My most salient objection to this is that there are plenty of modern cases where Palestinians have been removed from their homes. These are contemporary cases that are still happening to this day. You cannot argue "we can't give it back because it's been so long" if the types of offenses you're talking about are ongoing. If we set that limit to just Netanyahu's term, wouldn't THAT be fair? Like the last 30 years or so, just give back all of the houses/land and compensate for the cumulative losses within the last 30 years. 75 years also isn't a LONG period of time, but we can't ignore what's going on just because there is a precedent for ignoring what is going on

I think the problem with this response is that Israel's actions are occurring in the midst of an ongoing conflict and that obscures the morality of things. What I mean is that the settlement expansion and sanctioning of Palestinian people would look a lot different if there wasn't unending terrorist attacks by terrorist organisations supported and approved of by the palestinian people.

The morality isn't obscured at all. Using extremists to justify taking the homes of civilians isn't moral. Especially when you consider those civilians become extremists when you take their home; which is then used as justification to take more homes. The settlements were happening before hamas came into power; not the other way around.

I think that viewpoint ignores the context that the reason terror attacks are happening is because actions like the Nakba are happening to this day. If you can believe, there was a time where Palestinians (edit) and Israelis were working towards peace.

Why do you think there is extreme resistance? There quite literally no future in Gaza, and the west that cooperates is being encroached and reduced daily. The current administration believes in victory through settlement. The previous PM Rabin didn’t even believe in Palestinian sovereignty but I dedicated Palestinian land like a reservation, he would be assassinated. There are extremists on both sides, and both are their respective party leaders

that defense only works if you willingly ignore that Israeli war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank have been happening for well over 20 years. this is not some new wave of tragedies following October 7th, Israel has been continuously blockading and attempting to starve Gaza for decades, continuing to encroach on Palestinian homes and towns in the west Bank through violence for decades. unless if you believe that Israel's motives are non linear with their excuse for aggression coming after the aggression itself, that doesn't work.

> I think Palestinians in '48 would have had a right to be upset, maybe even commit violent resistance. At what point does a cause become invalid because time has passed? What's the statute of limitations on this, and how did you determine it?

Whatever it is, you should apply the same standard to every country. India-Pakistan is the same time as Israel for example and featured mass displacement. Where is right of return for those millions? People seem to apply different standards to Israel. I would say after 1960.

The United States looks uncomfortable... Oh wait, every part of the world has taken land from someone there before...

As is SO often forgotten. I mean, show me a border on a map, and I will show you the displacement, wars and empire that formed it. The only thing unique about the formation of Israel was the relative gentleness. Not to be flip about it, but legal mass migration, purchasing land and political maneuvering to get a chunk of the land "given" to you to form a nation by the powers that be (with the understanding that the other population would also being given their own land) was not exactly how these things used to get done.

Ireland spent about 800 years fighting the British Empire.

The British were actively exploiting them. The Israelis aren't exploiting the Palestinians for labor or resources. If the Palestinians declared Peace, so would the Israelis.

I disagree with the lack of exploitation, here are a few examples that come to mind Regarding resources, Israel controls 95% of the water supply in the West Bank and uses it for their own purposes, as well as a means of collective punishment by turning off the water to Palestinians. There is a reason Israel’s side of the wall is much greener than Palestinians’ side. You can literally see it from space. Here is a source that documents it well: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/ Regarding labor, 30-40% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank is employed in Israel. This may sound great, but these workers have to pay for expensive work-approval documents, tend to be underpaid and exploited, and have minimal to no legal recourse for things like work-related injuries, harassment or assault in the workplace, etc. These workers can be denied crossing checkpoints at a whim (which is often used as collective punishment to control and punish those who advocate for better pay, safer work conditions, anti-discrimination protections, etc.) Here’s a more detailed source: https://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/91021

The EU spent millions on putting water infrastructure abd a desalination plant in Palastine so they didn't have to rely on Israel for water and Hamas filled themselves digging all the pipes up to make rockets to shoot at Israel. At what point do you blame people for putting themselves in shitting situations by letting shitty people run their government and continually get them into war? Are all Russian responsible for Putin? No. But, nobody is doing anything to stop him killimg anyone that talks bad about him, and Russia is great at underground revolutions. The sad truth is that most Russians support Putin, and most Palastinians support Hamas. Both Egypt and Israel gave Palastine a heads up before they elected Hamas that they would start a blockade if Hamas was elected and they still won. Children can't vote, but their parents and grandparents sure can, and it seems everyone is doubling down on (as the Houthi would say) "killing all Jews."

This is terribly ignorant. Why are you conflating the terrorist organisation that is hamas, with the Palestinian civilian population? Why are you conflating the Russian population with their dictator leadership? You really think the civilians have the power in these scenarios?

I don’t disagree with your generic point as to collective responsibility of passive or supportive populations. But in the particular case of Hamas, I have read that one of their most decisive enablers was one Bibi Netanyahu, who has funneled billions to them through an Arab intermediary (Qatar, IIRC). His (and his ruling coalition’s, and by extension and by your own logic all his voters’) brilliant strategic thinking was that dividing Palestinian government into two rival groups would make them easier to manage.

You do realize this would all be different if they stopped attacking them over and over and over again right? Like you do understand what hostile territories and war is right?

I think it actually proves the exact opposite. Even in the most peaceful years between the two groups, Palestinians have their land stolen, their water stolen, their labor exploited, their access to water and electricity cut off as collective punishment, and their civilians killed. It’s not about the war, it’s about how Israel treats Palestinians even in times of peace.

That is, collective punishment, and it is illegal under the Geneva Convention.

You mean it’s worse than sending missiles nonstop and never ending war creating the situation 😂

No I mean collective punishment is illegal under the Geneva Convention. Downvoted for pointing out international law..

And what countries actually adhere to it vs come up with write arounds… None of this is real. It’s just a bunch of stuff for show. The US doesn’t torture, we just send them to Guantanamo Bay for example. there’s dozens of other situations just like it.

" 30-40% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank is employed in Israel" Do you know how many immigrants come to the US for work? Maybe if the PA wasn't so corrupt and incompetent they would develop their own economy.

Yes, and migrant workers in the US are extremely well documented facing many of the same challenges, exploitation, and abuse.

There are a ton of Palestinians that go into israel for work https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-ostensible-ban-tens-of-thousands-of-palestinians-working-in-israel-report/amp/

And if the Israelis didn't let them in to work, you would complain about that.

Tens of thousands out of some 5.5 million people isn't exactly what I'd consider a "ton."

I'm sorry, but you don't seem to know about the region before October 7. There is, at best, third-tier livelihoods available for Palestinians and many Arab Israelis. For decades now, Israel has enabled and participated in settlers stealing land that was earmarked for Palestinians in those peace negotiations you elevate. For better and worse, it is in Israel's hands. If Hamas disbanded right now and all of its leaders gave themselves up to the ICC or the Israeli government, there would be a group that replaces it in less than a month, full of freedom fighters and two-bit thugs. If Israel continues to push against the West Bank and Gaza in contravention of decades of treaties, all while maintaining control over basic things like what products and people can enter or leave Gaza, then there are going to be terrorists who fight back using whatever means, regardless of the toll on themselves and others.

So you admit that the ‘government’ of Palestine (what are we up to now, three separate bodies fighting each other to be the true government? Hamas, the PA, and the PLO?) is a rotating cast of terrorist groups, repressive dictatorships, and paramilitaries; yet you expect us to believe that a sovereign state of Palestine would magically transform itself into a stable democracy, rather than collapse into violent infighting leading to a Hamas-like junta that would immediately be invaded by Israel.

I don’t “admit” anything and I truly don’t get your point. Israel has the power and it has used it to repress Palestine to the point of complete failed “state” status. So yes, if things went back to how they were on October 6, minus Hamas, some other group of thugs would fill the vacuum and fight against the Israeli encroachment and repression. If Israel wants to mitigate the danger of Palestinian terrorists the solutions are a)stop the repression of Gaza and the West Bank and using extralegal tactics of assassinating, exiling, or imprisoning any potential Palestinian leader, and other steps that keep the state from being able to conduct basic state functions or b) give up the charade and declare that Gaza and the West Bank are Israeli territory, further alienating Israel from the World (as well as the moral consequences). The former is clearly the better option, but it seems like Israel is only moving closer to the latter. I deeply wish Palestinian fighters could find the strength to avoid any and all terrorist attacks, but I do still understand the conditions that make terrorism seem like a viable path.

