I'd say there is of course a range of opinions and different narratives on both sides (from from actively seeking coexistence to humanitarian to pragmatic to nationalist to religious fundamentalist to having a deep personal hate for the other side).
Then you have all kinds of different groups, factions and third parties with their own allegiances and motivation.
However all of those pieces arrange themselves around a central conflict which does have exactly two sides in my opinion, which are the Israeli and Palestine people, respectively their claims to live on the land. You can see this rather easily by observing which groups view each other as mortal enemies and which merely as a nuisance.
There are - thankfully - lots of people trying to bridge the divide and not aligning themselves only with one side. This is where we all should be headed, but it doesn't change the fact that currently there are sides.
We're talking here about the conflict that has happened as a result of the Hamas attacks on October 7. Take a look at how CNN vs BBC vs The Guardian categorize the conflict. CNN describes it as the "Israel-Hamas War" (Reuters similarly uses "Israel and Hamas at war") while the BBC and Guardian list it as the "Israel-Gaza war" (and I'm pretty sure the Guardian previously used the same terminology as CNN). And you've described it as "Israeli people-Palestine people".
https://www.theguardian.com/world/israel-hamas-war
https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-ga...
Its even funnier when that silence is interpreted as wishing for a pogrom, like, see a therapist? If there is 1,000 years to support that view of every society turning against you, the common denominator isn’t us!
>I want you to know something else, which is that the Palestinian Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas do not represent us, the Palestinian people, at all. We reject authority and we reject Abbas and all his ministers. I do not know whether you have heard of the security coordination agreement between the Zionist occupation and the Palestinian Authority. Years ago, the Palestinian Authority concluded an agreement under which it would serve the occupying entity in terms of security. That is, all the young Palestinian activists who fight the Zionist occupation in one way or another and the occupation cannot arrest them, the Palestinian Authority pursues them, arrests them, and hands them over to the occupation, and then no one knows the fate of that young man or that girl. These do not represent us, nor any other Palestinian. These are completely rejected in the Palestinian street, but unfortunately they are officially and internationally recognized by the United Nations and supported by the United States of America.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/was-hamas-electe...
Now if I were in Gaza my opinion is that what they are doing is stupid. They don't really have a choice but to like it and make the best of their situation with charity, tolerance and love. All the other plays lead to worse results. But there aren't many political bodies with less agency.
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/30...
From the article:
"In other words, Hamas’ absolute rule of Gaza is not what the Palestinians voted for back in 2006. In fact, since the median age of Gazans is 18, half of Hamas’ subjects weren’t even born when the election took place."
I cannot help but see most of the arguments that people make equating Hamas with Palestinians as bad faith. Explanations are not excuses and knowing why things are happening is the first real step towards fixing anything.
And, for the same reason, the ones that were born largely couldn't vote.
There's also the obvious elephant in the room that Israel is executing a disproportional response to the terror attacks and the conditions they're creating will only extend this conflict and create more terror. As the article states, it's pretty well understood that citizens need stable material conditions before voting really works well, otherwise they tend to trend towards the reactionary.
Israeli policy during the occupation is responsible for Hamas, and it existed before W had any foreign policy influence.
Blaming Bush for Hamas because he was somehow responsible for the elections happening is stupid. The elections happening was a good thing. Fatah stupidly rejecting the idea of a national unity government was a bad thing. Israel deliberately seeking to assure a Hamas victory by interfering with campaigning, and voter registration, conducting a targeted campaign of arrests of Palestinian politicians, and doing everything possible to make the Fatah-led PA look weak, complicit, and corrupt in Israel's favor in the immediate runup to the elections was horrible -- but predictable given the entire history of Israel actively promoting Hamas, from its founding, as a tool to divide Palestinians and assure that there was a public face of opposition less sympathetic to, particularly, the population of Israel's Western Allies (particularly the US) than the more secular nationalists of the PLO during the height of occupation, and Fatah as a political party once there was an entity to have political parties.
To me a smoking gun here is that Biden's administration wants the Palestinian Authority to rule Gaza "after Hamas" (as an aside, I sincerely doubt Israel will be successful in destroying Hamas, but ofc even if they do there will just be a more radical group taking its place anyway); history shows pretty well that the US only installs a power when they know they will be a vassal/puppet of US interests. There's many examples but the most recent one is when we (I'm American) propped up the bogus Afghanistan "Government" only for it to instantly collapse and be replaced again by the Taliban the moment we withdrew.
Really hope there's a path forward that gives the Palestinians real autonomy and an end to the bloodshed. In reality, I expect this conflict to continue indefinitely and us to just continue supporting the occupation, which I find heartbreaking but my rational mind is convinced is the most likely outcome.
