Yeah. They “encroached” on 77% of Palestinian land in 1947.
Since then, they’ve steadily encroached on 56% of what was left.
Now they’re encroaching on 32% of Gaza, which is 4% of the 56% of the 77%. The Palestinians are going from owning the least usable 10.1% of all the land they used to own, to now a 9.7% share. So what’s the big deal? Doesn’t sound like that much.
By “ancestral”, how far back do we go? 200 years? 2,000 years? 20,000 years…? It’s somewhat ironic, that that “homeland” has been under “foreign mandate” pretty much all the time.
Native Americans had a way better claim to the land, since in many places they were the first ones to settle there. Can’t say the same about Syria Palaestina, or any of the dozens of names you can call it.
“Too bad” some didn’t accept a UN Resolution, went to war, and lost.
Don’t cite me on that last one, cite Mahmoud Abbas:
Too much emphasis on ancestral not enough on homeland. Despite what may have taken place 200 2000 or 20000 years ago to lead to the settled population being what it was when israel got Wished into existence, there was a population settled there. israel doesnt get to say it has a right to defend itself/right to exist when its defense now and existence in the first place is a function of the displacement of that population.
By the logic israel uses, the native Americans had no claim to the land because manifest destiny. They werent using it correctly either, the land is in much better hands now, gestures broadly. Also, those pesky indians were fighting among themselves so often the land changed hands countless times over the centuries and millennia; who’s to say who the rightful owners of the lands really were when the white savior came along and fixed it all up proper? They were wrong to try to defend the land their forefathers had hunted buffalo across, to launch failed wars to retake those lands, to form war councils to lead their people who recommended to commit acts designed to strike terror into the hearts of their oppressors like torture, kidnapping, raping settlers, and sending murderous raiding parties into border towns… Anyway, they couldnt defend it, so what claim can they be said to have had at all?
Now replace native american with palestinian, manifest destiny with zionism, hunted buffalo with farmed dates, war council with hamas, murderous raiding party with O7, and white savior with the 1947 U.N. Palestine Plan. Its just ethnic cleansing by way of genocide in order to take land and increase material wealth. There is no piece of paper that makes the harm done tit for tat for tit for tat going on nigh a century now any the less evil, and no matter how you slice this pie, israel comes out with a greater share of that evil, both for the initial wrong, and for the continued encroachment, coming full circle to the point I was making in my top level comment: Israel was founded by the foreign seizure of already settled lands. Observe in the “1947 U.N. Palestine Plan” UN is the subject and Palestine is quite literally objectified.
israel doesnt get to say it has a right to defend itself/right to exist when its defense now and existence in the first place is a function of the displacement of that population.
Which was 70 fucking years ago! Israel absolutely gets to say it has the right to defend itself. After a certain point, the borders are the borders, and you can’t just point to territorial wars from decades past as justification for not recognizing its nationhood.
Israel was founded by the foreign seizure of already settled lands. Observe in the “1947 U.N. Palestine Plan” UN is the subject and Palestine is quite literally objectified.
Which is the story of all nations, actually. How many times has Europe been conquered by other empires and dictatorships? How many native populations have been been displaced by colonialism?
I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s the bloody history of how our each of our nations have been founded. No matter what soil you stand on, it was subjugated by somebody else.
Entire terrorist groups have been founded on the idea of some territorial subjugation from the 1800s gives them the right to enact violence on the nations of today. So, I don’t subscribe to this idea that we should point to the actions of 70 years ago as justification for wars or terrorism or rejecting the sovereignty of a nation.
Israel absolutely gets to say it has the right to defend itself.
Quick question, does Palestine get to say it has the right to defend itself?
Follow-up, is starving Palestinian children part of what you would claim is Israel defending itself? Or is that something Israel doesn’t have a right to do?
Quick question, does Palestine get to say it has the right to defend itself?
Which part? The strip of land west of Israel that was involved in the latest terrorist attacks, or the other strip of land east of Israel? Which one is Palestine? Because it can’t be both. And Palestine didn’t even agree to both when it had the chance in 1947.
