Israeli–Palestinian conflict

[OzyWho]

I'm having trouble understanding this conflict.
This is what I gather so far:

• The Balfour Declaration: a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during the First World War announcing support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine (Region, not country. Both: todays "State of Palestine" and "State of Israel".).
• On 14 May 1948 the Jewish People's Council gathered and proclaimed the establishment of a Jewish state to be known as the State of Israel.
• Immediately following the declaration of the new state, US President Harry S. Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin recognized the new state.
• State of Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the Six-Day War of 1967.
• On 28 October 1974, the 1974 Arab League summit held in Rabat, reaffirmed the right for the people of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to establish an independent state.
• The Palestinian Declaration of Independence formally established the State of Palestine on 15 November 1988.
• The State of Palestine is a de jure sovereign state, recognized by 139 UN member states, in the Middle East consisting of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
• The State of Palestine is a de facto occupied by State of Israel since aforementioned 1967.
• Hamas was founded after the "First Intifada", which was a protest by Palestinians in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. (1987–1993)
• On Saturday 7 October 2023 (a Sabbath day and date of several Jewish holidays Hamas began its offensive - which it named "Operation Al Aqsa Storm".
• The rest is ongoing conflict. So far there's about 5 times more Palestinians dead than Israelis, but the Palestinians tend to use more ungentlemanly warfare.

I don't wish to attempt wrapping my head around how did it come to a sovereign state being inside another sovereign state, with different religions no less.
What I am interested in, and what I don't understand:
- why doesn't State of Israel just stop occupying the territories of State of Palestine?
- are they actually occupying them still? all sources say they are, but why would Hamas attack Israelis outside of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip?
- if they are, why are Hamas labeled as "Terrorists" by all our media (other than their ungentlemanly warfare) if all they do is fight for their independence? Independence that's recognized by 139 UN states no less.

[Marshmallow Marshall]

I'm not sure I'm informed enough to answer, but I'll try and will gladly be corrected if someone can further our understanding. Your summary seems pretty good btw ^^

I'm pretty sure both Israel and Palestine believe they are the rightful owners of the Holy Land, basically, so neither side wants to back down. The difference between the two, as highlighted by your summary, is that Israel was established recently and pretty much pushed the local Arabs out, which isn't very nice, to say the least. And now, the big problem is that Israelis happen to also be established there for like 75 years, which means they were born there, and it's likely their parents and grandparents were too. So now it's a bit like Königsberg/Kaliningrad, except the different peoples there don't have the same religion, worldview, and fundamentally hate eachother's guts. The State of Israel doesn't recognize the State of Palestine, and thus basically considers Palestinians as rebels in theory (even though reality prevents them from actually acting accordingly). Thus, Israel is pretty much never going to stop occupying Palestine unless NATO orders it to do so - which really seems to be the only chance at a durable peace that does not involve a genocide (if there's noone left to wage war, there's peace... but that's not a viable or a moral "solution" in any way lol).

Hamas considers itself at war against Israel. When you're at war, especially when you couldn't care less about human rights, international rules, etc., you don't exactly limit yourself to specific regions.

Hamas is labeled as a terrorist group because their "ungentlemanly warfare" means intentional murder of innocent civilians through horrible ways in order to frighten the enemy and make him yield to their demands. That's the definition of terrorism, so yes, they absolutely are terrorists, which is wrong. It doesn't instantly make their cause illegitimate, though, which might be why you're feeling strange about it; the dominant rhetoric is that since terrorism = evil, whatever terrorists defend = bad, which isn't necessarily the case : terrorism is an illegitimate means to wage war/pressure countries, but it remains merely a means, not the end in itself (cf. the IRA, which used very questionable methods in order to achieve a perfectly legitimate goal, Irish independance).

Hopefully that makes sense lol.

[OzyWho]

Yeah, you make a ton of sense.

A small addition to what you said: one other reason for why Hamas are called terrorists is their first and primary stated goal - "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."
(though for most people it's enough that there's a section for "Torture and mutilation" on this conflict's Wiki)

Btw, looking at why Holy Land is significant to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - I saw this quote from the Quran: "O my people! Enter the holy land which Allah hath assigned unto you, and turn not back ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin"
Depending on how serious they are about their religion, I feel like this could make a war over Israel inevitable?

[Marshmallow Marshall]

Yeah, you make a ton of sense.

