All the territory west of Jordan river was designated for the "Jewish homeland" by the League of Nations decision in 1922. East of the river was designated for an Arab state. Claiming that Israel is occupying their own land has been one of the most hostile propaganda claims of a century.

Countries are not "for" ethnicities, nor should they be in the modern era. Yes, I include Japan, Saudi, etc. in my calculations. But those states' existence did not make a substantial group of people stateless.

The Jews had just suffered a genocide, and were not wanted anywhere. There was literally no where for them to go, except the one place that had a thriving Jewish settlement on it for the past 50 years (and a deep connection from long before).

I think the history of Israel/Palestine is complicated, and everyone has some blame for the lack of current day peace, but let's be clear that the majority of Jews who became Israelis were not some conquering colonizers - they were the weakest refugees in the world, who had just seen 90% of their family killed, and had nowhere else to go.

I didn't say colonizers. Also Israel's Jewish population is made up majorly of people not tied to Europe / the Holocaust. Those latter are the minority.

Again, a state built around one ethnicity that by its founding requires people of a separate ethnicity who were equally living in the same land to become stateless, that's wrong and should not happen.

Now, the Holocaust is nearing 100 years old, does the raison d'etre of the country even apply anymore and does it justify the current state of things which has not changed since then?

> Also Israel's Jewish population is made up majorly of people not tied to Europe / the Holocaust. Those latter are the minority.

The majority were largely refugees that were ethnically cleansed from the Arab world, so not sure that really changes anything.

> Again, a state built around one ethnicity that by its founding requires people of a separate ethnicity who were equally living in the same land to become stateless, that's wrong and should not happen.

Israel's founding did not require anyone to become stateless. The land was effectively inhabited by two separate groups that did not want to become one state, and rules by the British - then the British gave the UN the task of deciding what to do, and they suggested what everyone else who has ever looked at the problem has suggested, and what any five year old would suggest - split the land into two, and give one to each group. The Jews accepted this split - and the Arabs refused, and started a war to conquer all the area (and let's leave to the imagination what they would've done with the Jewish population in the area).

But, all of that is history at this point. I don't think it matters as much now - Israel exists and has existed for 75 years as a fully reocgnized state. It no more makes sense to talk about "it's wrong for Israel to exist" as to talk about "it's wrong for the US" to exist. Do we routinely look at any other country's founding and talk about them not making sense any more? Many of which were also founded based around ethnicities?

> Now, the Holocaust is nearing 100 years old, does the raison d'etre of the country even apply anymore and does it justify the current state of things which has not changed since then?

Countries don't need a raison d'etre to continue existing.

If by "current state of things" you mean the Palestinians having no state, I don't think anything justifies that. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to change that - multiple attempts have been made at a peace process that gets the Palestinians a sate, which the Palestinians have refused each time. By most surveys or interviews I've seen, most Palestinians do not want peace with Israel - they want Israel gone. And to top it off, the last 15ish years have seen Israel become ever more extreme right, partially driven by the Israeli left's total failure to create a peace with the Palestinians - so it's not like the Israeli side is encouraging peace at this point, in fact quite the opposite.

> If by "current state of things" you mean the Palestinians having no state, I don't think anything justifies that.

So we're all on the same page then. I never said Israel shouldn't exist, and your whole history lesson before (as much as you're leaving out) doesn't really matter. The ethnostate nature of Israel now is what matters, and that it requires Palestinian statelessness is key. At least this is the approach of the current Israeli government.

> multiple attempts have been made at a peace process that gets the Palestinians a sate, which the Palestinians have refused each time

Leaving out that the PA renounced violence against Israel as part of the Oslo Peace Process, which only led to more land theft, that Israelis so badly did not want Palestine to have a state that they murdered Rabin to stop it, that multiple Israeli PMs constantly sabotaged the process to Palestinian statehood thru the PA (most notably Netanyahu preferring to allow Hamas to threaten their rule and ultimately expel them from Gaza). Let's be honest about failures on both sides, not prop up one story or the other solely.

> By most surveys or interviews I've seen, most Palestinians do not want

Doesn't really matter what people want though. Like I replied to you earlier: "You're talking about what Palestinians inherently "want", but that's not really related to peace. Peace exists when nations can deter each other"

Unfortunately, giving Palestine the one thing that can actually enable peace (deterrence) is also a huge risk for Israel. One day Israelis will have to decide if that risk is worth it to have a nation not constantly at war, not constantly on edge, not constantly bowing to the "strong" far-right, and not constantly sending its children to do all the things they are doing in Gaza, some necessary in war, and some absolutely beyond normalization. Palestinians could change entirely tomorrow and it won't make any difference, the way the power lies right now. That is largely borne out by seeing what happened to the PLO/PA after they changed themselves substantially to aid the peace process.

> So we're all on the same page then. I never said Israel shouldn't exist, and your whole history lesson before (as much as you're leaving out) doesn't really matter.

Yes, I believe we are. I kind of have to be pro-actively defensive about the history, because lots of other people (even in this very thread) express exactly that - that Israel shouldn't exist, or that Israelis are uniquely evil, or something.

> The ethnostate nature of Israel now is what matters, and that it requires Palestinian statelessness is key. At least this is the approach of the current Israeli government.

I don't think this is fair, though. First, calling the "nature of Israel" an ethnostate is misleading - it's not any more an ethnostate than France is an "ethnostate" for the French. Indeed, Israel has a sizeable Arab/Palestinian minority (~20%) that have full rights and full voting rights.

And I certainly don't think anything about Israel requires Palestinian statelesness.

But yes, the current government is certainly of the approach that the Palestinians should never have a state - they literally voted on disallowing them ever having a state. The current government is awful, and not just for the Palestinians - dragging Israel towards dictatorship is (IMO, of course) a terrible thing for Israelis too!

> Leaving out that the PA renounced violence against Israel as part of the Oslo Peace Process, which only led to more land theft, that Israelis so badly did not want Palestine to have a state that they murdered Rabin to stop it, that multiple Israeli PMs constantly sabotaged the process to Palestinian statehood thru the PA (most notably Netanyahu preferring to allow Hamas to threaten their rule and ultimately expel them from Gaza). Let's be honest about failures on both sides, not prop up one story or the other solely.

I believe I am honest about the history, certainly honest about the experience of the Israeli left.

There was a genuine push for peace, sustained over many years and multiple PMs, and the experience of the country is that every push for peace ended up with more violence and less security, which just doesn't make any sense - why did the Palestinians ramp up the violence when on the way to getting what they ostensibly want? It makes sense from the POV of Palestinian extremists like Hamas, because they were explicitly against the peace process, and explictly refused to accept anything except getting rid of Israel. So for them, any concessions on the Israeli side were "proof" that Israel would eventually be able to be pushed out, which is what they really want, and represents (afaict) a majority view.

> Unfortunately, giving Palestine the one thing that can actually enable peace (deterrence) is also a huge risk for Israel.