And yes, it does have the right to defend itself. Perhaps they should send their armies into Gaza Strip to defend their country, if they want to lay claim to both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. All they have to do is march their army in the West Bank, cross Israel, and arrive at the Gaza Strip. (Insert Gru four-panel here.)
It’s also too bad the PLO/PLA is too in bed with terrorist groups to have a standing army that would be involved in defense, instead of bombing citizens partying at a music festival.
Follow-up, is starving Palestinian children part of what you would claim is Israel defending itself? Or is that something Israel doesn’t have a right to do?
In our bloody history of war over the past several thousand years, I can’t recall a war that didn’t involve starving children, homelessness, the death of civilians (accidental or otherwise), and all of the other horrors that it entails. War sucks, and it’s especially brutal on the defensive side.
Having said all of that, Israel certainly needs to calm down its hard-on for atrocities and police its own warcriming. Israel had some sympathy with the catalyst of the war (the music festival bombing), and quickly lost all of that when it decided to go gung-ho on the whole Gaza populace.
Though, it is especially unfortunate that one side chooses to hide behind terrorism, instead of clearly identifying military over citizens. Maybe if the PLO didn’t embrace terrorism, their citizens wouldn’t be in this dangerous spot.
And yes, it does have the right to defend itself. Perhaps they should send their armies into Gaza Strip to defend their country
I… what? March them across the intervening Israeli territory, so they can engage with the IDF once they arrive in the Gaza strip? Something tells me that wouldn’t be the totally logical and good successful step you seem to be suggesting it would be.
So… getting away from the back and forth, I have a feeling that the underlying thing you’re saying, that Hamas is a violent terroristic organization and they shouldn’t have killed or raped all those people at the music festival, I agree with completely. Where it breaks down for me is:
Likud has been helping Hamas defeat their less-violent domestic opposition, and elevating the most violent and unreasonable element in Palestinian politics, for years now. Which kinda makes it weird for them to all of a sudden get upset that the Palestinians are acting violent and unreasonable. It’s like picking the worst and most dangerous dog to take home to your family, then torturing it on purpose because it’s a “bad dog,” and then blaming someone else when it mauls one of your children, and saying everyone needs to put you in charge and never question you so you can protect everyone against these dogs and keep torturing the dogs. To me, that shit means you should never be in charge of anything again and should maybe be brought up on charges both for what happened to the dog and what happened to your kid.
Any violence Hamas has done to innocent Israelis, the IDF has done to innocent Palestinians ten times over.
To me, no one should get raped at the music festival and no one should watch their children starve. Both of those seem like straightforward things to believe. Anyone on either side who’s for a realistic path for peace is the the ally, and anyone on either side who’s justifying atrocities is the enemy (as you seemed to do for deliberately starving children – saying that it happens by accident sometimes, as a way of excusing Israel doing it on purpose, is deliberately missing the point of what I was saying I think.)
I think Hamas leadership and Likud are both guilty of perpetuating the conflict and killing the innocent, and a good solution would be to get the lot of them out of government, bring them up on charges, and find some people whose solution to “they did an atrocity to us” is something other than “Let’s do an atrocity to them*! It is justified and will totally fix things because it’ll show them not to do that again.”
(* “them” being very loosely defined and including a whole bunch of innocent people)
Because the world is filled with nuance and shitty solutions.
I defend that Israel is a country, and don’t defend arguments based on ancient grudges from decades past. I’m not even defending what Israel is currently doing, but what solutions do you think they should be doing in response to a terrorist attack? (Which was the last straw in a series of terrorist attacks.)
Last straw my left nut, this is merely the latest in a series of campaigns committed by both sides in this 80 year mutually-retributive open warfare. “Last straw” he says. This “last straw” is just the next straw- the next provoked “justification” for the next wave of seizure and occupation of every other house on the block, by way of outright murder and starvation and any other means necessary (read: slow-roll ethnic cleansing by way of genocide).
