Ryan stated that he thought the principle I upheld in my discussion of the situation in Palestine conflicted with the principle which I promoted in my discussion of the situation in Tibet.

In section 3.7.1 Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, I state:

Israel is not going away and it is not going to give back the land it took in the 1957 war, a war which frankly was a defensive action on the part of Israel, a war which the Palestinians helped to instigate, a war which the Palestinians and their allies lost, fair and square.  They need to accept this 60 year old defeat and get over it.

These are strong words.  I do feel sympathetic for the terrible plight of the Palestinian people who have been living in refugee camps for generations.  The situation must be resolved, and at the time when I wrote this I believed that by holding onto false hopes instead of working for real peace the Palestinian leadership was unnecessarily prolong the interminable conflict that has paralyzed the region.

It turns out this argument is somewhat off base and I thank Ryan for calling this to my attention. I misunderstood the issue, and I wholeheartedly apologize to my readers for the error.

In fact the Palestinian position is that they want Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders, and it turns out they have a very good point, because since 1967, Israel has continuously built settlements for its own people on occupied territory in violation of several United Nations resolutions.  (This might be seen as further evidence that the United Nations requires some sharper legal teeth in order for its resolutions to be meaningful.)  I will certainly correct this passage in future editions of the book, and call upon Israel to comply with the UN resolutions, and/or work out a system of compensation and social re-integration for the dislocated populations.

Does this correction resolve Ryan’s concern? Not entirely, I think, for if we are to be honest, what many Palestinians really object to are not so much the 1967 borders or even the recent wall; what they really object to is the 1948 formation of the state of Israel itself; and it is this event which I still think they need to get over. The alternative is endless war. It’s clear the Palestinians have no hope of winning a civil war militarily. Their choice must be either: a. continue to attack soft targets within Israel (restaurants, bus stations, schools) with suicide bombers and rockets for an indefinite, perhaps endless period of time; or b. to renounce violence and try to think of a better way to build their society. Obviously, I call upon the Palestinian leadership to renounce violence.

So by way of contrast, in section 3.2.2.4 China, as part of a broader overview of potential military rivals of the United States, I state that “China has invaded, colonized, and presently holds by force the neighboring country of Tibet.”  I go on in a footnote:

…Tibet was indisputably self-governed from 1912 until the Chinese invasion of 1950.  Since that invasion, the Chinese occupation of Tibet has taken the form of a segregated apartheid society, with the majority ethnic Tibetans subjugated by Chinese settlers…  China’s claim that Tibet is a historical Chinese province ignores the legitimate Tibetan claim to autonomy, and is essentially based on an ancient Mongolian invasion.  …  Empire-building by right of conquest is no longer acceptable…  We reject the rule of empires.  Tibet has a right to independence.

Ryan’s point was essentially this, if he will forgive my paraphrasing:  “In one war, some people lost land, and you’re telling them to get over it; but in a different war, some people lost land and you think they have a right to fight for their independence.  These seem to be conflicting principles.”

The difference in my advice is based on the different circumstances of the two different regions. 

Tibet has been a unified territory for the last 1,400 years.  China is a neighboring empire with its own distinct borders and cultural heritage.  The Chinese invasion of Tibet was a deliberate, organized, military action that took the form of a brutal invasion.  The Chinese settlers who were encouraged by the Chinese government to move to Tibet after the invasion have held the function of maintaining and strengthening China’s rule over Tibet.  These settlers were not a displaced people returning to their homeland:  they were Chinese people settling on land that had been forcibly taken from Tibetan people.

I maintain that this invasion represents an act of aggression by China; and while I would not insist that those Chinese who now live in Tibet must leave, I do believe that China should relinquish political, economic, and military control of Tibet.

In stark contrast to the historical status of the Himalayan Forbidden Kingdom, Palestine has not been an independent unified territory for the two thousand years since the Roman invasion.  Since then, it has traded hands repeatedly, a minor territory of various other empires.  Its present borders were drawn by the French and British at the end of World War I.  At the end of World War II, the British military was in control of Palestine, and they did everything they could to keep the Jews out.  However, large numbers of Jewish people, many of them holocaust survivors, were fleeing Europe and migrating to their ancestral homeland.  This was a large-scale social phenomenon that had been underway, on and off by degrees, for centuries; it was no invasion.   This was not an organized, military conquest; it was the long-term resettlement of a people who had been evicted and dispersed by the Roman army in the second century. 

Eventually the United Nations granted half the territory to the Israelis in the original two-state solution; and Britain grudgingly complied with the mandate, only a few months late.  Israel declared independence, and was promptly attacked by five neighbors in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.  In 1956, Israel participated in a military action against Egypt, and assumed control of the Sinai Peninsula.  1957, Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt under the auspices of the UN.  In 1967, Israel’s neighbors began massing troops near its border in preparation for an invasion; the resulting Six Day War saw Israel capturing more territory.  It is to these “pre-1967 boundaries” which the Palestinians and their supporters demand that Israel should withdraw. They had better be willing and able to offer something pretty good in exchange. How about eternal peace?

In the book, I conclude the Palestine discussion with the proposal of two alternative solutions:  1. a contiguous, fully independent, self-governed state of Palestine; or 2. full Israeli citizenship and democratic equality for all of the Palestinian people, including the Palestinian diaspora currently living as refugees in other countries.

When examined in this light, the principles supporting this argument remain the same:  the principle that all people have the right to freedom and self-governance.  The Tibetans have a right to freedom from Chinese authoritarianism; and they, as well as both the Israelis and the Palestinians, have a right to self-governance. In Tibet, the only popular uprisings since the Chinese invasions have been nonviolent and they have been crushed. I would support a military insurgency in Tibet because this tactic has not yet been tried.  Perhaps after ten or twenty years of terrorist attacks the Tibetan insurgency could break China’s motivation to continue the occupation, or at least force some political reform in the Chinese government.

In Palestine, the people are not so much occupied as they are besieged; clearly an untenable position. Nevertheless, after decades of fighting it should be clear that their military insurgency has already failed, and that this failure is due to the ideological extremism of the movement’s leaders, and therefore it is now time to consider new alternatives.

If the two peoples, the Israelis and the Palestinians, could achieve peace through a unified state that incorporates both peoples, then they will be stronger; but even if they can achieve self-governance only through a functioning two-state solution, then at least that would be a workable solution and much preferable to endless war.