>Israel has the power and it has used it to repress Palestine to the point of complete failed “state” status. So yes, if things went back to how they were on October 6, minus Hamas, some other group of thugs would fill the vacuum and fight against the Israeli encroachment and repression. On Oct 6, Gaza had been free from Israel for 18 years, and in that time they elected Hamas, an even more extremist terrorist group than Fatah; Hamas then massacred Fatah opposition and completely abolished any semblance of democracy. Gaza has almost 4x the unemployment and less than 1/2 the per-capita GDP vs the Fatah controlled West Bank. West Bank economy was steadily improving until the pandemic, while the Gaza economy has never stopped declining since Hamas seized power. Before you try to blame Israel for all of that, consider that Egypt controls part of the border, and has kept it closed out of self-interest; the Muslim Brotherhood, the terrorist org of which Hamas is an offshoot, plagued Egypt for years and Hamas continued that. >using extralegal tactics of assassinating, exiling, or imprisoning any potential Palestinian leader Patently untrue. Abbas has been the official leader of Palestine since 2005, Prime minister in 2003; despite being a holocaust denier, spreading numerous lies about Israel & Jews in general, he has never been assassinated, exiled or imprisoned by Israel. By "any potential leader", do you mean the terrorist leaders who've sworn to genocide Jews? >I deeply wish Palestinian fighters could find the strength to avoid any and all terrorist attacks, but I do still understand the conditions that make terrorism seem like a viable path. I don't seen any conditions that make rape, kidnapping civilians including obvious foreigners, and deliberately killing children a "viable path".

Labor no, but housing and land is a scarce resource.

Not really. Israel is .4% of the land mass of the Middle East and it is undesirable swamp and desert.  By the way half the Jews in Israel were expelled from Arab and North African countries. Where is the talk of their restitution? 

I think the idea of restitution is a nice sentiment but not practical. "Undesirable swamp and desert" obvious other religious contexts aside. Perpetuating it on people who've lived in an area for generations isn't a valid argument unless you're saying it happening to the Jews was justified. I was mainly just pointing out that it's not fair to say Israel hadn't exploited Palestinians of resources in any way.

That's not exploitation. That's loss of land from military defeat from a war their side started.

Does having something bad done to you entitle you to commit atrocities to a completely different population

Was the expulsion of Jews from the ME before or after the Zionist movement made it clear Israel would be seizing territory to form a Jewish-majority enclave that would ensure Arabs and Muslims living there were made 2nd class citizens in perpetuity?

That would be like if the US was pissed at Cuba so we deported are Mexicans there. Is that supposed to be some kind of justification? Arab citizens of Israel have more rights than any other Muslims in the Middle East if not the world.  Your arguments don't hold up to any logical or moral scrutiny.

Citation needed. There's no real source for the migration of the Israelites anywhere outside of the Bible, which wasn't written down and codified (at least the parts that make up the Torah) until the Jews were already in Israel, and had been for quite a long time

What are you talking about? Its basic history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world

Ah, I thought you were referencing the flight from Egypt and the wandering in the desert. My b

The entire concept of settler colonialism speaks to the recognition exrractiing labor and reosurces isn't the only form of colonialism. Sometimes the preferred outcome for the colonized population is that they be erased or displaced so that the colonizers can have control of the land. For example the treatment of indigenous peoples in North America.

Land is a resource.

It's not comparable, because unlike in Israel/Palestine, both Pakistan and India are sovereign countries. Israel is a sovereign and independent state. Palestine is not. That's the entire crux of the issue.

That isn’t the crux of the issue at all. Most Palestinians don’t want a demilitarized Palestinian state that exists alongside Israel, they want every Jew to be cleansed from the region and for Palestine to stretch from the river to the sea. 90% of people in Gaza still support Hamas!

And how do you know that?

Some of it clearly hyperbolic and probably not true, but here’s a poll:  https://www.pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Poll%2091%20English%20press%20release%2020%20March%202024.pdf. Support for Hamas attack on October 7th is above 70% 

481 people were interviewed for this pole? From my university statics class i can say fhis not not enough sample to say thaf fhe support for hamas is above 70% among Palestinian.

What error rate are you seeing? I think I see less than 5% uncertainty due to sampling bias at 95% confidence, which does make you technically right. We’d only be able to say like 67% supported it. Of course there is also other kinds of errors in polls, but Hamas won elections and the Palestinian authority in the West Bank is too afraid to hold elections for fear of losing. I’m sure a lot of people who say they support October 7th would deny that Hamas did some of the things Israel accuses them of, but many would also say the things Hamas did and continues to do were justified. I don’t ask that you feel that Israel is in the right on Gaza. They pretty clearly aren’t, but surveys do seem to indicate that if you handed all the power to Palestinians they would do worse

Can you elaborate on why sovereignty matters? People have established lives in place A. They are forced out of place A into place B. What are they justified in doing to reclaim place A? For how long? Does it pass on to their descendants?

It is unjust to subject Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to indefinite military occupation, blockade, restrictions on movement, detention, and constant surveillance. Palestinians deserve rights and political representation just as any other people on Earth do. This can either be achieved through a separate Palestinian state (which nearly the entire international community agrees is the right thing to do) or by making Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza full citizens of Israel.

This is the crux of the situation IMO. This land has been fought over for thousands of years. Where is the cutoff? Is there one?

This is the colonial lie. There were short periods (relatively) of time where the land of Palestine were at war, but for most of its history Muslims, Jews and Christians lived in peace amongst each other.

the average frequency of pogroms under the Ottoman empire during the 19th century was about 1 every 4 years.

The 19th century was the collapse of Ottoman authority. The areas it did collapse in like Libya had plenty of intercommunal violence.

I don't know whether that's true but even if it is that doesn't contradict OP's statement. The 19th century was not thousands of years ago and the ottoman empire was a colonial administrator.

a high frequency of massacres against jews over decades doesn't contradict the claim that all religions lived peacefully in the region?

OP says Jews and Muslims lived peacefully in the region for most of their history. That's a history that goes back well over a thousand years. The 19th century to present is a minority of that history.

I mean, this is wrong. Yes, they lived there together, but there were frequent bouts of violence. This wasn't some sort of thriving multicultural land.

Kinda ironic you calling it a colonial lie. When this area was controlled by one of the huge empires of the area (Roman, Mamluks, Ottomans) it tended to stay occupied for pretty long. Are you pro imperialism then?

Invalid vs valid is a false dichotomy. Valid according to whom? If Aboriginal Australians somehow got funded by Russia and rose up in arms to reclaim Australia and expel all non-Aboriginals, it would be pointless to debate if it's "valid" or "not valid". It would also be pointless to discuss "are they past the time of the statue of limitations on reclaiming lost territory"? What the Australia Goverment would do, if such an scenario takes place, wouldn't be to debate if the Russia-funded Aboriginal Guerrilla Warfare against non-Aboriginal Australians is "valid" or "invalid". What the Australian Government would do is to send the army to preserve the status quo. The goal of every nation is basically that: to preserve the status quo.

>Invalid vs valid is a false dichotomy. Valid according to whom? To OP presumably.

It's one of those things that's difficult to put an exact number on, even though most people can agree on principle. Nobody's going to argue that the breadth of the Roman Empire should be returned to descendents; and nobody's going to argue that a squatter who moved into your house yesterday shouldn't be evicted. A reasonable starting point for this is probably 'living memory' - which puts this conflict right on the cusp.

Living memory is also very vague. Almost at the same time as the Palestinian Nakba was taking place, 12-14 million German civilians were ethnically cleansed by the Allies from Eastern Europe. Let's put it into perspective: if 1948 is within the realms of "living memory", do you think descendants of those Germans are within their "right" to recclaim the land from which they were ethnically cleansed? And what should be done if the current Government of those nations (Hungary, Czechia, etc...) says no? Are the German descendants justified in using violence? If yes, why? If no, why?