As for what the secular and interested nation of israel- the supposed “Land of the Jews”- should do? They should start, if they were actually motivated by the spirit and not by lucre, by opening the Torah and observing the wisdom from Exodus: An eye for an eye means to restrict compensation/retribution to the exact nature of the loss, and I invite you to figure some of the many nuanced ways that could apply here. They could stop pretending they are the sole victims and not-at-all perpetrators. They could find peace with their neighbors, they could stop murdering and harassing and starving and raping and kidnapping and torturing and pulling their land from their cold, dead hands as was, in point of fact, the ultimate intention of the other atrocities, despite so much peaceful rhetoric. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
An excellent first step would be calling a truce. An excellent next step would be deposing the current bloody-minded ruling party. An excellent third step would be to make amends and disburse reparations, starting with the schools, hospitals and critical infrastructure they have destroyed, fourth ceding the gradually encroached (to the point of the article) territory. I’m willing to bet for my own (admittedly useless) part that the peoples of Palestine and israel would settle at this point for the two state solution if it meant a lasting peace- if ever two leading parties were morally sane enough to propose it to each other in good faith and bold enough to resist outside pressures against it, “river to sea” notwithstanding. USA & Co. could still keep its slice of Suez pie, even.
Christ, can you imagine it? Jews and Arabs living side-by-side in peace and harmony, except actually, and that across the entire region?
Which was 70 years ago. We’re in this spot because a bunch of people are still bitter about the Seven Day War, and the nationhood of the Gaza strip was never officially declared. After all, how the hell can Palestine lay claim or maintain a territory that is totally disconnected from the West Bank? The short answer is “you can’t”. You can’t police it as a separate entity. You can’t ask its citizens to move from one area to another without having to deal with passports crossing over the country. You can’t govern it.
Israel was formed. It has its own government, and it is a recognized nation. What is not its own nation, and is a lawless neutral zone that has been actively housing terrorist groups, is Gaza.
From your initial comment it seems like the main misunderstanding is that nation states unilaterally declared by European powers in Africa and Western Asia from the nineteenth century until around the middle of the 20th century have been utterly disastrous to those places rather than being the only source of order in those places. Although these nation states are seen as legitimate by the powers which established them, in the opinion of many of the victims of these European powers whose population is much larger and much more relevant since they are physically present for the consequences of this establishment, tend not to consider them as legitimate and more of an encroachment. Colonization is not a neutral or natural process but an act of aggression by parties with superior military might on parties vulnerable to that might. If your view is that might makes right, then the issue here isn’t in historical misunderstanding but more of a moral dissonance. If that isn’t your view I’d be willing to entertain a more detailed conversation.
From your initial comment it seems like the main misunderstanding is that nation states unilaterally declared by European powers in Africa and Western Asia from the nineteenth century until around the middle of the 20th century have been utterly disastrous to those places rather than being the only source of order in those places.
Is this the starting volley of an argument that unfair colonization from the 1800s is justification for a nation’s lack of sovereignty?
tend not to consider them as legitimate and more of an encroachment.
I thought it was moral dissonance. I’m at least glad that in youger generations mass murder is coming to be seen more universally as evil even when committed against groups who are not white. I’m sorry about whatever happened to you to make you this way.
As I pointed out in another post, using decades- or centuries-old arguments for sovereignty has been used as justification for terrorism. When bin Laden smashed a couple of planes into the Twin Towers, that’s exactly the kind of argument he used as justification.
It’s not about moral dissonance. It’s about how hate spreads through ancient spites and grudges. The decades of failed peace attempts in the Middle East have been brought about by clinging on to these ancient grudges, and it’s exactly why Palestine has had much less of a standing in being officially recognized as a nation than Israel has.
What percentage of Palestinians currently don’t live in the family home they were born / grew up in, because the place they grew up in has been destroyed or taken by the Israelis during their lifetime? I mean obviously for Gaza, the percentage is pretty near 100% at this point, but I’m curious what you think the number is for all Palestinians put together.
