An alternate history scenario:
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of Return in exchange for Israel agreeing to a territorially contiguous Palestine, with the smaller little settlements withdrawn and the bigger ones turning into semi-autonomous enclaves of the Palestinian state.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.
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.