I for one will be holding my representatives responsible who continue to vote for the US to enable a genocide. The videos coming out of Gaza have turned me and many others into single issue voters.
replies(16):
Unfortunately, that isn't likely to happen. Netanyahu has, to date, handled Trump deftly and Rubio's current presence in Israel seems to be aimed at offering support to the ground offensive, not opposition. I honestly have no idea what kind of backlash it would take to shake U.S. support for this genocide.
In order to be effective, US pressure would have to be aimed at forcing Israel to do one of two things:
1. Withdraw its military from the Palestinian territories (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza), dismantle all of its illegal settlements there, and recognize a fully sovereign Palestinian state. This is basically asking Israel to give up its dreams of taking over the Palestinian territories and to withdraw to its own borders - a simple ask.
2. Alternatively, Israel gets to keep the Palestinian territories, but it has to grant full, equal citizenship to the Palestinians who live there. That would mean that 50% of the Israeli electorate would be Palestinian, effectively ending the Jewish nature of the state of Israel. The next prime minister could be a Palestinian - who knows?
Israel has held onto the Palestinian territories for nearly 60 years without granting the people who live there (except for Israeli settlers) any rights. It has to either leave the occupied territories or grant everyone who lives under its control equal rights. It's actually quite a simple and reasonable demand.
Right now, because of unconditional US support, Israel has no incentive to do either of the above. Israel's leaders correctly believe that they can have it all: they can keep the land without granting the Palestinians who live there any rights. They operate with complete impunity. The US could end that impunity and impose real costs on Israel for its actions.
Both options laid out above (the 2-state and 1-state solution) are vastly better for the Palestinians than living under permanent Israeli military occupation with no rights, and subjected to continuous violence from the Israelis. It would not be the Palestinians who would block these types of solutions, were they actually on offer.
The Israelis have a near monopoly on force in this conflict. They are the overwhelmingly dominant party, the only one with tanks, aircraft, destroyers and nuclear weapons. They have the power to dictate solutions, and that's what they've been doing for decades, using brute force. Pretending these are two equal sides that just can't agree is a fantasy.
Arafat was offered something very close to a two state solution. He walked away without responding. He couldn't accept (he would have been assassinated if he agreed), he couldn't make a counter-offer because there was a risk of it being accepted, leading to the same end.
Look carefully at all the "peace" proposals from the Palestinians. All are non-viable due to details buried in them. Typically this is hidden references to the "right of return".
The offer made to Arafat was awful for many reasons that are well known, and that I won't go over here (but to give you an exanple, the proposal said that the Palestinians would have no military, and that the Israeli military would have the right to enter Palestine whenever it wanted, meaning that Palestine would not have real sovereignty).
> He walked away without responding.
Actually, he told the Israelis that the offer was a very bitter pill to swallow, and that he would have to show it to the Palestinian national council before he could accept it. Then, the PLO came back a few months later to negotiate further in Taba. The Israelis eventually broke off negotiations, because the ruling party was about to lose the election to a party that opposed the two-state solution.
> Typically this is hidden references to the "right of return".
It always amazes me how Israelis say the Palestinian right of return is so awful, absurd, outlandish, unacceptable, etc., when the entire founding ideology of the state of Israel is that the Jews have a right of return from 2000 years ago.
Right of return = total Palestinian victory in the next election, which at this point probably means genocide of the Jews.
They hide it because it a known deal-killer.