
They were refugees, more precisely. But just to be specific, what is your concrete proposal for where they should have gone?
> By your logic, anyone could just invade Africa and start a country there since all humanity's ancestors descended from the region.
No, I don't see how that's an analogous situation at all. My question about Israel is a pretty specific one: I challenge its presentation as a "European" or "Western" colonial project. Though maybe that was not your intent?
> Colonization and genocide are actually pretty black and white
We'd have to clearly define "colonization", since I suspect we disagree on whether specific actions constitute it.
Genocide is pretty black and white, I agree. I am opposed to genocide. We may disagree on whether there is genocide, or attempted genocide going on in various situations, unfortunately.
Concretely: Do you feel that Israel is attempting a genocide campaign against the Palestinians? Do you feel that the Israeli electorate supports such a campaign? Do you feel that the Palestinians are attempting a genocide campaign against Jews? Do you feel that their electorate (using that term loosely, due to lack of elections) supports such a campaign?
Fundamentally, I disagree with both the "from the river to the sea" narrative and the "all of Judea and Samaria" narrative... (And I do note that neither of those is necessarily genocidal, though both can be nice jumps onto slippery slopes towards there.)
> Israel is violating international law and committing human rights violations.
Yes, I agree. But just to make sure we're on the same page, so are the Palestinians, every single country Israel has a border with (on the human rights violation parts of the ledger for sure), and quite a number of other entities. Including, I am 99% sure, the country you live in. There are questions of scope and degree, of course. Please don't mention the words "false equivalence", because I am not claiming that anything here is "equivalent" to anything else, and if I were we'd likely disagree on what equivalences are "true" vs "false".
More practically, what specific actions do you think would be required for Israel to stop committing what you perceive as human rights violations and international law violations? And if your answer is "dissolve itself as an entity and have all the Jews go somewhere else", then I can see how that's a consistent moral position, but that does not match either international law nor morality as I perceive it.
If that's not your position, then were back to trying to figure out various shades of grey, as far as I can tell, which we're probably not going to manage to work out in this sort of discussion.
Israel encouraged immigration, yes. And the countries the Mizrahi Jews left did all sorts of things that encouraged their Jews to leave.
> Yes, I think Israel is attempting a genocide against the Palestinians.
OK, we have that clear. I asked three other questions in the paragraph where I asked that question, and I'd love to know what your answers to those are.
> The ICC is currently investigating war crimes
As they should, yes. I don't think everything Israel does is either acceptable or even justified, by any means.
No, I don't think the Palestinians are engaging in genocide against the Israelis. Yes, I think Israel should be disbanded. As for what to do with people who don't want to stay? I'd be more than happy to welcome them to the US.
Thank you, that makes your position quite clear. I appreciate your continued engagement with this conversation and the fact that I think we managed to keep it reasonably polite...
You're right but that doesn't mean we should accept it. Why we didn't accept it when Saddam invaded Koweit or when Russia annexed Crimea?
Colonization of Palestine has very negative direct and indirect consequences on our world.
No countries recognize Israeli claims to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and even the comparatively tame annexation of the Golan Heights is recognized by very few.
That means, formally, Israeli actions in the OPT are even less accepted than Russia's annexation of Crimea. Practically, begrudging acceptance seems to be a very apt description, arguably of the latter even more so than the former.
Didn't the Trump administration declare that the settlements were not illegal? Palestine is not even fully recognized as an independent state.
Besides the comparaison with Crimea, the point was that borders throughout history have been shaped by colonizations and invasions but that cannot be used to justify colonization itself.
Crimea was given by Stalin to Ukraine relatively recently. Yes, Russia took it back by threat of force, but it's not like they didn't have some historic claim to the land, much like Jews do to the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea.
That's a very dangerous position. If you want to go there you'll find a long list of claims of almost anything.
Take Crimea for example: the Russian Empire only conquered it in the late 18th century (relatively recently too). Should the Turks claim it next (as the Crimean state was the Ottoman Empire's vassal before) or maybe Mongols, Greeks, or descendants of Goths, Huns?
There's a reason for avoiding forceful border carving in the modern world for "historic justice". It is a phony cause and leads to a chain of generational violence. Too bad the modern world never acts to efficiently prevent it.
And by the way, Stalin was already dead by 1954 — difficult to "give" anything in that state. Not even mentioning that "giving" in USSR is just an administrative re-arrangement of a territory within an empire. By that logic, all the states ever being part of any empire have a "historic claim" on the other parts.
That's a very slippery slope if you justify the colonization of Palestine by Israel because it was part of a jewish kingdom thousands of years ago.
Spain has been muslim for centuries would that be acceptable if they settled again there by force?
