On counterfactual history and Israel:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I am currently working on an alternate history titled Yasser Arafat's Great Gamble where Arafat tries to bluff his way into Sharon attacking him and acting in bad faith for propaganda points over the Israelis.

What happens is that Sharon decides not to attack Arafat and to get Arafat to attack him so he can launch a Defensive Shield-type hammer-dropping on the Palestinians. In this particular alternate history as both sides try to bluff the other into shooting first but neither finds their interest suited by being the one to pull the trigger, Sharon begins negotiations for his unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in an attempt to use this to bluff the Palestinians into attacking him over this. Instead what happens is Hamas and Islamic Jihad declare Arafat a traitor and form the Islamic Popular Front (yes, I chose the name as a Monty Python reference) and the Palestinian Civil War starts when they intend to use it to backstab Arafat.

9/11 happens to be for this particular timeline one of the key elements in the evolution of the unintentional peace, namely that Arafat uses this to claim to the USA that he wants weapons to fight the IPF (which he actually intends to because it's personal for him), and that he wants specific weapons that give him a long-term advantage over Israel, especially when he gets US weaponry to attack Israel in what he thinks will be a Gaza Strip base. Then an IPF bomb kills him, Abu Mazzin takes over, ends the war, and establishes a type of peace where the Israelis start withdrawals from the Gaza Strip and West Bank as Palestinians develop a new system geared to a world where they're not in fact dependent on war with Israel as a unifying factor.

To me the reason that it would take something like this to lead to an Israeli-Palestinian peace is pretty simple and straightforward: historically both Israel and Palestinian leaders have benefited from their shooting at each other more than any peace. If war serves interests, war is good. If war does not serve interests but peace serves interests, war is bad and so war will not happen.

I think the biggest single obstacle to a meaningful peace between Israel and the Palestinians is that neither can give to the other what the other will ever accept, and that in the short and medium terms, while the interests of both are served by a halt to the endless violence, neither see it as such and neither can actually achieve it. For Israel to exist, Palestinians must either be ethnically cleansed or doomed to perpetual third-class citizenship. It's a requirement of state security, and reasons of state take precedence over human decency at all times. Palestinians have never had any reasons whatsoever to like this, but they have never had a means of successfully challenging this, either, while their leaders' interests have been served by losing wars more than by winning them.


Unfortunately the way things are shaping up, I can't see the Gaza Strip changing for the better, and am curious as to why we never hear of the West Bank anymore. Which IMHO has to do with Israeli media not benefiting from admitting that Palestinians *can* in fact establish stable, prosperous governments for propaganda reasons, but that's my opinion.

The timeline (still in progress), is here: http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=227223.

Comments

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

...why we never hear of the West Bank anymore. Which IMHO has to do with Israeli media not benefiting...

You only get news from the Israeli media?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I'm certainly not trusting Al Jazeera or Arab media on that issue, while I've seen too many instances of Western media not even identifying basic things properly to trust them on anything related something in a war zone.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Hamas and Islamic Jihad declare Arafat a traitor

That's a big counterfactual. Arafat was able to maintain his position as the preëminent Palestinian leader in the despite making many tactical errors much bigger than what you describe. His credibility in Palestinians' eyes was inexhaustible.

It's not clear to me why Islamist Palestinians would be more willing to sue for peace in this timeline than in our own, but I think that's because I'm missing something.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Because in this timeline he's actually looking like he's negotiating a serious peace with Israel. To them this is treason, and a sign that "the Tunisians" are about to sell out the Palestinians again. The elephant in the room is the Gaza Strip, which both the IPF and Arafat want to secure as a base to shoot at Israel, but the IPF moves first. The Islamists never really liked Arafat historically and his power to control Palestinian factions was somewhat exaggerated. He, however, loathed even a pretense of a challenge to his own power, thus......

The Islamists sue for peace because the Palestinian National Authority smashes their military power to smithereens.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Conceivable, but I'm not persuaded.