Instead of coming up with conspiracy theories we could consider what other options there are. There are effectively only three powers which could control Gaza if/when Hamas is defeat: Egypt, Israel and the PA.
Egypt certainly doesen't want anything to do with the region or Palestinians anymore. So US can only chose between supporting a direct Israeli occupation or a semi-indirect one (through the Palestinian Authority). I don't think the US government wants to install a puppet regime in Gaza, they'd rather have absolutely nothing to do with at all.
Tangential but when it comes to Afghanistan I'm almost certain that stupidity and incompetence (and one might guess a good dose of corruption) rather than outright malice or imperialism were to blame for that entire disaster.
> Palestinians real autonomy
Well to some extent Hamas was the closest they got to that for decades.
I'm sorry, but the US installing powers that are favorable to it is not a conspiracy theory. It's a conspiracy fact. How do you think Pinochet and others happened? It certainly wasn't organic (at least not entirely so).
Anyway, regarding the options, there's technically a few more like Jordan or other arab states, or a new organization arising (albeit in reality the US and others would intervene to stop them taking power). But beyond those quibbles I don't disagree with you that there's no good options, I'm just stating my belief that if we support organization X, it's because organization X is directly controlled by us or indirectly its incentives align well with our own.
> Well to some extent Hamas was the closest they got to that for decades.
Agreed fully, and that's one of the problems.
> I'm almost certain that stupidity and incompetence (and one might guess a good dose of corruption) rather than outright malice or imperialism were to blame for that entire disaster.
Why not both? Imperialism is a pretty stupid ideology, at least if one's goal is to keep one's country safe and powerful. If one's goal is to extract resources from one's own country at the cost of lots of bloodshed of your citizens and others', then it achieves the goal fine.
Yes, it was certainly a fact during the cold war however foreign policy is not static and changes pretty often. Even Iraq and to some extent Iraq (and certainly Afghanistan) didn't really fit the pattern that well. Considering that no other country benefited more from the US toppling Saddam than Iran did (considering it was a Shia majority state ruled by a Sunni minority, the inverse of Syria for instance).
The invasion of Afghanistan on the other hand was justifiable both on defensive and humanitarian grounds. While the aftermath was mostly botched, US had no interest in somehow subjugating it it long-term (IMHO imposing a "colonial" administration directly controlled by NATO/Western powers would've been the least bad option).
> more like Jordan or other arab states
None of them would ever accept that (after all Jordan willingly gave up the West Bank back in the 80s and I don't see why would they ever want to take it back even if Israel had no objections).
> (albeit in reality the US and others would intervene to stop them taking power).
Again before the US and other count stop it you need some regional powers who are willing to support this.
> X, it's because organization X is directly controlled by us or indirectly its incentives align well with our own.
At this point it seems to me that from the perspective of the US the middle east is more of a distraction. They don't have that many vital strategic interest in the region since US+Canada alone produce produce significantly more oil than all the Arab states combined.
> 20. Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170510123932/http://hamas.ps/e...
Adding to show that the '67 borders are pretty generally supported. There's even support for them among some of the "from the river to the sea" crowd since the '67 borders touch both the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
> 2. Palestine, which extends from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean in the west and from Ras Al-Naqurah in the north to Umm Al-Rashrash in the south, is an integral territorial unit. It is the land and the home of the Palestinian people. The expulsion and banishment of the Palestinian people from their land and the establishment of the Zionist entity therein do not annul the right of the Palestinian people to their entire land and do not entrench any rights therein for the usurping Zionist entity.
> 3. Palestine is an Arab Islamic land. It is a blessed sacred land that has a special place in the heart of every Arab and every Muslim.
The Arabs believe they took over the Levant fair and square in 637 and that the loss of any of that territory is an affront to Islam. Hamas’s charter reflects that.
Which in the context of the cited request for 1967 borders and right of return, could read to be an additional call for the right of return of Palestinians to the lands within the Israeli side of the 1967 borders.
In terms of international relations and power dynamics, the Palestinians have no real basis for any demands, they only can plead with their "allies" in the UN for some diplomatic influence, but they have no rights to holy sites, territory, supplies, money, infrastructure. They cannot functionally threaten the Israelis militarily. They have no economic purpose or key trade function that would curry them favor with other nations.
The one reason the world cares about them as opposed to the Tigray war or Azerbaijan-Armenia in modern terms (heard about them? No? Wonder why) is that they are in the middle east and the world cares about oil.
