Comment by hylaride
3 days ago
I don't disagree with you, but will comment.
There is a justifiable argument for Israel to occupy the west bank and/or the Gaza strip (whether one agrees or not is another matter that I will not get into). Settling it is another matter entirely, and this action is what causes so much grief.
But what Palestinian supporters continuously fail to grasp is that every time Israel has tried to give (and there were many attempts in the 1980s and 1990s), bad actors have caused violence. This violence was a huge cause in support shifting to right-wing parties in Israel.
The tragedy is that a plurality of Palestinians would otherwise love to have a peaceful (two state or otherwise) solution, but the "bad" ones are well funded by outsiders, in particular Iran. If a Gandhi/Martin Luther King/Nelson Mandela figure emerged, they'd almost certainly be killed by Hamas,Hezbollah,etc.
But at the end of the day, there's no way the extreme elements of either side will agree to a permanent and dignified peace, because even if it would work it would mean the end of either of them (and Israeli PM was assassinated by a far-right Jewish nationalist).
I'm sympathetic to both sides myself. I'm sympathetic to Israel's position, need for security, and the fact that hostility against them is a given. I'm also sympathetic to the fact that the Palestinian people were pushed off their land, often with violence to a level that can fit the definition of genocide, during Israel's independence and subsequent annexations.
But there will never be a true peace so long as the extremists on both sides have as much power as they do. I know most Iranians are fed up with their government. My Iranian colleagues all are commenting that even devoutly religious Iranians back home are getting fed up. A lot of this is a house of cards, so I guess we'll see.
The fact that we use the term "Settling" and "Settlers" is kind of grotesque. These places are occupied, by Palestinians, who have to be ethnically cleansed (with varying degrees of violence) in order to establish new Israeli Jewish settlements. This is done with Israeli Jewish soldiers, a hundred thousand of whom now patrol hundreds of enclaves and all major routes through the West Bank.
Isreali and US right-wing leaders find a hostile Iran to be extremely politically convenient, and the military-industrial complex that they share with each other and with centrist parties just wants a reason to keep existing. People talk about a potential "War with Iran", but in reality we've given them maybe a dozen different diplomatic casus belli in the past decade, in part to deter them from political moderation.
That's how the term is used in the U.S. as well, when history classes describe "settlers" who wiped out the Native Americans who lived here through genocide, germ warfare, regular ol' warfare and displacement. I think in general when one sees the word "settlers" one should assume the worst.
> military-industrial complex that they share with each other and with centrist parties just wants a reason to keep existing.
This is so freakin' true. I feel like, if world peace ever reared its ugly head Americans would whine, "but jobs!" because of the hit it would give the military-industrial complex.