I really, really disagree with this. Again, Mexico and the US have peace, but it's not because Mexico deters the US in any meaningful way. They just aren't fighting because they aren't competing over anything.

If Mexico tomorrow decided that it has a claim on (say) Texas, and were determined to conquer it - and started shooting rockets at the US and invading the US - would your reaction really be "well the only thing that can solve this is the US giving Mexico enough weapons so there was mutual deterrence"?

What brings peace is agreeing to live next to each other without killing each other.

> it's not any more an ethnostate than France is an "ethnostate" for the French.

It is moreso one because there are French citizenship standards for people currently wanting to become citizens not based on ethnicity. And people indigenous to France not of the preferred ethnicity are not forced to live outside the country with no right to citizenship. The need for Israel to be majority Jewish requires that Palestinians cannot become citizens of Israel, even though their lives are completely controlled by the polity of Israel, by necessity, according to the Israeli government, for security reasons.

> why did the Palestinians ramp up the violence when on the way to getting what they ostensibly want?

Why did the Israelis do the same? Even after Oslo, why expand settlements when they got so many concessions from the PA and eliminated essentially their greatest foe of decades, the PLO, through diplomacy? Again, the conflict is not solved by painting one side as a bad faith actor and the other as a good faith actor. There are bad faith actors on both sides increasingly in power. It is not Russia/Ukraine where one clearly invaded a sovereign nation. In this case one does not recognize the other nation while simultaneously blockading all the people in that unrecognized nation, who are all stateless. No matter how we got to this point, it isn't justifiable long term and it is not going to last as a solution. As I said before, let's be honest about both sides' shortcomings.

> They just aren't fighting because they aren't competing over anything.

That's what I said also in reference to Zimbabwe, it applies also to Mexico.

> If Mexico tomorrow...started shooting rockets at the US and invading the US

Did you read my other comment? I will repost my response when I predicted you would say this and preemptively answered:

"You would balk at that saying "But the Palestinians are a security threat. Israel cannot be expected to allow that on its border. The US would never allow Mexico... Etc." and that is of course the same logic Palestine uses to justify its attacks on Israel."

> What brings peace is agreeing to live next to each other without killing each other.

Both sides have rejected to do that when the other has opted for peace. Again the West Bank and PA is very illustrative of this, and you know the analogous situations for your side also

Look, the question of how Israel can remain both Jewish and a democracy is a complicated one that no one has a good answer to. I won't pretend otherwise. I do think people think about this as if it's unique to Israel though.

It's better, IMO, to just think of Israel as a country that, like any other country, defined its citizens in some way when it was founded, as France defines its citizens as French. And that's pretty much it, nowadays it is largely similar to other countries. Just as France wouldn't want agree to an influx of a 10 million immigrants gaining French citizenship, neither would Israel agree to accepting many non-citizens and turning them into citizens. That is true of almost every country on Earth - very few have completely open paths to citizenship.

> It is moreso one because there are French citizenship standards for people currently wanting to become citizens not based on ethnicity.

As there are in Israel. Firstly, 20% of Israel is not ethnically Jewish. Secondly, there are paths to citizenship for non-Jews. The only unique thing in Israel is that if you are Jewish, you have an easy path to citizenship - but that is literally the same as Israel just having defined that all Jews are effectively Israeli citizens, when it was founded. Nothing special about that.

> And people indigenous to France not of the preferred ethnicity are not forced to live outside the country with no right to citizenship.

Umm, I'm not sure there's quite an analagous situation here. But if a group that had lived in France a hundred years ago but had moved somewhere else now wanted French citizenship, they wouldn't just get it.

> The need for Israel to be majority Jewish requires that Palestinians cannot become citizens of Israel, even though their lives are completely controlled by the polity of Israel, by necessity, according to the Israeli government, for security reasons.

Well we've talked about this "complete control" elsewhere, but to focus on the citizenship question - yes, Israel would not agree to double its voting population with people who are not part of the country and have very different values/etc, just as no other country would.

And btw, Palestinians who stayed in the land during the war did become Israeli citizens, hence Israel having a 20% minority Palestinians population. And IIRC, Palestinians living in Jerusalem are able to become Israeli citizens, though few choose to do so.

Again, take out the historical back and forth aside - this is the same as any other country. Dozens of countries came into being in the last 70 years, all of them defined their citizens in some way, often some combination of culture/ethnicity, and none of them would agree to just double their size with new citizens.

I think the rest of your comment I answered in great detail in my other comments.

Some people are trying to argue like Palestinian Arabs are a separate nation. This kind of argument is not any different than arguing that Germans that were living in Czechia were a separate nation. As post war European history demonstrated - the solution for a long lasting peace is clearly separated nation states - this removes most of the reasons for tensions. Jews will not accept any "solution" that would eliminate them from their indigenous land in Judea and Samaria. I believe that they can give up Gaza or some other parts of their land, but not this. This leaves only one real option here.

It is similarly the indigenous land of the Palestinians.

Like Americans and Canadians are not indigenous people of Northern America and Australians are not indigenous people of Australia, they are not. Arabs in Palestine are descendants of colonizers and settlers enabled by the colonial powers.

  > Arabs in Palestine are descendants of colonizers and settlers enabled by the colonial powers.  

So the creation of a state by western colonial powers and the migration of jews from all over the world there does not make them descendants of colonizers and settlers, because they identify with some people mentioned in a two thousand year old book which says they lived there.

Oh and they didn't even speak the same language, they had to revive it.

Right. Makes sense.

Their home was taken away by The Western Colonial Power - Rome. Jews are the only nation that was crushed by Rome, but survived without their land, all other such nations have perished. Restoring their homeland on their indigenous land was the only morally rightful thing to do when the descendants of Rome recaptured this territory.

I don't know what you are in need of more, history lessons or reasoning training.

Even if we ignore the fact that claims to land almost TWO THOUSAND years later are insane, even if we ignore the fact that the evidence is a two thousand year old book, claiming that modern day russian and hodgepodge jews from all over europe are descendants of the original inhabitants of the Levant is simply hilarious.

To create a national identity they even had to resurrect a dead language.

And without the UK creating the state of Israel purely as a western colony for geopolitical reasons, this would not be a discussion and so many lives would've been spared.

You could have just written that you hate Jews. Could have been shorter. If we inherited the Rome, we also inherited its moral debts. The uniqueness of the situation of Jews doesn't invalidate our moral obligations. Brits could have claimed the Palestine for themselves - it was a Roman Christian territory after all, they chose to do the only moral thing imaginable - restoration of Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Liar.

But Israel has created the need for Palestinian Arabs to have a separate nation by leaving them nationless by defining their nation as belonging to a specific ethnicity. Anyone can tell you Israel cannot have an Arab majority. That's fundamentally missing from your example. There were no stateless Germans living in Czechia

The problem with Germans in Czechia was their hostility toward Czech. This heightened with the Nazi occupation. They also didn't become "nationless" as they got German citizenship. The everlasting Palestinian refugee crisis is especially created by UN by creating the UNRWA and inheritable Palestinian refugee status instead of demanding other Arab states to give them citizenship. It is not a problem created by Israel, they just have to deal with it somehow.