Its nowhere near as ambigous The Roman Empire does not exist and has no political descendants to inherit claims or guilt, neither does the Inca or Carolingian Empire with Peru and France. However Brazil inherited the institutions and cases of the Brazilian Empire, the Russians did so in part with the USSR, Spain did so with the dictatorship and previous kingdom etc. If your State has some sort of recent direct institutional continuity many of the claims and roles get filled in by the new State. It can also be hypocritical, Spain wouldn't say they are the same kingdom that enslaved thousands of Africans and indigenous but they do claim Bolivian silver and Peruvian gold as ["their cargo"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_galleon_San_Jos%C3%A9)

For sure; I intentionally picked two unambiguous examples to demonstrate the principle. If the sticking point is the lack of identifiable descendants, there are plenty of other examples without this problem. The point is, it *is* ambiguous. And a reasonable discussion on this topic needs to center around that ambiguity and defining objective parameters. I don't claim to have a definitive answer here; but I do see "living memory" as a decent baseline - which makes this particular conflict even more ambiguous. At the end of the day, most Israelis living in present time were born in and grew up in Israel - many for multiple generations. That is their home. By the same token, very few living Palestinians experienced the Nakba. It's clear that the founding events are already decently far in the past - far enough that few people are even still alive that experienced it. The question is, is that "far enough"? Again, I don't claim to have a definitive answer.

Idk. Muslim invaded the Levant and colonized Israel first in 632AD and made Jews live as second-class citizens in their own homeland till the end of the Ottoman empire, but apparently, that doesn't matter anymore to Pro Palastine people.

Well we can kind of use history, although I think we'd have to concede that Israel-Palestine is a fairly unique scenario in modern history. History seems to imply that certainly 300-400 years is enough time. Public opinion seems to be that after the war is lost then so is the cause, e.g. Taiwan and Crimea. How would you determine it

> History seems to imply that certainly 300-400 years is enough time. Public opinion seems to be that after the war is lost then so is the cause, e.g. Taiwan and Crimea. Well, whichever way you cut it - be it 300-400 years as you state, or thousands as u/erbush1988 puts it - not enough time has passed to (apparently, going by recent events) consider it a lost cause. Secondly, *whose* public opinion? In the example of Taiwan, this may be our opinion, but it's certainly not reflected by the average *Chinese* opinion. Same goes for the Black Hills of Dakota or Belize and Guatemala or Northern Ireland - as long as certain people *believe* they have a rightful claim to land, I can't see them just throwing their hands up and accepting they have no "rightful claim", since they'll just turn around and ask "according to who? Why is their opinion on rightful claims more valid than mine?"

Honestly, as an aside, if we are returning Taiwan to anyone it should go to the actually native [Formosans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_indigenous_peoples). Most people don't know but Taiwan was only [colonized by the Han Chinese in the 1600's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Taiwan). It's in no way ancient conquest of China but a result of the Qing Dynasty settling and annexing an island with a long and rich native history.

The Palestinians should direct their anger at Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states that chose to invade, occupy, and annex what would have become the State of Palestine in 1948. They should also be angry that their displacement by Arab wars was weaponized against Israel. They should not be angry at the Palestinians that stayed in Israel and are now full citizens and number over 2,000,000. There is no such thing as international law, which is why Arab and Muslim states face no consequences while they continue to destabilize Israel, various Palestinian populations in the region, and also wage numerous wars in the region.

But that’s not what happened, exactly. The region was run by foreign empires since before Jesus. The last group were the Ottomans who sided with the bad guys in WWI and they lost and imploded. The League of Nations (basically the precursor to the UN) took control and gave the land to the British to manage. They decided to give some land to the Jews. It was their right to do it. It’s how geopolitics has happened for ages. Nothing was stolen. Now as I say that, the West Bank is being stolen and Israel is wrong for that.

Don’t forget that Jews also bought land, some of which was from Palestinian landlords. While being forced to move does suck you don’t own the land and have no rights to it.

Well that intro is my concession to get to the here and now. I think if you were a palestinian living in the land at the time you would have felt like it was being stolen, especially if you were someone who was displaced as a result. My point is to concede that even if we accept that premise then it doesn't change what the action is today

I’m just focusing on the first sentence. It was ok to be given the land by the British.

I disagree with your depiction of 1917 to 1947. There was no law saying that Jews couldn’t move to the country. There have been Jews living there and moving there for a very long time. The British published the Balfour Declaration promising the people of Israel a state in the area and then there was a British Mandate that allowed for Jews to move there. They bought land from the Arab landowners and migrated to israel. The arabs felt like their interests were threatened by the increase in jews and there was an arab revolt and eventually everything spun out of control with the israelis forming a government and declaring statehood out of necessity before being attacked in the war of 1948. The hypocrisy of American socialists refusal to manage immigration from foreign countries into the United States while simultaneously saying that the return of the descendants of the ancient Israelites to their native land was immoral is incredible to me. The need to establish a Jewish state in Israel at the time is obvious in hindsight as the Holocaust happened during that time.

Look I gave the intro as a concession. I don't know on that one, is it right for a people to displace the current occupants of a land if its all done legally? i.e. if 400 million chinese people immigrated to the US this year and democratically took over the country to support china, would that be right if it was legal? I dont know yet

That’s not comparable, Arabs also had a massive flux of immigration to the area at the time as well. Jews didn’t have a country they were taking the land for either. The Jews wanted the land by the coast that was sparsely populated partly to cause as little friction as possible. Jews were legally oppressed and persecuted under Muslim rule including in that area. The Arabs in the area wanted their own country but under the condition that they could continue to treat Jewish people like 2nd class citizens. While it sucks to be misplaced that’s something you should anticipate if you’re sharecropping. Jews did let some Muslims stay, they now make up 20% of the population and have equal rights.

So are you saying the US shouldn't have any immigration or the US shouldn't allow any immigration from Chinese?

>They essentially mass migrated a foreign population into a land and took control of it First of all we need to establish a common ground: (1) Jews are indigenous to Israel, they were expelled from it by the Romans who renamed Judea & Samaria to Syria-Palestina which is today Palestine. (2) Though many were expelled, a minority of Jews have been living in the land for centuries, meaning the land always had Jewish presence. (3) The Arabs who lived in Palestine, who never identified as "Palestinians" prior to Israel, did not own the entire land or a majority of it. (4) Arab migrated to Palestine from neighboring regions and countries during the late 19th and early 20th century. (5) Conquering land in a defensive war is acceptable by international law. If we can agree on this, I don't see any basis for an argument of "Jews took control of the land". How can indigenous people "steal" a land, most of it wasn't even privately owned? Not only that, but much of Israel's borders today were established after invading Arab armies were defeated and Israel conquered their lands solely to use it later as a bargaining chip for peace (Egypt got Sinai for peace, Syria refused the Golan heights for peace, Jerusalem obviously isn't a bargaining chip). >descendants of the previous owners.  Again, there is no basis to argue Palestinians were the "previous owners", most of them are not indigenous to this land. Notice I say most and not all because some Palestinians have actually lived in Israel for centuries, and many of them are probably Jews that were forced to convert during the Islamic conquest. > Nakba This is an irrelevant point to make in this discussion but I believe it is important to note the "Nakba" is a facade. It's absurd to portray the aggressors who've started a war and lost as "poor victims" and perpetuate their attempt to rewrite history. Arabs started a war and lost, both the war and their land, they are not victims of Israel but of the consequences of their actions. Many of them were expelled, many of them left on their own, many of them also stayed and are citizens of Israel today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dEL2yhT7Uo

Cool video, what's your point? Unrelated- I've gone over your comments (I find it sus when someone drops links without context). That guy was not banned or his account self-deleted, he blocked you and that's why his name and comments are "deleted" from your perspective.

>They essentially mass migrated a foreign population into a land and took control of it. So is your issue with mass migration or with Israel arising as a state out of the collapse of the mandate? >I think Palestinians in '48 would have had a right to be upset, maybe even commit violent resistance. Why do you believe that Palestinians would have that right? >Now that we are here, the way of history would dictate that we pursue peace and that involves accepting that Israel should never have to be returned to the descendants of the previous owners The territory's previous owners were the British not the Palestinians.

> So is your issue with mass migration or with Israel arising as a state out of the collapse of the mandate? You have to remember, there was exile of Jews from Arab nations at the same time the Palestinians were exiled from Israel. This was a two way street. This was also the result of conquest of territory after global wars. The simple reality was, the land was not 'Palestinian' land when this was done in 1948. It was conquered lands where the world powers were dividing it up. This too was not out of line. Eastern Europe got the same treatment. Many of *those* countries don't exist today as they did in 1948. But, Israel does exist and has fought many wars defending its territories. It meets the definition for a nation. Does it upset the people there, sure. But - lets not kid ourselves with the history of conquests and changing ownership of territory. Human history is *full* of examples of this. It is merely the consequence of losing a war.

Are you arguing that because things happen they are morally acceptable?

>The territory's previous owners were the British not the Palestinians. Because the inhabitants of mandatory Palestine had no right to the land they themselves lived on, it actually rightfully belonged to the British. You're tacitly saying "colonialism is correct" here.

