Israel tried to do in Gaza what they did in the West Bank. Carve it up, control key resources, create settlements through terrorism and encroach daily on Palestinian territory.
Their settler-colonial crimes are well documented in the West Bank but Israel didn't have enough people and resources at the time to carry crimes both in the West Bank and Gaza.
Gaza has farms and wide open spaces. It is about twice the size of Manhattan. Check Google Maps and confirm both of these yourself.
Finally, Jewish people cannot colonise an area they’ve been for 3000 years. Using the expression, settler colonial is an easy way to stop taking your arguments seriously.
Is that land area enough to feed their population?
Jews can't colonize an area where they're literally kicking people out of their homes?
Good question. We do know Hamas has very little interest in meeting the needs of Gaza's population - there are no wells, aid money is taken for weapons and for the personal wealth of it's billionaire leaders instead of it's populace. We'll never know if Hamas can feed Gazans because it puts very little effort into doing so.
Land in Israel was purchased from Ottomans and Arabs before 1948, and gained after winning wars declared by Arab states after 1948.
Are you trying to say that not a single Palesitinan has been displaced? The nakba is largely why we have these problems today, and it's still going on.
> The nakba is largely why we have these problems today
Not quite, the displacement happened, but that's a symptom of the cause: the wars declared by Arab states after 1948 mentioned in the comment you're replying to.
Likewise Poland and France still own land gained from Germany after WW2.
So it's just fine if they stole some land and kicked the people out? They should just be happy with losing everything they have. Is Israel still at war with the west bank? As they're still doing the same thing, and under such circumstances you say it's ok.
Egypt’s reasons vary. One stated reason was that they fear that Palestinian refugees will attack Israel from Egyptian soil and threaten the 40 year peace between the nations. Another reason is that Egypt had its own problem with extremists and accused Hamas of backing them. A third reason which we really shouldn’t overlook is that Egypt and Israel want to improve their economic relationship and increase bilateral trade to $700 million a year. Fourth, Egypt also brings up the concepts of displacement and right of return but that’s a level way beyond my understanding so I’ll insert it as a fact but cannot speak to it in any way.
International law is such that Israel would have a lot of difficulty keeping Rafah Rafah (for lack of a better word to describe that clusterfuck of a border) if Egypt was interested in fighting for its integrity. They’re not. Jordan has also always refused Palestinian refugees.
Finally, Israel has made many overtures for peace. Those overtures have destroyed political careers and resulted in at least one assassination. Despite the overtures, the attacks still continued.
I’m not willing to engage unless you can tell me about some of these Israeli attempts at peace. Show me that you have some understanding of the other side and we can talk. But otherwise, I get very bored without balance.
Every overture of peace from Israel has contained poisoned pills. Lasting peace cannot be made in this manner, see Treaty of Versailles. Everyone except Israel has now accepted the 1967 borders, even Hamas. The two state solution is impossible unless Israel gives up what it has taken in the West Bank, just look at the pockmarks on a map. Did you really bring up the assassination that the current right wing government in Israel called for publicly and don't think there's a problem with Israels leadership?
I'm afraid to say that I missed the latest Hasbara episodes so I guess you won't respond.
> I'm afraid to say that I missed the latest Hasbara episodes so I guess you won't respond.
The sad thing is the parent got flagged and you're the one breaking the HN guidelines.
In response to someone that basically said "say something nice about Israel or I wont talk to you".
I’m not sure what that means.
I’m a person. I have ancestors who were likely [0] forced out of at least four identifiable countries. Many if not most Americans are in a similar position.
Does this mean that my descendants could “colonize” places where my ancestors never lived but could not “colonize” places where they did not live?
If I moved, permanently, to Antarctica, Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, New York, England, Russia, Ukraine, Mars, or Argentina, would I be colonizing, “returning”, etc? Does the answer really depend on where my ancestors lived 50 or 100 or 3000 years ago?
I do think there’s something to be said for someone moving to where their recent ancestors live or lived, but this gets complicated very very quickly, especially when political borders move in the mean time.
I once visited the house in a foreign country where some of ancestors lived in the 1930s, from which they were quite aggressively removed. I’m pretty sure that if I moved back there by force, I would be doing something very very wrong.
[0] I say “likely” because some degree of extrapolation is needed as to what happened tens of generations ago. And the number is likely much larger than 4.
