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If Palestinians stop fighting, there will be no independent Palestine either. Palestinians will become permanent second-rate residents of Israel in everything but name.
This argument flies in the face of facts and history. There are several independent Muslim Arab states in the region; Israel is a tiny portion of the region, smaller than many American counties. "Independent Palestine" is a call for a Muslim Arab country specifically in Gaza and the West Bank, which was granted in the Two State Solution, and refused by the Palestinians. Palestinians still refuse it as a solution. Give them a two state solution, and within half a generation they will be raiding Israel from behind their "borders," calling yet again for the extermination of the Jews. How do we know this? Because they keep doing it.
Not only that, but a substantial percentage of Israeli nationals are Muslim Arabs, from when Israel tried to just allow Palestinians to choose to participate in a liberal democracy along with the rest of the developed world. Some took the offer, and are pretty universally better off for having done so. I have known a few Palestinian Israelis, and they were not "second-rate residents" in any sense but perhaps the fact that they lived in an officially Jewish nation--not unlike the Jews and Christians who are sometimes permitted to live in officially Muslim nations, except for the part where Jews and Christians are generally treated far worse in Muslim nations. Rural Americans in many states often have less political power or self-determination than Palestinian Israelis.
Attitudes like yours toward the conflict in Israel strike me as the most absurd exercise of both-sides-ism in modern history. Israel has taken every reasonable avenue, and perhaps some unreasonable ones, toward peace and coexistence. Every olive branch they have extended has been sharpened into a stake and used to murder their children. In some ways Israel may be the single most Christian nation ever to exist, so far has it extended forgiveness and amnesty to the descendants of the Muslim Arab colonists who live within their borders.
I've lived through this cycle so many times I've actually lost count, but it repeats like clockwork. Every time it looks like we're going to get "peace in the Middle East" at last, the Palestinians sabotage it (usually, with financing and support from other Muslim nations). "Independent Palestine" is a canard, code for "death to Israel," because coexistence is not on the menu, and as long as Muslims are religiously committed to reclaiming every inch of their holy lands, it never will be. Israel's Muslim neighbors wish to see it destroyed, and Palestinians are the stooges they have been using to pursue that goal for longer than most Mottizens have been alive. Nothing has changed, nothing is new. I feel bad for the Palestinians, they are being used harshly by bad actors. But they have had many opportunities to escape the cycle, and they have squandered them without hesitation.
I am sympathetic to arguments for independence and self-determination, but what Palestinians (and you) say in that regard does not match with their actions over the years. Talk is cheap. Peace is a choice they refuse to make.
"Why should there be another Muslim Arab country?" is a loaded question. It's like asking, "why should Panama exist when there are many other Latin American countries?"
Again, "granted" is a loaded word. From the viewpoint of the Palestinians, they weren't granted half of Palestine, half of Palestine was taken from them and awarded to Israel. Why should the UN decide that Palestine should be divided 50/50 just because Jews owned 6.6% percent of the land?
Palestinian Israelis are not second-rate residents (other than some humiliating restrictions like not being able to own their old homes), but West Bank and Gaza Palestinians aren't Palestinian Israelis, no one offered them this option. "Other countries treat their minorities worse, why shouldn't Israel be allowed to do this?" is a question that should be reversed, "why don't we apply the same rigorous standards and demand BDS against Saudi Arabia, Estonia and the PRC?"
Every reasonable avenue other than founding their nation somewhere where the natives were fine with it. Yes, they are much better stewards of this land than the Arabs, but that's saying you shouldn't complain that you woke up with a kidney missing just because Terence Tao was the recipient.
I find your responses uncharitable and probably disingenuous. You seem to simply be engaged in motivated reasoning toward a preferred outcome, rather than attempting to take a view of the whole situation.
No. The question is not whether Palestine should exist or not. The question is whether Palestinians should be empowered to exterminate Israel, and aided by the world in their mission to do so. The answer is "no." Your response was, "but what about independent Palestine" and my answer was, "I am sympathetic to arguments for independence and self-determination, but what Palestinians (and you) say in that regard does not match with their actions over the years. Talk is cheap. Peace is a choice they refuse to make."
I don't really care about their "viewpoint," especially when it is clearly ahistorical. But even if they weren't the literal and ideological descendants of colonists now complaining about being colonized, it wouldn't matter: Israel is there, now, and has been for a long time, and the actual options are (A) stop the Palestinians from occasionally murdering Israelis due to an ancient grudge or (B) allow the Palestinians to continue occasionally murdering Israelis due to an ancient grudge, and in turn get murdered right back. "Two peaceful states getting along peacefully" is a much better option! But it will never be on the table while the Palestinians and their useful idiots continue to chant "from the river to the sea, Palestine is for Muslim Arabs."
Except we're not dealing with a human being here, we're dealing with nation-states and identity groups. There are so many problems with nation-states, and identity groups are, if anything, worse. The original expulsions were horrible and shouldn't have happened, and under the standard of modern liberal democracies likely would not have happened. But the empires of yore worked differently. The Muslim Arabs in Palestine weren't sovereign, and had never been sovereign.
Again: insofar as they seek full freedom and self-determination, I'm pretty open to that. But it can't be on "by murdering everyone else in the region" terms, and they have repeatedly shown themselves unwilling or incapable of accepting those terms.