But the geopolitical significance of oil is waning, and will dramatically wane in the next decade as vast swathes of transportation infrastructure transition to BEVs.
The world does not care about "blessed sacred land". If Saudi Arabia doesn't care about it, no one else will. The current terrorist action was fomented by Iran to disrupt a fairly formalized Israel-Saudi alliance/alignment, and the Sunni Saudis are bigger blood enemies to the Shia Iranians than the Israelis are.
The Palestinians are a defeated people, and do not seem to realize there is a ticking time bomb that has nothing to do with Israel. They exit almost solely at the gracious of Qatar (humanitarian) and Iran (terrorist funding). If that money dried up, they are in very very very serious straits. They have no infrastructure, a limited economy, no trade, and are surrounded on all sides by Israel (who at a minimum distrusts them) or Egypt (who hate Palestinians from their 25 years of overseeing Gaza in the late 20th century).
The money is going to dry up in the next ten years. They have no infrastructure. No resources. No economy or trade. THEY CAN'T GO ANYWHERE. The Gazas (and Palestinians in general) have been on a 70 year long population explosion (think 6-8 children per female on average) that took them from 500k to 3-5 million people, which takes them from "big but manageable humanitarian crisis" to "unsustainable population in a crisis".
The Palestinians need to wake up that Israel, the enemy, is actually their only friend, and they need to make up with them very quickly. Of course they are paid not to be, so that is like the proverbial flying pigs.
Otherwise, they will starve in a horrifying manner.
In 637 the non-urban population of Palestine (incl. Galilee) was still majority Jewish - Justinian had only turfed them out of Jerusalem. There was no genocide in 637.
Furthermore, no one elected Hamas as the restoration of the caliphate and spokesperson for entire Muslim world. They’re actually not Isis.
I have no problem with Islam’s wars of conquest and civilization. I just find the victimhood mentality that’s been adopted in the 20th century to be undignified for such a culture.
Now when Israel is their colonizer, things are a bit different. Not only has Israel imposed a new language, culture and religion onto their lands, but they have also severely displaced them. No colonizer has done that to the Palestinians in the past, not even the British.
Modern Judaism permits conversion but refuses to promote or encourage it, and sometimes even goes out of its way to make it hard (especially some of the more conservative Orthodox). Hence, there has never been any encouragement for Palestinians to convert. It wasn’t always thus - John Hyrcanus forced the Idumeans to convert to Judaism; but that was over 2000 years ago now.
By contrast, Islamic conquerors always encouraged conquered peoples to convert to Islam, through a mixture of carrots and sticks. The same is true of Christianity.
Possibly, this is part of what sustains the Israel-Palestine conflict; if contemporary Judaism were pro-conversion, many of the Palestinians might have already become Jews by now.
The Muslims are the colonizers. Israel is just taking their land back. Who built the Temple Mount the Dome of the Rock is sitting on?
Israelis are not native to this land. Sharing a religion with one of many religions Palestinians have held in the past does not make the land indigenous to anyone except the Palestinians them selves. Just like Roman Catholics are not indigenous to the Vatican, not even the Roman Catholic minority in Romania.
European Jews have been a very real part of European history for dozens of generations. The history of European Jews is indeed a very rich history. They are a culture of their own, some even speak their own Germanic language (Yiddish). They are as European as me (an Icelander) and are indeed indigenous to Europe, not Palestine. The minority of European Jews who migrated to Palestine and later founded their own state on Palestinian lands did so by establishing a colony. This by definition makes them colonizers.
“Who built the Temple Mount the Dome of the Rock is sitting on?” Palestinians did, back before they converted to Islam, back when majority of Palestinians were still Jewish, and probably called the land Judea. Likewise, the Jews built the Temple Mount, back when they lived in historic Palestine. European Jews can claim that their ancestors built the Temple Mount, and they wouldn’t be wrong. In fact they can be proud of their ancestors. However, claiming that European Jews built the Temple Mount, that would be wrong.
This is no different than the question of “Who built the Pyramids?” Egyptians built the Pyramids. When the Egyptians built the Pyramids they practiced a different religion and spoke a different language. Since then they have been colonized multiple times over, by the Greeks, by the Romans, by the Byzantines, by the Umayyad Caliphate, by the Ottomans, by the French, by the British, etc. The Egyptians that built the Pyramids didn’t call them selves Egyptians and they probably didn’t call their land “Egypt”, It was still the Egyptians that built the Pyramids.
As a matter of academic interest, when would you say the statute of limitations runs out on the right of displaced peoples to reclaim their ancestral lands? If your answer is "it never runs out," then the descendants of the ancient Canaanites, Midianites, and Amalekites† would like a word ....