Arafat['s] power to control Palestinian factions was somewhat exaggerated

I recognize that the Palestinians have always been highly factionalized and that Arafat never controlled much of anything. I believe that Islamists and others would say that Arafat was wrong, even successfully oppose him on plans; we saw plenty of that historically. I just don't believe that any faction could maintain credibility after painting Arafat as a traitor. His credibility as dedicated to the cause, on a personal level, was unshakeable.

because the Palestinian National Authority smashes their military power to smithereens

A lack of military power has never made Palestinians less bellicose before. Why in this instance? (Am I wrong to think of the Kzinti?)

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

There are crucial elements in the scenario that make this work.

1) The crucial element is that the Israelis just as IOTL prepare to withdraw entirely from the Gaza Strip. Both Arafat and the Islamists intend to nab it as a means of backstabbing the whole thing, the Islamists wind up triggering the civil war and making the claim in the process of this before the withdrawal starts. Essentially they decide that if Arafat deals with Israel to get them to withdraw, he's recognized the state and is thus a traitor and *they* get the new military base to start bashing people with. It goes downhill for them from there and they don't maintain much credibility afterward beyond the range of their weapons.

2) Because "You killed Arafat, you bastards" is part of Abbas's stock in trade aimed at them and he uses it to torpedo their credibility, bolstering it by their prolonging the war past the point where it was militarily lost for them.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Aha. So the key counterfactual you have to sell is that the Islamists decide that they can bump off Arafat and maintain their credibility. The propaganda knife fight between Arafat and Sharon is a change, but easy to imagine.

You need something equivalent to the Finns getting Hitler to think that the Russians aren't so tough after all ....

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And that one I do sell in that the process evolves slowly and as much from Arafat attempting to direct them in the sense of an autocratic micromanager as anything else. When they plan the war it takes them much disagreement and negotiations, and the real problem is that the attempt goes awry from Murphy's Law, killing Arafat's wife and daughter but not Arafat (in the style of his close escapes from other attempts to kill him). When *that* happens Arafat decides it's personal, they can't un-dead the two family members of his that died, and the result for them is a spiral into a civil war that radicalizes both sides.

In the timeline I note that the primary reason the Palestinian Civil War lasts long at all is that Arafat was a bad battlefield/military leader and that it ends as quick as it does when Abbas takes over because he's much better about millitary matters (and unlike Arafat is waging a total war to the last ditch) at the warfighting levels. For their part the Israelis decide to hunker down and wait, both expecting sooner or later they'll be targeted and fearing any action taken would produce both sides united against them. The Islamists *do* try to draw them in, the attempts fail, and they then start lobbing rockets into the West Bank bypassing Israel. Sharon, meanwhile, is sitting on the couch eating popcorn watching the whole thing unfold.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

the primary reason the Palestinian Civil War lasts long at all is that Arafat was a bad battlefield/military leader

Nice touch.

Sharon, meanwhile, is sitting on the couch eating popcorn

Interesting. That's a bit uncharacteristic for him — he generally erred on the side of using military force — but it's not hard imagining the cooler heads in Israeli leadership making the efficacy of that course clear.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a harsh truth but it is one. He only wins battles by virtue of facing opponents more incompetent than he himself is. Add to this that Arafat is not exactly keen to prosecute the war with the severity required to win it........

Well, I might add that it's not all that uncharacteristic for him to want to have a smaller set of enemies instead of a larger one. Sharon, after all, has every reason to expect that Arafat *will* self-destruct the procedure and Arafat *wants* to do this. He just doesn't survive long enough to do it, and his successors liked the "We're not shooting at each other" thing better when it turned out it could actually work. Arafat doesn't actually embrace peace in a meaningful sense, but winds up being considered the founding father of it from circumstance.

In a sense this is the advantage of Mr. Palestine being safely dead and buried while giving his successors an actually positive legacy to build off of. While the Israelis aren't exactly keen on a Forever War.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

the Israelis aren't exactly keen on a Forever War

True. But they're going to make themselves one anyway ....

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

In real life, yes. In this scenario when they try something different it actually works.