There is no colonisation to justify or otherwise, there was a continuous use of the land by Jewish people since this time. The name 'Palestinea' only came about as a punishment by the Romans for Simon bar Kokhba.
Not that Wikipedia itself is a good source, but thi has a bunch of references:
> In the aftermath of the war, Hadrian consolidated the older political units of Judaea, Galilee and Samaria into the new province of Syria Palaestina, which is commonly interpreted as an attempt to complete the disassociation with Judaea.
There has been a continuous use of the land by Christians and Muslims for centuries as well. So because Judaism has existed the longest they have the right to expel everybody else or best case scenario, make them second-class citizen (Law of Return, Jewish National Fund ...).
There has also been a continuous presence of native Americans for much longer than Europeans in North America...
If you're denying that colonization even exists it will be difficult to have a discussion based on facts.
I’m not denying there has been Arabs and other groups there. The situation regarding expelling is in many cases more more likely to do with people avoiding tax under the Ottomans (if you didn't own a field you were using, you couldn't be taxed on it) than forced expulsion though.
You’re also confusing a religion with an ethnicity in your comment. The issue is Arabs and Jewish people not anything to do with Islam, Christianity or atheism.
> The issue is Arabs and Jewish people not anything to do with Islam, Christianity or atheism.
Religion has a lot to do with the issue. Religion and ethnicity are often strongly related especially for Jews. Judaism is the main element that identifies Jews together and the vast majority of Arabs living in Israel/Palestine are Muslims.
I think the point was fair. We try to have a world where force is not used to reshape borders. Eg, we rightfully call out Russia's annexation of Crimea and sanction them.
If we are to call out China's genocide of the Uighers, we should also call out the Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States when they commit human rights abuse.
It's about applying human rights and international law as impartially as possible, and using economic might to sanction any country which breaks the rules.
I mean... economic might is a version of human rights abuses.
Ask the Cubans.
The are no simple applications of pithy thoughts. The world is messy, subjective and everyone has an inherent bias to their world view. And most importantly, it isn't fair or just. We just hopefully try to do better than yesterday.
There are officially recognized war crimes and crimes against humanity. There's national sovereignty. These aren't "pithy thoughts", they're well regarded basics that Israel regularly violates with the support of the US.
Go look at the UN Council on Human Rights, which is historically a literal who's who of human rights abusers.
The UN Security Council is actually the only UN group that can officially declare Human Rights Abuses... but of course a single veto prevents that.
The ICC has its own host of issues around bias.
I guess my point is most issues are not as clear cut in the moment as they are in retrospect.
Some are clearer than others, of course. But life is messy, and the victors have always written the narrative that past events are judged. It's a relatively recent artifact where we can argue about this stuff in real time.
Much the same could be said about America, Australia or New Zealand - or in older days the expansion of the First Calpihate - but time and humanity blithely blunders on regardless of critics' mores.
"in everyone's best interest to become friendly with Israel"
Said the Arabs in the West Bank?
We can't use the argument that 'Israel has a right to exist' (ok) to dismiss the illegality of the occupied territories (not ok).
Hezbollah exists for this historical reason. (Edit: people flinching at this comment, I meant to imply 'partly for this reason', i.e. in the context the overall conflict and brought them up because the article is about Lebanon. Of course Hezbollah is not primarily about Palestenians)
So yes 'let's make peace' but that would involve something like a two state solution or whatever.
I have a funny feeling that Israel is maybe paying for most of this cable, and that Greece is getting the added benefit of 'it's side' of Cypress getting a big win. Israel has a lot to gain from a geostrategic perspective from this whereas Cypress is too small and Greece doesn't have enough money for this to be a top line item.
Hezbollah isn't the PLO, they were formed out of Shia militia groups from Lebanon's previous civil wars, not to help the Palestinians.
Lebanon absolutely does not have the Palestinians rights in mind. They have "refugee camps" with tens of thousands of people in them that they have been kept there since the 1950's and 1960's, and haven't given them citizenship.
How come you're so concerned about other countries making peace with Israel, but not concerned with countries making peace with Lebanon?
"How come you're so concerned about other countries making peace with Israel, "
I'm not concerned with any nation making peace with the next because mostly they have a pragmatic peace.
The 'concern' is the ongoing incursion into the occupied territories, against all international condemnation and the duplicity of US actions i.e. technically declaring the occupation illegal while literally at the same time moving embassies etc..
The legitimacy of the Jews right to a homeland and their problems derived from nearby enemies is constantly used as cover for their other actions.
Zionism is not supposed to be Apartheid, but in pragmatic reality, it is.
That there are not sanctions against Israel is a testament to it's far reaching influence.
Hezbollah does not exist to fight for Palestinians. It was created to resist Israeli presence in South Lebanon, which in itself was a response to PLO attacks on Israeli territory launched from within Lebanon (e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_Road_massacre).