My honest and heartfelt position is "a pox on both their houses, what I think about this conflict doesn't matter a bit and the farther I stay away from it the better". But any attempt to take a view of the whole situation is impossible without trying to steelman the positions, and I was trying to do this with respect to the Palestinians.
Why not? After all, we're letting Israel do the same. Letting Israel control where the Palestinians are allowed to live, what they are allowed to do and so on is symmetrical to letting the Palestinians control where the Israelis are allowed to live, what they are allowed to do and so on. Why not push the Israelis that don't accept Palestinian supremacy into Jewish enclaves and watch them elect Otzma Yehudit and start bombing the Palestinians with improvised FPV drones? Yes, Palestine would be a much worse place to live in than Israel, but that's not a meaningful way to decide which side to support. After all, there are lots of mismanaged countries, but we no longer let the Netherlands take over and manage them.
I don't think it's a "steelman" to soften their actual beliefs, though. They want all the Jews to either leave Israel or die. They are quite explicit about this. They literally make children's shows teaching this. To steelman that view requires you to elaborate reasons why, all things considered, this is a reasonable view to hold. Your response appears to be something like "there's no meaningful difference between Israel's government and Hamas, so their positions are just equally bad." That's not a steelman, that's ignoring inconvenient facts in hopes of strengthening an objectively outrageous position.
Bullshit. In the first place, there never was a "Palestine" to exterminate. Furthermore, the Israelis have repeatedly demonstrated their ability, if they so chose, to militarily conquer not only Israel itself but much of the neighboring territory as well. Israel has treated the Palestinians with kid gloves for decades.
More bullshit. There's nothing symmetrical here; the Palestinians wish to kill all the Jews. Do you seriously not understand this? If Israel's goals were "symmetrical" to those of the Palestinians, all the Palestinians would already be dead. You are not steelmanning anything, you are literally making shit up.
How the fuck is that not meaningful? That is often, perhaps always how nations decide "which side" to support (though nations are also at times wrong about what will make something a "worse place," in the end).
But never mind that; we have an absolute laundry list of economic and political reasons to support a productive and educated first-world democracy over a couple of terrorist cells whose aspirations toward theocracy are often not only explicitly anti-Israel, but explicitly anti-American. To say nothing of the events of October 7, which are independently sufficient evidence that every civilized person everywhere should regard Palestine as, if it is a state at all, only a terrorist state.
Palestine is not a country in any particularly meaningful way, and it never has been. It is two separate terrorist groups living on the largess of other nations within the borders of Israel, actively oppressing their own supporters for theological reasons. Writing as though we were dealing with an oppressive colonial nation-state and its equal-but-opposite conquered territory demonstrates either ignorance, or willful ignorance.
No, the steelman is, they were there first, so their impolite request that those who arrived later leave or die is more reasonable than "we believe our ancestors lived here 2000 years ago, so move over, you Arabs are all the same anyway". If some Seminole terrorists start blowing up retirees in Florida, my reaction will not be 100% "what fucking savages", but "they kinda have a point" as well.
Just because they didn't have a flag doesn't mean it didn't exist.
They weren't there first. Why isn't your reaction to the (re)creation of Israel, "what fucking savages" but "they kinda have a point" as well? Because 2000 years is longer than 400? Or 50? My whole point is that it doesn't matter if the Palestinians "kinda have a point" about being told by their government, "sorry guys, time to move." What matters is what they do about that; what they have repeatedly chosen to do about it is not to pursue peaceful solutions, but to pursue the solution "murder as many Jews as we can, say we're sorry so the international community suppresses Israel's response, then prepare for the next opportunity to murder as many Jews as we can."
You have assiduously avoided addressing this angle, at all, in your responses. This is, at best, a botched "steelman" grounded in simply omitting relevant facts. What it feels like is just completely dishonest engagement.
Ah. Well, if stand up comedy is the level at which you engage with history, that would explain a lot of what you've written here.
The Palestinian Declaration of Independence was written in 1988. Prior to that, both Arab and Jewish nationalists in the 20th century helped to overthrow the Ottoman Turks in hopes of creating their own nation, but Britain and France did not follow through on those expectations. The region has been ruled from afar for just about all of recorded history, albeit mostly by Jews, then Muslims, and occasionally Christians. Although many Jews were driven from the region by Hadrian (and others), there were always some who remained. By the early 19th century, many had begun to return.
But once more (since you're apparently ignoring it every time I write it anyway): it doesn't ultimately matter who has or had a flag, or whose ancestors were from where (though don't think I don't notice the rhetorical trick of making conveniently inconsistent claims about what counts as being somewhere "first"). What matters is that there is a group of terrorists pretending to be a "nation" for the express purpose of killing as many Jews as possible, and that this is (contra to your bizarre claims) in no way "symmetrical" to a democratically elected government doing what it can to respond to the mass murder and rape of its people by Muslim Arab terrorists pretending to be a "nation."
I think you have it backwards. Their express purpose is not killing as many Jews as possible, it's the only means that is left to them that has a non-zero chance of succeeding for the purpose of creating a sovereign Palestinian state. If the next PM of Israel says, that's enough, this whole idea is stupid, I've bought the Gascoyne from Australia, we're packing up and moving there, do you think Hamas will complain that they have no way to obtain Australian visas to continue killing as many Jews as possible?
And since it doesn't matter who was there first, then both nations have an equally valid claim to the land and can fight each other to their hearts' content. Just because Hamas cannot afford a proper army doesn't mean they aren't allowed to resist.
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