[DiogenesKynikos]

The Palestinians offered peace many times. The Israelis refused. It goes both ways.

One of the reasons why the Palestinians refused the Israeli offers was because the Israelis never offered the 1967 borders, which is what the Palestinians want. This is the exact opposite of what you're saying.

> Moreover, Israelis signed deals that were based on land for peace, e.g., Egypt.

The difference is that the Egyptians had a serious army that scared the bejeezus out of the Israelis is 1973. Israel only respects the language of force.

> Palestinians got autonomy only to establish a "pay for slay"

Israel has a massive "pay for slay" program. It's called the IDF.

[reliabilityguy]

> The Palestinians offered peace many times.

Can you list those "many times"?

> The difference is that the Egyptians had a serious army that scared the bejeezus out of the Israelis is 1973. Israel only respects the language of force.

You mean the one that Israel won? You do realize that your argument holds no water for the simple reason that there was like 5-6 years between the war of 1973 and siding of the peace deal? If Egyptian army was so strong, why did they left Sinai in Israeli hands after the war of 1973? If this army was so strong why did they need to sign a peace deal at all?

> Israel has a massive "pay for slay" program. It's called the IDF.

Can you point me to the part of this "program" that increases the pay to IDF soldiers with number of Palestinians they kill?

I think it will be hard for you to find this part for a simple reason -- it does not exist. Service in the IDF is not voluntary, and the salary for every soldier is the same.

Palestinian government-sponsored terrorism is completely different: first of all, you are not forced to participate, and second -- the more you kill, the more money you get.

So, you can continue with these false equivalences but they hold no water, and easy to dispute.

[DiogenesKynikos]

> Can you list those "many times"?

The Palestinians spent most of the 1980s trying to simply get the Israelis to come to the table and talk, and 1990s trying to get the Israelis to agree to a Palestinian state on 1967 borders. The Palestinians were consistently more interested in a peace deal than the Israelis were. The simple reason is that Israel suffers very few negative consequences from its occupation of the Palestinian territories. It has very little incentive to make any peace deal.

> You mean the one that Israel won? You do realize that your argument holds no water for the simple reason that there was like 5-6 years between the war of 1973 and siding of the peace deal?

Israel came very close to defeat in 1973, and had to rely on an unprecedented resupply effort by the United States, which replaced nearly the entire Israeli tank force and much of the airforce within days. The Israelis were aware of their vulnerability after 1973, which is why they entered negotiations with the Egyptians. Negotiations take time, which is why the whole process took several years.

> Can you point me to the part of this "program" that increases the pay to IDF soldiers with number of Palestinians they kill?

The IDF is a massive organization that kills hundreds of Palestinians every day. Every week is another October 7th for the Palestinians, for two years in a row. But you're quibbling about the details of how IDF soldiers get paid, as if that made any moral difference.

> So, you can continue with these false equivalences

I'm not trying to draw any equivalence. The IDF is a thousand times more evil than any Palestinian organization.

[reliabilityguy]

> The Palestinians spent most of the 1980s trying to simply get the Israelis to come to the table and talk, and 1990s trying to get the Israelis to agree to a Palestinian state on 1967 borders. The Palestinians were consistently more interested in a peace deal than the Israelis were. The simple reason is that Israel suffers very few negative consequences from its occupation of the Palestinian territories. It has very little incentive to make any peace deal.

So, nothing concrete beyond your opinions not grounded in facts. Okay.

> Israel came very close to defeat in 1973, and had to rely on an unprecedented resupply effort by the United States, which replaced nearly the entire Israeli tank force and much of the airforce within days.

What? How do you replace entire tank force within days from across the globe?? How do you train the crews on new equipment? Why are inventing things that never happened?

> The Israelis were aware of their vulnerability after 1973, which is why they entered negotiations with the Egyptians. Negotiations take time, which is why the whole process took several years.

Realizing that piece is better than constant wars and trading the land for it is a good move. I’m not sure what are you trying to show here.

> But you're quibbling about the details of how IDF soldiers get paid, as if that made any moral difference.

Devil is in the details though, right? :) I know that you cannot have an evidence based discourse because it will be quickly shown that Palestinians incentivize non-conventional terror warfare, while Israelis not.

Getting people paid to kill civilians is immoral.

> I'm not trying to draw any equivalence. The IDF is a thousand times more evil than any Palestinian organization.

Of course not. Making your own people blow themselves up in cafes and buses is immoral.

[DiogenesKynikos]

> So, nothing concrete beyond your opinions not grounded in facts.

You can read about every round of negotiation, going back to Madrid in 1990. This was consistently the Palestinian position. At Madrid, the Israelis were so obstinate that they refused to even meet with a Palestinian delegation at all. The Palestinians had to join the Jordanian delegation. The Palestinians proposed a two-state solution with 1967 borders. The Israelis refused to commit to the idea of a Palestinian state at all.

> What? How do you replace entire tank force within days from across the globe?? How do you train the crews on new equipment? Why are inventing things that never happened?

It sounds amazing because it was. The US used its massive airborne heavy-lift capacity, and flew in hundreds of M60 tanks within literally days. It was an amazing, unprecedented feat of logistics, intended partly to save Israel from defeat, and partly to impress the Soviets. The Israeli tank crews did not have to be replaced from scratch - when a tank is knocked out, the crew often survives. They just don't have a tank any more. The resupply effort also brought in large numbers of aircraft to replenish the Israeli air force, and massive amounts of ammunition. The Israelis simply did not have enough ammo to fight such a high-intensity war for longer than about one week. No US ammo resupply would have meant that the Israelis would have had to freeze all of their offensive operations and start conserving ammo just a few days into the war.

