Do you care about the safety and security of people in Israel? What would you do if a fundamentalist group shot thousands of rockets into your town over a decade?
What would you do if you were expelled from your homeland at gunpoint by foreign settlers, and then 19 years later, your refugee camp was conquered by the very same people, who then ruled over you using brute military force for nearly 60 years, with no end in sight?
Based on your argument, why don’t the Gazans leave? Would you not consider Gaza to be a bad neighborhood?
The answer for both sides is that both sides have historical claim to the land, and there is no better neighborhood to live in for either of the sides anyway.
I accept that argument. If I were Gazan I’d leave too, if I could.
But Gazans can’t leave (the borders have been closed for years now), while Israelis can emigrate whenever they like. So on an individual basis, every Israeli has made a choice to accept living in the bad neighborhood, whereas the Gazans have no choice but to make the best of the bad situation.
The many Jews and ex-Israelis here in the NYC suburbs seem to find it pretty safe. My neighbor just sold his Tel Aviv condo he's owned for 40 years -- he seems to believe he's never going back.
What would you do if you were a southern governor responding to a slave revolt? It's the same kind of question. I wouldn't build my society on ethnic supremacy and then seek to maintain that through force.
