This thread has a number of people I respect, so I have to come out here and ask what the additional practical benefit comes from talking about modernity, anti-modernity, postmodernity, and such. They seem like generalized abstract categories that some social theorists came up with that we can easily do without. I can follow the arguments in this thread, but it seems much more straightforward to talk about the use/misuse of reason, objectivity, industrialization/consumerism, and so on. That's just more relatable to how I think about the relevant subject matters.

Today's millennials have significantly more progressive political instincts than all the older age brackets, but they're also the least active electorate while those >50 who on average have the most regressive politics are the most active electorate.

This pattern has been typical since the past century (young in contrast to the old being the least active), my guess for the reason is that it takes a while to absorb enough experience for a lot of people to realize that they need to pay close attention to the country instead of sitting down. But the politics of the average politically engaged American is going to be very different in the coming decades.

Check out Michael Delli Carpini & Scott Keeter or more recently, Donald Kinder & Nathan Kalmoe.

Revolutionary is just an escapist buzzword for those who don't want to think about the steps. Take for example, stakeholder socialism that was mentioned earlier, let's run through what is needed to achieve this. What are the prerequisites to recreate the Meidner Plan for instance, you obviously need a labor union movement. And at the moment, this is excruciatingly difficult in the U.S. without passing the PRO Act, which people are organizing to pass right now. And if it fails this year, we have to try again through building a greater majority in Congress next year with left-wing members (and I'm not saying this because I like this process, but what's the outline?). Or what about the Roemer's Market Socialist Model? To do anything close to making sweeping changes like this, you need a radical social democratic state. It's a far greater expanded form than Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund project.

"Well that's speculation. It's hard to say. Maybe they want structural changes in the form of Keynesian policies. Maybe they want an end to what's called "capitalism" altogether. What we do know is where the country stands on these issues. I think deep structural change is wanted -- I want it as well. But short of a revolution, that's not going to happen. Changes happen gradually and require hard work sustained over time. But as I said before, I'm all for radical changes if I'm missing something -- I'm there if there's a revolution. Give me something to sign and I'll sign it. But I don't see it happening in my lifetime. So we have to work within the confines of reality."

I lean towards Erik Olin Wright's formulation of "non-reformist reformism" on the path to socialism. Let me know if you're sympathetic to it (personally I find this path to be obvious, there is neither going to be a revolution or slow build up of anarchist communes that will lead to socialism. I'm just glad someone was able to articulate it in formal language)

"There is a third position in debates within the Marxist tradition over the problem of transcending capitalism. This third approach, which is neither strictly revolutionary nor reformist, advocates what has been referred to as “nonreformist reforms.” Here the idea is to struggle for reforms in the institutions of the state that have three kinds of simultaneous effects: they solve some pressing problem in the system as it exists; they enlarge, rather that close down, the space for future transformations; and they enhance the capacity of popular social forces to fill that space. The central argument is that the capitalist state is an internally contradictory configuration of principles and mechanisms, and thus it is possible, under appropriate historical conditions, to achieve such nonreformist reforms of the capitalist state itself. Simple reformists don’t worry about the second and third conditions; revolutionaries deny their possibility.”

- Erik Olin Wright from John Gastil: Legislature by Lot

P.S. It's true that polls have shown the majority Americans seem to agree with policies that are significantly more progressive than the Democratic Party Elite when asked. I don't think that means they're "left-wing" however, if that means a particular political worldview (having a political worldview involves many different tendencies other than just policy) 80% of the American public is "politically ignorant" meaning they are so ignorant that they can not answer very basic questions about American politics. The people who somewhat follow the news and hold strong political opinions is a fraction of the U.S. public at large. What it does mean that in the state of ignorance, a lot of progressive policies simply make sense in the absence of ideological blinders. So there is an opportunity to catch them in.

Since when was aiming for stakeholder socialism the dominant agreed upon goal among American leftists in contrast to cooperative model, computerized planning, radical social democracy… (don’t get me wrong, I’m intrigued in the Meidner Plan, Roemer model, etc. It’s probably the most experimentally feasible out of all the socialist models. None of this is possible in the short term anyways.)

Even what I consider as leftists broadly, I wish we made 10% of the electorate. It’s not even close.