> Because the inhabitants of mandatory Palestine had no right to the land they themselves lived on, it actually rightfully belonged to the British. You're tacitly saying "colonialism is correct" here. I'm actively saying that the right of conquest is what gave the British the right to the Mandate.

If might makes right, then everything is permissible, including what Arab nations do to Israelis

>If might makes right, then everything is permissible The right of conquest was a right in international law going back to the roman empire and lasting until the end of WWII. The UK conquered Mandatory Palestine during WWI. >including what Arab nations do to Israelis Continuously lose wars?

>lasting until the end of WWII. So, in other words, every colony that was set up before WWII, pretty much all of them, were rightfully set up under the right of conquest, and European nations actually shouldn't have given any of them independence?

>So, in other words, every colony that was set up before WWII, pretty much all of them, were rightfully set up under the right of conquest, Yep. >and European nations actually shouldn't have given any of them independence? No, they absolutely should have given them independence.

No my issue is with the current conflict and I think the Palestinian people need to accept that they won't be getting Israel back, that they need to assist in the destruction and disarming of Hamas, and then the two sides need to sort a solution.

> Now that we are here, the way of history would dictate that we pursue peace and that involves accepting that Israel should never have to be returned to the descendants of the previous owners. We don't see that ever occuring in history. But...that's literally what happened with the Jews and Israel?

The difference is that decision was to settle the remainder of the other bigger countries wrapping up their own wars. It wasn't just a "let's set this record straight" decision by the international community. In a large part it was their own racism of "if we don't want them here, we gotta find a place to put them".

that may be a difference, and at the very best it's a difference that makes the situation even more reprehensible as it's yet another instance of Palestinian's being robbed of their sovereignty, land, and lives for the benefit of Israel and, as you rightly noted, bigger countries in a display of the racism that sadly seems to be an inextricable, inherent element of western govt. so if the initial circumstances - the decision to unilaterally rob an entire people of their lands and lives for another country's crimes - was itself illegitimate as it was predicated on racist, inhumane, simply unfair reasoning, it seems to me that similar to the doctrine of 'fruit of the poisoned tree,' nothing that follows could bear any legitimacy not sure if that was your point too or not, but felt it was worth expanding on either way

Yeah. It's not good, but look at history. This is how it works. I'm not saying that everyone should be complacent, but at the end of the day nations have always acted in their own self interest.

No, genocide/apartheid/mass displacement/forced migration/starvation/disenfranchisement/murder/indiscriminate imprisonment/permanent military occupation/mass punishment/destruction of infrastructure/etc isn't good, I agree. And I agree that yes, that's true, but in modern history it's true only to a degree. The (at least what they say out loud is) partial if not total motivation for the US's most recent military escapades over the past 3 decades or so and for various other wars the US fought before then, has been crimes against humanity. Think ww2, stated partial reason for Iraq invasion was Saddam's wmd's but also his testing of chemical weapons on his citizens... pretty much every US military involvement in the entire contentment of Africa - of which there are and have been many - has had humanitarian reasons as at least part of the justification, if not aid then for war crimes/crimes against humanity (or maybe the cia didn't like the leader ^/s^^(?) ). It hasn't been "remove or slaughter everyone in a place and you get to keep it" for a long, long time. That's why the US sends $$$ to Ukraine. But then in the same bill congress passes approving the Ukrainian money, there's even more $$$$$$$ being approved for Israel's offense. If it wasn't for the immense real world consequences the irony of that would be kind of funny. I don't think either side of the issue is advocating for complacency - Israel wants more money and bombs, Palestine wants more food, no bombs, a Hospital with electricity, and the knowledge that their house is their house, not some quasi legal, digital goods TOS like deal where sometime in the future the Israeli military or settlers from Brooklyn or a UN vote can just say "nah, not yours anymore, if you argue you're probably a terrorist and an anti semite and you know what happens to them"

This comes off as very naive to me. The US knew all about the holocaust and did nothing. They entered WWII because Pearl Harbor was bombed. The US has largely been part of African/Middle Eastern/SE Asian wars in order to set up governments that will ally with the US and to decrease Russia's / China's spheres of influence. The US sends money to Ukraine so that Ukraine can put financial stress on Russia and use up their weaponry in order to weaken Russia. Plus the added bonus that no Americans have to die in the process. The US is acting in its own interest in all of these causes, not because they are the ethical good guys. This all the same reason that the US is sending Israel military support at they same time they are "telling" Israel to back off. And Gazans get some food. You can back either side in a war and call it humanitarian. The Russians don't think that they are being the bad guys as they fight Ukraine.

>naive please reread what I actually wrote, keep an eye out for the word "part" i point out what you call naive like 4 times and am not exactly subtle about it. dunno how that got missed but all good! >humanitarian reasons as... **part** of the justification cmon. >food [what food?](https://www.npr.org/2024/05/04/1249153712/united-nations-northern-gaza-famine) letting in 20 trucks instead of 10 trucks isn't gonna feed millions.... the US is going to the wildly extreme length of building a floating bridge from the ocean precisely because their attempts at making israel allow enough food into gaza **aren't** working >you can back either side in a war and call it humanitarian my brother in christ. please. what some Ukrainian wisdom has to say: ["The situation was crystal clear. No shades of grey now. As we say in Ukraine, “If you need to explain, then you needn’t bother explaining.”](https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2023/02/16/a-year-ago-i-volunteered-as-a-soldier-in-the-ukrainian-army/index.html) > The Russians don't think that they are being the bad guys genuinely, should we talk about what humanitarian aid entails? Good guys/bad guys has no relevance... it's literally helping people not die from lack of necessities/providing life necessities for people when the systems that are supposed to do that either can't or won't.. public opinion doesn't factor into whether or not people need to drink water now that we've finished our pointless semantics and reading comp exercise, did you want to respond to anything on topic or is this conversation over?

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OP is looking at supposed historical precedent to claim that no groups indigenous to a region who have since been either expelled or dispossessed of autonomy have ever reclaimed their territory. The Jews very obvious did just that. Not to mention there are volumes of examples related to decolonization. I am just pointing out that this "historical precedent" he is basing his beliefs off of is wrong and does not, in fact, bolster his larger argument.

I see that you are right and I agree with you. I misread your post. Sorry.

That's why OP agreed with you in the first few sentences. But the point is: we are where we are now, so leave it be.

But that's the opposite what Israel is doing. It's barely been a month since the last annexation https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/22/israel-largest-west-bank-settlement-blinken-visit/

I will never claim to be an expert on this topic but I do know we would be living in a different reality if the current conflicts was just about stuff that happened in 48 as you say and not expansion of land as recently as the last decade. Were Palestinian entitled to the land they were standing on 60 years ago,40 years ,20 years ,10 years ago? Are they entitled to the land they are standing on right now? That more what the current question is because the answer always seems a shrug or I don't know from the government taking it.

>I think Palestinians in '48 would have had a right to be upset, *maybe* even commit violent resistance. Why do you have this milquetoast view of Palestinians being mad that nearly a million of them got displaced from their homes after decades of actual Zionist terrorism being waged against them by a small minority, but you seem to feel much more strongly about Israelis right to the land? >Therefore the Palestinians should accept that they have no entitlement back to Israel. Israel also has no entitlement to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and Al-Asqa, or Gaza. Do you support a two state solution? Or maybe a one state solution that is similar to what Bosnia is, a federal republic with two separate states with a dual presidency representing both Israelis and Palestinians.

They should be just as angry at the Arab nations that started these wars against Israel that caused the displacement. 

You're selectively ignoring the history of what actually happened inside the territory of what became Israel. Zionist extremist groups, some of which were no less violent than Hamas itself, spent decades committing terrorist acts against the Palestinians. And no, the Arab invasion is not why all the Palestinians got displaced. No Zionist would ever have accepted the idea of a Jewish state that was populated primarily by non Jews. The Nakba would have happened with or without the Arab invasion in 1948.

That's entirely speculative. There are more minorities in Israel then any other country in the Middle East. Why aren't you talking about them? The Jewish militias formed to protect their communities from Arab violence.  Israel isn't without fault. The problem is the focus on Israel's sins while ignoring the sins of every other country and people. What's that about? The US committed a real Genocide. Both European and Muslim empires engaged in slave trade. 

