[nsguy]

Since you went off topic. If Palestinians only wanted dignity and self-determination this conflict would have been resolved a long time ago. Palestinians, broadly speaking, want Israel removed from the map. This is why they're chanting "from the river to the sea" which happens to include the area Israel is situated in.

During the Oslo peace process, when Israel was trying to address this in the way you propose, Hamas launched a suicide bombing campaign against Israeli civilians:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_at...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Accords

You can be critical of everything Israel does, in this war or ever - fine. But the Palestinians have no other accepted settlement other than shipping ~8 million Jews to Europe or killing them.

The people who suddenly developed this simplistic understanding of occupation/resistance/occupier have no idea what they're talking about. Often quite literally in the sense they don't even understand the meaning of what they're saying, not to mention the history of Israel or the middle east. EDIT: I realize this last statement can feel offensive but this is still my take based on two decades of interactions with a fairly random sample of people trying to explain wth is going on in this tiny piece of the middle east. The complexity of the situation doesn't yield itself to simplistic narratives (from neither side really, though my statement refers to one of those narratives the Israeli side simplistic narrative is also insufficient/inaccurate).

[cess11]

"From the river to the sea" comes from the Likud policy program, which says there will be an israeli jewish state in that area. The palestinian slogan finishes with "Palestine will be free", without stating that it would cover the entire area.

Israel has been sabotaging peace talks and applying divide et impera politics in the region since it was created.

Sheikh Yassin, the paraplegic spiritual leader of the Hamas movement was quite clear that their beef wasn't with the jews, but with the occupation and apartheid. He was assassinated by Israel in 2004. In hindsight Hamas was correct in not trusting the israelis in the Oslo talks.

It's more like 700000 jews that would definitely need to move, i.e. the illegal settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

[tsimionescu]

Terrorists will terrorize, especially when they feel justified by their homes being stolen from them by foreigners and inept leaders as happened with the formation of Israel. They should be caught, punished, even killed, since what they are doing is destructive and morally wrong.

However, if you actually want peaceful coexistence in the long term, the only possible solution is to stop oppressing these people, and instead to build a better world for them. The Israelis won: they built their country, they got international recognition, they defended it from their neighbors. However justified this may have been given the horrors of the Holocaust, it is also undeniable that this was to a large extent to the detriment of many people who previously lived there. They now need to ensure those people can be content with the life that is left for them.

But the reality is that Israeli leaders (and a significant minority of the population) do not want that. They don't view the Palestinians as full human beings (as many in the Knesset have compared them time and time again to cockroaches and other pests), and they believe Israel has a right to even those small territories left to the Palestinians. They are continually illegally annexing more land in the West Bank, and some are preparing to do so in Gaza as well.

Netanyahu has been very open about funding, or at least supporting, Hamas as a means to ensure that moderate Palestinians don't get a voice and a two-state solution is never allowed to happen. He has said these things openly. Of course, a one state solution is also unacceptable, as it would threaten the Jewish character of Israel to have such a signficant (and growing) Muslim Arab population. Making them officially second-class citizens is also unacceptable as it would deny Israel's claims of being a democracy. Killing them all would be a bad look internationally.

So, what was happening before October 7th was in fact the ideal state according to Netanyahu and his ilk: the Palestinians are de facto second class Israeli citizens with almost no rights, they act as a convenient boogie man to scare the populace, and they are weak enough to be no more than a nuisance. October 7th was an embarrassment to the authorities on many levels (and of course a horrific crime), so they have to punish the cockroaches of Gaza to ensure they don't have the courage to try another October 7th anytime soon, and to prove their strength to their own population, then return to the status quo. Of course, if Hamas is destroyed, they will also have to find a new militant anti-Israeli organization to lead Gaza, lest they end up with credible peace attempts that could make their position difficult.

[nailer]

> their homes being stolen from them by foreigners and inept leaders as happened with the formation of Israel.

The population of British Palestine was 31% Jewish, 9% Christian and 60% arab in 1946 UN Survey. Jews got more land after partitioning but a huge chunk of that was the Negev desert. Arabs rejected partitioning and the Arab nations started a war to destroy Israel. You can confirm this from any source you like.

dang: can you kill this article? The article has biased language (Israel is fighting Hamas not “bombing Palestinians” as if the war is on the civilian population) and the conversation here is political advocacy.

[tsimionescu]

Not sure what those percentages are supposed to show. Most of the ethnic Arabs were living in all of the cities of Mandatory Palestine (as it was called at the time), and around half of them fled those cities after the war started and Zionist forces established the state of Israel. They were encouraged to flee both by the Zionist militias and by their own leaders, as civilians do in most wars. But, since the war was lost, the vast majority never got to return to the homes they abandoned in the new state of Israel. Some of them still live in Gaza and the West Bank, as do the children and grandchildren of the others.