I have a chrome folder of bookmarks for News Websites that I check daily. There's a lot of useful blogs I follow back and forth. Otherwise I get a lot from foreign news from friends on Facebook. Twitter is useful as long as you scrupulously avoid ego-pandering nonsense and follow serious scholars & journalists. I prefer reading content over medium like podcasts because listening takes longer. I don't have cable and haven't watched television for a long time. I use youtube but not for news.

The very idea of there being an uprising is skipping steps, there isn't any other option than hard work by organizers and taking over local governments and councils, which accelerated due to the Sanders campaign. It's difficult to keep track of the work being done because we live in a continent sized country but it's there if you've been following your state politics, just don't expect to overturn the country in the next few years.

That's within the ballpark of what I meant. When it comes to the cosmological or ontological argument, yeah we have Craig & Platinga rather than the original Anselm/Aquinas, but it doesn't really take long to absorb the gist of the reasoning and form an opinion. (I’m not limiting to these examples, just to respond to you)

“I think the idea is that the majority of philosophers are atheists not because atheism is correct, but because of certain historical events (et cetera et cetera) there is a climate of atheism within philosophy that more or less takes theism to have been refuted, and that because of this most philosophers simply don't see the need to really deal with it.”

This kind of thing happens sometimes but I think it’s wrong here. They might not see the need to exhaust the whole literature by theistic philosophers, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t legitimately form their own judgments and just ran with the assumption that what their peers say is correct. The main arguments for the existence of god are quite accessible, and it doesn’t take long for one to think them through and become unconvinced even if they don’t hear every new iteration of these arguments.

Analytic Philosophy seems like it has been useful to politics mostly in pieces, like providing a toolbox of better arguments here and there. Not as much in initiating a holistic system of a thought, the debate surrounding Rawls & Nozick bores me to tears.

I really like Erik Olin Wright's work. He's a sociologist, but his style comes from a group of intellectuals steeped in that philosophical tradition. If there's a resurgent political project in Analytic Philosophy, that's the kind of thing I'd like to see.

Murray is being peddled around by Sam Harris in recent years, this is a pretty good debunking of that nonsense.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/27/15695060/sam-harris-charles-murray-race-iq-forbidden-knowledge-podcast-bell-curve

The only thing I'd add is that Klein should be even harder on the Flynn point. If black IQs (along with white) have continued to rise since the 1970s, it's impossible for Murray's argument that you've squeezed out all the environmental factors to be true.

Look up Max Tegmark

In the sentence I wrote right after that I said "Of course if there is something that we're all in agreement and united on (and which is correct), or can take steps forward to do so, that's a good thing."

The talk of Bipartisanship is referring to Congressional/Political Party procedures, that's where all the talk about division and unity is besides the point. I'm not aware of convincing more Republican citizens that climate change is real is referred to as bipartisanship, that's just convincing people out of bad ideas. The less people who believe in shitty things, the better. Even there, I don't see the point in focusing of unity and division as the relevant concepts. I don't really care about uniting with the population, just enough people to not support shitty politicians so my preferred programs go through. Of course if we were all united, that would be easier and better.

"Like anything, it depends. I personally don't think it's healthy to have division about climate change -- that's something that should be agreed upon, as it was a few years ago before the Koch network took the Big Tobacco playbook and manufactured controversy."

I don't really think it has anything to do with unity or division, it's a bit of a strange way of talking about what's going on, a kind of red herring. Of course if there is something that we're all in agreement and united on (and which is correct), or can take steps forward to do so, that's a good thing. Bipartisanship in the Democratic Party sense is more like pretending to be united while actually being screwed. If you can get people to side with your program, okay good. If not, you have to do what you need to do push your program, including beating the other side. But even the whole dynamic of trying to get people to join your side, that's more needed for people organizing on the ground than dealing with politicians in Congress.

We're talking past each other despite agreement, I meant nonsense as in bipartisanship. The stall in the next infrastructure bill and Biden recontacting Lawrence Summers frustrates me. Hopefully activist pressure sways things in the right way.

https://www.ft.com/content/a7debb77-f361-4c5c-a6c5-f1a92fdc7966?fbclid=IwAR1D6a_qaWFqKuBMvIsEyXYEVCQ-QGIxt8CdcgyYGZD7lcs8cKnqcIsP9r8

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-summers-economy-call/2021/06/03/a353a676-c46c-11eb-8c34-f8095f2dc445_story.html?fbclid=IwAR1hWC8fj8Dy8ls-SCWRTKxv2JHsSPAMkxN1J2raSs9A0VVIuwyYoXZMo9g

Political pundits, yes -- but mostly the public. It's hard to say exactly whether the public even wants "bipartisanship" anymore, but if they do then yes, that idea should die. — Xtrix

To be straightforward this time, I really meant to say that I don't think most people aside from Democratic politicians actually gives a shit. The NYT was basically gushing over Biden's first infrastructure bill by bypassing the Republicans, and now Biden is being tempted to go back to that nonsense again.