… The short answer is “They have not been allowed to.” The long answer is the paragraph-long metaphor you seem to have missed or skipped over in my other comment. You are pleased to use the devastation and fragmentation and discoordination of a region which used to be connected and prosperous as some sort of gotcha against Palestine’s legitimacy- In all ignorance of the fact israel inflicted that devastation and fragmentation, ensured that the only coordination could be underground, with the necessary help of US dollars. You’d be arguing against your propagandistic position and for Palestinian independence, but that I frankly doubt you are able to see what you wrote here as part of the larger narrative of oppression unless I further spell it out for you. Either that or you read the comparison to native americans, understood it, and unironically agreed, in which case I invite you to do the other thing.
israel was formed on the corpses of the people it murdered in the homes of the displaced to take that spot in the first place. It has a government propped up by foreign support and could not possibly exist without it. That support only continues because of the strategic and material advantage of having a hold on Suez shipping; Obviously the nations which prop up and benefit from this corrupt arrangement recognize it. What is not a recognized nation (except, of course, by an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations, and me for another one) is that remnant of the ottoman empire, a people with thousands of years of ancestry there, that has seen fit to elect a military organization willing to use terrorist and other guerilla warfare tactics, notoriously effective in holding off a larger and better equipped opponent.
What of the people who already live there, the people who are unquestionably being forced out; what of their right to live in peace and prosperity? What of their rights to defend themselves, their families, their homes, their farms, their peace, their prosperity, defend themselves as israel is so nauseatingly fond of repeating is its right, and that by any means necessary? What of their right to exist? Open war and guerilla war and terrorism- flying planes into skyscrapers: This is what they will take when they are denied the right to exist. Why don’t you answer to me about the rights of Palestinians, and not wax propagandistic about how hard israelis have it ( 🥺 ) trying to manage their apartheid- and genocide-fueled ethnic cleansing. “deal with passports” forsooth.
You are pleased to use the devastation and fragmentation and discoordination of a region which used to be connected and prosperous as some sort of gotcha against Palestine’s legitimacy- In all ignorance of the fact israel inflicted that devastation and fragmentation, ensured that the only coordination could be underground, with the necessary help of US dollars.
Which is, again, ancient history. Israel was established as a nation after the Six Day War. It doesn’t matter how wrong that war was, or why it was done, or how it was done. It was done, and it was done over 70 years ago. Borders are established most of the time through bloody conflict, so this is not something that is suddenly unique to Israel.
for Palestinian independence
Which is what? Which borders do you agree are Palestine? Is it:
The West Bank? Sound fine to me. Maybe they should start pushing this with the UN and officially ratify it?
The West Bank and Gaza Strip? No. They can’t properly manage two separate landmasses like that. And even when they had the chance to accept that accord, they rejected it.
The entirely of Israel, West Bank, and Gaza. Fuck no. This is what I’m talking about when it comes to ancient grudges. They fought a war and lost. It happened. Israel formed. Ancient history.
That support only continues because of the strategic and material advantage of having a hold on Suez shipping
Are you actually serious? You think the entirety of the Israeli independence was because of a shipping lane? Not the fact that Jerusalem is in the center, or that a bunch of displaced Jews wanted to form their own state, or the fact that there have been several crusades to take back Jerusalem for centuries? In fact, I will accept almost any religious-based argument you give me. But, not because of a fucking shipping lane.
And as far as continued support, let’s not forget that there’s still a bunch of nukes pointed at Russia from Israel. Why do you think the Cuba Missile Crisis happened?
is that remnant of the ottoman empire
I… ummm, I’m going to have to stop right there. The Ottoman Empire ended in 1922. You are, again, using ancient grudges to justify terrorism.
What of their right to exist? Open war and guerilla war and terrorism- flying planes into skyscrapers: This is what they will take when they are denied the right to exist.
Yeah, I shouldn’t have read any more. Now you’re calling 9/11 a justified act. This conversation is over.
I didn’t say it was justified, I said this is why people are doing what they’re doing. I believe my exact words were, without looking them up, “This is what they will take when their right to exist is denied.” That isn’t justification- though I understand to them it would be. I’m saying I understand, sympathize, even empathize with other people. You are saying you don’t. You are saying that 77 years is “ancient history” (there are people alive today who can remember back to 1947, you betray the immaturity of your age, and your perfect ignorance of history with that belittling quip) as a way to misrepresent recent history. You are using the words “ancient grudges” to hand-wave the existence of people who are very much alive and suffering today as a footnote to history. The ancient history here, if you want to do that goes back through and past the ottoman empire. The collapse/dissolution of that empire balkanized the region- fuck me You know what, I don’t feel like teaching you history, it’s goddamned exhausting, and anyway you’ll ignore and twist and misunderstand and take out of context and put words in my mouth that I never said, whatever is convenient to your argument, based on the rest of our “conversation” anyway (I’m quite certain I detect the effect of skimming my work in your words, certain marks of a person who has not taken the trouble to understand a person’s position before replying to it). My advice: go read wikipedia on palestine/israel instead of the nothing you got in public school and the less-than-nothing you’re getting from the news.