Any rhetoric by Hezbollah leaders to the contrary is just that, plus an excuse to maintain relevance following Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon. After all, why maintain an extra-legal paramilitary force after it has successfully achieved the goal it was created for?
That's true for the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc., but not Hezbollah, which responds to Israel’s periodic occupations of South Lebanon, not their occupation of Palestine.
As a (former) military officer I will refrain from commenting on current foreign politics. I just observe that both countries could gain a lot from the cessation of their current conflict.
Which country actually initiates negotiations is not very interesting, if you can even accurately determine the "start" of any negotiation in this time of digital communications and backchannel diplomacy.
> As a (former) military officer I will refrain from commenting on current foreign politics. I just observe that both countries could gain a lot from the cessation of their current conflict.
It would also be nice if Lebanon accepted the international community's ruling that yes, the 2000 Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon really happened, and there is in fact no remaining occupation of Lebanese land.
Why should Lebanon accept rulings from the international community when Israel has ignored almost every single one since 1948?! The core of the issue is the 30 square kilometers Shebaa Farms area which Israel occupied in 1967. Syria and Lebanon claims that it is Lebanese territory and Lebanon wants it back. Israel claims that it was Syrian territory that it occupied and subsequently annexed in 1980.
That sounds like rather much of a diversion from the simple factual question of whether any under international law Lebanese land remains occupied by Israel, to which the answer is a simple no.
The CIA did a fake vaccination program to find Bin Laden. I'd probably look askance at offers of aid workers from a country I'm technically at war with.
People were up in arms that palestinians weren't offered vaccines. If Israel doesn't give medical aid they are devils, when they do, they really want to cause harm.
There is a lot of confusion here. Israel is 25% Arab (mostly Palestinian). All those Palestinians have full medical care just like any other citizen of Israel.
Israel has now begun to vaccinate Palestinian workers that commute from Gaza and the West Bank, and has also donated vaccines (despite the Palestinian government stating repeatedly they don’t want help from Israel) to Palestine.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) [...] is an organization founded in 1964 with the purpose of the "liberation of Palestine" through armed struggle, with much of its violence aimed at Israeli civilians.
Before that it was vanilla antisemitism, pogroms and massacres organized by the local Muslims, no different than how it was done in other places in the Middle East (or other places in the world). Some even were Nazi sympathizers/collaborators, like the Mufti of Jerusalem [2].
I wouldn't say millenia, but hundreds of years seems appropriate[1][2][3][4] ....
The "resistance" didn't start with the PLO. They are only the latest manifestation of a conflict going back centuries. It didn't start in 1948, or 1964, etc. It started long before that.
That's exactly what I wrote, so we're in agreement here.
Before 1964 it wasn't driven by a Palestinian national aspirations, it was driven by religious antisemitism/bigotry, and in a much lesser extent by pan-Arabism.
There were many massacres of the Jews (including of women and children) by the local Arabs. It wasn't something specific to Israel, it happened with many minorities all over the Middle East. My family has oral memories of one such massacre.
But I wouldn't call massacres of the civilian minority population - a "resistance".
I should clarify that I was ironically using that word. Basically the point is that this is part of a much larger history, that has pretty much nothing whatsoever to do with the formation of Israel.
Unfortunately, most of the people who've been tasked with bringing the "conflict" to an end cannot seem to fathom, or more importantly, actively choose to deny the existence of these prior elements. As they would completely undermine their (only) thesis.
Again, I hate giving Trump credit for stuff, but his approach of "lets make deals with parties willing to make deals, and ignore those who want to waste our time" has opened doors. It would be a tremendous shame if we walked backwards to the old (failed) peace processors viewpoint. With the current administration, I'd say that was inevitable.
Lebanon could benefit from this. So could the Pals. All they have to do is stop trying to kill Israelis and destroy Israel. I have little hope of this happening in my lifetime.
Very much similar to the Tuskegee experiment. When your opressors experiment on you in the name of science it is logical to distrust the science of your oppressor.
Would any Jew in 1950 have willingly taken a German vaccine?
Many things would need to fall in place for this to happen. Since Hezb is a puppet of Iran, it is unlikely to allow this to happen. If anything, I would suspect they (Hezb/Iran) are planning on attacks against the infrastructure.
Lebanon tried to make peace before the civil war. I think anyone with Lebanese family can see how Lebanon pre-civil war and Israel had more in common than Lebanon had with the greater arab world, or even with Palestine.
But Israel basically wanted the leadership to bend over further than they'd be willing to do, and the deal was cancelled.
Today with a more diverse Lebanon it's still possible. There would need to be a shift away from Syrian and Iranian interest but it is definitely possible.
