> The majority of Gazans would be happy if Israel just respected their right to return.
Sure and Greeks would love to have Constantinople back. Greece attacked Turkey to get Thrace back and failed. Most of the Greeks living there were expelled. Sucks but that’s war and conflict.
Yet we see that Greeks and Turks don’t suicide bomb each other daily to regain some lost historic sense of pride. They accepted their Diaspora, not kept them locked up as political pawns like the Arab countries did with Palestinians.
Statements like yours sound nice on the surface but are ignorant of practical realities and the messiness of the history.
Even by your own logic, after all, Israeli Jews are just exercising their “right of return” no?
> Israel could simply let all the gas out of the issue immediately. Send the settlers home, and let the victims of the nakba return to their land.
That would not work. You see what Hamas is willing and was able to do on Oct 7th. If Israel allowed that they’d likely be facing the same as Oct 7th continually.
The Arabs that remained after the Nakba are full Israeli citizens now. It’s not perfect but to my eyes living next to several Palestinian Israelis they have pretty good lives. Much better than in Jordan actually.
> They perfectly mirror the zionist terrorists who fought for the establishment of Israel. And look where that got us. Israel being ruled and directed by those terrorists has created the current crisis.
Atrocities were committed by both Arabs and Jews prior to 1948. Again you have a very slanted and inaccurate “white colonizers bad” of the history.
When two ethnicities begin fighting it’s very difficult for either side to remain docile. Naturally populations that once lived together will separate. I’m not justifying it, just pointing out the reality of the matter.
Even the British prior to 1948 proposed forced resettlement of Jews and Arabs in the region to reduce tensions and fighting. Both sides had terrorist elements. Your post minimizes and ignores that both sides were guilty.
Israel being formed just forced the issue and after all the surrounding Arab nations attacked them. Every other situation like that in recent history has had refugees leave or flee their homelands. Most have been allowed to resettle and make new lives, unlike the Palestinians.
Unlike the Palestinian governments, Israel has already given citizenship to remaining Arabs and proved they can live peacefully with their minorities. They grant the right to vote. They protect places of worship for all faiths. They’re not perfect but far better than how the Arab peoples and nations treat Jewish minorities pretty much anywhere in the Middle East.
I did a study abroad in Israel when they withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Most Israelis were supportive of it and removing illegal settlers in Gaza, yet it was a political battle against their own extremist elements. Yet despite doing that it only took a couple years before the rockets started coming from Gaza.
>Even by your own logic, after all, Israeli Jews are just exercising their “right of return” no?
No. There are surviving people with a clear right to return they were removed from. Its those people that Israel seeks to outlive by holding them in Gaza. Its happening now. That's not equivalent to some loose claim from a long time ago.
>That would not work. You see what Hamas is willing and was able to do on Oct 7th. If Israel allowed that they’d likely be facing the same as Oct 7th continually.
Lmao, if theres a fear that returned people would continue terrorism, the anger is coming from being held in an open air prison for decades. It should be a police matter, from a government that protects all citizens. Thats the only way to start to repair things.
>The Arabs that remained after the Nakba are full Israeli citizens now. It’s not perfect but to my eyes living next to several Palestinian Israelis they have pretty good lives. Much better than in Jordan actually.
Yes so the arabs that didnt let themselves get forced or ordered off their land retain some rights. That's not the amazing argument you might think it is.
>Unlike the Palestinian governments, Israel has already given citizenship to remaining Arabs and proved they can live peacefully with their minorities. They grant the right to vote. They protect places of worship for all faiths. They’re not perfect but far better than how the Arab peoples and nations treat Jewish minorities pretty much anywhere in the Middle East.
Yet you continually see them being forced off their land by settlers. If you have proven coexistence possible, you would only strengthen it by returning the refugees. If you want a 1 state solution, that state needs to demonstrate it is capable.
>Most Israelis were supportive of it and removing illegal settlers in Gaza, yet it was a political battle against their own extremist elements. Yet despite doing that it only took a couple years before the rockets started coming from Gaza
You need to understand that removing illegal settlers from gaza is like saying you stole someones house and gave them back the couch.