Amazing how Israel defenders claim Arab states should just be forced to give Palestinians citizenship, yet they justify the existence of Israel by saying "Well, no other country would give them citizenship nor were any safe for them, so they needed their own". That logic applies to the Palestinians right now, but you are too blind to ever put yourself in their shoes.

Remind me an Arab state where Arabs are constantly persecuted for being an Arab. It has NEVER been about citizenship (and yes, many countries have very strictly limited immigration of Jews before and after creation of Israel), it has always been about constant persecution of Jews. When Arabs lost to Jews in Israel Independence War then they started to punish and oppress Jews living in Arab states. Were these Jews responsible by any means? No, their only fault was being a Jew. And it's just only a single example.

You said Arab states should just be demanded to give Palestinians citizenship.

You think Israel needs to exist as a Jewish majority state because other countries did not accept Jewish refugees (e.g. the US) even though those same countries could and would do so now (at least as much as the Arab countries would for Palestinians).

So just think about that hypocrisy. Either being hated and rejected as refugees justifies a state of a group's own, or it doesn't.

I believe that Jewish state should exist. Jews have the right to have the same level of protections that other nations are entitled to have.

If they do not form a majority in that state, it's not a Jewish state anymore, in that state Jews no longer have the protection of the state, they instead are forced to search protection from the state.

It's simple and clear as that. It is also becoming more and more clear that your motivation is simply hatred toward Jews that you are trying to hide with these logical fallacies and simply lying.

> Remind me an Arab state where Arabs are constantly persecuted for being an Arab.

Palestine, particularly the Occupied Palestinian Territory, would be the obvious answer.

The footage going back many decades of their treatment by "neighbours" is savage.

You have to expand this comment a little. By now it's not clear what Arab state you are talking about.

What is the difference between pro-peace and pro-Palestine? I've always understood them to largely be different terms in favor of a two-state solution.

Well it depends on what you mean by pro-Palestine. One could similarly ask what's the difference between being pro-Israel and being pro-peace.

As some people use the term, it means the dissolution of Israel. As others use it, it means being in favor of a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine for a two state solution.

I think if you ask most Israelis (including me), they'll tell you that it's an unfortunate reality that most Palestinians themselves don't actually want peace - they want Israel gone. Many people who call themselves pro-Palestinian mean that they want whatever Palestinians want, which includes the dissolution of Israel.

Personally, I think being pro-Israel or pro-Palestine should both be the same as being pro-peace, because the only think that will ensure a good future for both peoples will be having peace between them.

Pro-Israel, as far as the government is, is inherently an anti-two-state-solution position. How can there be peace with 2-3 million stateless people who have no way to defend themselves against a hostile nation?

You're talking about what Palestinians inherently "want", but that's not really related to peace. Peace exists when nations can deter each other. The USSR and the USA had peace despite each "wanting" to destroy the other because they had MAAD. Without that, imagine the carnage? It might have looked like what we see today in Gaza...

I agree with you, that I wish pro-either-country was a pro-peace position. Ultimately it will have to become one in Israel for the situation to change. No matter what Palestinians want, they don't have the firepower to change the calculus.

> Pro-Israel, as far as the government is, is inherently an anti-two-state-solution position.

I'm definitely pro-Israel and anti-the-current-Israeli-government. I think terminology-wise, if I said I were anti-US, most would not equate it to being anti-Biden or anti-Trump, but rather anti-the-country-itself. So I think saying "anti-Israel" when you mean "anti-the-current-Israeli-government" is a bad way to phrase it.

> How can there be peace with 2-3 million stateless people who have no way to defend themselves against a hostile nation?

1. They have militias. Much weaker ones than Israel, but not nothing.

2. Israel is not inherently hostile to Palestine, IMO. Hamas (the militia that supposedly doesn't exist?) invaded Israel on October 7th and ran around killing people and taking hostages. Had they decided to stay home on October 7th, there would've been no war.

Now, maybe the situation was intolerable before that - I don't think it was, but maybe. Either way, the way out of it was probably not to further prove to Israelis that they will never be safe with Hamas on its borders.

> You're talking about what Palestinians inherently "want", but that's not really related to peace.

Unfortunately, I disagree. Because the Palestinians have shown, again and again, that they have the ability and the willingness to inflict unacceptable amounts of damage on Israel. Plenty of Israelis want peace, or at least some semblance of it, with the Palestinians. Many sympathize deeply with them. As long as the Palestinians refuse to accept any peace, and insist on making Israeli believe that any territory they control will be used as a base to attack Isarelis more, Israeli will simply not give them territory.

> Peace exists when nations can deter each other.

I think this is both very bleak, and very wrong. The US has peace with the UK. It has peace with Zimbabwe. It has peace with Vietnam, despite a massive war with it. It has peace with Andorra.

None of these places can deter the US. But they're not actively threatening the US - so why wouldn't there be peace?

Peace can also exist when countries don't have a reason to threaten each other.

This is why, fundamentally, I believe the problem between Israel and Palestinians comes down to the Palestinians refusing to give up on most of the territory of Israel. There is a very obvious way to peace - simply agree to split the land along the borders that every agrees with, and... that's kind of it. The Palestinians have refused this again and again, and not only have they refused - they've ramped up the violence every time peace was being negotiated.

> Ultimately it will have to become one in Israel for the situation to change. No matter what Palestinians want, they don't have the firepower to change the calculus.

I agree that morally speaking, Israel must do all in its power to change the situation to arrive at peace.

But the Palestinians don't need firepower to change the calculus - that's the opposite of what they need. They need to stop using firepower to fight Israel, and prove that they will be willing to live side-by-side with Israel without trying to kill Israeli. If they laid down their weapons - the current war would be over tomorrow, and there'd be peace the day after.

You didn’t mention Nakba which is the core issue. Israel cannot exist on stolen land and be pro-peace. It really is as simple as that.

Since most Palestinians consider all the land to be stolen land, especially in reference to the Nakba, you're pretty much saying Israel cannot exist.

Yes, that’s what I’m saying. I support a single Palestinian state based on the human rights violations that went into illegally constructing the Israeli state.

Well, the ottomans have tax records going back hundreds of years so....

Thanks for sharing. I guess I never thought of anti-Israel or being pro-Israel and also pro-two-state-solution. There are fewer and fewer who balance both positions.

Israel is hostile to Palestinians as Palestinians are to Israelis. The killing of many people during the march of return. The starvation plus diets. The treatment of the West Bank after the PA renounced violence as part of Oslo, there are numerous examples Palestinians will cite to show that Israel is hostile to them. You can trot out a long historical argument to justify all these, if you'd like. They can do the same for Oct. 7. Such narratives begin with the Nakba, probably include the fact that Palestinians have no military which can adequately protect them from Israel while Israel has missile deterrence systems, etc. But all these don't matter. At the end of the day, right now, both countries are materially and physically threatened by the other. And those threats materialize into violence often.

