An alternate history scenario:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

When I was still a member of AH.com I began working on a scenario that led to a peace between Israel and the Palestinian leadership. My scenario was inspired by a comment read in a book by I believe Efraim Karsh who stated that if Arafat genuinely wanted to show up Israel in general and Ariel Sharon in particular that he should have tried for bluffing them into shooting first. In this scenario Arafat does try that......only Sharon decides he'll let Arafat shoot first.Thanks to the magic of timing and the benefits of well, alternate history the Israeli proposal to withdraw from Gaza leads to an Islamist/Fatah Civil War among Palestinian movements that ultimately bumps off Arafat and leads to the Treaty of Paris that creates Israel and Palestine.

In this scenario Palestine forfeits the Right of Return in exchange for Israel agreeing to a territorially contiguous Palestine, with the smaller little settlements withdrawn and the bigger ones turning into semi-autonomous enclaves of the Palestinian state. Meaning that the only obligation they have to this state is to pay taxes, its primary obligation to them is to provide security. This is coupled with the free trade zone in the Gaza Strip that leads to a curious evolution of an alliance in the future independent Palestine between the Autononmous Regions (which include Christian regions as well as Jewish ones) between the new commercial elite in Gaza and that subset of the former West Bank. Palestine only gradually builds up an air force, due to Mahmoud Abbas balking at the kind of taxes required to pay for it *and* an Army, meaning that Israel's prohibition of Palestinian aircraft meets little initial challenge.

In return, in this alternate history, Ariel Sharon becomes the most popular Prime Minister of Israel of them all, and George Bush wins a 60+% margin of re-election in 2004 for 'peace in the Ex Mandate of Palestine-er Middle East'. However as this is going on, Bush decides because his view is that the Palestinian cause actually has a thing in the world to do with the Iraqi insurgency that he can let that work its magic and that insurgency disappears. By 2005 huge parts of Iraq are virtual self-governing enclaves of the Mahdi Army and the Sunni insurgency, and there's one giant, massive "Oh Shit" moment on the part of the US elite, which in 2006-8 has to fight a renewed and much more vicious version of the war caused by delay. This timeline's Second Battle of Fallujah is the largest urban battle the USA's fought since WWII, not Vietnam, and the global aftershocks of a new Palestinian state prove simultaneously more disorienting in some ways, more of a relaxation in others, and the ultimate discovery in this timeline is that ending the war of Israelis and Palestinians does absolutely nothing to end any other wars in the rest of the Middle East. In fact Hezbollah and Israel still go to war in 2006, due to Hezbollah being an Iranian proxy and the war seeing an even more brutal Israeli overreaction due to their temporarily assuming that all Arabs think alike and the peace with the Palestinians might end the war elsewhere.

Ironically the Palestinian state actually condemns Hezbollah equally when it starts throwing rockets at *them*.

http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=227223

Personally this to me is the only real way around the Israeli-Palestinian issue, in that it would have to predate the War on Terror to begin with, and that both sides would have to clearly discover the amazing surprise that societies benefit more from not fighting a perpetual war with each other than actually fighting it. It also occurred to me that the naivete in some parts of the world about what this would reasonably lead to is likely to lead to the cruel irony that such a peace would produce new wars of greater brutality if people fall into the trap of assuming that ending the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict would mean anything at all with other wars at the same time.

I do admit to some general annoyance that the AH genre focuses overmuch on wars and battles and too little on alternate *endings* to wars and alternate *avoidance* of battles, but then again modern science fiction is short on imagination in too many ways.

Comments

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

The problem with alternate history is that there are very few instances where everything is truly "in the balance". For the most part if you present the same actors with the same scenario you will generally get similar results. The more you change the scenario the more you have to justify.

Internecine warfare between Jihadis is pretty much par for the course so it's not hard to imagine a change to the existing timeline that might result a Civil War among the Palestinian movements. Thus the issue becomes how does Israel respond and why? Sharon certainly had the acumen to cut a deal but what kind of deal did he cut? It's hard to see the Israeli parliament buying off on giving the Palestinians that much autonomy without some very serious concessions on the part of both the Palestinians and the international community.

Likewise if the Palestinians forfeit the right of return you now have a few million refugees who will need to be assimilated by their host countries. Expect a lot of butt-hurt if not violent opposition from the Syrians and Lebanese. Does the "Arab Spring" kick off early as a result or does it get crushed in it's infancy during the ensuing government crack-down?

Barring major unrest in either Syria or Iran Its hard to see the broad strokes of the situation in Iraq changing all that much. As such your American response seems like you're tossing the Conflict Ball/applying Rule of Drama rather than adhering to prior characterization.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The problems here start with the assumption that all the Palestinian movements are 'Jihadis.' Fatah and the Commies certainly are not. You evidently completely missed the parts where I noted that there were both concessions and the clear break with the past.