Yeah but die among whom? The public? Political Pundits? I honestly think at this point that it's just a fetish among the political elites.

Well it's much easier to see that squared circles are incoherent, you just try to draw it on the ground and it makes no sense. We didn't understand life (and still not fully) for over 2000 years after the Ancients. The fact that they shuffled some concepts together into a narrative doesn't make it coherent in light of modern understanding, even if it's less obviously so. People can think their concepts are coherent while it not being so when applied to reality. As for why disembodied life is incoherent, arguments have been offered why in the last couple of pages, it’s inherent in its description, at least the concept of life that we know of and found evidence for. You’re referring to something else otherwise.

That’s really the only concept of life we know of though, concepts are built upon the evidence we’ve seen of the phenomenon that allow us to make descriptions.

Now we can ask something like “can biology be built with silicon instead of carbon” without observing the former. We can make sense of this because they both consist of atoms, a familiar bedrock of concepts, so there is a path to affirm the claim. But as for afterlife, you’re otherwise proposing an unknown concept that you just attribute life to. We don’t know how to make sense of a disembodied life because we never observed such a thing, unlike molecular constructions, the problem is not just lack of data.

I think the issue I'm seeing here is that for example in popular fiction (or ancient religious tales), the afterlife is depicted as you getting a new body with your memories intact, and you continue living life. That’s coined as the term "afterlife" or you can call it second life or whatever. Like is the concept so muddled that one couldn’t follow the story plot or something?

But imagination isn't reality. Part of the benefits of fiction is that you can ignore the gaps of understanding (to an extent) for the sake of the plot and it works out for entertainment purposes. That explanation of magic doesn't make sense? Who cares, I like watching wizards shoot things out of their wands at each other. But if you want to talk about the concept as it plays out in reality, you have to propose something on solid coherent grounds, related to things we're familiar with and have evidence for, and so on in a way that you can describe what it is and how it works. There can't be any gaps, that's my own take that I extracted from anyways.

Well for people who used to believe there's a soul to imagine the possibility of surviving death, there's now no reason for us to believe we're different from other animals in that respect. I guess scientific evidence (evolutionary history, study of the brain) removed the rug underneath so to speak.

Agnosticism in the broad sense is the conclusion you reach after weighing evidence, that's why people pose to be agnostic about aliens and not matters of relative consensus in the realm of science (I don't know you and what you believe, but Einstein's Relativity for instance?) or everyday matters. For agnosticism to be rationally justified, you clearly have to move beyond the step of being confronted by very strong evidence. The reason I'm mentioning this is that any reasonable form of Agnosticism doesn't function as the starting default. It's the ending conclusion, contingent on the topic question that is being posed.

Of course, it may be rational for people to stay undecided before they explore the available evidence, but that's just "I don't know, I haven't read and thought about it enough yet" That isn't a philosophical position. You can call that Agnosticism starting by default, but that's pretty uninteresting and I don't think that's the topic of issue we're interested in.

You can also choose to be agnostic about an issue and not rationally justified towards such position, if the topic at matter at hand for instance (going back to my previous post) poses concepts that can be shown to be incoherent or contradictory with available evidence.

The issue I see is that posing the existence of theistic God requires a definition of God, which involve asserting certain metaphysical claims, such as making claims about a being that transcends the world and so on. All you have to do is dispute the metaphysical claims as incoherent to undermine theism. Suspension of judgment as the conclusion (such as about the existence of aliens in our Galaxy) requires a very different starting point.

“Israel actually takes extensive precautions to limit casualties”

— BitconnectCarlos

We know for sure they don’t. Israel has all the contact information of all the residents in Gazas, they can make them evacuate before bombing them if they really wanted to. They are killing families purposefully.

