For mental health reasons, I had taken myself out of most political topics. But lately there seems to be a surge of talk about Palestine and Hamas (forgive me if I spelled this wrong). I do know it’s something to do with land rights, but it also seems to be so much more at the same time. I’m not trying to start any fights. I just want to understand. Thank you.
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I hate to wade in but I see a lot of misinformation being posted.
The reality is both Israel and Palestinians are victims; victims of each other, their neighbors, and the world around them. You can make one side look better or worse depending on when you start the clock on the discussion.
When Israel was formed in 1948 there wasn’t a Palestinian state, but rather a collection of towns with various ethnic populations including Jewish and Muslims peoples. The area was controlled by Britain in the time before WW2 under a mandate from the league of nations, the precursor to the UN.
In 1948 the UN set a border for Jewish and Palestinian states in the territory that is today known as Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. The Jewish peoples, some who could trace their ancestry in the area to biblical times, and others who settled the area as either a Zionist effort or fleeing the Holocaust, accepted the borders which were much smaller than today’s Israel, because it meant they would finally have their own state and land.
The Arabs didn’t accept the border for a variety of reasons, and the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia attacked the fledgling Jewish state.
Notably, the Palestinians didn’t attack. Though there were tensions between the Jewish peoples and the Palestinians who felt the encroachment of Jewish settlers from Europe, the Palestinian cause was really created and coopted by their Muslim neighbors.
During the war Israel expanded their borders, 700,000 Palestinians were displaced while some were massacred. Some Palestinians fled the war, some were forced out, some left at the call of their Arab neighbors, and some left in fear of being massacred. The armistice that ended the war left Israel larger, Jordan in control of the West Bank, and Egypt in control of Gaza. Note, this was before the West began to provide military aid to Israel.
So the Israel narrative or myth is that they have the pure moral high ground where they win a war for the right to exist. The Palestinian narrative and myth is that they were all violently dispossessed by the Jews and are pure victims. To this day, children born in Palestinian refuge camps are taught about the village they are “from” which often doesn’t exist and their family does 70 years ago. Though many were not forced out during the war, the narrative is they were all forced to leave by the Jewish army.
So you have these competing ideas passed down on both sides that are in conflict, and neither one quite right.
When you look at how Palestinians have been treated by their Arab neighbors you see how they have been abused further. For example, Jordan and Egypt could have made the West Bank and Gaza independent Palestinian states, but they didn’t. They continued to occupy them, and ultimately lose control after going to war with Israel again in the six day war in 1967, which set the stage for many of the problems today.
Over the years these narratives in conflict have bred real world violence in a tit for tat escalation that spans decades. Israel continues its narrative that it is in a war for its right to exist, which is true, but also doesn’t accept responsibility for worsening the situation at times over the years and human rights abuses such as the 24 documented displacements.
Palestinians continue to define themselves as a dispossessed people, teaching their children that they need to reclaim what they lost, while being used by their surrounding Arab religious state neighbors as a proxy battleground against Israel. Palestinians have refused offers to develop permanent housing for fear of would weaken their claim to being refugees, and really live in entrenched slums that they call refuge camps.
The recent events were caused by Hamas, fearing the normalization of Israel relationships and the fading of the Palestinians cause to retake lost land, attacking Israel. Then of course, you have Israels grossly disproportionate response and the horrors therein.
So really the situation is quite a mess, and made worse by people ignorant of the history rushing to support one side or the other. In reality, both sides are prisoners of their own history, and unlikely to set themselves free anytime soon.
If you want a short podcast that goes over this in more detail, I recommend “The Daily” podcast titled 1948, which was released this past November 3rd and interviews the NYT Israel correspondent from 1970.
Let me know if you have any follow up questions.
For everyone else who is blindly on one side or the other waiting to bait me into a never ending argument by selectively framing the situation: no thanks, I have a weekend to enjoy.
Have a great day!
As Israeli - Very good explanation indeed, thanks! I would mention a few things like Israeli Arabs and that not all Jews are from Europe and most are actually Mizrahi Jews(Come from Arab countries), but well written explanation overall
Thank you! I wanted to touch on some additional points like those, but I am in my phone and already was hitting the character limit, so I’m glad you mentioned them.
Enjoy your weekend!
Thank you. I think that helps me understand everything much better. I appreicate that you did so in an unbiased manner.
You’re welcome, glad it was helpful!
Excellent write up! Israeli here. Everything you wrote is spot on. There’s obviously a lot more you didn’t cover, but it’s a good intro :D
Great write up. Thank you!