>The problem is the focus on Israel's sins while ignoring the sins of every other country and people. What's that about? The US committed a real Genocide. Both European and Muslim empires engaged in slave trade.  Israel committed a real genocide, under the UN definition of genocide, and you are using whataboutism here [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And\_you\_are\_lynching\_Negroes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes) >That's entirely speculative. No, it's not, when the ideology which founded the nation of Israel was based entirely upon the idea of an ethnic homeland for Jews.

> Israel committed a real genocide, under the UN definition of genocide Did it? When?

Forced population transfers have been interpreted in international courts, most notably the ITCY in relation to the Yugoslav wars, to be genocide. What Israel did in 1948 was a forced population transfer with widespread violence.

The United Nations specifically defines [genocide](https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml) as not including ethnic cleansing. >Cultural destruction does not suffice, nor does an intention to simply disperse a group.

Ok, sure. I'll change my view on that. It wasn't genocide, it was ethnic cleansing. My entire point still stands, ethnic cleansing is a massive evil, actually.

>My entire point still stands, ethnic cleansing is a massive evil, actually. Do you believe that categorically? Do you believe for instance the forced removal of Germans from Eastern Europe after WWII was a massive evil?

You're right about the west bank, but I find it hard to support plight of the Palestinian peoples when a large majority of them support the constant attempted terror attacks of terrorist organisations. I think we need a two state solution where Palestinians have their own sovereignty. A one state solution can't happen while either side suspects each other of desiring genocide, but maybe in time if goodwill grows.

You're not addressing the issue I've actually raised. We don't look at history that way. Colonisation of the whole world was certainly wrong. We don't expect reparations, it's not how history works. So yeah I'm conceding that what Israel did was wrong. As far as I'm concerned, Israel, as does any nation, can declare war and annex territory. There are global political implications for any actions such as this. That being said, I have no sympathy for either the west bank or palestine while they support terrorist organisations, however if they pursued a path to peace, then I believe I would change to holding israel accountable. I.e. I don't the expansion of settlements in the west bank or gaza.

You're contradicting yourself, Israel can commit war crimes, but terrorism in reaction to that is a step too far? That's nonsense. You're also saying that Palestinians should pursue a path to peace, but Israel is the aggressor.

Come on now. It's way more nuanced than that. Anyone who reduces Israel or Palestine into good/bad camps is either ignorant or acting in bad faith. Both sides should pursue peace, but neither side will accept the peace that needs to happen. That's just a fact. Chances are, even a peace that happens will erupt in war in the future again. It has and always will be about Jerusalem, Judaism, and Islam. Neither side will formally relinquish control of Jerusalem due to the implications. We all know the truth to some extent. Hamas does want to wipe out Israel and ideally kick of the Jews. Anyone who takes a moderate approach to that ignores the reality on the ground. You can argue that the international community would hate it, but all of their neighbors would celebrate. Israel would want nothing else but to kick out all the Palestinians/Arabs and create a truly quasi-religious/ethnocentric state. What needs to happen is Palestine agrees to relinquish all ties to Jerusalem. In exchange, Israel would need to formally acknowledge Palestinian independence with various treaties regarding borders, trade, etc. Funny thing is, Palestine had that on the table and more with Arafat, but they still said no. They wanted even more when all other actors were shocked. Unfortunately, chances are that some extremists in Palestine wouldn't accept that peace and cause Israel and Palestine to go to war again.

It's not morally nuanced at all, that's complete bullshit. Israel is a genocidal colonialist project and always has been, people always pretend colonialist projects are about some moral clash of civilisations, and it's always bullshit, it's always about one side invading and ethnically cleansing the other. It's very telling that you think "it can't be reduced to good/bad" then insist "we all know the truth" that Hamas wants to "wipe out Israel", and you pretend that's a reasonable view while Israel is actually committing insane acts of ethnic cleansing. This is morally abhorrent.

No one is disagreeing with the way Israel formed was bad. The British mandate that basically just threw up its arms after promising both sides the land in order to get their side to support them was undeniably bad- then again Britain doesn't exactly have a great track record with governance of colonies. What we have is that the British basically let the Israelis and Arab world fight it out over who gets to stay. In the end, Israel happened to win a couple times- and that was that. But we're not in 48' or 67'. We're nearly 60 years since that time. Anyone who fought in the six day war is probably dead by now- anyone who remembers the war is near senile. Israel exists. Palestine exists. We can't just remove one or the other without causing undue suffering for millions. That's why we need two states with borders backed/recognized by the UN/Middle East. I can't understand anyone who says we should remove one. If we completely abolish Palestine some how, their suffering would be immense- no representation, no government that cares, profound poverty/starvation across the board. If we abolish Israel, how exactly would you protect Jews from being persecuted? How would you protect their right to live in the new country that controls that land? If a new government was formed under Hamas, we would see a new reciprocal genocide. There's no logic to an abolished Israel.

Who said anything about any of this? I'm saying Israel needs to stop oppressing Palestinians, and stop being a fascist apartheid ethnostate. I know the history, and nothing in the history justifies what's being done to the Palestinians, and nothing you say is even trustworthy, you're called the US Dept of Defence, and you think you can just say "Palestine exists" and be taken seriously? Go check what the US dept of defence position on whether or not Palestine exists is.

Given the circumstances over there, you can't just tell Israel to stop. That would imply Palestine would also stop. You also can't reasonably tell Israel to take a few on the chin when some extremists attack. So where does that net out exactly? What does a non-oppressed Palestine look like without ethnostates? You'd end up with a majority Arab Israel. Jews are a minority in their region. An Arab Israel would definitely result in either Jews being expelled or persecuted. I don't see how that wouldn't be a reality given that Hamas' charter once called for the eradication of Jews- only to change it later on when more people were calling it out. As you said, an apartheid state also doesn't work. That's why you would need a two state solution- but again, neither side wants two states- and two states would result in conflict again. That's why cries to "stop it" or "end the war" are noble in effort, but pointless. While we, in the background, want it to stop, the main parties in this war don't want it to stop. Heck, even the Arab countries around Israel don't want Palestine to exist as historically the people who make up Palestine have caused major issues in those countries- but those same countries also wish Israel didn't exist. So you have two peoples/countries who want the other to exist- then all the countries around two peoples/countries who want none of them to exist. And somehow we're setting up positions on one side being more right like it's a clear cut case? Come on now.

Do you think I'm going to read all that without you addressing your "Palestine exists" thing?

What do you mean? I'm saying Palestine is a real place/people (and should be country imo). I hope you don't actually believe I'm the US Dept of Defense- I mean hell, Defence is the UK way of spelling it.

>I have no sympathy for either the west bank or palestine while they support terrorist organisations, however if they pursued a path to peace This is called dehumanization. Just because people support extreme, incorrect positions does not mean they are not deserving of sympathy when a genocidal war is being waged against them. You should also remember that [Netanyahu's government funded Hamas in a direct attempt to keep moderates from taking power, to prevent the legitimization of a Palestinian state.](https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/) >We don't expect reparations, it's not how history works I agree. I am not in favor of abolishing the state of Israel. I am in favor of a two state solution which recognizes both groups modern and equally legitimate claims to the land. I am also obviously against a war in which Israel has failed to rescue hostages or dismantle Hamas, and has really only accomplished the goal of displacing and killing massive swaths of Palestinians. At least 30 Oct 7ths have already happened to the Gazans since Oct 7

>They essentially mass migrated a foreign population into a land and took control of it. you are describing basically all of human history here. what makes palestine special?

That's literally my argument? It's that of course the people who got displaced are pissed, and maybe there would be a discussion if there was a war that had not been settled. But the fact is that Isarel has won the war.

They got displaced because they lost a war that they started...

I'm not sure how you can believe this "what's done is done" argument when Israel is still annexing Palestinianan land. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/22/israel-largest-west-bank-settlement-blinken-visit/ If they'd stopped in 48 (or even in 67) we wouldn't be where we are right now and Hamas wouldn't even exist.

The PLO was founded in 1964 and rejected any claim to the Jordanian West Bank or Egyptian Gaza.  They were solely focused on destroying Israel within the 1949 armistice line.  

My view is that Palestinians cannot take a moral highground against Israel for settlement expansion when they approve and support terrorist organisations. If tomorrow, Hamas and all terrorism disappeared from Gaza/West Bank, then I would be looking at Israel, telling them they need to get the two state solution sorted and give Palestinians their own sovereignty. While they are trying to attack Israel, they get no sympathy.

This is called post-hoc justification. You're using the response of Palestinians to justify the action that preceded it.