> Realizing that piece is better than constant wars and trading the land for it is a good move. I’m not sure what are you trying to show here.

That Israel will not trade land for peace with the Palestinians, because unlike the Egyptians, the Palestinians don't have anything like a serious army that could threaten Israel.

> Of course not. Making your own people blow themselves up in cafes and buses is immoral.

Israel just dropped a bomb on a café in Gaza used by Palestinian journalists a few days ago. Is that more moral? Israel has been doing things like this many times a day, every day, for nearly two years, killing tens of thousands of civilians and wiping Gaza off the face of the earth. Now, the Israeli Defense Minister has proposed building a giant concentration camp for 600,000 Palestinians in southern Gaza. Is that moral?

[reliabilityguy]

> You can read about every round of negotiation, going back to Madrid in 1990.

And then we had Oslo Accords.

How can you make such a claim, when a bit later there was a deal???

> and flew in hundreds of M60 tanks within literally days

The whole airlift took about a month! No denying, ofc US helped Israel caught with their pants down, but making it like US just brought 200 tanks overnight, is laughable. Regardless: Israel turned the war around. Israeli forces were forced to stop on their march to Cairo. What kind of victory is that for Egypt?

Making a land deal for peace to make future wars impossible is a good deal. There was no war with Egypt ever since, so it clearly worked. I don’t understand why you denying this simple fact?

> That Israel will not trade land for peace with the Palestinians, because unlike the Egyptians, the Palestinians don't have anything like a serious army that could threaten Israel.

Israel literally left Gaza. Why would they leave Gaza if they want more land?

> Israel just dropped a bomb on a café in Gaza used by Palestinian journalists a few days ago. Is that more moral?

It’s different. I don’t understand how can’t see a difference between military action that has no incentive whatsoever for those who carried it out vs. paying your civilians to carry out attacks against civilians and making the payment directly proportional to the severity and number of casualties.

> Israel has been doing things like this many times a day, every day, for nearly two years, killing tens of thousands of civilians and wiping Gaza off the face of the earth.

It’s called war. People die in wars. UK was in war with Germany (including bombing civilians). Was it immoral war?

> Now, the Israeli Defense Minister has proposed building a giant concentration camp for 600,000 Palestinians in southern Gaza. Is that moral?

If such concentration camp would be built it would be immoral.

I am not surprised that someone who values people lives with two different sets of rules to not see that one (state’s military) is more moral than state sponsoring its own citizens (not even its own armed forces, which still would be less moral) to kill civilians (not even armed personnel) of the other side.

[DiogenesKynikos]

> The whole airlift took about a month! No denying, ofc US helped Israel caught with their pants down, but making it like US just brought 200 tanks overnight, is laughable. Regardless: Israel turned the war around. Israeli forces were forced to stop on their march to Cairo. What kind of victory is that for Egypt?

Israel would not have been able to turn the war around without the massive US airlift. As I said, the Israelis were literally running out of ammunition by the time the US airlift began. Without the airlift, they would have had to cease offensive operations and conserve ammo. The airlift enabled them to wage an entirely different type of war, without fear of running out of ammunition, tanks, airplanes, etc.

What Egypt proved in the war was that it was a serious military threat to Israel. Six years after the Six-Day War, which was a complete humiliation for the Arab forces, Egypt successfully pulled off a sophisticated crossing of the Suez Canal. It broke through the IDF's fortified line, and then decimated a large Israeli armored counter-attack, knocking out hundreds of Israeli tanks. That was a huge psychological shock to the Israelis.

Even though the Israelis turned the tide of the war, they were acutely aware that they had been caught with their pants down and had needed massive American aid to get through the war. Nobody could guarantee that the next round would end the same way. That was the major motivation to seek peace with the Egyptians.

There were other factors involved as well, like the American moves to woo Egypt away from the USSR, but the key thing that broke the deadlock and convinced the Israelis that they should negotiate with Egypt was the Israeli realization of their own vulnerability.

[DiogenesKynikos]

> And then we had Oslo Accords. How can you make such a claim, when a bit later there was a deal???

The Oslo Accords specifically avoided mentioning anything about a Palestinian state. Why do you think that is? It's because the Israeli negotiators refused to agree to any framework that explicitly called for a Palestinian state.

The Palestinian negotiators at Madrid were shocked to learn that behind their backs, in secret, the PLO had negotiated an agreement with Israel that contained no mention of a Palestinian state, no commitment by Israel to end the expansion of illegal settlements, etc.

This is really basic history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that you should know.

> It’s called war. People die in wars. UK was in war with Germany (including bombing civilians).

First, this has nothing to do with war any more. This is one-sided slaughter and destruction of everything, which has sadistically been carried on for nearly two years now. Second, why is it that defenders of Israel always point to war crimes from WWII to justify what Israel is doing? Do you really think that makes Israel look better? Third, nobody except for the most strident Israeli partisans think it's the Palestinians who are analogous to the Nazis in this conflict.

> If such concentration camp would be built it would be immoral.

Then what do you think it says about Israel that the Defense Minister, a major political and governmental figure, is calling for the creation of a concentration camp for Palestinians in Gaza?