Thank you for this nuanced and unbiased write up. I have been actively avoiding this topic online and this helped me to get an idea about the background of the war going on now.
I think you need to actually start closer to 1918. When the proto-isreali insurgency heated up and eventually lead to the 1946 bombing of the king David hotel killing 91 civilians and destroying the Palestinian embassy. The proto-isreali insurgency would then leverage this terror campaign to force the two state plan (which was a proto Israeli concept) and remove any plan to make an Jewish state in Africa.
No one will ever convince me lehi or irgun aren’t in control of hamas, there’s just too many coincidences and actions that actively work against Palestine.
Plus, you know…
by the way Israel tv had a news bulletin in Arabic and at the same time jordan tv had a news bulletin in Hebrew
Nothing to add. I just want to compliment you on taking a mental health break from political subjects. I think that’s something more people should do.
Many of which are in politics.
This is incredibly nuanced topic with decades of history. Search for the Israel Palestine conflict and check out the YT videos from Vox they’re pretty comprehensive and mostly non partisan
*edited for dumb dumb auto correct
If you checked out for mental reasons, do yourself a favor and keep checked out.
If you want to know news events look at a couple diverse news sites. They’ll do a much better job of informing you than social media.
But somehow this post has the vibes of purposefully starting this social media fight again. Too many things you know for someone checked out. Too naively suggesting “something to do with…” that’ll rile up people. I call bullshit. Go back to Reddit!
It’s complex and I encourage you to do research as this is all from the hip and might not be accurate.
It goes back to World War 2 and the suffering the Jewish people endured. The countries involved decided to give Israel their historical lands as a place where they could self-determinate and be safe. The problem is that other people owned that land at the time and had little say… these same people are understandably upset with that decision and have been fighting for their own land inside Israel since then. So there’s automatically two sides living in the same country wanting the other out.
Terrorism was really coming into its own during the first couple decades, and terrorism works best for those that don’t have an organized military… so the Palestinians sided with them. Black September, the PLA, Hamas… one after another these groups caused a lot of damage, which meant Israel locked all of them into one tiny part of Israel for their own security. Gaza.
But Israel isn’t a saint in all this. They keep expanding their settlements into claimed territory and rarely through any civil means. They treat the Palestinians as the enemy, even when not all of them are. Same sort of struggle the whole west is having at the moment. There’s lots of politics at play in the Middle East, and those countries also don’t want Palestinians to come into their countries because of the damage those terrorist groups have done to them too. I believe it was Jordan that was completely destabilized after taking in a bunch of Palestinian refugees.
Then Hamas attacked Israel and killed a ton of people, have innocent hostages, and have vowed to never ever stop. Israel is at a crossroads. They obviously have to wipe them out… same way America felt about Al’Qaeda. But Hamas is hiding in Gaza, right in the middle of population centers. What to do?
Israel announced to everyone in Gaza that they needed to move south, dropped fliers saying they were going to attack, all the things. Then they attacked. Now innocent Palestinians are getting killed because they either couldn’t or wouldn’t leave, and Israel isn’t allowing humanitarian aid in.
It’s a giant cluster, is what it is.
Ok, that gives me better insight. I think my confusion has been who the actors are. So Hamas is a (terrorist) group within Palestine?
Correct.
Thanks for the write up
And it’s not like Israel didn’t drop bombs on the south you know? Nor that forced displacement of people doesn’t amount to a war crime. And one should expect a country having such a sizeable military superiority to be a little bit more concerned about civilian casualties and human suffering, but apparently they care very little.
And if you want to see it from a different perspective. Israel used the killing of 1200 Israeli citizens a pretext to kill 11K and counting civilians, cut their electricity, food, fuel and water, considerably restricting the humanitarian aid entering the enclave and almost completely destroying a city that was once hosting 1.1M people.
After continuously refusing to admit that with their own actions they have created a humanitarian catastrophe and refused all international calls for humanitarian pauses or ceasefire.
No one is refusing their right to defend themselves, but the way they are doing it is very much recalling a blind revenge and with those actions they portrayed themselves in not a very good light, even though western politicians are very adamant on publicly condemning them.
Mind you that during that time there were an increase of violent settlers attacks in the West bank, a lot of Palestinians got evicted, killed, injured with the silent approval of the authorities and the IDF, which is additionally stirring the conflict.
When elections were held some wanted to not allow armed groups to participate but ultimately they were allowed. hamas killed competitors. its basically not really democratically elected. it was but not at the power levels it eventually took.
Yeah this topic is not one to easily just jump into. I tried to make a summary in a long post here, but its really hard, there is too much information. If I were you I would just sit this one out altogether.