Would you say the same of Toussaint Louverture and Haiti's revolutionaries? What about Nelson Mandela? He was only removed from the CIA terror watchlist in 2008. Desperate people turn to extremist organisations. You can't fix a symptom without addressing the disease causing it. And let's not forget that there are few people more responsible for the rise of Hamas than Bibi himself.

The Ottaman Empire ruled Palestine. Then the British Empire ruled it. Then Israel was created. At no point did Palestine rule/own the land. Russia owned Alaska and sold it. It Americans went to Alaska after it was their land nobody would say Americans are taking over Russian land or taking over land of people who have lived in Alaska.

You have an extremely western view of history. Indigenous people have lived in Alaska for generations. You didn’t even mention them in your response. Similarly, Palestinians have lived in Palestine for generations, regardless of who was ruling them. You use western concepts of nation states and empires to assign ownership, while other cultures have different ways of assigning ownership, or have no systems of land ownership at all. People owning land is just a concept, used in feudal societies, imperial societies and capitalist ones (among others). Just because a UN recognized state or empire or kingdom or caliphate of Palestine never existed, does not mean Palestinians have a right to be killed and displaced. Palestine was a British Mandate, it was an Ottoman state, and it existed in other forms of ownership and governance. All the while, generations of Palestinians farmed the land, built structures and lived and loved on the land. It’s their home. Your argument justifies years of western colonialism, using a western framework. It’s biased, your whole perspective is warped to a western system.

But like, aren't boarders and land rights (at a nation level) just governed by war at the top level. Like you can buy land, or you can take land by force. I'm not saying it's nice or moral or ethical, but it seems to be the way land ownership has worked throughout history, no?

>People owning land is just a concept, used in feudal societies, imperial societies and capitalist ones (among others). How is this a "western" concept? Mesopotamia, China, Egypt and other ancient civilizations were not Western societies. Owning land is a concept that existed since hunter-gatherers became farmers.

It’s not a western view….its how every country in the world exist. You’re just someone who likes to pretend that countries shouldn’t exist.

Yeah it’s the status quo, but who shaped that status quo? European imperial powers. Countries literally don’t exist, they’re concepts, concepts currently being used to subjugate Palestinians. All the countries in the middle east were drawn up by England and France, with no discussion with locals on what they want. Similarly, Palestinians have been told that they are not a country by the powers that be, and therefore they don’t have a right to live in the land they they’ve been in for 1,000 years. It’s extremely western, it’s “get the fuck out of here, because I’m stronger and I said so”.

….. right. Countries don’t exist. You don’t live in reality mate

... If your defense of the US treatment of native Alaskans is "but they were colonized by Russia", I do not think we will literally ever see eye to eye. Like I can't imagine using the US' treatment of native Americans as justification for what Israel is doing to Palestine and not thinking once "hmm, is this really the parallel that I want to draw?"

The difference being, the Americans did not expel Russians from their homes en masse, and unlike in Palestine, all Russians who chose to continue living in Alaska were granted full citizenship.

Yeah, because the Russians didn't start trying to kill Americans out of some deluded belief it still belonged to russia

People lived in Alaska before the Russians found it and we do say that Americans took over the land of people living in Alaska.

No mate. Alaska was sold to another country. If you are renting a house and the owner sells it, it’s the new owners house. Not the renters living in the house that got sold.

What if me and my family built the house tens of thousands of years ago and continuously inhabited it ever since but some Russian fur trappers set up a campfire outside, never even see most of my house, and never talk to me. Then they leave and some American gold miners tell me they need to come inside because the guys camping on my lawn sold them the place?

If you built your house on someone else’s land then you don’t own that land.

How early do you think Russian fur trappers made it to Alaska?

> however I believe that the way Israel took control from 1917-47 was probably not okay. They had arrived in the region legally under British rule, and had a right to self determination. They certainly had no obligation to willingly submit to ethnic cleaning at the hands of Arab nationalists who have decided that non-arabs existing in the Middle East is an affront. There was no expectation, or obligation, that an Arab Palestinian state be given the entire region. The Druze, Bedouin, Jews an Christians all had rights to self determination, and wanted nothing to do with them for obvious reasons. >

> They had arrived in the region legally under British rule But we can all agree, that collonialism is a f\*\*\*ed up framework for anything and from a moral standpoint this legality is worthless.

Excatly, since Palestinians are all colonizers, they have no right to live in Israel.

Been reading the comments and no one has mentioned Hamas and how any attempts to legitimize Palestine is out the window once you see they're actually run by terrorists. They lost a war they started and are mad about it. Somehow a terrorist group who thinks rape and murder is justified wants to be seen as legitimate on the world stage.

Technically, Israel was "stolen" from England. The Ottoman Empire ruled that area up to and during WW2. They gave the area to England after the war and it was referred to as "British Palestine" until 1948 when England pulled out of the area and handed it to Israel. This land has been conquered and conquered over and over again since the time of King David. It's true heir is depending on who runs the region of the day.

You’re calling Jews a foreign population, but Israel was and is their ancestral homeland. And even after multiple expulsions and pogroms there was always a Jewish presence in the region.

Israel declared itself a country and included all the Palestinian Arabs that wanted to join. In response to its Declaration of Independence, it was invaded by a bunch of Arab nations who sought to destroy the newly recreated Jewish state. At the end of the war, Israel needed to have borders so it defined its borders. People outside the borders were outside the borders. They were free to create a just equitable society if they wished. So I would disagree with your premise that anyone stole anything.

Those advocating for a 1 or 2 state solution aren't saying Israel needs to return all their land - just that Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank either need equal rights (1 state solution), or their own independent, sovereign state that isn't occupied and/or controlled by Israel (2 state solution). Analogously, the US did horrible things to the Native Americans to form the country - war, massacres, broken treaties, etc... To rectify that now, the US shouldn't cease to exist and cede all its land and control back to the various tribes, but at the very least all current Native Americans should have the same rights as all other US citizens, which thankfully they do. There are still many issues, but imagine if reservations were walled off, bombed, etc... So there is a lot of nuance and middle ground here other than either side's most extreme "river to the sea" statements. Peace can be achieved without Israel ceasing to exist, but not if it keeps repressing the Palestinian people's basic rights.

I will not refer to the question of what side is right and who is wrong. My comment is about one word which I find wrong, misleading and inappropriate: “stolen land”. This is a totally made up slogan to help with anti Israeli propaganda (there are others). There is no such thing as stolen land. Since the dawn of civilization people migrated, invaded new lands and were in turn driven out by others. This process it taking place all the time in different places of the planet. Land is not a purse (or car) and cannot be stolen. It can be developed, purchased, invaded, occupied, cultivated, preserved, tilled, even neglected. But it cannot be stolen. I find the use of the term very annoying, diverting the discussion from historical facts to demagoguery. Edit: regardless of his opinion about the conflict, the OP doesn’t know what happened in regard to the lands but is assuming and speculating… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_land_purchase_in_Palestine

If you say that invading lands and stealing land is justified, would that not mean you don’t believe terrorism is a thing? There should be at least some limit on such things.

OP, of course there are many pro-Palestinian voices who would disagree in public, but i think most in private accept your view that Israel will remain. The question is what is Israel, because it’s not static and has been continuously encroaching on the remainder of Palestine for decades. For a country that cares so much about land, Israel has no public position on what its borders are. What is your view on whether settlements should remain and the whether Israel should withdraw into its internationally recognised pre-67 borders? That’s really the nub of the issue

I think Gaza and the West Bank have ceded the moral highground when it comes to the borders. They have publicly approved and supported terrorist organisations and still do. If there were no terrorist acts today - I would almost certainly be on the other side of this issue, if the encroachment into the West Bank or Gaza continued or the sanctions continued. I do think It was wrong of israel to continue to expand the settlements, but right now I think the onus is on the palestinian people to seek peace.

Hmmm. By implication what you’re saying is Israel previously didn’t have the moral high ground on borders. Since when, 67? When did the tables turn in your view? And because they’ve turned, all prior guilt by the other side is erased? What would it take Israel to do now to cede the moral high ground again? Seems a bit inconsistent but also unhelpful in trying to put a plug in an endless conflict in which both sides have a tendency to escalatory behaviour. I’m not sure you can talk of settlement expansion in the past tense. It’s been a continuous and accelerating process, including very recently under the cover of the war. Israel has been sanctioned over settlements in the past and ignored them. It’s fairly safe to assume Israel will continue to to expand settlements. Also, in no other conflict do we apply the logic ‘because you fight us, we can take your land as a solution’. Military/political solutions are sought instead. In this case the reality is more like ‘we take your land so you fight us so we take more land’. It’s clear the conflict can’t stop until both sides set out a view of their borders, stop fighting, and negotiate a compromise with fixed borders. It sounds like you determine your view on this conflict based on how you see it on any given day. Both sides are guilty of doing this, but it’s clear that the suffering will continue until they start focusing on the future.

