by aprilthird2021 | 2025-04-17 01:26:32+00:00
I will skip over the "withdrew so not de facto control, etc." we are both aware of the history and the level of control Israel can and does exercise over Gaza. Your main point is:

> Being under a blockade by a state doesn't make a region part of that state.

But I'm not saying it's a part of Israel. I'm saying the people of Gaza are subjects of the state of Israel because their lives are de facto controlled by Israel, and must be so for Israel to exist at all. Israel must control them and must also not allow them political power or it's ethnic minority democracy cannot exist in the combined region. I think you can agree with that sentiment. Both sides will obviously have different characterizations of who is to blame for this state of affairs, but blame back into history is a fruitless game, and this is the state of affairs, yes? Can we find common ground on that?

> So it's not that anyone is suggesting replacing the Jewish state with something more enlightened, but rather always for something worse.

No one is advocating for a Palestinian supremacist state to replace a Jewish supremacist one. It is a useless effort to replace one form of wrong with the same form of wrong in a different shade of blue.

The 2 state and 1 state solutions are precipiced on equal rights. Either within the same state or in separate states of mutual defensibility (e.g. detente).

> So it's not as if this law matters for the purpose of this discussion. Also, they are not kings, they are normal citizens like everyone else, including the Arabs.

No, it does matter. It is entirely the reason for which Jewish people have rights over Arabs. No Arabs can move to Israel and kick someone out of their West Bank home. Only Jews can do that. Arabs can never be allowed to be the majority voting populace of Israel. Only Jews can do that. That is what makes it an ethnostate, and compounded onto that is that it is an ethnostate where a minority rule over the majority which they keep in a blockaded area away from them.

> It's also not sanctioned by Israel, but in some times in its history (including nowadays) the government turns a blind eye or even encourages it.

I think we agree there. It's not okay, but the state sometimes (like right now, when legalizing illegal settlements to "punish" the Palestinians collectively) encourages it.

> Also, I've lived in Europe, the US, and Israel, and I can tell you that at least from my experience that's bullshit. Safe doesn't just mean death, it also means harassment and non lethal physical harm.

Fair enough. The feeling of safety may be there. But the likelihood of dying in combat or from an attack is higher for a Jew in Israel than in Europe or America. That is what I and the opinion piece author meant. And it is true. I don't think that feeling of safety is worth making millions of people stateless because of their ethnicity. Perhaps this is the ultimate root of our disagreement. Maybe you think that price is well worth paying, and I disagree.

> it's within its rights to decide to be a safe haven for a persecuted minority.

Yes that is fine, but it comes at the expense of another people, and that's what's wrong about it. If Israel gave equal rights to the Palestinians or allowed them a state with equal ability to defend itself, no one would bat an eye at the idea of opening their citizenship up to Jews. But one comes at the expense of the other, and that's what is wrong about the situation.

> There's a border, they have a Palestinian passport, they don't recognize the existence of Israel, they have their own police, etc. It's not the same country.

It seems very similar to Indian Reservations. They have a bunch of things like a state has, but they are ultimately in the total control of the USA. At least the USA allows them to choose whether to live in the main US or remain in their reservation.

The Schrodinger's Palestinian state exists when it can exculpate Israel from its treatment of the Palestinians, but it doesn't exist when it might provide what Palestinians would consider defense against Israel and what Israel would consider a threat to their existence.

But ultimately, the truth in the area is that Israel completely controls the Palestinians and cannot allow them political power of any kind for its ethnic democracy to exist because they are not the majority in the region. I believe the route to the problem begins with Israelis. When they realize that ethnic supremacy only lengthens the conflict, and that whatever feeling of security (as you noted it is a feeling rather than a statistic) they gain is not better than the wrong needing to be committed to maintain it. I think that is when they will be open to either a 1 or 2 state solution. Unfortunately they were more open to it in the past than now. But I think, that time will come. They are the only ones who can choose it though as they are the ones who control what happens in the region.

> The problem is not that the national identity is new, the problem is that the national identity is "let's destroy Israel".

I don't agree with that. And it is a shifting of your position from what you originally said. Originally your sole claim was that the nationality isn't "native" or "old" enough. When I said it doesn't matter (because it doesn't), the claim shifted to being about the nationality being fraudulent in order to kill Jews. It seems like you are just trying to discredit them for wanting a nation. It sounds almost exactly like anti-Semitism but applied to Palestinians instead of Jews. Again, this is why it's the least convincing argument. It doesn't matter how "legitimate" their claims to a nationality are. What matters is what's happening on the ground, and it is ultimately the ethnicity of the Palestinians (non-Jewish) which has resigned them to have less rights than Jews in the same land.

Palestinians are the ethnic majority in the region, not the minority. If they were the minority, the Israeli issue would be a lot easier. They could simply all be citizens of the Israeli state and any violence could be dealt with as an internal issue, like Kashmir in India, or Catalan separatism, etc. Israels need for Jews to hold the majority of power while being the minority in the region is the root of why this continues to be a conflict.

Thanks again for your response. I learn from it a great deal. Hope you are also learning something from mine.