Sad but true observation!

The whole situation being Scary is definitely something we can certainly all agree on….

@Marionville Should clarify a bit. When I say Israel defeated I mean militarily, the IDF. I do not wish for the destruction of the state of Israel per say, the dismantling of their society or the slaughter of their population. Just enough to force real negotiations for a Palestinian state, as per the UN resolution from many years ago.

Yes..the complexities of the Israel/Palestine situation run very deep and are much more convoluted than just a straightforward warring two factions…the number of side interests and alliances, all with their own agendas run into double figures. There is the fact too that not all Palestinians are Muslim but there is a sizeable number of Christians amongst them…wasn’t the PLO’s chief spokesperson during the 1990’s Hanan Ashrawi a woman and a Christian?

I don’t see how a potential new wave of refugees should be Jordan’s problem. They got their sizable Palestinian population from the displacement of 1948. It was the Emirate of Transjordan not Palestine. I think some on the Israeli right feel Jordan should now be Palestine and earlier Revisionists thought Transjordan was unjustly carved from what should have been Jewish lands (1). Nope! The Hashemites have their sovereignty and they probably are not the worst regime in the region. Saudi Arabia might get that distinction.

(1) a notion I got from Neil Caplan’s The Israel-Palestine Conflict which is a decent neutral source as I’ve read.

@Marionville
Yes Ashrawi is Christian and among the more moderate Palestinian notables.

George Habash was a Christian too and founded PFLP, so not a moderate. The Christian Arab population might be less sizable due to the rise of Islamist militants. But being Arab and being Muslim are not 1:1 characteristics.

Yes…fault all round and wrongs all round …our own countries notwithstanding!

What he said. Quite frankly, I am concerned that we are fast approaching WWIII.

I take it from your reply that you strongly disagree with the article. Thank you for your detailed answer…from it I deduce you cannot see any fault on the Israeli side, being so dismissive of any other viewpoint as you are. There is nothing antisemitic in questioning or expressing disapproval of the actions of Israeli politicians such as Netanyahu, a large number of Israeli citizens do not approve of him and their government at present. Hamas is certainly a plague on the people of Gaza, but terrorism doesn’t happen overnight and throughout history there is usually a traceable cause such as oppression, injustice and inequality…cause and effect in other words. If the Palestians had been treated better there would have been no breeding grounds and festering grievances for Hamas to feed on. I speak as one who lived through 40 years of IRA terrorism in Northern Ireland where there was also another breeding ground ready made for terrorism due to inequality and injustice.

The 2005 Disengagement was at least partly about fear of the Palestinian womb, how the demographic time bomb would impact the Jewish character of Israel. That’s a reason they mostly dislike the Palestinian right of return. Disengagement was also about freezing the peace process, putting it in formaldehyde so to speak.

The "antisemitic" trope is a huge cop out. One must be so if they criticize Israel. It's a very lazy argument. We all abhor the violence of Hamas, the generalities do not need to be constantlyrepeated.

It is a sad and insoluble situation. The increasingly polarising effect of Netanyahu and his unholy alliance with even more extreme right parties and the increased support & influence of Hamas in Gaza was never going to bode well for peaceful co-existence.

"...who needs this war to stay in power..." - - Bullshit. The last thing Netanyahu needed to stay in power was this attack and the following war. After the war there will be judgment day for him, 80% of all Israelis hold him responsable for the security failure which made possible this attack in the first place. For the time being, Israel stands united, but N. knows that his days in office are numbered

Yes…I’m of the same view. I think it was understandable for the UN to agree on granting Israel the right to set up its own State in 1947…subsequently founded in the following year 1948, due to collective guilt about the Nazis and the Holocaust…but that was always going to be problematic for the Palestinians who were displaced. The past 75 years have been bloody and increasingly worse for the Palestinians, and not exactly peaceful or secure for Israelis either.

@Marionville "due to collective guilt about the Nazis and the Holocaust… ??
First of all: why the hell should the British and the Americans feel any guilt about crimes committed by the Nazis?
If you had some background information about the history of the conflict (instead of parroting hackneyed phrases from people who do NOT like Israel, to put it mildly), you'd know that the British planned to partition Palestine well before the Holocaust (the so-called Peel Commission in 1936), because it was obvious that some sort of two-state-solution was the only way to defuse the conflict. As in 1948 it was the Arab side which roundly rejected the plan.
[en.wikipedia.org]

@Thibaud70 I will not be told by you or anyone else that I parrot anything, I know the history..my thoughts are my own, my views are my own…drawn on much research and by just living during most of the history we are talking of, and taking a keen interest on what is going on in the world I live in. I told you yesterday not to patronise me and I will repeat it again today. If you cannot be civil in your discourse to me or any others in the group then I would ask you to leave the group.

@Thibaud70
The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (1946) came after the Peel Commission (1937):
[en.m.wikipedia.org]

It too was a pipe dream but recommended a binational solution.

@Marionville They should have cut out a part of Germany and given them that as a country. These people were from Europe, not the Middle East. The Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Just because my family line goes back to a 14th Century Scottish Black Knight, does that mean l should be able to go to Scotland and take someone's house and property. There is no justification for what the U.K. and the U S. did in Palistine. It is that arrogance of Europeans and American,White people, that they always know what is better it comes to the afairs of people of color. White people have been the bane of this planet as soon as Europeans figured out how to circumnavigate the planet.

@Sticks48 I agree 100%…and now we have Brooklyn Jews who have travelled to Israel from NY as new settlers on the West Bank…contravening UN sanctions and international law…

Weirdly enough some ultra-Orthodox Jews are rabidly anti-Zionist. See:
[en.m.wikipedia.org]

I can understand where Zionism was coming from after the Dreyfus Affair and pogroms they figured enough was enough of that. The whole migrating to Palestine and setting up shop thing is surely controversial and I get that too. It was not a land without a people for a people without a land regardless of what Mark Twain said. I draw the line with Revisionist Zionism though Labor was problematic in many ways too.

The history and current situation are a very complex issue where there exists some serious polarization. I dunno what the answers are. I would wish for a two state solution with good faith actors on both sides. Not in my lifetime. Two words: intransigence and intractable. Full stop.

@Marionville , why encourage him, why don't you just ignore that brainwashed idiot?

@callmedubious Good advice…thanks!

@Sticks48 Very true. The belief that Palestine is the god given home of the Jews is based on pure mythology. Unfortunately the genie is out of the bottle and will not go back.

@Moravian l agree and this problem will probably never be resolved. The Middle East will continue to be what it is and has been for the foreseeable future.