“An investigation by the human rights group B’Tselem that focused on some 70 of the families who were eradicated in 2014, provided three explanations for the numerous nuclear and extended families that were killed, all at once, in one Israeli bombing on the home of each such family. One explanation was that the Israeli army didn’t provide advance warning to the homeowners or to their tenants; or that the warning didn’t reach the correct address, at all or on time.

In any case, what stands out is the difference between the fate of the buildings that were bombed with their residents inside, and the “towers” – the high-rise buildings that were shelled as of the second day of this latest conflict, during the daytime or early evening.

Reportedly, the owners or the concierge in the towers got prior warning of an hour at most that they must evacuate, usually via phone call from the army or Shin Bet security service, then “warning missiles” fired by drones. These owners/concierges were supposed to warn the other residents in the short time remaining.

Not only highrises were involved. On Thursday evening Omar Shurabji’s home west of Khan Yunis was shelled. A crater formed in the road and one room in the two־story building was destroyed. Two families, with seven people altogether, live in that building.

About 20 minutes before the explosion, the army called Khaled Shurabji and told him to tell his uncle Omar to leave the house, per a report by the Palestinian center for human rights. It is not known whether Omar was there, but the residents of the house all hastened to get out, so there were no casualties.

This very fact that the Israeli army and Shin Bet trouble to call and order the evacuation of the homes shows that the Israeli authorities have current phone numbers for people in each structure slated for destruction. They have the phone numbers for relatives of the people suspected or known to be activists for Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

The Palestinian population registry, including that of Gaza, is in the hands of the Israeli Interior Ministry. It includes details such as names, ages, relatives and addresses.

As the Oslo Accords require, the Palestinian interior ministry, through the civil affairs ministry, transfers current information regularly to the Israeli side, especially concerning births and newborns: The registry data must receive Israeli approval, because without that, Palestinians cannot receive an identity card when the time comes, or in the case of minors – they can’t travel alone or with their parents through border crossings controlled by Israel.

It is clear, then, that the army knows the number and names of children, women and elderly who live in every residential building it bombs for any reason.”

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/gaza-israel-wiping-entire-palestinian-families-hamas-1.9820005?fbclid=IwAR2dJmlDOlEId4PX8oLq51nyguj_it9lTEm3XFGR2Cl4SRcLwSgJmlwpWW0

The U.S. didn't originally support Israel much until the 1967 war after Israel helped Saudi Arabia defeat Egypt, the former who was a U.S. ally since the 1940s, and then U.S. aid to Israel shot up dramatically. And then again after 1970 when Israel intervened to prevent Syria from intervening on behalf of the Palestinians in Jordan. Clearly the timeline shows geopolitical partnership (shaped by geoeconomic concerns) outweighed ideological origins.

1948-1958 US, reluctant to alienate Arab oil producers by selling arms directly, gives economic aid only.
1961 President Kennedy authorizes first direct arms sale: Hawk missiles.
1962 First US military aid (loans) to Israel.
June 1967 Six-Day War. Israel’s main military supplier, France, imposes arms embargo.
1968 Congress increases aid to Israel 450 percent. Military aid jumps from $7 million in 1967 to $25 million in 1968. US agrees to sell Israel 50 Phantom fighter bombers.
1970 Jordan’s “Black September” crisis; US sees Israel as means to combat Soviet influence in Arab world, increases military aid from $140 million in 1968-1970 to $1.15 billion in 1971-1973.

https://merip.org/1990/05/us-aid-to-israel/

To add to those, the U.S. shares close geopolitical goals with Israel, to empower the Gulf States and contain Iran.

But I also wouldn’t overstate functionalist causes to policy. There is also the motivation among the U.S. Elite to not change policy trends, either out of some venal sectional interest, narcissistic deafness to criticism, ethical laziness & indifference. If people in this forum thread can act like this, what should we expect of them.

Even the term ceasefire (which the U.S. blocked the UN Security Council resolution for the third time) is kind of a capitulation to Israel's framing, because Hamas isn't even a state actor and Israel killed much more people in the past week than Hamas did over the past decade. We need to urge Bill HR 2590 that's supported by 25 House Progressives. It is simply indefensible to send Military Aid to Israel who are using our tax payer money to kill civilians, including children and unarmed demonstrators.

It would be one thing if there was a complete devoid of arguments and fact citing and just name calling where explaining is necessary. But that's not really the problem I saw building up earlier in the thread. They have a problem with oppositional condemnation towards Israel, making all sorts of excuses.