> Unfortunately, I disagree.

Your disagreement doesn't change the actual calculus on the ground, so it doesn't matter. Like I said, only deterrence actually can make peace between two actively hostile nations. It is also not true that the Palestinians did not accept any peace. They accepted Oslo, in which they conceded far more than Israel, and were rewarded for that with basically nothing. But again, it doesn't really matter now, that is long gone and dead, and if you see it differently, fine.

> The US has peace with the UK. It has peace with Zimbabwe. It has peace with Vietnam, despite a massive war with it. It has peace with Andorra.

The US and the UK fought many wars (American Independence, the WR of 1812, etc.) they achieved peace through deterrence because the American army could stand up against the British army at that time. That deterrence set up the allyship they have now.

America chooses to have peace with Zimbabwe, but these nations have never been hostile with each other. If America ever perceived Zimbabwe as hostile to it enough to be a serious threat, they would invade and decimate the country as they did Afghanistan and Iraq.

Our situation is not like those. Both countries rightly perceive the other as an active threat. In such a situation, when only one can deter the other, you'll have terrorism until some actual, tough, negotiated peace process occurs. Unlike with the IRA (a similar situation to this one), the closest peace process for both sides was sabotaged and ruined, and now we are in a territory not really historically analogous to any other in the modern era.

> But the Palestinians don't need firepower to change the calculus - that's the opposite of what they need. They need to stop using firepower to fight Israel

You could of course swap Palestine and Israel and have the American left-wing reading of the situation. You would balk at that saying "But the Palestinians are a security threat. Israel cannot be expected to allow that on its border. The US would never allow Mexico... Etc." and that is of course the same logic Palestine uses to justify its attacks on Israel. Palestine, being inferior by air, land, and sea militarily resorts to terrorism in its attacks, just as the IRA did with a similarly overmatched foe.

> Thanks for sharing. I guess I never thought of anti-Israel or being pro-Israel and also pro-two-state-solution. There are fewer and fewer who balance both positions.

A generation ago, Israel was working towards a two-state solution. I think even in 2017, a majority of Israelis supported a two-state solution in polls.

> Israel is hostile to Palestinians as Palestinians are to Israelis. The killing of many people during the march of return. The starvation plus diets. The treatment of the West Bank after the PA renounced violence as part of Oslo, there are numerous examples Palestinians will cite to show that Israel is hostile to them.

I agree that there's a list of supposed reasons, but I think they're being considerably blown out of proportion in terms of showing that Israel is "actively hostile" to Palestinians. The average Palestinian in the West Bank would never have to interact with any Israeli or anything to do with Israel and have full freedom of movement. The average Gazan would even less interact with Israel, though obviously the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt affect things.

Also, tens of thousands of Palestinians work within Israel, and that number had grown over time (until October 7th).

Remember that Palestinians and Israelis used to fairly freely interact, Israelis could once visit Gaza, etc. Things closed down because of the violence by Palestinian terrorists.

> At the end of the day, right now, both countries are materially and physically threatened by the other. And those threats materialize into violence often.

This is kind of true and kind of not. Had October 7th not happened, there would be no invasion of Gaza, and tens of thousands of Palestinians that are now dead would be alive. Israel had never and would never do anything like this war were it not for the ultimate proof that Hamas delivered, showing it could simply not be lived next to.

That said, it's true that Palestinians had a legitimate fear of Israel continuing to expand settlements, and potentially annex the WB or something. Still pretty clear to me that the answer to that fear is not violence - not only is it morally wrong, I think it's inarguable that Hamas has set back the Palestinian cause in terms of Israel's attitudes immensely.

> It is also not true that the Palestinians did not accept any peace. They accepted Oslo, in which they conceded far more than Israel, and were rewarded for that with basically nothing. But again, it doesn't really matter now, that is long gone and dead, and if you see it differently, fine.

It's true that the Palestinians accepted Oslo, but it's not even close to being true that they got nothing from it. Those accords literally created the Palestinian Authority, which is the official governing body of the Palestinians, and as close to being a "real" state as anything the Palestinians have. That body is still governing 30 years later, and the vast majority of West Bank Palestinians have lived for the last 30 years under their own governing body, not Israel, which is supposedly the point!

Of course, the idea of the accords was to set up an eventual Palestinian state, but the later negotiations ended with the Palestinians walking away from deals that gave them almost everything they supposedly wanted. Obviously I'm not truly objective, but I've done a lot of reading on this topic, and as far as I can tell - this is the view of almost everyone involved. There were, at least at some points, offers that the Palestinians could've taken that would've given them almost everything they ostensibly want, and they chose to walk away instead.

(And of course, also started the second intifada, making a mockery of the Israeli left; it promised security through peace, and while holding out the hand of peace and trying to reach a deal, was rewarded with a massive suicide bombing campaign that tore apart the country.)

> You could of course swap Palestine and Israel and have the American left-wing reading of the situation. You would balk at that saying "But the Palestinians are a security threat. Israel cannot be expected to allow that on its border. The US would never allow Mexico... Etc." and that is of course the same logic Palestine uses to justify its attacks on Israel. Palestine, being inferior by air, land, and sea militarily resorts to terrorism in its attacks, just as the IRA did with a similarly overmatched foe.

The American left-wing reading of the situation is simply wrong. I'm not American, but if I were I'd certainly be considered on the left. But you can't just swap the names and pretend that everyone is equal in this situation in terms of their goals.

And btw, this whole notion of "the Palestinians are fighting back" is itself detached from reality - the Palestinians are ostensibly represented by the Palestinians Authority, that's their official governing body. Hamas overthrew that governing body. They are shooting rockets at Israel and coordinating terrorist attacks. The actual government of the Palestinians is working together with Israel to stop terrorist attacks, and get rid of Hamas and other terror groups. (To some extent. The PA is not blameless.)

If the roles were reveresed, if the Palestinians had the capacity to actually eliminate Israel in a day (as Israel has towards the Palestinians) - Israel would simply be destroyed. I'm as sure of that as I am of anything.

Any analysis of the situation that doesn't take into account that the Palestinians getting what they want means the destruction of Israel and likely death of all Israelis - not taking that into account is simply choosing to ignore reality.

I have been pretty reasonable with you, and many times taken what you said and thought about them considerably. You need to also come to this with good faith.

Things like

> I agree that there's a list of supposed reasons, but I think they're being considerably blown out of proportion

Are not in good faith, imo. People whose loved ones die, who see killing in the name of hatred, on both sides, are not blowing their issues out of proportion. The expansion of settlements isn't a "blown out of proportion" reason to doubt Israeli commitment to peace any more than terrorism is a reason to doubt Palestinian commitment to peace. Both lead to horrific and disturbing killings and massacres with state (or quasi-state) backing.