† According to the Hebrew Bible, the ancient Israelites violently (and genocidally?) displaced these peoples; see, e.g., Num. 31, Josh. 10:40, 11:15. But it's not clearly established that this actually happened.
You shouldn't be doing that generally on HN, either, and unfortunately your comments (as I've been attempting to communicate to you) have swung too far in the flamewar direction in recent months (or maybe the last year or two, I'm not sure). You've been a good HN contributor for a long time before that, so if you'd please revert to status quo ante, we'd appreciate it.
River = the Jordan River
Sea = the Mediterranean sea
=> calling for the destruction of Israel. But sure, we'll take '67 as an intermediate step.
I don't know how to read that except the willingness to compromise on 1967 borders, as long as those ejected in 1948 can return to their land and become Israeli citizens.
Yes, they should also be allowed back and several countries have explicitly allowed such a thing.
> Do you truly believe a compromise can be reached with an organization that committed a massacre on the scale of October 7th? Personally, I'm willing to compromise a lot for peace (divide Jerusalem, give up the west bank, whatever. Fighting over land/religion is absurd), but I honestly don't believe that's what Hamas is aiming for. Their actions at least indicate otherwise.
I don't think compromise is an option that has legitimately been tried.
The Palestinian position is that Oslo and Camp David were not good faith compromises by Israel, but even if so Arafat made no counter-offer. He rejected the offers out of hand. Then the second Intifada started and ushered in Likud and Netanyahu which led us to where we are today.
As far as a Palestinian right-of-return to within Israel's borders. It would be the demographic end of a Jewish democratic Israel. It's the one thing that Israel absolutely will not and cannot compromise on. It's an unreasonable demand.
To my mind: Palestinians have never had effective leadership and they've been used as pawns by the other Arab nations. The lack of Palestinian leadership is not entirely the Palestinians' doing, at least since Arafat anyway. Israel has intentionally kept West Bank and Gaza leadership divided. Nonetheless, Palestinians are going to need to figure out a way to have effective leadership. Someone who is motivated and empowered to negotiate for peace, recognizing that Palestinians are not negotiating from a position of strength.
This is why those who claim Israel is a "western democracy" are liars. It's just an ethnostate with the veneer of democracy and westernism put upon it so we westerners don't see what our governments are supporting. Saying "we stole land from these people not even a century ago, but we can't allow them back because of democracy" is such a disgusting notion. It's also not even true; Israel has a population of just under 10 million people. You could give true right of return to every impacted Palestinian and still only dilute the proportion of zionist citizens by like what, a handful of %?
But no instead the only "right of return" that Israel recognizes is the right of Jews from anywhere in the diaspora to come and live on bloodsoaked land. Doesn't matter if you're from friggin Antarctica, you've got a home in Israel if you're Jewish! Doesn't that whole notion seem ridiculous to you?
In what world would that ever happen? Would those people ever be safe there?
And that’s just one of a dozen countries that tortured and killed Jews in the name of Allah.
For example: [Avi Shlaims book "Three Worlds"](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62918049-three-worlds)
There has been a longstanding and unsinkable narrative that, frustrated by the refusal of Jewish communities in Arab lands to move to the early Israel, an active campaign of bombings etc was launched by Israel itself, surreptitiously, in order to exarcerbate tensions already caused by 1948.
Of course, the fact that these communities had existed within the Arab world for centuries itself belies the notion that the Arabs wanted to exterminate them "for Allah". As anyone with even a passing knowledge of history can attest to.
Way before the foundation of Israel, my father and uncles were restricted in numerous ways because of their Jewish ancestry. For example there were quotas on the number of Jews allowed in universities.
Jews were frequently imprisoned there (including my father and his brothers) for the sole reason of being Jewish.
Let’s apply that argument to eg mid 20th century Europe. Let me ask you this directly: are you denying the holocaust?
It was for the more common reasons. To scapegoat the Jews while the government steals and does horrible things to its citizens.
(campaign of Mossad bombings targeting Jewish communities elsewhere in the Middle East, to force sectarian fault lines to implode - documented BY an Iraqi Jew whose father left Iraq, served in the IDF, then left for London where the daughter wrote a book detailing this very thing),
vs the long tradition of Muslims and Jews living peacefully side by side. The Caliph Umar, when he took control of Jerusalem from the Byzantine's, actually invited the scattered Jews BACK to Jerusalem. When Jews were being banished from Al-Andalus (Spain) after the Christian reconnaissance (Spanish Inquisition and all that), the Ottoman Sultan actually sent multiple ships to RESCUE them, which is why there was such a large Jewish presence in N Africa.