Also this is a real life issue with real life people in this forum.

To a child beaten by their abusive father, there isn't a really substantive difference between the father's explicit defenders and people like you who no basis to complain about the critics except that the discourse bothers you.

"Fifteen Palestinian nuclear and extended families lost at least three, and in general more, of their members, in the Israeli shelling of the Gaza Strip during the week from May 10 through to Monday afternoon. Parents and children, babies, grandparents, siblings and nephews and nieces died together when Israel bombed their homes, which collapsed over them. Insofar as is known, no advance warning was given so that they could evacuate the targeted houses.

On Saturday, a representative of the Palestinian Health Ministry brought listed the names of 12 families who were killed, each one at its home, each one in a single bombing. Since then, in one air raid before dawn on Sunday, which lasted 70 minutes and was directed at three houses on Al Wehda Street in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza, three families numbering 38 people in total were killed. Some of the bodies were found on Sunday morning. Palestinian rescue forces only managed to find the rest of the bodies and pull them out from the rubble only on Sunday evening.

Wiping out entire families in Israeli bombings was one of the characteristics of the war in 2014. In the roughly 50 days of the war then, UN figures say that 142 Palestinian families were erased (742 people in total). The numerous incidents then and today attest that these were not mistakes: and that the bombing of a house while all its residents are in it follows a decision from higher up, backed by the examination and approval of military jurists.

An investigation by the human rights group B’Tselem that focused on some 70 of the families who were eradicated in 2014, provided three explanations for the numerous nuclear and extended families that were killed, all at once, in one Israeli bombing on the home of each such family. One explanation was that the Israeli army didn’t provide advance warning to the homeowners or to their tenants; or that the warning didn’t reach the correct address, at all or on time.

In any case, what stands out is the difference between the fate of the buildings that were bombed with their residents inside, and the “towers” – the high-rise buildings that were shelled as of the second day of this latest conflict, during the daytime or early evening.

Reportedly, the owners or the concierge in the towers got prior warning of an hour at most that they must evacuate, usually via phone call from the army or Shin Bet security service, then “warning missiles” fired by drones. These owners/concierges were supposed to warn the other residents in the short time remaining.

Not only highrises were involved. On Thursday evening Omar Shurabji’s home west of Khan Yunis was shelled. A crater formed in the road and one room in the two־story building was destroyed. Two families, with seven people altogether, live in that building.

About 20 minutes before the explosion, the army called Khaled Shurabji and told him to tell his uncle Omar to leave the house, per a report by the Palestinian center for human rights. It is not known whether Omar was there, but the residents of the house all hastened to get out, so there were no casualties.

This very fact that the Israeli army and Shin Bet trouble to call and order the evacuation of the homes shows that the Israeli authorities have current phone numbers for people in each structure slated for destruction. They have the phone numbers for relatives of the people suspected or known to be activists for Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

The Palestinian population registry, including that of Gaza, is in the hands of the Israeli Interior Ministry. It includes details such as names, ages, relatives and addresses.

As the Oslo Accords require, the Palestinian interior ministry, through the civil affairs ministry, transfers current information regularly to the Israeli side, especially concerning births and newborns: The registry data must receive Israeli approval, because without that, Palestinians cannot receive an identity card when the time comes, or in the case of minors – they can’t travel alone or with their parents through border crossings controlled by Israel.

It is clear, then, that the army knows the number and names of children, women and elderly who live in every residential building it bombs for any reason."

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/gaza-israel-wiping-entire-palestinian-families-hamas-1.9820005?fbclid=IwAR306IXBQT4_RVceJyJ2H-HOXTpnalwWMC4r2d0-9Pvbg9XypO1j8rlFr3s

My failure to participate more in this thread is having to find ways explain over and over again why atrocities need to be condemned to people and oppression needs to end who just will never care, it's like the Sisyphean task.

I'm curious how one endures that high level of self-deception for so long. I'm sure I've had my moments before, but the feats are impressive.

"Hi, I am a theist and I have a question for atheists. I hope this does not cause too much turmoil. Do atheists actively not want God to exist?"

In the beginning of my transition to atheism, that wasn't the case. Speaking for myself, I got into philosophy because I wanted to justify my religious beliefs, so it was the opposite. I wanted God to exist and stubbornly stuck with it until I was forced to admit none of the theistic/fideistic arguments were convincing.