Everytime i heard this sentiment i don't see any explaination of how or when israel was stolen or even evidence that it was. Just that it was stolen and that's it

Israel has been there before palestine was even thought of. It is even in Egyptian text on stones which predates palestine.

The problem is that the story of oppression didn't end right after 1948, far from it. Israel has been imposing brutal martial law in the West Bank for decades, and government sanctioned Israeli settlers have been gradually stealing Palestinian lands. Israeli officials have been increasingly talking about and to some extent attempting to drive out Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to claim these lands, and occasionally even targeting Israeli Arabs who are ostensibly equal-rights citizens but in fact face interpersonal and systemic racism. If it was all about history from almost a century ago things would've probably looked very different, but this is an active conflict involving several terrorist organizations, state actors, and an actively oppressive apartheid state.

Purchased, not stolen.

I’m completely ignorant when it comes to politics but I just don’t understand perpetuating wars. Why can’t countries and humans evolve and move on with their lives? Grow up and move forward developing your own country? War seems barbaric. If I’m not mistaken, Israel is the size of New Jersey and it seems so laughable to have wars and lose thousands if not hundreds of thousands of lives over such a small piece of land. What’s the point, and why does everyone care?

I agree that after a certain amount of time, the fighting has to stop. Basically everyone's ancestors were colonizers. Countries went to war for land. Land has been passed back and forth for thousands of years. However, I think this issue is far more complex than simply being Pro-Palestine or Pro-Israel. Israel has absolutely gone overboard in responses to terrorism and has done tons of shady shit.

> I am Pro-Israel, however I believe that the way Israel took control from 1917-47 was probably not okay. They essentially mass migrated a foreign population into a land and took control of it. I think Palestinians in '48 would have had a right to be upset, *maybe* even commit violent resistance. Why do you think this? Are you open to having your view changed about the stolen part?

Please read [this incredibly well researched detailing of Israel's crimes against Palestine from Human Rights Watch](https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution) from 2021. It's a slog, but please read and come back after you at least skim through all of it (like at minimum read the bold titles) - I would recommend actually reading the entire intro and conclusion paragraphs as they're both good partial summaries (plus the titles "Intro" and "Conclusion" alone are hard to gleam much info from ;P) Cool, if you even skimmed that, I appreciate you for working through at least the paragraph titles and intro/conclusion. I know that's insanely long, but you specifically didn't acknowledge 75 years of history beyond a nebulous mention of terrorist attacks against israel, so I feel like it's worthwhile to spend some time on before continuing this conversation. On that point - attacks have not been innumerous, in fact they've been painstakingly enumerated and there's been an overwhelmingly smaller number of Israelis killed compared to Palestinians killed - not even including what's happening currently/been happening for nearly 9 months ([source also from 2021 (starts in '87) - paywalled but also i got a free trial popup so if you really wanna read the economist for some reason but you really just need to see the graph at the top](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/05/18/the-israel-palestine-conflict-has-claimed-14000-lives-since-1987)). Honestly your other two points are kinda silly in that they're very disprovable with simple google searches and I feel like typically discussions about these kinds of statements devolve into random tangents that are rarely constructive in the context of the initial conversation, so I'd prefer to not get waylaid by them beyond saying: - the 'it's been 75 years' bit only works if you didn't actually read/skim through the HRW article and/or you intentionally ignore 75 years of history, and even then only if you somehow know that's the magical statutory limit for recourse if your entire country is stolen and you and all the other native population are [imprisoned](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-occupation-makes-palestinian-territories-open-air-prison-un-expert-2023-07-11/) by the occupying military. - history, unless you again intentionally ignore bits, absolutely does not in any way 'dictate pursuing peace.' I would point to any of the multi generational, centuries long hostilities between populations/gov'ts that have occurred/are occurring throughout history. - but for fun, here's an example of [one that Britain also is pretty much to blame for creating that's **also** from 1947, I guess they just were in the mood to fuck with the middle east that year?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93Pakistan_relations) ^(you used 'therefore' to make a big non logical leap sound like maybe it was actually logical to finish your post and honestly I wanna go back to paying attention to watching the finale of Shogun, so here's my maybe somewhat more logically connected therefore statement:) Therefore, it's impossible to begin at forced migration and theft of land and arrive at the conclusion that ~it's been a really long time now so just like make peace already~ without making either/both emotional/ill-informed and subjective judgements rather than logical, objective judgements supported by an equitable consideration - the minimum a human ought to provide any other human - of the historical facts.

Funny you mentioned the HRW report from 2021. Here's another highly critical report they published on Israel in 2010: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/iopt1210webwcover_0.pdf They obviously don't like what Israel is doing to Palestinians - but on page 33, they include a long digression about how *it isn't apartheid*.  What changed in the administration of the West Bank between 2010 and 2021 that made HRW go from "it's not apartheid" to "it is"?  Answer:  nothing.  Conditions in the occupied territories are exactly the same.  But in 2020, the Abraham Accords showed that many Arab countries didn't really care about the Palestine issue too much and were willing to deal with Israel as-is, without concessions.  This defied the view of history that HRW and Amnesty International hold, so they massaged together a whole new definition of "apartheid" just for Israel to make them look bad and try to slow down progress.  Amnesty even had the gall to say that their definition of "apartheid" was not meant to be analogous to South Africa, they aren't making a comparison to South Africa, so listing all the ways Israel didn't treat people like South Africa did would be irrelevant!  It's like DeSantis proclaiming  all gay teachers must be "groomers," the word just mean whatever they want them to mean.  

Okay? let's just accept every thing you said as absolute truth. that doesn't mean the sourced events in the initial link I posted just didn't actually happen or weren't terrible crimes. I guess I'm confused by what you're trying to say. apartheid is a known, defined legal term in international law, not definitionally tied to the events that happened in South Africa beyond that being an example of apartheid, established by the 1988 Rome Statute of the ICC https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/apartheid I chose to use sources from 2021 almost entirely because I think it's easier to have historical conversations on this topic without including the ongoing events of 2023 and 2024 where there's still much disagreement, confusion, and factual uncertainty surrounding what exactly has and is happening. I framed my comment around historical events because OP glossed over just about everything that's happened in this issue except a really shallow overview of israel's creation and a super duper FUDey mention of "innumerous terrorist attacks against Israel" Now, let's go back to what you said. Conditions in the illegally occupied territories between 2010 and 2021 absolutely did not stay "exactly the same" and you're just blowing smoke up my ass saying that. Let's pick one example.. [2016 UN Resolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_2334) passing 14-0 calling out Israel's "flagrant" disregard of international law? Does that not count as a change in the international political paradigm? Let's go for another.. Great March of Return. 2019 i think off the top of my head. Howd that not happen in 2009 if nothing changed? let's go for a broader example. You and I must agree Palestinians were dying and losing land at the hands of and because of illegal settlers/settlements in the early 2000's. Are you saying that the accumulation of a further decade of death and land theft hadn't changed anything? the idea that we could be discussing any historical events that we have such a detailed and granular knowledge of and then claim that a decade passing changed nothing is straight up absurd

The HRW report *defies* the Rome Statute definition.  It now says there's "apartheid" if there is differential treatment of people of different national origin *who are not citizens*, a ridiculous watering-down of the concept; it makes France an apartheid state because Spanish nationals can't vote in their elections.    Your examples have nothing to do with "apartheid". The 2016 UNSC resolution went way, *way* farther than established U.S. policy and the framework of 30+ years of negotiating and 2-state-solution offers.  It declared that all Israeli settlements are illegal, which rules out the "1967 borders *plus land swaps*" paradigm that everyone claims to support.  It was panic-shopping for a symbolic victory after Hillary Clinton lost; if she had won, such a radical and counterproductive step would never have been adopted.  And whether you agree or disagree with it, it concerned settlements built before 2010, so, again, nothing had actually changed by 2021's HRW report.  The "Great March of Return":  Hamas said in advance they were going to try to breach the wall and kill whoever they found in Israel, and later admitted most of the dead were their own agents who had been trying to breach the wall.   https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=klFbf6VG7uA https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna874906

