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by borski 921 days ago
> So this is going to seem very one sided, but if you look prior to Oct 7, you can't have peace where one side controls everything, has all the resources, and uses them to keep the other population "occupied". That is always going to breed resistance.

Except that that's not quite true. Gaza could have continued maintenance of the existing water treatment plant (for example) that was working when Israel pulled out in 2005. Instead, they elected Hamas a year or two later and began firing rockets at Israel.

It's not as simple as you're making it out to be.

> Very simply, for peace Israel should pull all the settlements out of the West Bank, pull back 50 miles from Gaza for a number of years, remove all checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza, invest in the development of both areas, rebuild the airport they destroyed, stop and sign definitive peace accords allowing free movement and Right of Return for Palestinians, pay reparations for the destruction of Gaza and the damage to the West Bank (plus many other things that I won't list here), and finally on top of that invest in Palestine's future.

They pulled out completely, including removing every single settler, in 2005. Rebuilding is important, I agree, but if Gaza is going to run its own government, they need to, I don't know, not elect Hamas as perhaps a first-order approximation to "reasonable discourse."

Israel isn't going anywhere, no matter what hopes and dreams anyone has. That means they need someone to negotiate with, and Hamas ain't it.

In addition, the current government of Israel is garbage and I'm not sure has much interest in a two-state solution at all - but that is a separate (and important!) issue; there have been plenty of years and decades where Israel was committed to a two-state solution, and Gaza... wasn't.

Even if Israel did rebuild the airport, allow freedom of movement and right of return, and all that - what guarantees do you have that Hamas would not then just flood into Israel and partake in the destruction of every Jew? None.

And that, my friend, is the problem. It is complicated. It is not simple. You are not the first person to have suddenly found the 'secret' to this problem. To think you are, or to think that it is immensely simple, is honestly a bit arrogant, but more importantly, it's also incorrect.

The current situation is awful and absolutely terrible; but sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that only Israel is the aggressor, and that suddenly if they pulled out the problem wouldn't exist anymore, is naive at best, and misguided on avaerage.

1 comments

You can give the Israeli part any moral excuse for their barbarity in Gaza. We will just turn on the screen on any live Israeli TV channel and any propagandist excuse you gave here will be deemed completely irrelevant, overriden by the sick society that arrogance and impunity have fostered.