At this point, it sucks that I'll cease to exist after a short period of life on Earth as well as some other comforting thoughts, but it also means there is no hell. That's one of the Christian teachings that was most disturbing to me, it's good hell doesn't exist. The God of the Bible is more like the Devil in my current view, so I don't want him to exist.

"They need a Gandhi or MLK Jr. Lots of marching and civil disobedience. That approach has a pretty good track record."

"Does condemning Israel change anything? If so, how?"

Since when did supporting Gandhi & MLK not coincide with condemning the oppressor, the British Empire & White Supremacy. That is just obscene hand waving without caring what the movements behind those people were about.

a) For Palestine and Israel to negotiate a settlement based on the 1967 borders, the territorial rights that are currently written in international law. International law isn't the end be all, but it provides a legal mechanism for enforcement that the international community can agree upon. And it has to be done sincerely unlike the Oslo accords, the Palestinians need control of their own territory, they need their own country. That's the minimum requirement that needs to be done for Palestinians to survive strangulation, and the most that can be done in the short term in my opinion.

b) Very difficult. I mean the first step I hoped for was pressure from a Bernie Sanders Presidency (who seems quite serious about it), but that didn't happen.

There is now no statehood, so it is straight up colonialism. (the prediction in the 1993 piece was that it would have been like France-West Africa rather than US-Mexico, the former is close to colonial control) But if in the Oslo accords (fully known by 1995), Israel retains virtually complete control over land and people, together with most of the attributes of sovereignty, then that's what it amounts to. The point was you pointing out the Rashid Khalidi piece was published decades later by a partisan, when it was recognized that the construction projects were well under way at the time and (not sure if you saw the edited post with the The Atlantic quote added underneath) the settlements increased right after the Oslo accords from 110,000 to 185,000 from 1993-2000. The intention wasn't towards peace and sovereignty for the Palestinians but control. The beginning of our exchange was your comment claiming factional-Palestinian fights leading to terrorist attacks on one side and an olive branch offerings on the Israeli side.

The intentions of the efforts are laid out in the Oslo agreement:

Jerusalem: Amid an analysis of Jerusalem as the nexus of Israel’s conquest strategy (‘an ever-expanding Jerusalem [is] the core of a web extending into the West Bank and Gaza’), Said presciently observes that ‘in the history of colonial invasion … maps are instruments of conquest’. Turning to Oslo II, we find that, although the text defers Jerusalem’s fate to the permanent status negotiations, to judge by the map appended to the accord, Jerusalem is already a closed issue. The official map for Oslo II implicitly places Jerusalem within Israel. Said also laments that the PLO agreed to ‘cooperate with a military occupation before that occupation had ended, and before even the government of Israel had admitted that it was in effect a government of military occupation’. In fact, the so-called Green Line demarcating pre-June 1967 Israel from the occupied West Bank has been effaced on the official Oslo II map. The area between the Mediterranean and Jordan now constitutes a unitary entity. Seamlessly incorporating the West Bank, Israel has ceased to be, in the new cartographic reality, an occupying power. On the other hand, the textual claim that Oslo II preserves the ‘integrity’ of the West Bank and Gaza as a ‘single territorial unit’ is mockingly belied by the map’s yellow and brown blotches denoting relative degrees of Palestinian control awash in a sea of white denoting total Israeli sovereignty. In sum, the official map for Oslo II ratifies an extreme version of the Labour Party’s Allon Plan and gives the lie to the tentative language of the agreement itself.

Water: Although Palestinians will be granted an increment to meet ‘immediate needs … for domestic use’, the overarching principle on water allocation for the interim period is ‘maintenance of existing quantities of utilization’, that is, ‘average annual quantities … shall constitute the basis and guidelines’. Turning to Schedule 10 (‘Data Concerning Aquifers’), we learn that these ‘average annual quantities’ give Israelis approximately 80 per cent and Palestinians 20 per cent of West Bank water. Prospects after the interim period seem even dimmer. Although Israel does ‘recognize Palestinian water rights in the West Bank’, these rights do not include the ‘ownership of water’, which will be subject to the permanent status negotiations. Indeed, Israel already claims legal title to most of the West Bank water on the basis of ‘historic usage’. That is, having stolen Palestinian water for nearly three decades, Israelis now proclaim it is theirs.”

