by roughly | 2025-06-22 19:16:58+00:00
> I don't think they want Genocide. They look at the Palestinian extremists and say that they will never change. No matter what we try they will always try to kill us. So if it's us or them it should be us.

This is a bit of semantics, though - "if it's us or them it should be us" is advocating genocide (I'm not saying _you're_ advocating genocide, to be clear). I think this is one of the problems for Israeli society, especially post-Oct 7 - the only group with a coherent picture of what they want and how to get there is the extreme right, and they're pushing for genocide, no matter how they phrase or qualify it. The semantics and the nuance of the conversation inside Israeli society isn't making it to the outside world, but the actions of the right wing hardliners are - that's what the rest of the world is seeing and responding to (and, for what it's worth, I'd suspect there's similar conversations happening inside of Palestine, too).

> The fact that Palestinians voted for Hamas shocked us all back in the day.

There's a couple sides to this - one was that Fatah was viewed as broadly corrupt and ineffective, and Hamas was the opposition party. I understand why Israel saw that as a Palestinian vote for Israeli genocide, but there's a credible claim that it was closer to, say, a Turkish vote for Erdogan or an Indian vote for Modi.

The history of the Hamas government, especially in the early days, is an interesting one - the group made real signs that they were willing to de-escalate and move towards peace. There's a long history of the moment here: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/cobban-breakout-hamas-... - but long story short, neither Israel nor America were willing to take a chance, and, again, right-wingers in Israel took actions that closed that road off.

> The problem is that Palestinians don't have stable leadership that we can talk to and trust.

Yeah, this is definitely a credible complaint from the Israeli side - probably the last person who could've conceivably been that person was Yasser Arafat, and even the people who worked closely to negotiate with him noted that he was a militant to his dying days (which were 20 years ago).

Regarding the road to peace, I think this is something that Israel needs to invest in if there's hope of a genuine two-state solution - there needs to be efforts to build up Palestinian civil society and they need to show there's a credible reason for negotiating with Israel and genuine benefits to come from it, which I don't think Palestinians broadly believe right now.

> I hope calm voices will take the Saudi deal which can truly revolutionize the middle east. But right now I think we need to calm down. We've been in nonstop war since 2023 and it puts you in a fight or flight mode. People are picking up extreme stances as a result.

Yeah, this is going to be really hard to unwind - especially since I don't know what kind of committed partner for peace you're going to have on the other side of the Gaza wall going forward. The amount of despair visited on those people isn't creating fertile ground for the thawing of relations for the next generation or so.

Netanyahu has carved his name into the history of Israel at this point - I sincerely hope y'all can find a way forward towards peace.