1d ago

US and Russia ‘propose West Bank-style occupation of Ukraine’

www.thetimes.com

Under this scenario Russia would have military and economic control of occupied Ukraine under its own governing body, imitating Israel’s de facto rule of Palestinian territory seized from Jordan in 1967.

...

Witkoff, who is also tasked by Trump with bringing peace to the Middle East, is understood to support the idea, which the Americans believe circumvents barriers in the Ukrainian constitution to ceding territory without holding an “all-Ukraine” referendum.

Europe @lemmy.dbzer0.com

misk @piefed.social

1d ago

US and Russia ‘propose West Bank-style occupation of Ukraine’

www.thetimes.com /us/american-politics/article/us-russia-deal-west-bank-occupation-ukraine-wfvnt6v6f

50 comments

I assume that also means that Russia would then send in state-sponsored terrorists in the guise of "settlers" to murder the Ukrainians and incrementally steal their land, and send in the army to slaughter them if they dare to fight back.
- Yeah, you broke the code.
  Can't imagine why any Ukrainian person wouldn't be on board for that. "Peace!" That sounds great, why don't you like peace?
  (Actually they pretty much did that in 2014 already. The details were a little different, but absolutely they were organizing ethnic Russians trying to violently seize control of the government in Ukrainian areas, and then they sent the Russian army to "protect" them when the Ukrainians started objecting and shooting back.)
  
  I literally had an Israel defender on reddit agree that black people under apartheid should have accepted it for "peace". I live in south Africa, fuck Nazis, even the Jewish ones.
  Irony: Jewish people in SA were a big part of anti-apartheid efforts; all the while Israel was apartheid's biggest mate (after Thatcher and Reagan got cold feet of course, don't feel too righteous in the anglosphere).
- Would? They already do.
- Undoubtedly. I can’t think of a reason they wouldn’t start doing this immediately if this ridiculous deal somehow went through.
- Russia / Ukraine is asymmetric, but not nearly as much so as Israel / Palestine. I can’t see every tactic working the same all the way down the line.
  
  Not every tactic - no.
  And Russia is introducing some novel tactics of its own, like kidnapping and indoctrinating Ukrainian children.
  I have little doubt though that the broad strategy is exactly the same - what they can't take immediately, they intend to take incrementally.
  And in fact, that's essentially what they're already announcing to the world. They can't be unaware of the fact that, to much of the world, stating that they're patterning the proposed occupation after the West Bank is effectively stating outright that they fully intend for Russia to then incrementally steal everything and to kill anyone who tries to stop them.
West Bank-style occupation
How's that working out?
- depends on who you ask
  
  Palestinians hate this one trick
- For the Israelis, it's working out great. They allow just enough violence to happen to justify "retaliation," i.e. doing what they wanted to do anyway, which is seize land and kill Palestinians.
  I highly doubt that it would work well for Russia though. I mean, the Ukrainians will never agree to anything like this, the only reason it even works in Palestine is that Israel has tons of money/technology support from the first world to do whatever they want on the ground and the Palestinians have 0. In Ukraine the equation is 100% the opposite.
  It's pretty clear that this is normal Russian strategy of talking gibberish with a straight face to distract and cause commotion. No one aside from a few dozen idiots on Lemmy actually believes that rejecting imaginary deals like this makes it Ukraine's "fault" that this is happening because Russia "wants peace." I think the whole point is just to degrade the concept of diplomacy as a useful activity, in favor of bullets and bombs which are more Russia's wheelhouse historically.
BECAUSE THAT'S WORKED OUT SO WELL
Dammit. It's not an Onion post
- The onion has to be funny, not just dumb. It isn't the Babylon bee.
  
