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So I was doing some reading on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. I was vaguely pro-Israel before with disclaimers on how both sides are bad (like most others here I presume), but I just felt more and more pro-Israel the deeper I read (I'm not trying to astroturf, this is my true feelings on the matter). The Israeli demands during the 2000 Camp David Summit seem reasonable. The Palestinian leadership seem weirdly comfortable with ridiculous conspiracy theories about Israel trying to undermine the Al-Aqsa Mosque etc. The ban on non-Muslims from the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the ban on non-Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount, are both reprehensible. Every nook I look into, it seems like I support the Israeli side and the "both sides are bad" cases that I expected to find is largely missing.
Has anyone else had the experience of their position markedly shifting as the read up on the issue? Are the Israelis just better than PR, cunningly doing bad things to the Palestinian side under the radar, while counting on that the Palestinian reaction will be performed with much worse optics? What's the best moderate Palestinian take on an acceptable solution for a workable two-state solution?
Also, what are your predictions for the evolution of the conflict. Say that the year is 2043 and condition on no end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it: what does the conflict look like then? It seems unlikely to cool anytime soon, and the long run seems like a race between Palestinian demographics and Israeli economy, where I think Israel has the upper hand, especially if they are liberal with technological mass surveillance.
As @Bleep and @RandomRanger point out, you need to go further back in time and learn about the late 19th/early 20the century roots of the conflict. The tl;dr is Palestinians and a few Sephardic Jews were living in Palestine. European Jews were feeling pressure to assimilate or leave due to rising ethno-nationalism in Europe, and so a bunch of rich and/or ideologically zealous European Jews orchestrated a migration to Palestine where they dispossessed the locals of their land and rights using salami slicing tactics. Tensions flared but the British usually came down on the side of the Jews who had high level advocates in the British govt and had way better PR. Some zealous Zionists and Jewish Communists came from Europe and formed a hard core of Jews willing to push back against Palestinian attempts to take back their land. And then the violence escalated higher and higher on each side until you had Palestinians bombing markets full of Jewish families and Jews blowing up school buses of Palestinian children. And so on for the last 7 decades.
Though both sides are covered in blood at this point, to me it's clear that the Jews showed up and essentially invaded Palestine. Was it done "legally?" Probably. But I don't think I'd just shrug my shoulders if my government decided to sell large parts of my city to, say, a bunch of rich Chinese looking to settle new land. The end result would be the same, regardless of legality.
I can't really do anything with that information. I do get that there's historical bad blood (duh). In a way, it would have been better if the Jews hadn't been so ideologically commit to settle the region of Palestine. (But wouldn't that alt-history most likely end with more Jews staying in Europe for the Holocaust? That doesn't seem optimal either.) But in the world we live in, there was and is a significant amount of Jews with high ideological commitment to live in Palestine. They semi-legally "invaded" the territory (as did many Arab immigrants during the relevant years). After much turmoil, the Jew came out on top. It still seems bad to me that Jews are not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount, and that the Palestinian leadership rejected the 2000 Camp David proposals and went for a second Intifada instead. Knowing that people migrated in 1870 doesn't change my opinion much.
You can understand the conflict in the proper context instead of falling for a false sense of balance ("historical bad blood"). Do American Indians have "historical bad blood" with white settlers? In a disingenuous sense, yes. But it's more correct to say that the Indians are aggrieved at the conquest and loss of their lands than to imply it's some sort of "Hatfield and McCoy" situation where they've just "always been killing each other."
It would've been bad for the Jews had more of them been within Hitler's grasp, yes. But why should the Palestinians pay the price? Would you give up half of your country to the Tutsi to save them from the Hutus? Why not?
In the world we live in, the Soviets decided to take over Eastern Europe, create a bunch of puppet states, and bus in a bunch of Russians. It still seems bad to me that local languages are spoken and that Russians face discrimination. Knowing that Soviet tanks rolled through the streets in the 1940s doesn't change my opinion much.
You can't just arbitrarily draw a line and ignore all history before that point and expect to understand anything. I'm not on favor of affirmative action or reparations, for example, but I would never deny that to understand black Americans you'd need to know about slavery, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights era, effects of Great Society, crack epidemic, etc. It would be foolish to simply say "blacks and whites have always hated each other, blacks are rioting in the streets and whites aren't, ergo blacks bad." It's more complex than that and context matters.
My point is that the historical context helps with understanding, but that it doesn't really help me much on what action to take or what policy to pursue.
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