A small addition to what you said: one other reason for why Hamas are called terrorists is their first and primary stated goal - "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."
(though for most people it's enough that there's a section for "Torture and mutilation" on this conflict's Wiki)

Btw, looking at why Holy Land is significant to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - I saw this quote from the Quran: "O my people! Enter the holy land which Allah hath assigned unto you, and turn not back ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin"
Depending on how serious they are about their religion, I feel like this could make a war over Israel inevitable?

Oh wow, I had never taken the time to go all the way down to primary sources on the matter... Yeah, as long as Hamas will be the leading force on the Arab side, there is absolutely no chance for peace whatsoever lol, as they're striving towards a shamelessly stated illegitimate goal with their woefully illegitimate means...

Regarding the Holy Land: it's the Promised Land for the people of Israel (in its biblical sense, i.e. the people from the patriarch Jacob, renamed Israel), which means getting there is like a supreme goal for the faithful, in a way, since it's part of the Covenant. (Stuff like the Temple of Jerusalem happens to have been there too, but it's a consequence of the former.) Christians share that view and add to it that Jesus lived there and did his miracles there. As for Muslims... well, they sort of share that view, since they also have their own version of the Bible. There's also that Muhammad ascended to heaven from Temple Mount (iirc it's from the Dome of the Rock, but I can't find the source), making Jerusalem Islam-holy in its own right.

Regarding that quote making war inevitable: There are lots of conflicting interpretations regarding holy texts. One could always interpret this in a way favourable to peace (just send some people to live there under the state of Israel!), especially considering metaphorical interpretations open pretty much all possible gates. But of course, there will always be warmongerers...

[MartinGG99]

Oh wow, I had never taken the time to go all the way down to primary sources on the matter... Yeah, as long as Hamas will be the leading force on the Arab side, there is absolutely no chance for peace whatsoever lol, as they're striving towards a shamelessly stated illegitimate goal with their woefully illegitimate means...

Regarding the Holy Land: it's the Promised Land for the people of Israel (in its biblical sense, i.e. the people from the patriarch Jacob, renamed Israel), which means getting there is like a supreme goal for the faithful, in a way, since it's part of the Covenant. (Stuff like the Temple of Jerusalem happens to have been there too, but it's a consequence of the former.) Christians share that view and add to it that Jesus lived there and did his miracles there. As for Muslims... well, they sort of share that view, since they also have their own version of the Bible. There's also that Muhammad ascended to heaven from Temple Mount (iirc it's from the Dome of the Rock, but I can't find the source), making Jerusalem Islam-holy in its own right.

Regarding that quote making war inevitable: There are lots of conflicting interpretations regarding holy texts. One could always interpret this in a way favourable to peace (just send some people to live there under the state of Israel!), especially considering metaphorical interpretations open pretty much all possible gates. But of course, there will always be warmongerers...

I didn't realize we had a thread about this. So I figured I would share a written work by Adam Something who, to my knowledge (I could be fallible in this), is often correct.

People keep asking me for Israel-Palestine coverage. I don't think I'll be covering the issue in-depth, as I don't think I could add much to the discourse, including because I'm not that well-versed in it. Instead, I'll write a community post about it.

Disclaimer: "Hamas" is not a synonym for "Palestinians", nor are "Israel" or "the Israeli government" synonyms for "Jewish people". Claiming the former is anti-Arab, while claiming the latter is antisemitic.

The way I see it, Middle Eastern Viktor Orban, a.k.a. Netanyahu barricaded 2.5 million people inside an open-air concentration camp, surrounded by walls, with 40% unemployment, to be ruled over by a far-right Islamist terror group. Netanyahu also supported Hamas in order to sabotage the more moderate West Bank Palestinian government's attempts at creating a full-fledged Palestinian state. So there's that, too. You can google all that if interested.

In the middle of all this, Gaza and its inhabitants were just kind of there, forgotten by global audiences. Tensions were rising, poverty, suffering and hopelessness slowly grew Hamas' numbers. Predictably this resulted in violence: a particularly heinous attack on Israeli civilians.

Now that the far-right terror group (that Netanyahu also propped up, google it) did what far-right terror groups do, Netanyahu received a full international mandate to retaliate. And in the process, he gets to enact his ethno-nationalist policies, i.e. to kick the Palestinians out of Gaza. He's already been doing this in the West Bank by building Israeli settlements, breaking international law.