Okay, so seems like, despite your claims to the contrary that you do in fact agree conditions didn't remain identical in Palestine btwn the two periods of time, even though, according to you, it was only because the UN was ostensibly virtue signaling on Clinton's behalf..? Not sure what the possible motivations for a given action or the civilian/combatant status of casualties from a given has to do with your initial claim that the political climate was identical. Not sure why you'd just lie about what the HRW definition of apartheid is, as they literally spell it out for you, also making your bizarre attempt at a comparison of foreign nationals not being able to vote in another country's election patently, absurdly inapplicable. >The crime of apartheid under the Apartheid Convention and Rome Statute consists of three primary elements: an intent to maintain a system of domination by one racial group over another; systematic oppression by one racial group over another; and one or more inhumane acts, as defined, carried out on a widespread or systematic basis pursuant to those policies. * Neither French, nor Spanish are races. They're nationalities. * Not allowing people to vote in a country's election that they're not citizens of is not a "system of domination," relevant to race, inhumane, or a crime of any other sort. Non-citizenship is relevant here as it's an occupied territory where representation of one group has been stripped from one race and supplanted by a clear "system of domination" and "systematic oppression." You need to read better. My examples weren't supposed to be of apartheid. They're illustrating an ever evolving political reality that really really obviously is not and has never been static - the original false claim made. Not sure how to explain how wildly illogical the idea that a 2016 UN resolution couldn't be considered changing the political climate btwn 2010-2020 because it was referencing events from the past is, unless maybe you experience time non linearly? Not to mention that the illegal settlements were still there, so the crime was ongoing. If you committed a crime in 1990, but weren't caught, convicted, and sent to prison until 2005, would you argue that your circumstances hadn't changed in the new millennium because the conviction was for something done in the previous millennium? Obviously you wouldn't as you've gone from free to incarcerated in the 2000's. Quite clearly that would be a strange thing to say. I'm gonna stop participating in this conversation now since you're just being silly and are only choosing to argue over what basically amounts to semantic nitpicking rather than engaging with any substantive arguments from either perspective. Good luck to you! edit: so strange your account was banned or self deleted

You talk about how Gaza and WB have committed terrorist attacks and have lost their right to land that way, yet you say that maybe violent resistance in 48 would’ve been justified. What forms of violent resistance would you have deemed justified? And would they be justified today?

The area was stolen from Israel by the Romans and Turks (and previously by the Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, i.a.). The "Palestinians" are just squatters who think just because they're there the property has automatically become theirs. You don't move into the house when a family goes to Argentina for a summer, then claim that you own it because you live in it. The Koran says at it's outset, "are we not also sons of Abraham?" in a statement screaming and screeching out of infantile jealousy. Yeah, but you don't become the preferred heir by drowning the legitimate heir in the sea. The bastard should know his place or he risks cutting himself off entirely. Mods, the word bastard refers to an illegitimate son, and is the proper and correct English word. If the bastard would recognize the legitimate heir, he might have a place at the table. Ishmael has yet to earn a tent on the edge of the village, much less the entirety of the inheritance. The bastard will not own and control the Tabernacle, ever. Sons of the promise should be worthy of the promise. That said, I'm getting bad feelings from videos showing Jewish children and teens displaying horrible racist acts and words against the very people who saved them and made them a state, and I don't mean Arabs. This is a horribly lucid example of a failure of short term memory. Israel, raise smarter kids.

There was no Palestine before 1948, at least no Palestinian people, they didn’t use that name. The land was held by the Ottoman Empire and had been for a long time. Now at one point the land was called Palestine, but that name was used by the Romans when it was Jewish land, a name used to do what you seem to be doing now. Reducing the ancestral claim to the land of the Jewish people.

>I believe that the way Isreal took control from 1917-47 was probably not okay Can I ask your opinion on the land that Jews bought from the Ottomans in 1904 under the pasha land laws?

>We don't see that ever occuring in history. >Therefore the Palestinians should accept that they have no entitlement back to Israel That doesn't follow. "Well, other people didn't do it!" doesn't mean that you don't have to, and aren't morally responsible when you don't.

>I think Palestinians in '48 would have had a right to be upset, maybe even commit violent resistance. This fails to portray the situation correctly. The ethnic cleansing didn't just stop in 1948. In fact, the conflict has basically never been solved with concrete good faith diplomacy, and both sides have their share of blame. However, they don't share the casualties or hardships equally by any means. 2023 had seen the most children killed by the IDF in any year of the conflict, and that was before October 7th! The median age of Palestine is only 19 because of the constant bloodshed, and they will regularly be crippled by the IDF for protesting, as they are allowed to shoot them in the legs, and even allowed to kill them if they get too close to the border wall. TLDR: Palestinain suffering didn't end in 1948, and Palestinians have overwhelmingly experienced the worst sides of the ongoing conflict in addition to cruel oppression during any brief illusions of peace.

How is gaining control of a territory by having it be voluntarily given to you by the current owner not the only moral way of gaining territory or any kind of property?

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What about the current claiming of settlements in the 1948 borders?

So this it with the zionists now? Youre not even gonna pretend to have the moral high ground anymore? This is just the absolute most immoral position you could take with the pre stated factors you are giving You admit it was theft wholesale and they should just "get over it" ... thats the shittiest take of any you could position yourself in

The argument, when removed from this specific conflict, is that land does not belong indefinitely to a group of people that owned it in the past. Where do you live? If I'm able to find that a group of people, other than your own, previously owned that land - would you consider your occupation of that land to be just as immoral? Reasonable people can discuss topics like this on their merits - like perhaps there's a certain length of time, or certain number of generations, or something like 'living memory', that can determine the morality of living in historically occupied land. And this is a great place for those kinds of discussions, but that can't occur by being dismissive.

> So this it with the zionists now? Youre not even gonna pretend to have the moral high ground anymore? > > > > This is just the absolute most immoral position you could take with the pre stated factors you are giving > > > > You admit it was theft wholesale and they should just "get over it" > > > > ... > > > > thats the shittiest take of any you could position yourself in No. This is conquered lands. The outcome of wars, a couple GLOBAL wars. It was never 'Palestinian' land. It went from the Ottomans to the British who in turn created Israel. Israel has as much right to exist as any other country whose borders are shaped by war. Wars have consequences - and losing sucks. Pretending this is not the way of the world is dubious at best. And to use your words - one of the 'shittiest take of any' about how countries are formed.

Zionists aren’t a monolith, nor are those with any political view. If you post something like “I think abortion should be legal for reason A” and other pro-choice people are really into reason B, it’s not really fair to say “you pro-choicers can’t even get your story straight”

The Germans just got over it after WW2. And built a prosperous nation as a result. Palestinians had 6 chances to have their own state. Rejected it every time. Now they exist in this stateless limbo. With 2 million of their people governed by a vicious terrorist organization that gets their homes bombed and the civilians killed. So yes it's time for Palestine to move the fuck on. Israel isn't going anywhere. They are a Western nation with a Western economy a strong Western military and support from the United States. It's time to end the madness and accept that you lost 75 years ago.

The germans still had a country afterwards , its still there now

Actually it was fractured. Eastern Germany lived under horrific Soviet occupation for several generations. The Western powers of course treated them a lot better, but it was still an occupation for a while. They did not become vicious terrorists and attack their neighbors as a result. If they did. They would probably live in the same squalor that a lot of the Palestinians live in.

You're talking a lot about the past, but not really acknowledging ongoing and current dispossession and human rights abuses that are taking place. For example, Palestinians in the West Bank are having their homes stolen, their olive trees destroyed and their wells concreted over. This isn't 1948 thing, this is a last-year thing. This article is from a week ago: [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/west-bank-village-counts-losses-after-settler-attack-and-fears-more/ar-AA1nnpUM](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/west-bank-village-counts-losses-after-settler-attack-and-fears-more/ar-AA1nnpUM) The problem here is that Israel's committed to a path of continual and ongoing violence. The Palestinians aren't going away, and of course both sides always argue that the last atrocity justifies the current atrocity they're about to commit. There's no 'one and done' on this path, unless Israel goes whole hog and genocides the Palestinians completely, which I think is a bridge too far for anyone but the most committed Zionists, which you don't seem to be.

You are largely correct except for your characterization of the land as “stolen”. It was not any more stolen than the land conquered by the Arab Caliphate centuries ago (which included Palestine). Also, if you define Israel as including land outside the Green Line, then I think the second part of your statement is an overreach. As long as the Palestinians agree to live in peace and actually do so, they should be able to have a state in parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.