It occurs to me upon review that I did not address the point of religion. I do not say that the foundation of israel was irreligious, but rather the continued support by foreign powers of israel is totally secular- Based on the material considerations like that which I pointed out of Suez shipping (extremely underestimated by my interlocutor) and the strategic consideration my interlocutor pointed out of nuclear retaliation.
You can say the same about many so called “recognizer nations” in Africa. Just because some white dude drew a line and called it a country, doesn’t make it a correct line. The people of Gaza and Palestine exist and are a Nation.
Not counting the territory seized since the initial “foundation” of Israel, of course.
Yeah. They “encroached” on 77% of Palestinian land in 1947.
Since then, they’ve steadily encroached on 56% of what was left.
Now they’re encroaching on 32% of Gaza, which is 4% of the 56% of the 77%. The Palestinians are going from owning the least usable 10.1% of all the land they used to own, to now a 9.7% share. So what’s the big deal? Doesn’t sound like that much.
😢
Too bad Arab countries didn’t like the 1947 foundational partition, so they got some 1949 armistice territories instead.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine
“Too bad” they didn’t like their ancestral homeland seized by foreign mandate…
has big “Too bad the native Americans didn’t like manifest destiny, so they got the Trail of Tears instead” energy.
By “ancestral”, how far back do we go? 200 years? 2,000 years? 20,000 years…? It’s somewhat ironic, that that “homeland” has been under “foreign mandate” pretty much all the time.
Native Americans had a way better claim to the land, since in many places they were the first ones to settle there. Can’t say the same about Syria Palaestina, or any of the dozens of names you can call it.
“Too bad” some didn’t accept a UN Resolution, went to war, and lost.
Don’t cite me on that last one, cite Mahmoud Abbas:
Abbas faults Arab refusal of 1947 U.N. Palestine plan
Too much emphasis on ancestral not enough on homeland. Despite what may have taken place 200 2000 or 20000 years ago to lead to the settled population being what it was when israel got Wished into existence, there was a population settled there. israel doesnt get to say it has a right to defend itself/right to exist when its defense now and existence in the first place is a function of the displacement of that population.
By the logic israel uses, the native Americans had no claim to the land because manifest destiny. They werent using it correctly either, the land is in much better hands now, gestures broadly. Also, those pesky indians were fighting among themselves so often the land changed hands countless times over the centuries and millennia; who’s to say who the rightful owners of the lands really were when the white savior came along and fixed it all up proper? They were wrong to try to defend the land their forefathers had hunted buffalo across, to launch failed wars to retake those lands, to form war councils to lead their people who recommended to commit acts designed to strike terror into the hearts of their oppressors like torture, kidnapping, raping settlers, and sending murderous raiding parties into border towns… Anyway, they couldnt defend it, so what claim can they be said to have had at all?
Now replace native american with palestinian, manifest destiny with zionism, hunted buffalo with farmed dates, war council with hamas, murderous raiding party with O7, and white savior with the 1947 U.N. Palestine Plan. Its just ethnic cleansing by way of genocide in order to take land and increase material wealth. There is no piece of paper that makes the harm done tit for tat for tit for tat going on nigh a century now any the less evil, and no matter how you slice this pie, israel comes out with a greater share of that evil, both for the initial wrong, and for the continued encroachment, coming full circle to the point I was making in my top level comment: Israel was founded by the foreign seizure of already settled lands. Observe in the “1947 U.N. Palestine Plan” UN is the subject and Palestine is quite literally objectified.
Which was 70 fucking years ago! Israel absolutely gets to say it has the right to defend itself. After a certain point, the borders are the borders, and you can’t just point to territorial wars from decades past as justification for not recognizing its nationhood.