Benjamin Netanyahu is a Holocaust revisionist, who directly assisted the far-right, ethno-nationalist governments of Hungary and Poland when they tried erasing their countries’ history of open collaboration with Nazis. Netanyahu himself alleged that the Holocaust happened after the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini flew to Berlin, and personally convinced Hitler to exterminate Jews in Europe. Otherwise Netanyahu is currently in coalition with the far-right Otzma Yehudit party among others, whose openly stated goal is to ethnically cleanse Israel from Arabs.
(EDIT: as many of you pointed out, Poland wasn't "openly" collaborating with nazis, though collaboration obviously did happen, and the then far-right Polish government did try to whitewash it. Hungary was a whole other category in terms of the collaboration's scale and energy.)

Israel is led by just another far-right, authoritarian government. Even if they defeat Hamas completely now, with time I fear they'll turn Israel into just another Middle Eastern dictatorship, which, might I remind you, Netanyahu was in the process of doing even before Hamas attacked.

This war is just a conflict between two far-right governments and their militaries, with regular people caught in the middle, as usual.

All that being said, I personally oppose Hamas and the Israeli government, and support Palestinians in their struggle for statehood. That's because I oppose far-right movements, and I am in favor of international law. For the same reason I am in support of Ukrainians, and in opposition to the Russian government.

In a better world, following the Arab-Israeli war, Israel could have decided to become a modern, democratic melting pot of the Middle East. Where being “Israeli” wasn’t forcefully connected to being “Jewish” by proponents of ethnic nationalism, just like how European Neo-Nazis connect being “European” to being white. In that world, there would be no “Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip”. They would all be Israelis, living in the Israeli cities of Gaza, Rafah, and so on, free to move about their shared country. This would have taken the wind out of far-right Islamist movements' sails too, i.e. there would be no Hamas.

If you believe Arabs wouldn't be able to peacefully coexist with Jews*, you've fallen for far-right propaganda intended to keep those ethnicities separate. Regular Arabs and Jews just want to live their lives, and have to be radicalized by far-right movements in order to go at each others' throats.

Despite the Israeli government's openly far-right and Orban-esque politics, many people seem to support them who otherwise oppose governments like Orban's or Putin's. The tragic reality of the situation is, footage of injured and crying Israeli party-goers in the desert goes a longer way in building sympathy than a dry report on a hundred dead Palestinian civilians following an Israeli airstrike.

For those of us who do not wish to form our opinions based on a hysterical, sensationalist 24-hour news cycle, we have the opportunity to rely on our overarching political views, and our moral compass instead.

My overarching views include opposition to far-right movements and strongman leaders, and support for democracy and international law. I also believe ethnic nationalism is immoral, and that people of all ethnicities can peacefully coexist within the same borders.

These are some of my core beliefs, and I trust them to guide me through the world.

I just wish more people were consistent with their values. Like when pro-Russian tankies, who openly supported Putin genociding Ukrainians, suddenly care deeply about the plight of Palestinians. Or when some liberals and conservatives who oppose the Putin regime suddenly support Netanyahu and his government.

(*EDIT 2: I originally wrote "If you believe Arabs wouldn't be able to peacefully coexist with Israelis". What I actually meant was "with Jews". It's insane how much "Israeli" and "Jewish" got artificially connected inside our heads. Let's not fall for far-right newspeak, let's be mindful of our language.)

[scumbot5679]

So I've been reading about this lately, mostly to educate myself a little and maybe not look totally ignorant when posting in this topic. As Marshall points out, the modern state of Israel hasn't been around that long but we do know that the Jewish people were living there when the Romans annexed the area in the first century. And there was an Iron Age Kingdom of Israel and Jueda. So if the question is "who was there first?" then I think its clearly the "jews". Islam didn't even exist until the 7th century. Although it seems like both groups are descended from local semite tribes and the biblical tradition is that both groups are descended from half brothers. (though that last part might be more Quran than Bible) MM does a pretty good job of answering Ozzy's questions but I wanted to add a maybe more...historical context, though I'm not claiming to be a historian or anything.

I think I was already a little bias since I feel like Israel has the right to defend itself or retaliate when attacked and its citizens are killed and captured. I did go back and forth a bit but I think I'm still more pro-israel/anti-hamas after reading and listening to youtube stuffs.

I also think that the guy Martin is quoting is fairly wrong.