When you say

> it's not even close to being true that they got nothing from it. Those accords literally created the Palestinian Authority, which is the official governing body of the Palestinians

You're not reading what I'm writing with good faith, you're preparing a counter. I didn't say nothing. I said "basically nothing" because a government can be formed without Israeli agreement. They did not see an end to settlements. They did not see Israel commit to stopping its authority over Palestine, instead they rather cemented it against a "state" they knew had no equivalent defense against such. This is all after they made very big concessions and continued to do so even after the talks failed.

And you know that. You clearly know as much as I do if not more, which is why it's hard to accept what you're saying as being with genuine intent.

> the later negotiations ended with the Palestinians walking away from deals that gave them almost everything they supposedly wanted

You can't possibly believe this. Every side had to compromise quite a lot. Israel had to give in to some right of return, and Palestine had to give in to having to tell some refugees they would never return to their ancestral lands. Palestinians had to accept a broken up West Bank despite the occupation and settlement of the area being illegal, and they were willing to do so. You know the talks were not Israel giving everything the Palestinians wanted to them and them refusing over minor details. Why would the stronger nation, negotiating with their strongest ally orchestrating the talks, do that? The UK did not end up giving the IRA even 50% of what they wanted to resolve that conflict.

> The American left-wing reading of the situation is simply wrong

Why is it wrong? Israel is a security threat to Palestinians right now and for the past many years. If you are a Palestinian, especially led by a government who pursued peace with Israel (the PA), you are at risk to have had your land taken by settlers, your family killed by the same settlers, and your home stolen and "legalized" by Israel after it's stolen. That is entirely why Hamas grew in power against them because they, like the Israeli far-right, pointed to real security concerns and offered no compromise with their enemies as an alternative to solve those. It of course does not work. Hamas did not stop Israel from being a security threat, nor did the Israeli far right stop Palestinians from being a security threat to Israelis.

> if the Palestinians had the capacity to actually eliminate Israel in a day (as Israel has towards the Palestinians) - Israel would simply be destroyed. I'm as sure of that as I am of anything.

You have constantly spent time trying to paint Palestinians as fundamentally evil (but earlier you decried anyone doing that to you), but you're missing the point that what would happen in hypothetical scenarios, and what Palestinians "want" doesn't matter. It doesn't change the reality on the ground, and it doesn't change the fact that when two hostile nations are next to each other, only deterrence can lead to peace.

> Any analysis of the situation that doesn't take into account that the Palestinians getting what they want means the destruction of Israel and likely death of all Israelis - not taking that into account is simply choosing to ignore reality.

Never has there ever been any peace process that even hinted that the Palestinians would get "what they want" according to you (because according to you it's the death of all Israelis), so it's a moot point to bring up. What if we asked what the Israelis want according to polling? Lots of polling shows that they believe Palestinians should be stateless forever or be deported to other countries. But again, that has never been offered in any peace process ever.

Stick to reality and what's actually on the table politically, and try to answer in good faith.

> I have been pretty reasonable with you, and many times taken what you said and thought about them considerably. You need to also come to this with good faith.

Thank you, I appreciate your coming at this in good faith. I don't believe I'm acting otherwise, so I'm sad to hear that's what you think. I believe we have real disagreements, though we probably agree far more than we disagree.

The reasons I engage in these debates are 1) to learn, 2) to give an Israeli, albeit leftist-Israeli, perspective, something I think is very lacking in discussions about Israel, which is sad - both because it makes things uninformed, but also because IMO, the best chance we have of arriving at peace is via Israeli leftists and peace-activists. I do sometimes argue a more standard-Israeli POV than my personal opinions, because I believe it's valuable to understand it.

I'll try to tackle your specific points. I'll attempt to be as inclusive of all points of view as I can, but please also keep in mind that we might actually disagree about things - don't just assume I'm talking in bad faith. Sorry, this comment will be a bit long.

First, let me lay outright my main point of disagreement with you, IMO - I think you're coming at this from an outsider, "both sides" perspective, where you believe "Israelis" have a POV, "Palestinians" have a POV, both have reasonable points and are roughly equally valid, the truth is somewhere in the middle, and the way to arrive at peace is by somehow squaring the circle and giving both sides what they want.

I believe that is, roughly speaking, wrong.

I'm an Israeli Jew, so obviously I'm biased. That said, I've always been far more sympathetic to the Palestinians than most Israelis. I've spent the time since the war trying to learn a lot more about the history of Israel and Palestine, the history of the conflict, etc. I'm still far more sympathetic to the Palestinian side than most, even more so that I was before. In fact, I think Israel has behaved morally badly for the last 15 years by stopping all work towards peace (both not trying to seek peace, and actively blocking paths towards peace).

That all said, I still believe that, while the "pro-Israeli" narrative is obviously not completely accurate and paints Israelis more nicely than it should, it's still more accurate than the "pro-Palestinian" narrative. Both the history - the common "Jews came in and stole the land, the Palestinians should get all of it back" has some truth to it, but is far more wrong than it is right, for a lot of reasons.

More importantly, I believe it really is true that the main reason there was no peace is that the Palestinians refuse to live side-by-side with Israel, and continue to refuse it. There could've been peace many times (as Israel has done with other countries) if Palestinians had acted differently. That is a failure of the Palestinian narrative and the Palestinian leadership - which is continuing to push the completely false idea that if they just tried a bit harder, they'd convince the Israelis to pack up and leave Israel.

OK, I'll try to address specific points:

> Things like

> > I agree that there's a list of supposed reasons, but I think they're being considerably blown out of proportion

> Are not in good faith, imo. People whose loved ones die, who see killing in the name of hatred, on both sides, are not blowing their issues out of proportion. The expansion of settlements isn't a "blown out of proportion" reason to doubt Israeli commitment to peace any more than terrorism is a reason to doubt Palestinian commitment to peace. Both lead to horrific and disturbing killings and massacres with state (or quasi-state) backing.

Look, I'm not saying that someone who lost a loved one is "blowing it out of proportion" as a reason to be angry at Israel. And I can't imagine the feeling of most Gazans over the horror they've had to suffer over the last year.

I was specifically saying that these things are blown out of proportion as reasons to think that Israel is actively hostile to Palestinians. And indeed, I think your list is inaccurate. You talk about "killing in the name of hatred", and you talk about "horrific massacred with quasi-state backing", which is simply a mistaken interpretation of Israeli actions. Despite the absolutely horrible, terroristic actions of many in the settler movement, there are almost no "massacres" of Palestinians by settlers. Before the war, the vast majority of Palestinians killed weren't "killed in the name of hatred", they were killed in clashes with IDF for security reasons.

You paint a picture of Israel (the state) or of Israeli settlers routinely going around killing Palestinians, and (before the war) this just wasn't true, at all.

About the expansion of settlements - yes, I agree, that's a genuinely valid reason for the Palestinians to doubt Israeli commitment to peace. I think all settlements were and are a horrible idea, and I'd dismantle them all if I could. However, I don't think it's correct to say "well the settlements continued while we're still negotiating so that means the Israelis don't really want peace". Many of these "settlements" are a dozen people going in and "claiming" some land no one is on. Again, I get where this is coming from, and it's a totally valid criticism of Israel - but isn't real proof that Israel is "not serious".