Which is the story of all nations, actually. How many times has Europe been conquered by other empires and dictatorships? How many native populations have been been displaced by colonialism?
I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s the bloody history of how our each of our nations have been founded. No matter what soil you stand on, it was subjugated by somebody else.
Entire terrorist groups have been founded on the idea of some territorial subjugation from the 1800s gives them the right to enact violence on the nations of today. So, I don’t subscribe to this idea that we should point to the actions of 70 years ago as justification for wars or terrorism or rejecting the sovereignty of a nation.
Quick question, does Palestine get to say it has the right to defend itself?
Follow-up, is starving Palestinian children part of what you would claim is Israel defending itself? Or is that something Israel doesn’t have a right to do?
Which part? The strip of land west of Israel that was involved in the latest terrorist attacks, or the other strip of land east of Israel? Which one is Palestine? Because it can’t be both. And Palestine didn’t even agree to both when it had the chance in 1947.
And yes, it does have the right to defend itself. Perhaps they should send their armies into Gaza Strip to defend their country, if they want to lay claim to both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. All they have to do is march their army in the West Bank, cross Israel, and arrive at the Gaza Strip. (Insert Gru four-panel here.)
It’s also too bad the PLO/PLA is too in bed with terrorist groups to have a standing army that would be involved in defense, instead of bombing citizens partying at a music festival.
In our bloody history of war over the past several thousand years, I can’t recall a war that didn’t involve starving children, homelessness, the death of civilians (accidental or otherwise), and all of the other horrors that it entails. War sucks, and it’s especially brutal on the defensive side.
Having said all of that, Israel certainly needs to calm down its hard-on for atrocities and police its own warcriming. Israel had some sympathy with the catalyst of the war (the music festival bombing), and quickly lost all of that when it decided to go gung-ho on the whole Gaza populace.
Though, it is especially unfortunate that one side chooses to hide behind terrorism, instead of clearly identifying military over citizens. Maybe if the PLO didn’t embrace terrorism, their citizens wouldn’t be in this dangerous spot.
I… what? March them across the intervening Israeli territory, so they can engage with the IDF once they arrive in the Gaza strip? Something tells me that wouldn’t be the totally logical and good successful step you seem to be suggesting it would be.
So… getting away from the back and forth, I have a feeling that the underlying thing you’re saying, that Hamas is a violent terroristic organization and they shouldn’t have killed or raped all those people at the music festival, I agree with completely. Where it breaks down for me is:
To me, no one should get raped at the music festival and no one should watch their children starve. Both of those seem like straightforward things to believe. Anyone on either side who’s for a realistic path for peace is the the ally, and anyone on either side who’s justifying atrocities is the enemy (as you seemed to do for deliberately starving children – saying that it happens by accident sometimes, as a way of excusing Israel doing it on purpose, is deliberately missing the point of what I was saying I think.)
I think Hamas leadership and Likud are both guilty of perpetuating the conflict and killing the innocent, and a good solution would be to get the lot of them out of government, bring them up on charges, and find some people whose solution to “they did an atrocity to us” is something other than “Let’s do an atrocity to them*! It is justified and will totally fix things because it’ll show them not to do that again.”
(* “them” being very loosely defined and including a whole bunch of innocent people)
If it isn’t right, why are you defending it? “It’s always been done this way” is no excuse for continuing to commit an act that you admit isn’t right.
Because the world is filled with nuance and shitty solutions.
I defend that Israel is a country, and don’t defend arguments based on ancient grudges from decades past. I’m not even defending what Israel is currently doing, but what solutions do you think they should be doing in response to a terrorist attack? (Which was the last straw in a series of terrorist attacks.)
Last straw my left nut, this is merely the latest in a series of campaigns committed by both sides in this 80 year mutually-retributive open warfare. “Last straw” he says. This “last straw” is just the next straw- the next provoked “justification” for the next wave of seizure and occupation of every other house on the block, by way of outright murder and starvation and any other means necessary (read: slow-roll ethnic cleansing by way of genocide).