Reparations: Juxtaposing the cases of Germany and Iraq, Said repeatedly deplores the absence of any provision for Israel to pay reparations: ‘The PLO leadership signed an agreement with Israel in effect saying that Israelis were absolutely without responsibility for all the crimes they committed’. Indeed, Oslo II explicitly imposes on the newly-elected Palestinian Council ‘all liabilities and obligations arising with regard to acts or omissions’ which occurred in the course of Israel’s rule. ‘Israel will cease to bear any financial responsibility regarding such acts or omissions and the Council will bear all financial responsibility.’ In what might be called the chutzpah clause, the Palestinian administration must ‘immediately reimburse Israel the full amount’ of any award that, ‘is made against Israel by any court or tribunal’ for its past crimes. “ To be sure, Israel will provide ‘legal assistance’ to the Council should a Palestinian sue the latter for losses incurred during the Israeli occupation. Washing its hands of all responsibility for nearly three decades of rapacious rule, Israel – Said rues – ‘crowed’ while ‘an ill-equipped, understaffed, woefully incompetent Palestine National Authority struggled unsuccessfully to keep hospitals open and supplied, pay teachers’ salaries, pick up garbage, and so on’, and ‘dumped’ Gaza ‘in Arafat’s lap … even though it had made the place impossible to sustain’. As we shall see, South Africa’s apartheid regime displayed rather more magnanimity after its comparable withdrawal from and institution of ‘self-rule’ in areas of black settlement. Even after conceding the Bantustans independence, South Africa continued to cover much more than half their budgets through grants.

Sovereignty: Oslo II refers only to an Israeli ‘redeployment’, not a withdrawal, from the West Bank. Excluded from the Palestinian Council’s purview are ‘Jerusalem, settlements, specified military locations, Palestinian refugees, borders, foreign relations and Israelis’. Israel retains full ‘criminal jurisdiction … over offences committed’ anywhere in the West Bank ‘by Israelis’ or ‘against Israel or an Israeli’. Regarding internal Palestinian affairs, the Council effectively cannot ‘amend or abrogate existing laws or military orders’ without Israel’s acquiescence. There is even an explicit proscription on the wording of postage stamps which ‘shall include only the terms “the Palestinian Council” or “the Palestinian Authority”’. On a related matter, the Palestinian National Council must ‘formally approve the necessary changes in regard to the Palestinian Covenant’. No comparable demand is put on Israel to renounce its long-standing claim to the West Bank – and much beyond.”

Security: Israel retains ‘responsibility for external security, as well as responsibility for overall security of Israelis’. In the name of ‘security’, Israel is thus free to pursue any Palestinian anywhere. Although duty bound to protect Israeli settlers and settlements that are illegal under international law, the Palestinian police cannot – ‘shall under no circumstances’ – ‘apprehend or place in custody or prison’ any Israeli. Israel preserves the right ‘to close the crossing points to Israel’. Palestinians who, due to Israel’s systematic destruction of their economy, are dependent on work in Israel are thus still left to the latter’s mercies. Israel retains ‘responsibility for security’ at the border crossings to the West Bank and Gaza. Accordingly, it can detain or deny passage to any person entering through the ‘Palestinian Wing’, and enjoys ‘exclusive responsibility’ for all persons entering through the ‘Israeli Wing’. Said dismisses these arrangements as a ‘one-sided farce’. Yet, Palestinians do get to post a policeman and hoist a flag at their entrance and provision is made for the expeditious processing of provision is made for the expeditious processing of Palestinian VIPs. The ‘Palestinian side’ also gets to issue new ID numbers for residents of the West Bank and Gaza – which, however, ‘will be transferred to the Israeli side’

Land: The first phase of Israel’s redeployment leaves Palestinians with territorial jurisdiction over only 30 per cent of the West Bank. Further redeployments are promised in the future but their extent is not specified. And within the areas coming under Palestinian territorial jurisdiction, Israel continues to claim undefined ‘legal rights’. Moreover, the Palestinian areas are non-contiguous. A caricature of South Africa’s Bantustans, the Palestinian territorial jurisdiction comprises scores of tiny, isolated fragments.”

Excerpt From: Norman Finkelstein. “Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.” (from chapter 7 with the citations for the Oslo II accord)

It wasn't the will of the Palestinians who signed onto it, it was the group around Arafat, who were extremely corrupt. That matters in terms of our initial topic, explaining the later popular support for Hamas, it was from disenchantment of the accords that didn't hit any of the core issues. The intent of Israel to subcontract its oppression to the PLO was well known at the time by critics from within Israel.