All I know is Hamas rules at least some subset of the Palestinian people, and has for seventeen years. They were elected back then, but there have been no elections since.
A non-elected government ruling people who are prevented from owning weapons has, predictably, resulted in Hamas having enormous contempt for the people they rule, and using them as civilian cannon fodder.
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Israel took over
How nicely you avoided the fact that Israel was in fact attacked. It didn’t try to conquer the other countries. On a contrary, other countries aimed to eliminate Israel. Some of them are still trying and you’re actively helping them.
The injustices constantly change, along with the victims and perpetrators, depending on how far back in history you look. No party is a clear hero or villain. What Hamas has done is inexcusable, but killing more civilians is not the answer.
According to the IDF they made 15000 strikes on Gaza strip in the last month. Even if you take clearly made up number of victims from Hamas, you’ll see the efficiency of those strikes, and how Israel is trying to avoid civilian casualties.
15000 strikes in an area the size of Manhattan is hardly efficient (unless you were being sarcastic, hard to tell)
It’s not 15000 nukes. It’s 15000 high-precision strikes.
Why do they stay there?
What countries are accepting refugees from Gaza?
This has been going on for decades. There are thriving palistinian communities in California, New York, several other US states and in various countries. It just seems that there are a lot of folks living good lives abroad. My question is, considering that this kind of horrific behavior by Israel was inevitable based on their hideous previous behavior, why haven’t they all left before now?
They’re poor people without the resources necessary for international resettlement. Now you have politicians demonizing Palestinian civilians as all terrorists. Some have even proposed deporting Palestinians BACK to Gaza.
Zionists had resources and western political support, so they took the land instead of settling somewhere they were welcome.
Palestinian civilians have no resources, so their land has been stolen.
There are literally twice as many Palestinians living abroad in Europe and the rest of the world than live in isreal. It’s a tightly knit community even so. People that stay there are making this choice for other reasons than that they can’t travel.
I’m not sure it helps to say this.
But something motivated the two million Palestinians who have left to leave.
Sorry but you make it sound like it’s easy to just get up and leave. If that was the case, all the people I know back in my 3rd world home country would’ve left already. Just because there are communities around the world, it doesn’t mean it’s easy to get there, especially with how strict immigration is nowadays. Not to mention these are people coming from the middle east, in a region where countries are wary of accepting people from.
Emigrating isn’t free. People are reluctant to leave their families, friends, and jobs behind. Foreign governments aren’t exactly rolling out the red carpet for Palestinian immigrants, especially low income families with zero connections in the destination country.
On top of all that, human beings are really good at denial and thinking “it won’t happen to me.”
Would you leave your home if somebody told you ‘fuck off, this is my place now’?
It’s a shit situation all round
Largest open air prison.
Where people could leave any time they wanted, and many Palestinians worked in Israel. Not a very good prison.
Their response is disproportionate, and it seems their goal is genocide and complete control of the land.
Israel doesn’t want Gaza. They literally left it in 2005 precisely because they didn’t want anything to do with it. But while Hamas exists, there will never be peace. Tbh, there will never be peace there anyway. It’s the Middle East. War is the only thing they know.
Palestinians are denied human rights by Israel.
Israel prevents formation of peaceful political groups in Gaza, but allows Hamas as “preferred opposition”.
This supports Israel’s goal of genocide against Palestinians and provides a convenient excuse for bombing civilians.
Not really.
Basically there were arguments about land for 70 years (arabs never agreed to any compromise). Then on 7th October, Hamas (a terrorist organization) attacked Israel and Israel responded (they had a right to) but it’s debatable whether the response was appropriate.
And so there are big losses on both sides but more people from Gaza were killed.
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Imagine if someone from Japan bombed China, and China’s response was bombing random people in Tokyo.
That’s actually super common response. The US did exactly that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II
I do not necessarily agree with that. The main goal have always been to get rid of terrorists but because they are in the middle of inhabited zones, it’s actually quite tough not to end up with civil causalities.
That does leave out the highly questionable ‘settlements’ in Palestinian territories…
Israel left Gaza in 2005. There are no settlements there. Hamas is only in Gaza.
Regarding the West Bank, according to the international law, some areas are illegally occupied. In addition, even the Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that Israel is holding West Bank under “belligerent occupation”.
The west bank counts as part of Palestine. That’s all I said. And to my knowledge Hamas uses those settlements to further their agenda of ‘Israel bad’.
Autocratic regimes always see the neighbor democracies as a threat. This is why Russia attacked democratic Ukraine, this is why a bunch of countries attack democratic Israel.
It never was about the land, it never was about the religion.