As for what the secular and interested nation of israel- the supposed “Land of the Jews”- should do? They should start, if they were actually motivated by the spirit and not by lucre, by opening the Torah and observing the wisdom from Exodus: An eye for an eye means to restrict compensation/retribution to the exact nature of the loss, and I invite you to figure some of the many nuanced ways that could apply here. They could stop pretending they are the sole victims and not-at-all perpetrators. They could find peace with their neighbors, they could stop murdering and harassing and starving and raping and kidnapping and torturing and pulling their land from their cold, dead hands as was, in point of fact, the ultimate intention of the other atrocities, despite so much peaceful rhetoric. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
An excellent first step would be calling a truce. An excellent next step would be deposing the current bloody-minded ruling party. An excellent third step would be to make amends and disburse reparations, starting with the schools, hospitals and critical infrastructure they have destroyed, fourth ceding the gradually encroached (to the point of the article) territory. I’m willing to bet for my own (admittedly useless) part that the peoples of Palestine and israel would settle at this point for the two state solution if it meant a lasting peace- if ever two leading parties were morally sane enough to propose it to each other in good faith and bold enough to resist outside pressures against it, “river to sea” notwithstanding. USA & Co. could still keep its slice of Suez pie, even.
Christ, can you imagine it? Jews and Arabs living side-by-side in peace and harmony, except actually, and that across the entire region?
Which was 70 years ago. We’re in this spot because a bunch of people are still bitter about the Seven Day War, and the nationhood of the Gaza strip was never officially declared. After all, how the hell can Palestine lay claim or maintain a territory that is totally disconnected from the West Bank? The short answer is “you can’t”. You can’t police it as a separate entity. You can’t ask its citizens to move from one area to another without having to deal with passports crossing over the country. You can’t govern it.
Israel was formed. It has its own government, and it is a recognized nation. What is not its own nation, and is a lawless neutral zone that has been actively housing terrorist groups, is Gaza.
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That’s nice of you to counter with a complete lack of information.
Please. Enlighten me. What part of the history of Palestine am I not understanding?
From your initial comment it seems like the main misunderstanding is that nation states unilaterally declared by European powers in Africa and Western Asia from the nineteenth century until around the middle of the 20th century have been utterly disastrous to those places rather than being the only source of order in those places. Although these nation states are seen as legitimate by the powers which established them, in the opinion of many of the victims of these European powers whose population is much larger and much more relevant since they are physically present for the consequences of this establishment, tend not to consider them as legitimate and more of an encroachment. Colonization is not a neutral or natural process but an act of aggression by parties with superior military might on parties vulnerable to that might. If your view is that might makes right, then the issue here isn’t in historical misunderstanding but more of a moral dissonance. If that isn’t your view I’d be willing to entertain a more detailed conversation.
Is this the starting volley of an argument that unfair colonization from the 1800s is justification for a nation’s lack of sovereignty?
Yes, there it is.
I thought it was moral dissonance. I’m at least glad that in youger generations mass murder is coming to be seen more universally as evil even when committed against groups who are not white. I’m sorry about whatever happened to you to make you this way.
As I pointed out in another post, using decades- or centuries-old arguments for sovereignty has been used as justification for terrorism. When bin Laden smashed a couple of planes into the Twin Towers, that’s exactly the kind of argument he used as justification.
It’s not about moral dissonance. It’s about how hate spreads through ancient spites and grudges. The decades of failed peace attempts in the Middle East have been brought about by clinging on to these ancient grudges, and it’s exactly why Palestine has had much less of a standing in being officially recognized as a nation than Israel has.
What percentage of Palestinians currently don’t live in the family home they were born / grew up in, because the place they grew up in has been destroyed or taken by the Israelis during their lifetime? I mean obviously for Gaza, the percentage is pretty near 100% at this point, but I’m curious what you think the number is for all Palestinians put together.