I think you have a typo there (both options are where your ancestors didn't live).
Assuming you meant:
> Does this mean that my descendants could “colonize” places where my ancestors never lived but could not “colonize” places where they did live?
Then yes.
The first case - moving to a new country and sending people from your own country to live there - is colonisation - see https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...
In the second case, particularly if your community has been there for a few thousand years, you're just buying a house.
> Jewish people cannot colonize an area they’ve been for 3000 years.
As I understand it, Palestine used to be a majority Jewish area. Their creation myth states that they migrated there from Egypt to escape slavery and oppression. However Jewish people never mass migrated from Palestine like they mass migrated from Egypt. Some Palestinians simply gradually converted religion with during varying colonization, first to Christianity during Roman and Byzantine colonization, then to Islam during Arab and Ottoman colonization and today, most Palestinians are Muslim while Christian minority exists. Prior to 1948 there were even still Jewish Palestinians. Jesus Christ him self was even a Palestinian Jew.
While this is happening, some Jews—instead of converted—migrated from Palestine to Europe, where they were persecuted for centuries. While in Europe, they still managed to intermarry and doubtless some Europeans even converted to Judaism. These immigrants became part of Europe and European heritage, and after so many generations they became European Jews.
This is why I—and others—consider Zionism to be a specific case of the more general European colonial enterprise. Zionists are mostly European or European descendants who migrated to lands that wasn’t theirs, made it theirs, and displaced the indigenous population from it.
In my opinion this is the worst possible case of colonialism.
There was no Palestinian identity prior to 1960. One can easily confirm this for themselves - nobody "met a Palestinian man" prior to this time in any recorded media. People are free to identify however they like, but all people living in this areas were simply Jews, Arabs, or other groups.
Talk about Palestinians prior to this time is part of the same conspiracy theory as the nakba and Jews being from Europe.
> While this is happening, some Jews—instead of converted—migrated from Palestine to Europe, where they were persecuted for centuries.
Kind of? After the Bar Kochba revolt, the Romans pushed the Jews out and renamed Israel (then split into Israel and Judea) into Syria Palestinea, after the Philistines (who were Greek).
> I—and others—consider Zionism to be a specific case of the more general European colonial enterprise.
You're wrong. You can't colonise your own country. Islam converting some Jews when the arabs colonised the area in the seventh century doesn't change that.
Which also begs the question - why is arab colonisation acceptable but 'European' (but actually not Eupopean, as Jews are from Israel) colonisation not acceptable?
How so? When I search for the history of the Palestinian identity I can easily find something called Dux Palestinae on Roman maps from 400 CE on both banks of the Jordan river[1], a map of Palestine in 1482 version of Claudius Ptolemy's Cosmographia [1], a British issued passport and coins from the 1920s[1], a letter from Albert Einstein to the editors of The New York Times about happenings in Palestine and Palestine Jewish communities[2], etc.
The problem with looking for a Palestinian identity prior to 1960s is (a) there are historic artifacts, written records, etc. of one existing as early as the 1920s[*], and (b) the notion of the nation state didn’t exist (or was rather rare) prior to world war 1, and not every nation was given a state when nation states proliferated. So just because the nation state of Palestine didn’t exist before the 1920s, that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the Palestinian people before that period, even if they never called them selves such on written records[†]. Talking about national identity in modern terms prior to the proliferation of nation states is kind of nonsensical.
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* The same applies to the Nakba, however I choice not to engage in a debate about conspiracy theories which deny the history of very real horrors experienced by very real people, of whom many are still alive.
† This reminds me of a Monty Python sketch from The Holy Grail when King Arthur refers to him self as the “King of the Britons” to the peasantry, to which the peasantry promptly reply: “The king of the who?” and “Who are the Britons?”[3]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_name_Palestine
2: https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYork...
3: http://montypython.50webs.com/scripts/Holy_Grail/Scene3.htm
> How so? When I search for the history of the Palestinian identity I can easily find something called Dux Palestinae on Roman maps from 400 CE on both banks of the Jordan river[1]...
It doesn't seem like you've read the comment you're replying to again. I'm leaving this conversation.
the real solution is first remove terrorists organizations that control the Palestinians to enable a path to cooperation and than, a two state solution but terrorists won't give up without a fight. it is what it is and no western "let's talk about it" approach can resolve.