[Marshmallow Marshall]

By the way, anyone actually supporting Hamas itself is quite... strange, in my opinion. I mean, that means supporting the terrorist part of Palestine. The whole grey area is about the legitimacy of Palestine itself, as distinct (while related) to Hamas, and not about "is it right to use civilians as meat shields, to hide below hospitals", etc., considering I'm pretty sure there is a consensus that this is utterly immoral, regardless of one's stance on the conflict.

[Helz]

if they are, why are Hamas labeled as "Terrorists" by all our media (other than their ungentlemanly warfare) if all they do is fight for their independence? Independence that's recognized by 139 UN states no less.

This is an issue I focus on quite a bit. Western propaganda has an awful habit of assigning labels to spin situations in a specific light. I personally do not believe that Israel's response is any less 'ungentlemanly warfare.' They had massive bombing campaigns into the Gaza strip with absolute disregard for civilian lives. Regardless of the 'how we got here' I feel like the optics of the situation are pretty intentionally skewed. Those groups have been doing awful things to etch other for a very long time and we just happen to back one side over the other.

[Helz]

Had an interesting conversation with a 2 star in a cigar lounge today. His take was essentially that the fact Israel hosts a US Missile-defense base in a key strategic area makes Israel an important ally to America and for that reason its necessary to curve the populations view of the country to allow US support against their enemies.

[OzyWho]

Imho, since the war 'started' in October, Israel has gone full old testament on Palestine

• by the end of the year, 65,000 homes were destroyed, forcibly displacing 1.9 million Palestinians. In addition, 76 healthcare facilities, 370 schools, 115 mosques and three churches were damaged or destroyed.
• "In Gaza, 27 people – 23 of them children – have starved to death as a result of what international bodies say is Israel’s use of hunger as a weapon of war. Israel is limiting aid to some 2.3 million trapped and besieged Palestinians in Gaza, pushing 1.1 million people into “catastrophic hunger”, with 300,000 people trapped in northern Gaza facing famine."

We've seen how Russia's leadership can't go back on any of their words with regards to their war in Ukraine.
Is the leadership of the West is any better with regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

[scumbot5679]

not trying to be rude here but I'm not quite sure what exactly you are asking. It could just be on me and I'm too dumb to get it so I'll ramble on and maybe I'll hit the nail on the head.

I, or at least think I do, understand the war in Israel more than I do the war in Ukraine. It's just a land grab since Putin wants to restore the USSR?

Hamas, who is backed by Iran, and wants the destruction of Israel, goaded Israel into attacking them by commiting a terrorist attack and killed and raped innocent civilians. But we know that.

The US has been allies with Israel since forever? and I think people still broadly back Israel. We passed a bill that included more funding for Israel and Ukraine but our president has threatened to withold some of the funding for Israel and his administration has accused Israel of war crimes.

Currently here in the U.S. there are lots of pro Palestien protests on campus.

[scumbot5679]

just a small update but the ICC has issued a warrant for Israel offiicals. Biden told em to F off.

[Marshmallow Marshall]

just a small update but the ICC has issued a warrant for Israel offiicals. Biden told em to F off.

This situation, and especially the rhetoric of "Terrorist Hamas and Israel [or more accurately, the Israeli government, but noone ever says that] should not be put on the same level", is especially interesting. It's like people want to have at least one "good side" to identify with, even if that means supporting objectively wrong stuff (state-orchestrated attacks on civilians, devastation, and general overtolerance towards colonization). I am obviously not saying Hamas is any better, but two wrongs don't make one right. There needs to be some recognition that both sides suffer from grave moral issues, and that inconditional support to either side (which is what countries are widely doing, with the West backing Israel in spite of all their shortcomings) is actually immoral.

Between two bloodhounds, there is no moral choice to support either of them. The only moral course of action is arbitration, which means the US, as the leader of the West, need to express clear conditions to supporting Israel (i.e. pure defense or strictly military-on-military operations with minimal consequences on civilians), and cut the support if Israel does not comply. Besides, Israel's current approach is entirely irrational and only fuels the fire; it does not even match the state's rational interest, and Netanyahu seems to be using the war to keep himself in power through the support of the jingoistic Israeli right wing. This should not be ignored by Israel's allies: they are allied to the state, not to the crook who's in office at the moment and who's likely to be ousted from his position by his own people.

[scumbot5679]

We heard you the first time! :P

[Marshmallow Marshall]

We heard you the first time! :P

Lol! The site bugged and didn't want to let me post, or so I thought. I guess it really just tried to fool me into thinking that so that I'd double-post