> When you say

> > it's not even close to being true that they got nothing from it. Those accords literally created the Palestinian Authority, which is the official governing body of the Palestinians

> You're not reading what I'm writing with good faith, you're preparing a counter. I didn't say nothing. I said "basically nothing" because a government can be formed without Israeli agreement. They did not see an end to settlements. They did not see Israel commit to stopping its authority over Palestine, instead they rather cemented it against a "state" they knew had no equivalent defense against such. This is all after they made very big concessions and continued to do so even after the talks failed.

Again, I honestly disagree, and think you are misreading history here.

It's not true that "they could just setup a government", because Israel was militarily ruling the West Bank and Gaza at the time, and acted as the government.

After the accords, not only did the PA get official recognition, they got governmental control of most of the Palestinians. They don't have Israeli army presence within their cities, mostly, and the day-to-day lives of a majority of Palestinians doesn't involve any interaction with Israel.

It's just not accurate to say that Israel didn't commit to stopping its authority over Palestine, because the authority that Israel had over the lives of most Palestinians changed drastically, and is far lower.

Palestinians in the West Bank are mostly living without any interaction with Israel or Israelis, if they don't want it. They can travel the world at will via Jordan. Israel still exerts some authority, and it's not a truly independent state, but you're making it seem like the accords changed literally nothing.

Btw, I'll take a moment to criticize the Israeli POV here too - many Israeli pretend that Israel also gained nothing from these accords. Despite the fact that the Palestinians officially recognized Israel, and officially relinquished 80% of their claims on land (by agreeing to a future state only existing on roughly the '67 borders). Most Israelis don't think they had any valid claim to the rest of the land, but nevertheless, they do think they had a claim to it, and relinquished it. And the PA, for all its very massive faults, has worked in security coordination with Israel ever since.

This is why this subject is so touchy for me - I believe that both Israelis and Palestinians think the accords and peace talks didn't go anywhere or yield anything, making both sides dig in and say "there's no point in talking to the other side". And I think they're both wrong, because actually, the Oslo accords, despite eventually leading to failure of future peace talks, actually achieved some things that were real, important, and have held to this day.

I think it's really important to recognize the successes and build on them, and understand the failures and what led to them, because that's how we'll arrive at peace.

[Continued in next reply]

> > the later negotiations ended with the Palestinians walking away from deals that gave them almost everything they supposedly wanted

> You can't possibly believe this. Every side had to compromise quite a lot. Israel had to give in to some right of return, and Palestine had to give in to having to tell some refugees they would never return to their ancestral lands. Palestinians had to accept a broken up West Bank despite the occupation and settlement of the area being illegal, and they were willing to do so. You know the talks were not Israel giving everything the Palestinians wanted to them and them refusing over minor details. Why would the stronger nation, negotiating with their strongest ally orchestrating the talks, do that?

I do believe it. Not only that, I'll say something I first heard from an Israeli-Palestinian peace activist I admire - if you went up to a random Palestinian and told them that there was a deal on the table that gave them 99% of the land they wanted (some via land swaps), gave them sovereignty over half of Jerusalem, and a few other conditions I don't recall - they'd be shocked that this was on the table and shocked it wasn't accepted.

Look, there is a real matter of what your starting position going in. From the Palestinian side, if their starting position is "we should get all the land of Israel, all Jews should be gone from here", then yes, they "compromise" a lot by giving up on 80% of the land. Very few Israelis consider this a valid claim though.

The offers that were on the table in e.g. the Clinton Parameters included almost everything the Palestinians supposedly wanted in terms of land. Yes, there was the issue of Jerusalem, though a later offer included that. There was the issue of a right of return, which is also tricky.

But I've read multiple accounts of the negotiations by now. There are dissenting voices, but many of the people involved that I've read, mostly Israelis and Americans - including some that were fairly critical of the Israeli side - agree that a very good offer was put on the table.

What is undeniable, historically, is that the Palestinians walked away from the negotiations. They refused all Israeli offers, and eventually ended the negotiations, never offering a counter-offer. They didn't say "well your compromise on issue X is fine, but we need you to compromise more on issue Y", they said "no, this doesn't work for us, bye".

It is just true that there would be peace and a Palestinian state today, had Arafat said "yes" and accepted something that, as far as anyone knows, gave them 99% of what they say they wanted.

And yes, some say Arafat couldn't agree, because there is no way any Palestinian leader would give up the right of return. But then all of this again comes down to a single, undeniable issue - the Palestinians refuse to give up on the idea of returning to all the land and (depending on how it's implemented), effectively dismantling Israel, something Israel will simply never agree to.

> > The American left-wing reading of the situation is simply wrong

> Why is it wrong? Israel is a security threat to Palestinians right now and for the past many years. If you are a Palestinian, especially led by a government who pursued peace with Israel (the PA), you are at risk to have had your land taken by settlers, your family killed by the same settlers, and your home stolen and "legalized" by Israel after it's stolen.

Because this "risk" affects 0.01% of the population? At least pre-October 7th? As I said before, the vast majority of Palestinians living under the PA are living day to day in cities in a pretty normal way, without any interaction with Israelis.

And you keep saying "families killed by the same settlers", how many Palestinians do you think have been killed by settlers, exactly? There are a few horrible acts of violence, but definitely not big numbers. And the majority of Palestinians killed by the IDF are terrorists - I just looked up the stat for 2022, and it was 142 Palestinians from the WB killed by Israel security forces, with 80-ish of them militants or terrorists shot after they shot/stabbed someone. Now, any civilian killed is a tragedy, and I definitely don't want to downplay this; but this is a picture of clashes between terrorists and security forces, than of "the average Palestinian has to live in fear of being gunned down by security forces or settlers".

That's why I call this a misreading of the situation. It's like hearing about the many tragic school shooting in the US, and thinking that therefore people must be terrified every day of going to school or going in with bulletproof vests or something. It's simply a misundersatnding of the scope and the numbers here.

Of course - let's be super clear here - I pulled up 2022 for a reason. All of this has gotten much worse since October 7th in the WB. Another tragic consequence of Hamas's terrible actions.

(Worth noting that last week, there was a giant clash between the PA and Hamas/Islamic Jihad in the WB, with the PA trying to drive them out.)

> You have constantly spent time trying to paint Palestinians as fundamentally evil (but earlier you decried anyone doing that to you), but you're missing the point that what would happen in hypothetical scenarios, and what Palestinians "want" doesn't matter. It doesn't change the reality on the ground, and it doesn't change the fact that when two hostile nations are next to each other, only deterrence can lead to peace.

I absolutely do not think that Palestinians are fundamentally evil, and I really don't think I implied that.

I think the average Palestinian is wrong about the history, and holds a narrative that is simply wrong - that with enough violence, Israelis can be convinced to "go back to Europe". This is just wrong on many levels, and tragically wrong - because it means that "just a bit more violence" is what is needed.

