My blasphemous solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Nothing gets people moving like a firm, fast deadline. All the Israeli and Palestinian leadership seems to be able to do is negotiate temporary cease fires and launch recriminations at one another. The problem is probably ultimately insoluble because both sides have unshakable God-promised claims to the same territory, and no one will convince either side that the other is right.

So if they can't reach a compromise based on good faith, maybe they need something else to motivate them. I think an extremely powerful, nuclear country like the U.S. should, ahem, encourage the two sides who seem to have a vested interest in the Promised Land to come to some kind of agreement about how to share it. Kids and parents all know the concept: if you two can't share, nobody gets it. We should threaten to nuke Jerusalem.

We want to minimize the atrocity involved in this, naturally, so we need to make the ground rules abundantly clear.

1. Set a specific deadline for all interested parties to conclude negotiations (or, perhaps more likely, hostilities) over what to do with the disputed territory. Several months would probably be advisable, but experts in diplomacy would be best suited to advise on the exact length. Long enough for the stakeholders to get their heads around the problem and actually get a solution, but not so long that our capability to follow through on the nuclear deadline would be compromised (more on that below).


2. Set a second specific deadline -- the time that the area will be razed by nuclear hellfire. The purpose behind this is to allow all the residents of the area to be affected to leave. I think it would be incumbent upon us to facilitate their safe removal, because as noted, we want to minimize the atrocity involved. We aren't trying to kill anyone. Or more to the point, we aren't trying to scare Israel and Palestine by threating to kill anyone. We're trying to scare them by threatening to destroy their holy places because they can't behave like adults and share them civilly.
   
   I would think a matter of weeks or months after the negotiation deadline passes would be necessary. It's a thorny issue, because the vast majority would refuse or fail to investigate their options for relocation before the negotiation deadline had passed, so it needs to be long enough for the entire process to occur in an appropriately civilized manner. On the other hand, the longer the delay the more likely it is the negotiating leaders would fail to take the negotiation deadline seriously, which would jeopardize the people and put tremendous pressure on the commitment of the U.S. to delay the nuclear strike. And again, if negotiations continue after the negotiating deadline passes, it will severely hamper the relocation efforts.
   


3. We can expect some opposition from some corners of the globe. That will put strain on both our resolve and our tactical abilities. This incentive won't work if the nuclear threat is not credible. (It needn't be nuclear, so long as it achieves the specific mission objectives of destroying the holy land as it is known and fought for, but nothing gets the attention of the international community like "nuclear.") If we let the negotiating parties believe that the U.S. is not serious, the odds of actually driving an accord (no Honda pun intended) plummet. The best way to ensure U.S. resolve against foreign opposition would be to craft the deadline parameters in such a way that the U.S. cannot reasonably be blamed for Israel and Palestine's failure to negotiate according to them.
   
   There is also the problem of people trying to physically stop us, rather than just convince us not to go through with it. I'm pretty sure the military has anticipated that that would happen for as long as they have had nuclear weapons to deploy. That is why we have nuclear submarines. The biggest concern may be that we will need to have our nuclear subs in the water before we make the announcement in order to keep them from being spotted leaving San Diego or Chesapeake bay on satellite and followed that way. I don't know how long a nuclear sub can remain underwater, although I it's a long time, but that's something we will have to consider when setting up the deadlines in the first place.

Perhaps the political will does not yet exist for this kind of drastic action. But it's been 60 years since Israel was created, and there has been little peace there since. The area has been fought over in the name of God since at least the Crusades a thousand years ago. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, perhaps mankind simply is not perfect enough to occupy the holy places in Jerusalem.