Comment by edanm

As you allude to in your story, Palestinians being friends with Israelis was the norm thirty years ago - there was less separation and Israelis and Palestinians more freely interacted.

But you seem to blame Israel for the situation no longer being this way. You say:

> People move on if you let them

So why is the situation worse now than it was before?

The reason, from an Israeli perspective, is that Israel started a peace process with the Palestinians in which it tried to arrive at a reasonable solution, but the Palestinians eventually refused every offer, including very generous offers, and walked away. Not only that, they launched the second intifada, the deadliest wave of terror attacks on Israel.

Israel tried a different way with Gaza - we can't reach a deal, so fine - we'll just leave Gaza completely. It uprooted all Jewish citizens of Gaza, dismantled all settlements, and left. Gaza then proceeded to elect Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, and started almost immediately shooting rockets at Israel.

So as an Israeli liberal - I absolutely prefer peace and want to get to a peaceful resolution with the Palestinians. But it's honestly unclear to me that we have any partner on the Palestinian side that is willing to live side-by-side with Israel.

>And when a Palestinian militant group tries to resist with violence again don’t start murdering civilians. Just treat with them.

You know that this is precisely what Israel did with Hamas - just dealt with them with them. This is what many people are now criticizing Israel for.