But it is 100% true that Hamas wants to destroy all of Israel. It's not projection - they've said so many, many times, and when they temporarily gained the power to kill Israelis by invading Israel, they did so brutally.

It's not a hypothetical scneario - if there were to be a Palestinian state that is able to arm itself for real, and it were run by Hamas - I have no reason to think I wouldn't be dead as soon as they could launch an attack.

Remember - Israel completely left Gaza, pulled all settlers and all security forces from Gaza, and the result was them electing Hamas, and Hamas shooting rockets at Israelis every day.

And the Israeli response here wasn't to go back in or dismantle Hamas - it was to build defensive weapons so that the rockets kill only a few people, instead of being super dangerous.

I strenuosly disagree with you that "only deterrence can lead to peace". The path to peace was really simple and can be so again - the Palestinians stop violence towards Israel and agree to live in peace with Israel as a neighboring state. That's really all it would take. (Well, nowadays it would take that, plus a new Israeli government, plus convincing Israelis to actually trust the Palestinians again).

> Never has there ever been any peace process that even hinted that the Palestinians would get "what they want" according to you (because according to you it's the death of all Israelis), so it's a moot point to bring up.

Yes, which is why I think that fundemantally, the Palestinians have to change what they want for there to be peace! My point exactly.

> > What if we asked what the Israelis want according to polling? Lots of polling shows that they believe Palestinians should be stateless forever or be deported to other countries. But again, that has never been offered in any peace process ever.

Even as little as a few years ago, >50% of Israelis agreed with the idea of a two state solution. It's gotten lower over time, and I'm sure it polls very low right now (so probably around 30-40%, I don't remember offhand).

> Stick to reality and what's actually on the table politically, and try to answer in good faith.

Look, if you don't believe me, just listen to one of the many Palestinian peace activists I admire. Peace can be reached, but it will happen when both sides simply agree to live side by side with each other in peace. The 15 million people who live on this tiny patch of land need to all accept one thing - none of them is going anywhere! If both sides internalize this at the same time, the solution is incredibly obvious - just share the friggin' land!

You keep glossing over Nakba. It doesn’t make sense to “share the land” with people who ethically cleansed your family from said land. You say that you represent “leftist Zionism” but such a thing doesn’t exist as evidenced by your argument against basic human rights.

I'm not "glossing over" the Nakba. Firstly, we probably don't 100% agree on the exact events of the Nakba or the interpretation of them.

But more importantly, I'm not sure how actually relevant it is today. Israel was founded and for sure did some things that weren't great, just as the surrounding Arab countries did things that weren't great. Just as like 50% of the countries today have been through stuff that isn't great.

If no one can live in peace and a joint future because of things that happened in 1940, how is there any peace with Germany? With Japan? WW2 didn't just ethnically cleanse a lot of people - 50 million people died in that war. Yet there is peace, because people chose to stop fighting and figure out a way to coexist.

> It doesn’t make sense to “share the land” with people who ethically cleansed your family from said land.

For the sake of argument, let's assume your idea of what happened in the Nakba is spot on. What exactly is the alternative? What do you imagine should happen to the millions of Israelis that have been born and raised in Israel? If the land isn't "shared", what should happen?

This idea of trying to roll back the existence of countries is antithetical to the entire relatively-peaceful world order since 1945.

> You say that you represent “leftist Zionism” but such a thing doesn’t exist as evidenced by your argument against basic human rights.

Where did I argue against basic human rights?

You just glossed over Nakba again:

”Israel was founded and for sure did some things that weren't great”

The very foundation of Israel is illegitimate. That is the core issue.

> You just glossed over Nakba again:

I'm not glossing over it, we disagree about it. Also, the Nakba doesn't usually refer to the founding of Israel itself, but rather the ethnic cleansing of Arabs as part of the war, which is why you might think I'm glossing it over - I literally didn't understand what you mean.

That said, let's get into it.

First, let me again say - this doesn't matter as much as you claim it does. Is the foundation of other countries any more legitimate? Is the foundation of the US legitimate? What makes the foundation of a state "legitimate" is a question, but the fact that Israel is a worldwide-accepted state for 75 years for sure means that this question doesn't matter as much - there is no world in which saying "oops it was illegitimate" leads to anything but much more trouble for everyone. You continue to refuse to say what should actually happen - even if you think the founding of Israel is illegitimate, what now? What should happen in practice?

All that caveat aside, let's get into the question itself. Why do you think Israel's founding is illegitimate?

In 1947, the land of Palestine had both a Jewish and Arab population living on it - about 30% Jewish and 70% Arab, iirc. These populations were often in conflict, and signaled, many times, that they didn't particularly want to live together (moreso from the Arab side than the Jewish side).

The land was ruled by the British - and they handed over to the UN the question of what to do with the land. The UN gave the same answer that everyone else who's ever looked at the land said; there's two peoples who don't want to be part of the same country but live on the same land - so split up the land into a majority-Jewish state and a majority-Arab state. This also solved another problem the UN/world had - there were 250k Jewish displaced persons after WW2 that no country wanted as immigrants, and had nowhere to go.

So the UN voted on and officially proposed the partition plan for Palestine. This was accepted by the Jews, and rejected by the Arabs. This led to the Jews declaring independence on the land. The Nakba happened when this declaration of independence was followed by surrounding Arab armies attacking Israel, and Israel fought back. Some of the Arab population stayed where they were - they are today citizens of Israel. Some fled - unclear exactly how many or why, probably partially fear and partially at the urging of Arab leaders. Some were ethnically cleansed - actually pushed out. There are disagreements about the exact numbers of each of these groups, with Palestinians largely claiming everyone was pushed out, and Israelis largely claiming the majority just fled.

Anyway, from all the above - what part exactly do you think is illegitimate? Is there a more legitimate way of declaring independence than after the world's countries get together and officially vote for a new state to be founded? Seems far more legitimate than how most countries have been founded (pure force).

And if you think the founding of Israel was so illegitimate, what do you think should have happened in Mandatory Palestine instead? Both sides had a thriving community life on that land, and did not want to be a single country (with the early-Palestinian leadership pretty explicitly refusing to state "what should happen" to the Jews if an Arab state were to arise there). So what should have happened?

And on that subject, what should have happened to the 250k Jewish displaced persons from WW2, or to the millions of Jews facing persecution in the Arab world, that were themselves ethnically cleansed after the founding of Israel, and made up the majority of the early-Israeli population?

You keep glossing over it (also please stop replying with multiple paragraphs stating the same things, you don’t need to have the last word and you’re doing nothing to help you “cause”). Ethnic cleansing matters, yet you said this;

”this doesn't matter as much as you claim it does”

> A generation ago, Israel was working towards a two-state solution.

Yes, very briefly, until Netanyahu’s faction murdered Yitzhak Rabin, and not since.

> I think even in 2017, a majority of Israelis supported a two-state solution in polls.

There is a very big difference between a majority of a population preferring something in polls and the government representing that population working toward it (cf., universal single-payer healthcare in the US ca. 2000)

> And btw, this whole notion of "the Palestinians are fighting back" is itself detached from reality

No, actual Palestinians are, in fact, fighting back.