I don't understand Greece's actions in this matter. Why is Greece so keen on poking Turkey rather than working together? There is no winners in this lose-lose scenario.
This is like trying to go Manhattan from NJ without entering NY. I mean... it's impossible.
(Greek nationals doesn't seem to like this comment)
I'm not Greek, but your question seems to be disingenuous considering the fact that the long running dispute between Cyprus and Turkey is fairly common knowledge. See this[1] for why ethnic Greeks might consider Turkey to be disinterested in working together.
> Greece so keen on poking Turkey rather than working together
Turkey has not yet withdrawn from what is legally Cypriot territory on the north of the island. That would be the bare minimum of cooperation required.
Things would have been better had Turkey tried to actually cooperate for once, instead of repeatedly provoking and going as far as invading Greece's and Cyprus' EEZs.
Na. Turkey needs to be counterd by others. And others need to defend themselves from Turkey. These the are natural allies in this region for obvious, not so obvious, subtle and not so subtle reasons. There is a very long history of unhappiness between Turkey and these three countries.
Don't Turkey and Greece have issues with one another? Why run a backup line through a country you have grievances with?
Every time you enter Manhattan from NJ using the tunnels or the George Washington bridge you are directly entering the City of New York(which is in the state of New York).
Turkey has a history of claiming an EEZ way to the south of Cyprus (and also claiming an EEZ even past Crete in the Aegean), not wanting to work together and then accusing Greece of not working with them when Greece signs treaties to pass undersea cables in areas that Turkey claims as Turkish EEZ.
It's all a bit of a clusterfuck, I'm not even entirely clear on what areas Turkey claims and what areas Greece claims. Turkey also refuses to go to the ICJ to resolve this, which would have been a good solution, in my opinion.
It's more likely that Israel here has interest into linking with the European grid (Cyprus being just in the middle), and not Greece linking with Israel's
Because turks are really nationalistic and they see everything as a threat and they see themself always a victim. Like they see a country with a population of 10 millions provoking a country with 82 million inhabitants, just because Israel wants to link their power grid to Europe. Talking of poking and insecurity, how is it even possible to see Israel connecting their power grid to Europe as poking by Greece? Why should Greece, Cyprus and Israel ask Turkey first, if doesn't go through turkish sea and land?
I mean, the dispute between Turkey and Greece mostly is about the islands that are literally 5 to 10kms away from Turkish mainland and Greece trying to claim the whole Aegan See for themselves, citing the islands are her waters and there a LOT of islands, enough to cover Aegean See and isolating Turkey’s west shores. It causes a dispute, since if Greece would have their way, Turkey would not even be able to use her west shores.
Greece invading west Turkey in WW1 does not help either.
The conflicts are really feels like children arguing with each other. Both parties needs to stop, but I think both governments/ruling parties enjoy nationalist votes from fueling this dispute. Other countries, who have interest in this dispute, does not help either.
[1] this episode of the Caspian Report (an excellent Youtube channel on international affairs) discusses how Israel and Turkey are trying to establish stronger diplomatic ties in order to directly connect their maritime EEZ's and block Cyprus from the Mediterranean.
It would give the both access to undersea hydrocarbon deposits, and Israel was going to support route changes of pipelines to pass more through Turkey.
I suspect this project and goal is somehow intertwined, but I'm not versed enough with international relations to see the big picture.
Worth noting that Caspian Report is made by an azerbaijani guy who is, not very objective, with regards to matters that have to do with turkey
The video you talk about is probably talking about a proposal that Turkey made to Israel which runs counter to every international maritime law (it was promptly rejected by israel) . AFAIK they made similar proposals to egypt
To go from NJ to Manhattan without entering other boroughs one would simply take the Lincoln Tunnel, Holland Tunnel or GWB. Alternatively one can take a ferry or even a railroad barge.
The point is that as long as Turkey is opportunistically involved in every military conflict they believe they can get gains from, they can't be seen as a trusted partner by their neighboring countries.
All countries (also
people) do that. If you have power, you put in use. See USA(Iraq), Russia (Crimea), Germany (WW2), Britain (colonies) etc... I do not support war or occupation but countries behave like high school children - bullies are going to bully.
But, you find all those countries that I listed above, “trustworthy”, is that correct?
The problem here is, “trustworthy” does not mean anything in international relations. It is all about having the outcomes you want, one way or another. If peace gets you what you want, its great. If war, then you go to war.
That is why European Union removed the borders, unified the economic area, so that they will be too integrated/extremely hard to decouple to have war again, because treaties or trustworthiness is meaningless in scale of countries.
It's not completely random, e.g. it would be very hard for a politician in USA to convince population that it is a good idea to bully Canada. And it would not require any convincing for Turkish citizens to accept any action against Greece. So being extremely suspicious of Turkey is the only possible policy for Greece.