Of course, the war started because surrounding Arab nations didn't accept the UN plan of splitting up that territory - with both good and bad intentions to be sure. But even if you think the intentions of those nations were entirely mosntruous, my point is that the Arab population of Mandatory Palestine were victims of this whole war, and they (and their descendants) are the people who today live in ghettos of Gaza and the West Bank. And it is understandable that they would bear malice on those who caused them or their parents or grandparents to lose their homes, especially when they now live in squalor. And it is also to be expected, though sad, that some of them will turn to terrorism and hurt other innocents in their own turn.

But the existence of terrorists among a population does not give one carte blanche to attack that population.

[nailer]

> Not sure what those percentages are supposed to show.

That the narrative of Israel stealing land is false.

Israel encouraged arabs within their partition that were not resisting the new nation to stay. You can find many references to this, and it was Hertzl’s origin intention is his writing. This is why the 2M Israeli arabs - that have more freedom that in any arab nation - exist. Pity the arabs that left.

> is understandable that they would bear malice on those who caused them or their parents or grandparents to lose their homes

They don’t though. They have no malice towards their leaders that constantly started wars trying to destroy Israel and resulted in their losing their homes. They just hate Jews.

> But the existence of terrorists among a population does not give one carte blanche to attack that population.

Yes agreed. This is why the war is on Hamas rather than Gazans (even though Gazans overwhelmingly support the slaughter of their Israeli neighbours) at the cause of a great many Israeli lives.

[tsimionescu]

While Hertzl may have believed so, I don't think Ben-Gurion would have agreed. If the Palestinian Arabs had not fled, they would have been driven away in time. The Jewish character of Israel was immediately enshrined into their constitution: an Israel with a majority Arab population was never a possibility. A minority of Arabs can easily be tolerated, and represents a nice defence against accusations of racism or ethno-nationalism.

> They don’t though. They have no malice towards their leaders that constantly started wars trying to destroy Israel and resulted in their losing their homes.

Of course, they are living under propaganda and they are being actively oppressed by Israel, not by other Arab nations.

> They just hate Jews.

This is just false and racist.

> Yes agreed. This is why the war is on Hamas rather than Gazans (even though Gazans overwhelmingly support the slaughter of their Israeli neighbours) at the cause of a great many Israeli lives.

If this were true, than the population of Gaza would not be starved, with aid being trickled in such low quantities that even the USA under Biden is trying to go around Israel's official quotas and provide aid separately. And if this were true than the IDF would not be deliberately targetting aid workers, hospitals, nurseries and so on.

And for every Palestinian happy to see an Israeli killed, there is at least one Israeli happy to see Palestinians killed. Both sides have their disgusting extremists. The difference is that one has access to every weapon on Earth and is currently rampaging and killing tens of thousands of civilians, while the other side has killed a few hundred civilians in the worse attack they have ever mounted. And flaunting every international law they can find, such as recently bombing an embassy in a different country.

[nailer]

> The Jewish character of Israel was immediately enshrined into their constitution: an Israel with a majority Arab population was never a possibility

Yes. That doesn’t prove that the arabs were driven away by Jews though.

> they are being actively oppressed by Israel

No. As we’ve discussed Arabs tried to destroy Israel 3 times and lost. If you have a response to this historical fact then post it, otherwise it’s fairly clear who is causing misery to the arab Palestinians.

>> They just hate Jews. >This is just false and racist.

No. Firstly Gazans and west bank Palestinians are not a race, Arabs are. Secondly accusing others of being racist is not racist. Finally you can easily look up opinion polls in support of the massacre in Gaza to confirm that Gazans hate Jews.

> if this were true, than the population of Gaza would not be starved

Yes exactly! The starvation is another myth. You can look up obesity statistics in Gaza to confirm this yourself. Or watch videos posted by Gazans enjoying their open markets posted every day, or other Gazans throwing away their rations because they don’t like M&Ms. Like the nakba or the MrFAFO videos a huge amount of what you see is simply fake.

> The difference is that one has access to every weapon on Earth and is currently rampaging and killing tens of thousands of civilians

No. Rampaging would be running around torturing people in front of their families. You don’t know how many civilians are killed in the fighting between Israel and Hamas. Your only source is Hamas and they don’t distinguish between fighters and civilians, they also increased the number by the same amount every day for a month before they realised it looks bad.

[youngtaff]

Tens of thousands of women and children killed suggests Israel is doing much more than fighting Hamas

[nailer]

According to Hamas.

[tsimionescu]

According to everyone who is giving any numbers at all. The IDF also cites these same numbers.

[jakupovic]

Now we need our central overlords to shut one side down so we don't hear inconvenient truth. You don't get to suppress the truth because it is inconvenient. HN is consistently flagging and removing articles about Israel and Palestine which doesn't fit the "approved truth". You and people like you need to hear "the other side" and not just keep repeating convenient lies. Israel is perpetuating a genocide against unarmed civilians under the guise of "war" and the people supporting the genocide don't want to hear it. Does it upset you that you support all out genocide and want the other side to shut up? That's the truth, killing 30,000+ Palestinians, and now aid workers, is not a war it's a genocidal slaughter.