> the Palestinians are ostensibly represented by the Palestinians Authority

“ostebsnsibly” is a marker that the speaker believes the claim following it is detached from reality; if you can't even claim that this is more than ostensibly true, how can any claim about what the PA is doing rebut a claim about Palestinians qua Palestinians are doing?

> that's their official governing body

Yes, it is the widely (but not by the US or Israel) recognized government of the State of Palestine. It doesn't particularly represent the Palestinian people because of the Hamas-PA civil war that Israel orchestrated and assisted Hamas in winning in Gaza, and Israel’s subsequent use of its power administering parts of the West Bank to prevent all-Palestine elections for a new PA government that have been agreed to between the PA and Hamas; most living Palestinians couldn't vote in the last Palestinian election, most Gazans (before the recent escalation in fighting, even moreso probably since) weren't born.

> Hamas overthrew that governing body

No, they threw them out of Gaza, where Hamas already dominated the local administrations and the representation to the PA.

> The actual government of the Palestinians is working together with Israel to stop terrorist attacks

No, Israel has also engaged in an escalation of violence in both the PA and Israeli-administered parts of the West Bank, against the wishes of the PA. The PA acknowledges that it is structurally incapable of militarily fighting Israel (the PA administered parts of the West Bank lack the geographical compactness of Hamas-administered Gaza, and are instead dozens of small cantons interespersed with similar Israeli-administered zones and even when (almost) adjacent separared by Israeli-controlled security corridors, but is still actively opposing Israeli actions with every means at their disposal, having repeatedly suspended security cooperation even though the US has used the leverage its aid gives it over the PA to demand uninterrupted security cooperation, and securing a UNGA resolution demanding Israeli exit from the entirety of the occupied territories (Gaza and the West Bank) following its success at the ICJ in having the occupation declared to be in violation of international law.

> > A generation ago, Israel was working towards a two-state solution.

> Yes, very briefly, until Netanyahu’s faction murdered Yitzhak Rabin, and not since.

I think we've talked about this before?

This is just wrong. Firstly, I wouldn't call them Netanyahu's faction.

More importantly, Israel then elected Ehud Barak, who pursued peace, then Sharon was incredibly popular for doing the Gaza disengagement (not in pursuit of peace, of course, but in effect leaving Gaza completely and giving it over to the Palestinians). Then Israel elected Olmert, who vowed to continue with peace and disengagement. And finally, giving a majority to Livni who also wanted to continue down this line, but unfortunately wasn't able to build a coalition, so Netanyahu (who had, IIRC, one seat less than her) became PM.

As for the rest of your comment, I'm not sure where you stand here - does the PA represent the Palestinians? Doesn't it? Should we believe that Hamas is more representative, which is true by polls in the WB (though polls in Gaza have them at 5%! nowadays).

If Hamas truly represents the Palestinians, do you think there's any chance for peace? Given that Hamas's goals are basically the dismantling of Israel?

> As for the rest of your comment, I'm not sure where you stand here - does the PA represent the Palestinians?

De jure, yes.

De facto, not particularly, and they are quite conscious of that, and actively seeking to correct it but actively prevented by Israel whose strategy to mitigate international pressure for peace (and particularly to avoid meaningful US pressure for peace) centers on avoiding having any entity that effectively represents the Palestinian people.

> Should we believe that Hamas is more representative

It is more representative of Gazans a couple decades ago when the last elections were held (whereas the PA is of WB Palestinians at the same time.) It probably is less interested in fixing the problem (certainly its Iranian sponsors are), but even so it has on more than one occasion reached deals with the Fatah-led PA on new elections throughout the occupied territories for a new PA government, but those agreements went nowhere because Israel blocked implementation.

> If Hamas truly represents the Palestinians, do you think there's any chance for peace?

There's no chance for peace with the current Israeli regime, at least as long as it has unshakable support from the US; Hamas is a symptom of the problem (one actively fostered to both divide Palestinian opposition and provide a less Western-sympathetic opposition by Israel when they weren't in their momentary orientation toward peace), not its source.

> Given that Hamas's goals are basically the dismantling of Israel?

Peace always requires parties compromising on their goals, largely because they recognize that they are unattainable at acceptable cost. Why both Fatah, Hamas, or the numerous other Palestinian factions might do so is...fairly obvious. Israel, whose goal is no more the destruction of the Palestinian people entirely than Hamas’s is destruction of Israel, has bottomless US support, little effective (though plenty of symbolic) international opposition, and continues to progress (slow over the long term, quite rapid recently) progress towards its goal. Yes, it costs Israeli lives, but those are lives that the Israeli government has been clear that it is willing to sacrifice, not an unacceptable cost.

> There's no chance for peace with the current Israeli regime, at least as long as it has unshakable support from the US; Hamas is a symptom of the problem (one actively fostered to both divide Palestinian opposition and provide a less Western-sympathetic opposition by Israel when they weren't in their momentary orientation toward peace), not its source.

I wouldn't call Hamas a symptom of the problem, because the majority of Israelis have only the goal of security in mind. An extremist minority, that is unfortunately gaining-in-size-and-power, wants to conquer all the land, but they are still a small minority of the population. The majority of Israelis were historically totally on board with peace and a two-state solution, except for the security risk, which Hamas is one huge part of. (Hamas's actions were specifically targeted at destroying the peace process in the 90s, and are a big part of the reason for the dissolution of the Israeli left.)

> Peace always requires parties compromising on their goals, largely because they recognize that they are unattainable at acceptable cost. Why both Fatah, Hamas, or the numerous other Palestinian factions might do so is...fairly obvious. Israel, whose goal is no more the destruction of the Palestinian people entirely than Hamas’s is destruction of Israel, has bottomless US support, little effective (though plenty of symbolic) international opposition, and continues to progress (slow over the long term, quite rapid recently) progress towards its goal

Unfortunately, I agree with most of this. The current government is a disaster on many levels for Israel, and is not only not interested in peace, but is actively furthering that in many ways. I think this has been true for many years.

The opposition to the government comes from many places, but most of it is ineffective. Worse, the part of the opposition that comes from a pro-peace "trying-to-arrive-at-a-deal" place within Israel is severely weakened, since in Israeli's experience, that approach has always led to security disasters. So the Israeli left is tiny, and even if we were to get a new government, it is unlikely to pursue peace any more than the current government is. (Though the important silver lining - it will hopefully be a centrist-right government, not an right-extreme right government, which is making everything much, much worse.)

This makes it all the more obvious that the main way to arrive at peace will be for the Palestinians themselves to stop the violence and start making steps towards peace from their side. If the Israeli populace were ever convinced there's an actual partner for peace, the Israeli left and pro-peace camps will actually have something to work with.

I hope the one thing that comes out of this disaster that was October 7th and is the Gaza war, is a renewed boldness for peace activists pushing both sides to actually work towards a peaceful resolution.