  Hey man, don't harsh my brain's knee jerk attempts at coping
They really think Ukrainians are that stupid, don't they.
- It isn't a question of stupidity. It's a question of power.
  Without Western arms and armor to hold territory, both Israel and Russia can just seize the land and kill anyone who objects.
  Ukrainians can know it's bullshit in the same way the Palestinians (or Armenians or Tutsis or Rohingra Muslims) can know they are getting a raw deal. But what are they going to do about it, except eat lead?
  
  They've killed about a million Russians so far, and held the invasion a few hundred km from their border. I'd call that something they can do about it.
  They have the luck ("luck") of the entire first world funding them to defend against Russia, instead of Gaza where it's 100% the opposite, so they're not in the horrifying situation the Palestinians are in. Which I'm sure frustrates Russia to no end.
  
  The way to deal with a raw deal is to say "no deal". Appeasement of tyrants and bullies just strengthens their position and encourages them to take more. They'll never stop, because they're never actually satisfied, there is no such thing as having "taken enough" and eventually they're going to make up reasons they need more. It never ends. That's why we must fight tyranny to the death, to the last man, never give in, and be willing to die for what we believe in. Maybe what we believe in is wrong, but it's better than living in a world you can't accept anymore. Vichy France is not a good place to be. We learned these lessons after WW2, we knew tyranny had taken refuge in the Soviet Union and called itself communism, but eventually they too fell, and we thought we had found the answer to it, because we had defeated the Soviet Union with trade and peace and prosperity, we thought we could kill tyranny itself with trade and peace and prosperity. The long peace throughout and afterwards made us lazy and apathetic to the inherent dangers of tyranny and fascism, but nope, it wasn't gone at all, it was festering below the surface and now it's come back, seemingly everywhere all at once. And we're going to have to learn these lessons again and understand why people were willing to die for our freedom.
  
  Ukrainians are exceptionally innovative on the battlefield. The longer this drags on, the more likely Russia will lose. Putin needs a win for internal optics just as much as Ukraine needs arms and fighters.
That's colonialism. You're just describing colonialism.
- No! Colonialism is only when the West does it!
  Tankies
- 🤷
I find the whole westbank occupation style metaphor, whether the real one or the proposed one, the highest insult against human rights and International law right now. They are defaecating the world with their literal screwed up wordview of a horrendous reality, and imposing it as a peace proposal they can boast about. How despicable and low can you go, they keep breaking records.. They are soulless, heartless ruthless poor examples of humanity.
- I agree with most of what you said except this -
  They are soulless, heartless ruthless poor examples of humanity.
  They are the sum of all human nature. They represent the average of us, whether we like it or not.
  
  They represent the bottom/extreme evil side, not the average. Human nature is a full spectrum of possible good behaviors and bad behaviors. People are mirrors, they reflect their environment, the conditions and ideas that they've been exposed to. They are shaped and limited by the overall systems that they are living under, that they did not choose/built themselves.
I can't help to find it a bit ironic after Zelensky kept praising Israel and saw it as a model for Ukraine.
Now Ukraine is set to get the Palestine treatment of slow ethnic cleansing and slow genocide, which at some point will culminate in a fast ethnic cleansing and fast genocide after the rest of the world has been trained to look away.
- Uh, that point was in 2023.
Go f&@k yourself! - Quote from Stephen Colbert & Jon Stewart
The ONLY country that has a say in this is Ukraine. Back to the 2014 borders. Slava Ukraini!
- They were the only ones with the say but they decided to go full "fund me" mode. Now, the debt collector is here.
Oof. They’re actually looking at the occupied territories as some kind of diplomatic model for how Russia can keep the land but Ukraine can still say that it is theirs in name. Who the fuck looks at Palestine as a model to follow for fucking anything?? This is truly ghoulish.
Gross…
I hear the US is planning that with Greenland and Panama
What the ever piss poor Australian gangster loving cluster fuck kind of a deal is this shit?
Now I wish God does exist. All of them. Nobody else can do anything. We need God to come do something.
Yes, because THAT worked out sooooo well.
Cool. Cool cool tight tight tight

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