… The short answer is “They have not been allowed to.” The long answer is the paragraph-long metaphor you seem to have missed or skipped over in my other comment. You are pleased to use the devastation and fragmentation and discoordination of a region which used to be connected and prosperous as some sort of gotcha against Palestine’s legitimacy- In all ignorance of the fact israel inflicted that devastation and fragmentation, ensured that the only coordination could be underground, with the necessary help of US dollars. You’d be arguing against your propagandistic position and for Palestinian independence, but that I frankly doubt you are able to see what you wrote here as part of the larger narrative of oppression unless I further spell it out for you. Either that or you read the comparison to native americans, understood it, and unironically agreed, in which case I invite you to do the other thing.
israel was formed on the corpses of the people it murdered in the homes of the displaced to take that spot in the first place. It has a government propped up by foreign support and could not possibly exist without it. That support only continues because of the strategic and material advantage of having a hold on Suez shipping; Obviously the nations which prop up and benefit from this corrupt arrangement recognize it. What is not a recognized nation (except, of course, by an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations, and me for another one) is that remnant of the ottoman empire, a people with thousands of years of ancestry there, that has seen fit to elect a military organization willing to use terrorist and other guerilla warfare tactics, notoriously effective in holding off a larger and better equipped opponent.
What of the people who already live there, the people who are unquestionably being forced out; what of their right to live in peace and prosperity? What of their rights to defend themselves, their families, their homes, their farms, their peace, their prosperity, defend themselves as israel is so nauseatingly fond of repeating is its right, and that by any means necessary? What of their right to exist? Open war and guerilla war and terrorism- flying planes into skyscrapers: This is what they will take when they are denied the right to exist. Why don’t you answer to me about the rights of Palestinians, and not wax propagandistic about how hard israelis have it ( 🥺 ) trying to manage their apartheid- and genocide-fueled ethnic cleansing. “deal with passports” forsooth.
Which is, again, ancient history. Israel was established as a nation after the Six Day War. It doesn’t matter how wrong that war was, or why it was done, or how it was done. It was done, and it was done over 70 years ago. Borders are established most of the time through bloody conflict, so this is not something that is suddenly unique to Israel.
Which is what? Which borders do you agree are Palestine? Is it:
Are you actually serious? You think the entirety of the Israeli independence was because of a shipping lane? Not the fact that Jerusalem is in the center, or that a bunch of displaced Jews wanted to form their own state, or the fact that there have been several crusades to take back Jerusalem for centuries? In fact, I will accept almost any religious-based argument you give me. But, not because of a fucking shipping lane.
And as far as continued support, let’s not forget that there’s still a bunch of nukes pointed at Russia from Israel. Why do you think the Cuba Missile Crisis happened?
I… ummm, I’m going to have to stop right there. The Ottoman Empire ended in 1922. You are, again, using ancient grudges to justify terrorism.
Yeah, I shouldn’t have read any more. Now you’re calling 9/11 a justified act. This conversation is over.
I didn’t say it was justified, I said this is why people are doing what they’re doing. I believe my exact words were, without looking them up, “This is what they will take when their right to exist is denied.” That isn’t justification- though I understand to them it would be. I’m saying I understand, sympathize, even empathize with other people. You are saying you don’t. You are saying that 77 years is “ancient history” (there are people alive today who can remember back to 1947, you betray the immaturity of your age, and your perfect ignorance of history with that belittling quip) as a way to misrepresent recent history. You are using the words “ancient grudges” to hand-wave the existence of people who are very much alive and suffering today as a footnote to history. The ancient history here, if you want to do that goes back through and past the ottoman empire. The collapse/dissolution of that empire balkanized the region- fuck me You know what, I don’t feel like teaching you history, it’s goddamned exhausting, and anyway you’ll ignore and twist and misunderstand and take out of context and put words in my mouth that I never said, whatever is convenient to your argument, based on the rest of our “conversation” anyway (I’m quite certain I detect the effect of skimming my work in your words, certain marks of a person who has not taken the trouble to understand a person’s position before replying to it). My advice: go read wikipedia on palestine/israel instead of the nothing you got in public school and the less-than-nothing you’re getting from the news.
It occurs to me upon review that I did not address the point of religion. I do not say that the foundation of israel was irreligious, but rather the continued support by foreign powers of israel is totally secular- Based on the material considerations like that which I pointed out of Suez shipping (extremely underestimated by my interlocutor) and the strategic consideration my interlocutor pointed out of nuclear retaliation.
You can say the same about many so called “recognizer nations” in Africa. Just because some white dude drew a line and called it a country, doesn’t make it a correct line. The people of Gaza and Palestine exist and are a Nation.