Israel literally has members of its own cabinet that pursue the extermination of palestinians. Gvir literally shows up to pro settler demonstrations and demands people be shot. You need to understand that a decade ago Israel was able to have its global image be quite pure, and people didn't read what Israelis and their government were saying at home. Now its quite easy to access, it would be simpler to drop the pretense.
> No. There are surviving people with a clear right to return they were removed from.
There’s very few Palestinians in Gaza alive from that time. Even then, while they may have a desire to return home it’s not something any other people in similar conflicts have gotten.
Just as the equivalent numbers of Sephardic Jews who had their properties and homes stolen in Arab nations aren’t going to get them back or get a right of return.
Again it sucks, but you’re asking for a fantasy that modern western people love. We forget how much of our peaceful lives were built on terrible histories.
However Gazans need to begin caring more about the lives of their children rather than trying to regain lost homes or some lost honor in controlling Jerusalem. Homes can be rebuilt.
> Lmao, if theres a fear that returned people would continue terrorism, the anger is coming from being held in an open air prison for decades.
Yet you forget that many Sephardic Jews in the Middle East lived under similar oppression for almost a millennia under various Muslim colonial powers. Yet you don’t give a pass for their terrible actions. That just shows your bias and lack of understanding of the actual history of the region.
You place all the blame on Israel, but Egypt controlled Gaza for decades. They also kept the Gazans trapped. They built concrete walls before the Israelis did.
Jordan keeps 2.39 million Palestinians trapped in refugee camps as well. Jordan tried allowing them to integrate in the 1970’s and they tried to assassinate the king and take over.
> It should be a police matter, from a government that protects all citizens. Thats the only way to start to repair things.
Also there is no “government” that could magically do what you’re saying. Governments aren’t magic. They’re created by people.
The UN British Mandate that was such a government and they proposed forcibly resettling and separating Jewish and Arab populations in the region. So even when your neutral government was tried it advocated for the same separation that happened.
Israeli Jews created a state to protect their people. Yet despite centuries of oppression by Muslim colonizers across the Middle East, Israel decided to give equal rights to their Arab citizens. In the past they’ve offered to allow some Palestinians to return as part of peace-fires and were rejected because they didn’t just want to return home. They have wanted to destroy Israel and install their own Islamic government. Arab nations around them encouraged this and funded this ideology.
> You need to understand that removing illegal settlers from gaza is like saying you stole someones house and gave them back the couch. Israel literally has members of its own cabinet that pursue the extermination of palestinians.
Again with the your simple slogans. Israeli people and their government went against their extremists and did the right thing in 2005.
Hamas did not reciprocate.
> You need to understand that a decade ago Israel was able to have its global image be quite pure, and people didn't read what Israelis and their government were saying at home. Now it’s quite easy to access, it would be simpler to drop the pretense.
You seem to forget that seemingly unlike yourself I lived there and studied Middle Eastern studies. I even learned a fair bit of Hebrew and a very little Arabic.
I even met some of those Israeli settlers. Generally unpleasant types.
However I rarely or never Israelis Jews say they wanted to kill all Palestinians. Most Israelis actually empathize with them and wished for peace but also want to protect their people. They cared less about houses and more about the lives of their people.
On the other hand, it was relatively common to hear Arab Palestinians wish for the death of all Jews when they learned I am not Jewish.
While I hope for peace in Gaza, I also know generations of ideological indoctrination of extremist Islamic won’t disappear overnight. You should study more on the history of the region, not this shallow westernized version.
> There’s very few Palestinians in Gaza alive from that time.
Ok and then who are those people that are living in Gaza and the West Bank right now? To which country do they belong?
> Even then, while they may have a desire to return home it’s not something any other people in similar conflicts have gotten.
I notice this kind of double-sided argument in lots of discussions. Human rights, Post-WWII world order when Israel is in the defensive, but "Everyone is doing it" and a weird fallback into 19th century "Great Game" morals when Israel is on the offensive.
