Comment by ookdatnog
3 days ago
I don't think this is a symmetrical situation. Life in Israel is quite comfortable. Young people have hopes and dreams beyond sacrificing themselves in an eternal war. Palestinians in Gaza have an extremely bleak outlook on the future and effectively no hope that anything meaningful will change in their lifetime, and they feel collectively humiliated by decades of occupation. Sacrificing "everything" is a lot easier when everything looks a lot like nothing.
Did you know that Gaza has shopping malls and waterfront resorts? Did you know that Israel had been opening up more and more jobs for Palestinians within Israel? Until they decided to throw all that progress away on October 7th.
Progress towards what, exactly? Their own state? Or full citizenship of Israel? Or can you think of another acceptable outcome?
Their own state. This is what people keep missing in discussions about this conflict: you don't get your own state by having the world, or Israel, or the US, or Iran "grant" it to you. You get your own state by building it - having functional institutions, developing an economy, reaching out to build peaceful international relations.
Hamas chose to take all that steel and concrete, donated in the billions by the entire world, and build tunnels and rockets instead of universities and civilian infrastructure.