I'm actually not applying either. Bush's Administration had a clear predilection for mistaking what it wanted to believe for reality. Actually securing a peace between Israel and Palestine is just the kind of thing to make them make further stupid mistakes that strengthen their idealism at the expense of their attention to reality. They *do* react and the alternate Iraq War sees US firepower crush the enemy, but two years' time as opposed to a years' time makes it all that much harder.

The crucial point here is that this is alternate history, so the impact of Arafat's truce sticking, his convenient martyrdom, and Abbas's exploiting this to crack down on the IPF after being disgruntled with Arafat's movitves does have an impact. You also mistake the idea that abolishing the right of return means those Arab states will see that they 'need' to change the status quo one bit with Palestinian refugees. They're run by dictators, after all, when do those people do 'nice' things?

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

While I agree with your overall assesment that the only real way around the Israeli-Palestinian issue, is either for both sides to discover that societies benefit more from not fighting a perpetual war with each other than actually fighting it. Your scenario still leaves a lot of open questions.

Fatah and the Commies may not be Jihadis but Hamas and Hezbollah certainly are, and seeing as you aren't going to get a lasting compromise without their respective constuencies signing off on it my point stands.

Likewise, noting that there were concessions, is not the same as describing what those concessions were and their effect. How did Sharon sell the concept of Palestinian autonomy to his own people/party? What convinced the Syrians not to interfere? What reason does anyone in your scenario have to believe that this particular "cease-fire" wont end the same way all the others have?

Actually securing a peace between Israel and Palestine is just the kind of thing to make them make further stupid mistakes that strengthen their idealism at the expense of their attention to reality.

How? and In what way?

Now if we were talking about regime change in Saudi Arabia or Iran I might buy it, but Palestine? Iraqis never gave a shit about Palestine. Depending on how much credit you give the State Dept. the Iraq invasion was either about Oil or about Bush finishing the job that daddy started (and keeping the Gulf states on their toes). Palestine was never signifigant factor, and their respective insurgency's bases of support are largely independant, so why would things not play out much as they did in our time line.

...so the impact of Arafat's truce sticking, his convenient martyrdom, and Abbas's exploiting this to crack down on the IPF after being disgruntled with Arafat's movitves does have an impact. You also mistake the idea that abolishing the right of return means those Arab states will see that they 'need' to change the status quo one bit with Palestinian refugees. They're run by dictators, after all, when do those people do 'nice' things?

Why does the truce stick? Is it the martyrdom that does it? How does Abbas secure control of the various militant organizations?

As for the Refugees, even if the dictators ignore them there are still going to be a large numbers of pissed of Refugees and a large number of locals pissed off about not being able to foist those Refugees off on someone else. I would expect there to be at least some rioting and because these countries are run by dictators I would expect there to be a crack-downs. (like you said, when do those people do 'nice' things?)

Do these crackdowns cause the "Arab Spring" to spring early or does it "nip it in the bud"

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

1) Well, certainly, insofar as ending this war requires an implausible set of scenarios to begin with. What I'm proposing could not happen now in today's world.

2) Of course. This is why the Islamic Popular Front's war with the Palestinian National Authority is the reason that Hamas is irrelevant. It destroyed itself both on the battlefield and in terms of politically discrediting itself by killing Yasser Arafat. Hezbollah has Lebanese and Iranian influence behind it, what happens with Palestinians means squat to it.

3) Sure, to the insurgency, Palestine did not matter overmuch. To the Bush Administration and that corner of US public opinion that assumes a peace between Israel and Palestinians is a general Middle Eastern peace......

4) The same way Abbas has made it stick historically in the West Bank, where there has been no instability of the sort matching that in the Arab Spring historically, in the real world. Even when Gaza's shooting at Israel. The Arab Spring still happens but it does so for a reason unrelated to Palestinian refugees.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

To the Bush Administration and that corner of US public opinion that assumes a peace between Israel and Palestinians is a general Middle Eastern peace......


Why would this have any effect on policy in Iraq?

The war was fought primarily by the DOD in a reactionary manner. No change in the insurgency means no change in the DOD's response to the insurgency.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Because the President can issue orders to the SecDef, who as an ideological Neoconservative is likely to mistake the motivations of the insurgency. After all they spent a full year dawdling before recognizing it for what it was historically, all this does is add a second year.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Why were you banned from the forum?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

To be fully blunt it was getting overrun by neckbeards and I decided to see how many warnings it'd take to get myself out of the forum. By the time I was I'd really stopped caring and was already nostalgic.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Having never heard the term before, I simply had to look it up:

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

"To be blunt" is the new catch-phrase now, isn't it? :-D