Homes can be rebuilt, they can be rebuilt where settlers destroyed them.
>it’s not something any other people in similar conflicts have gotten.
If your perspective is "Might makes right" that's a worse position for a people with the history that the jewish people have, than a position that seeks justice.
Justice, and Israel being seen to be doing justice, would make Jews much much much more secure than chasing refugees into a prison and then failing to return them to their land because "it just doesn't happen".
>Jordan keeps 2.39 million Palestinians trapped in refugee camps as well. Jordan tried allowing them to integrate in the 1970’s and they tried to assassinate the king and take over.
Likewise, pushing the idea that a people can be bad, the most literal genetic fallacy, is also not making jewish people safer.
>Also there is no “government” that could magically do what you’re saying. Governments aren’t magic. They’re created by people.
Theres the Israeli government. If they wanted to be seen as legitimate (instead of simply a tool for the settler movement) they would be seen to be doing justice.
>Israeli people and their government went against their extremists and did the right thing in 2005.
Thats crazy. It wasnt even the minimum required.
>However I rarely or never Israelis Jews say they wanted to kill all Palestinians. Most Israelis actually empathize with them and wished for peace but also want to protect their people. They cared less about houses and more about the lives of their people.
I mean its so easily sourced why bother denying it lmao.
>While I hope for peace in Gaza, I also know generations of ideological indoctrination of extremist Islamic won’t disappear overnight. You should study more on the history of the region, not this shallow westernized version.
I know quite a lot about the history of this region, and everything I learn makes me even more angry with the state of Israel, and the extremists who built it.
> If your perspective is "Might makes right" that's a worse position for a people with the history that the jewish people have, than a position that seeks justice.
It’s not right, it just is. Ignoring realities of the situation has just made the lives of Gazans worse.
Accepting that the Jewish and an Arab populations separated and were exchanged after decades of fighting and massacres on both sides is just embracing reality.
The lives of the Palestinians would be better if as a culture and society, they accepted what happened and built new lives. The Israelis did.
Instead Gazan leaders with near unanimous popular support have continually tried to use violence and force to reconquer the lands they lost rather than protect their people. They use the lives of their children as human shields and their deaths as propaganda as they know militarily they’re weaker. They openly admit this.
Personally I find it cruel that parents in Gaza subject their children to indoctrination that being a jihadist and retaking Jerusalem is their noblest goal in life in order fuel a never ending conflict.
Again it’s tragic that two people groups with long established roots in the region were separated and displaced with both sides losing lands and properties during those decades.
However there’s no justice in saying only one of the two groups (the Palestinians) should be given their grand parents lands and properties back. That’s what the right of return of Palestinians would be as the Arab Muslim nations aren’t going to reciprocate for the displaced Jews.
Forcing relocation to “traditional” pre state of Israel regions would require even more horrible violence and force with people of both ethnicities loosing what they’ve built up in their lives. That’s not justice either.
That’s just wishful western liberal thinking. There’s usually a dash of racism of “poor brown people” too, despite the majority of Israeli Jews not being “white” or even from Europe.
> I mean it’s so easily sourced why bother denying it lmao.
I’m not denying it. Just saying that in my experience having met dozens or hundreds from both sides that one group was much more open on average to finding peace and even coexistence. That’s just my anecdotal data.
> I know quite a lot about the history of this region, and everything I learn makes me even more angry with the state of Israel, and the extremists who built it.
Then perhaps do you know enough of the history to be aware that Palestinians are largely descendants of the extremist Islamic colonizers who conquered the lands starting a thousand years back? The indigenous peoples there weren’t Arabs after all.
Those Muslim conquerors have for centuries persecuted not just Jewish, but also Christian, Druze, and many other minorities in not just Greater Syrian (what Israel and Palestine was called under the Ottoman Empire) but also the rest of the Middle East?
Again, I’ll point out that Arabs in Israel have equal rights as citizens and better lives than those in most of the surrounding Arab countries. There’s certainly some racism against them but they can and do build prosperous lives.