From 1993:

"The realization of the Israeli industrialists’ demands and their acceptance by the representatives of the Palestinian bourgeoisie would amount to a transition from colonialism to neocolonialism — a situation similar to the relations between France and many of its former colonies in Africa. But until a Palestinian state is established, Israel’s policy is clear. As Lt. Col. Hillel Sheinfeld, the Israeli coordinator of operations in the territories, put it, the declared goal of his work is to “integrate the economy of the territories into the Israeli economy.”

https://merip.org/1993/09/israels-economic-strategy-for-palestinian-independence/

"Throughout the interim years of the Oslo Accords, Israeli settlement activity was allowed to continue unhampered, with the number of settlers increasing from 110,000 on the eve of the Accords in 1993 to 185,000 in 2000, during the negotiations over a final status, to 430,000 today. That increase seriously undermined the notion that Israel was sincere about making way for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza."

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/the-oslo-accords-were-doomed-by-their-ambiguity/570226/

There is a lesson in that period in that the violence was in some sense less about Israeli actions, which were moving towards peace and statehood, than about intra-Palestinian struggles over peace and spoiling attempts. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's this crux that is mistaken, the Oslo Accords was the exact opposite of what you were saying. It was the completion of Israel's control of the Occupied Territories, not intent to give Palestinians their own sovereignty. That changes your whole picture of the motives for the attacks.

"Oslo was not designed to lead to Palestinian statehood or self-determination, in spite of what the P.L.O.’s leaders at the time appear to have believed. Rather, it was intended by Israel to streamline its occupation, with the Palestinian Authority acting as a subcontractor. In Oslo and subsequent accords, the Israelis were careful to exclude provisions that might lead to a Palestinian political entity with actual sovereignty. Palestinian statehood and self-determination are never mentioned in the text, nor were the Palestinians allowed jurisdiction over the entirety of the occupied territories. Israel’s intention is even more clearly visible in the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, which followed the start of the Oslo process. There were fewer than two hundred thousand Israeli colonists in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem when negotiations began. Now, according to the Times, there are about six hundred and fifty thousand of them.

The P.L.O. leadership, for its part, played a weak hand poorly. It failed to capitalize on the expertise that its delegation had accrued in Madrid and Washington in the two years prior, sending to Oslo inexperienced negotiators with little knowledge of the situation in the occupied territories or international law. As a result, Oslo reinforced rather than evened out the political imbalance between Israel, an undeclared nuclear power supported by the world’s sole superpower, and the Palestinians, a stateless people living under occupation or in exile. With the weight of the United States tipping the scales heavily in its favor—diplomatically, militarily, and through pressure on the Arab states—Israel was able to impose its will, entrenching an apartheid system in which millions of Palestinians live under military rule, with no rights or security, while Israel appropriates their land, water, and other resources. The only part of Oslo that was faithfully implemented, in fact, is the protection that the P.A. provides to Israel by policing its own people."

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/beyond-abbas-and-oslo

Here's an exposition of the details of the agreement

https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/palestineremix/the-price-of-oslo.html#/14

I don't think we're in 100% agreement, you're squinting to see an issue that does not need to be relevant. You're making it relevant by bringing it up in discussion because you were bothered by terminological usage rather than the actual issue. Terminology that is appropriate. The said security concern of being shot at by enhanced fireworks that kill a couple of people would be no longer be an issue with a resolution of the conflict, enhancement of security is not why Israel continues the occupation of over 4 million people.

I would encourage an internationalist approach that covers more issues (including similar ones, like Western Sahara, West Papua, Kashmir that do not get enough attention) But even though it gets a lot of attention, it’s still not resolved, so I don’t understand the gall of people complaining about the attention it receives. It is supported by U.S. policy in a way that can be challenged by its citizens and needs all the attention it can get.

Palestinian territory is illegally occupied by Israel under international law, they're strangling under their boot. That is dictionary definition of oppression. Who cares the fuck about whether the word oppression is flaunted in culture wars, people need to stop being triggered by popular discourse. We’re talking about concrete policies that need to be opposed here.

They just don’t care about people being brutalized and killed, and it hurts their pride for being told that. So they bring every tangent into the discussion to avoid it.