There is simply NO comparison between the Jewish experience under Muslim rule, and the Jewish history of repression under European rule. None.
And then Zionism came along. If not for that, you would be Iraqi today. That's the sad truth.
The fact is, they were expelled from those countries. EVEN IF it was “safe” being an iraqi jew in 1850, it was not in 1950, and it is definitely not today. So what is your point?
Life wasn’t equal as a Jew in Iraq, and that was one of the best examples one could find. And it shouldn’t matter that Israel was formed - if Jews were safe there they should always be safe.
That's why I laid the blame on Zionisms door.
And in Iran, where Mossad did NOT get to strut their stuff, the rather large Jewish community exists to this day.
Anyway, enough said. I've made this point as clearly and carefully as I could - and yet still got bizarre accusations of somehow being a Holocaust denier (not by you, but another yahoo who was dealt with).
It doesn’t matter that much. The Muslim world these days is deeply antisemitic.
Oh, go to hell with that fake question. What I said was DIRECTLY about Jewish communities living in the Muslim world, for centuries. Any half-decent professor of history would agree with what I said. It's not even remotely controversial nor contested by any serious historian, Jewish, Christian or Muslim.
You're desperately clutching at straws, trying to imply that anyone here denied the centuries long EUROPEAN history of pogroms and expulsions, from Britain and Spain in the 14th to 15th centuries, to the repeated pogroms throughout Western, Central and Eastern Europe, culminating in the 20th century where much of Europe COLLABORATED with the Germans to butcher 8+ million people far away from any front lines, 6 million of whom were Jews.
Why are you so desperate to put your words in other people's mouth? Are YOU trying to deny the Holocaust? Hmm ...
I asked you a direct question that followed from your argument, where you proposed essentially a global jewish conspiracy, based on strawman arguments.
As an answer, I got an angry rant attacking me personally, citing an unknown authority (“Any half decent professor”) as your source in an attempt to bully and discredit me.
Much Appreciated.
Sibling comment gave a direct example from personal experience countering your claim.
Heck, even at the time of the 2006 elections, an overwhelming majority of Palestinians including Hamas supporters also supported a peace agreement with Israel, and moderation of what was then Hamas's platform. (The latter occurred, the former not so much -- in large part because Israel stopped negotiating when the executive of the PA wanted Hamas -- the party that won a majority in the legislative elections -- involved in the negotiations.)
How do you think the 1967 borders became the current borders? Egypt shut down Israel’s access to the Red Sea and massed troops on Israel’s border. Then Jordan and Iraq sent troops. And then Israel kicked everybody’s ass and occupied the Sinai, the Gaza Strip (which had been occupied by Egypt) and the West Bank (which had been annexed by Jordan).
Plenty Palestinians oppose the war and want peace. This is the equivalent.
In their eyes, to rid of kahanists like Netanyahu and his cronies, who have subjugated them for decades, subjected them to a death by a thousand paper-cuts, they don't demand Jordan and Turkey besiege and bomb Tel Aviv.
Given the population density in the Strip and lack of trust in Israel by Egypt on refugees, smaller-scale military solution followed by a political solution must have been pursued but instead the majority sentiment in Israel was all-out revenge (and collective punishment very much okay: https://archive.is/t9pmT). It has been downhill from there.
I’m reminded of an excellent Middle Eastern restaurant in California that I went to on occasion during the Second Intifada. The had Hebrew- and Arabic language newspapers. The patrons (I assume) mostly had some form of Middle Eastern or Jewish heritage, but I don’t really know which. The falafel sandwiches were fantastic. The only sides were things like tahini and harissa. As far as I know, basically everyone who ate there wanted peace and didn’t really want any particular group to “win” the ongoing conflict.
I think the owners were Lebanese-American, but it didn’t matter.
The theory goes: if Hamas were to embarrass Israel on the public stage with a humiliating attack, this might provoke an overwhelmingly disproportionate response by Israel against Gaza, cementing the public perception of Gazans as the victims in the conflict even in light of the 10/7 aggression - and Hamas as their freedom fighters. This in turn would attract public sympathy for Hamas, bolstering their political prospects in Palestine, meanwhile derailing Saudi peace talks that might have resulted in formal recognition of the Palestinian Authority as the legitimate sovereigns. (Neutralizing peace talks between the two greatest enemies of one of Hamas's greatest benefactors, Iran, could only be viewed as a nice "plus").
[0] https://www.arabbarometer.org/media-news/survey-sheds-light-... [1] https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/polls-sh... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMxHU34IgyY