Trying to recast the history of the region into a white-colonial issue of the past 120 years is being ignorant of the history of the peoples and ethnicities in the area over the past 1000 years and more.
>The lives of the Palestinians would be better if as a culture and society, they accepted what happened and built new lives. The Israelis did.
The Israelis imported jewish people from all over the world to live on land that they pushed the palestinians out of. Its not exactly an equivalent "Move on" situation. Moving on would be aided by getting access to their land.
>However there’s no justice in saying only one of the two groups (the Palestinians) should be given their grand parents lands and properties back. That’s what the right of return of Palestinians would be as the Arab Muslim nations aren’t going to reciprocate for the displaced Jews.
I mean, happy for jewish refugees to be returned to various arab countries, heck even germany. I would not argue if they wanted to return to where they were removed from in living memory. The issue is that they don't, they are happy living on Palestinian land, while holding palestinians hostage.
>Then perhaps do you know enough of the history to be aware that Palestinians are largely descendants of the extremist Islamic colonizers who conquered the lands starting a thousand years back? The indigenous peoples there weren’t Arabs after all.
I am aware, but 1000 years ago is kind of outside of our timescale. If it helps, sometimes I do think Britain would be better off without the angles or saxons, but too much time has passed in both circumstances.
>Again, I’ll point out that Arabs in Israel have equal rights as citizens and better lives than those in most of the surrounding Arab countries. There’s certainly some racism against them but they can and do build prosperous lives.
Its fairly plainly false. Again, you speak of knowing so much about the region, but if you see how people are forced to live in the west bank you would never use the term equal.
Sure and Greeks would love to have Constantinople back. Greece attacked Turkey to get Thrace back and failed. Most of the Greeks living there were expelled. Sucks but that’s war and conflict.
Yet we see that Greeks and Turks don’t suicide bomb each other daily to regain some lost historic sense of pride. They accepted their Diaspora, not kept them locked up as political pawns like the Arab countries did with Palestinians.
Statements like yours sound nice on the surface but are ignorant of practical realities and the messiness of the history.
Even by your own logic, after all, Israeli Jews are just exercising their “right of return” no?
> Israel could simply let all the gas out of the issue immediately. Send the settlers home, and let the victims of the nakba return to their land.
That would not work. You see what Hamas is willing and was able to do on Oct 7th. If Israel allowed that they’d likely be facing the same as Oct 7th continually.
The Arabs that remained after the Nakba are full Israeli citizens now. It’s not perfect but to my eyes living next to several Palestinian Israelis they have pretty good lives. Much better than in Jordan actually.
> They perfectly mirror the zionist terrorists who fought for the establishment of Israel. And look where that got us. Israel being ruled and directed by those terrorists has created the current crisis.
Atrocities were committed by both Arabs and Jews prior to 1948. Again you have a very slanted and inaccurate “white colonizers bad” of the history.
When two ethnicities begin fighting it’s very difficult for either side to remain docile. Naturally populations that once lived together will separate. I’m not justifying it, just pointing out the reality of the matter.
Even the British prior to 1948 proposed forced resettlement of Jews and Arabs in the region to reduce tensions and fighting. Both sides had terrorist elements. Your post minimizes and ignores that both sides were guilty.
Israel being formed just forced the issue and after all the surrounding Arab nations attacked them. Every other situation like that in recent history has had refugees leave or flee their homelands. Most have been allowed to resettle and make new lives, unlike the Palestinians.
Unlike the Palestinian governments, Israel has already given citizenship to remaining Arabs and proved they can live peacefully with their minorities. They grant the right to vote. They protect places of worship for all faiths. They’re not perfect but far better than how the Arab peoples and nations treat Jewish minorities pretty much anywhere in the Middle East.
I did a study abroad in Israel when they withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Most Israelis were supportive of it and removing illegal settlers in Gaza, yet it was a political battle against their own extremist elements. Yet despite doing that it only took a couple years before the rockets started coming from Gaza.