To ask if we can please try to have Palestine and Israel thread where we acknowledge how awful it is for everyone, but try not to throw shit at each other?

[theotherfossilsister]

Please

From someone who does have 'skin in the game.'

It would also behoove the British to learn about and understand their key role in creating this situation. A lot of people here want to only point fingers at Israel without understanding the key role of Britain during the Mandate. The British actively worsened relationships between Jews and Arabs during this period by playing them against each other and making both sides promises that could not be kept.

I'm going to sound really stupid here and ignorant but I get so confused with this, can somebody explain to me in simple terms what the history of this is ? I know they have fought over land but I don't know how it all started ? Was Palestine its own country and Isreal came along, made a country and took their land ? Are they both Jewish ? All I know is that Jesus was born in Jerusalem, which is in Isreal isn't it ?
Sorry if I sound dumb but I never really learnt about it

You're better off googling a timeline of the history of the conflict - most of what you get here will be biased toward one side or another.

Everyone seems to be saying hammas has made this sensitive situation a million times worse

They have

The British did this in India too, and most of their other colonies. Its pointless to hark back to who's fault this was 80 years ago. What good will it do for the British to say 'Oh yes it was our fault '(When the formation of Israel and the subsequent failures in diplomacy were a UN mess) The continued conflict since then is the fault of successive Israeli governments, and the Palestinian authorities. Israel is not going away. They need to be allowed to exist. But they need to allow Palestinians to exist, and deal with their own population who are continually inflaming tensions by encroaching onto Palestinian territory. The Israeli government is busy bombing Palestinian territory with its huge army but will not deal with their own people.

@saymynamesaymy

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-44124396

this is from a year ago but explains the background to the situation

As far as I can make out, out of the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam- (they are Abrahamic because they believe they are all children of Abraham) Judaism is the oldest. It started in an area of the Middle East just past Egypt, called Judea (I think). So there were Jews there initially. Then Jesus was born, as a Jew, in Bethlehem. Some people thought he was the Messiah so formed Christianity. Separately in the same region, some other people decided that the one true way to God was to follow Mohammed. Muslims believe Jesus was a prophet (Someone who helps people to God, but is not the son of God) as was Mohammed. Jews and Muslims dont believe Jesus was the Messiah, or the Son of God. Only Christians believe that. They both existed together tribally on the same parts of the ME. After the Ottoman invasions, Jews were scattered all over the world and Islam took hold. Then there were a few hundred years of religious wars, then the British Empire, then the formation of countries in the ME. Then WWII. After WWII the newly formed UN decided that Jews should have their own state where they could live in peace, so took the part of the world that maybe according to the Old Testament, was the place they used to live thousands of years before. However, that place now had Muslim Arabs living in it, and it was also their Holy place. Since then, there have been basically continuous violence in the ME- factional violence - Jews against Muslims, Muslims against Jews, Sunni Muslims Shia Muslims and Christians and Kurds all fighting each other etc etc probably until the end of time.

Edit: The above article is much better than my ramblings- read that!

The whole situation is just awful. Is there anything we can do? Anything neutral we can donate to for aid?

Everyone is an armchair foreign policy expert since yesterday. How many threads now?

For my part, I would have as much sympathy for native Americans or Australian aborigines engaging in armed struggle to gain rights to their own lands if they needed and chose to, so your implication of hypocrisy is misplaced. However there are some key differences.

While those peoples were treated appallingly, many were murdered and many driven out of their homes and made to go live somewhere else within the same country, and/or adjust to the extreme change of culture within the country (learn English, live in cities etc.), they weren't actually expelled from the country and legally prevented from returning. The point being that Palestinian demands for the right of return don't apply here, because those people already have the right to reside in those countries.

And timescale must make some difference, simply because there will be many Palestinians who were alive in 1948 and suffered the events concerned directly, and certainly many who are their children. That makes for a stronger moral case than the one of people tracing their ancestors' place of residents many generations ago (which is not to say that that one is not important). As Israel clearly isn't going anywhere soon, I fully expect them to win this war by sheer dogged persistence and be in a similar place to the USA or Australia in a few hundred years.

I’m not surprised there are threads on it, you can always hide them

The Red Cross is committed to impartiality.

Palestine was under control of the Ottoman Empire (based in Turkey, but spread far and wide like the Roman Empire) until the first world war. It wasn't a "country" as such. It was majority muslim with a small jewish minority.

There was a movement called Zionism in America and Europe from the late 1800s, calling for more jews to settle there and eventually establish a jewish state. They considered this their right and destiny according to the Bible.

The Ottomans fought on the side of Germany in WW1 and lost. As part of this process the empire itself imploded and some of its lands, including Palestine, were reconfigured. The British took control of the region under the British Mandate of Palestine, intended to be temporary.

In 1917 the British issued a document called the Balfour Declaration, which outlined their intention to divide the land into separate muslim and jewish countries. There were various discussions and negotiations but all the Palestinian and Arab parties involved implacably opposed the idea.

Zionism continued in the interwar period, steadily increasing the jewish population, then there was a huge influx of jewish survivors of the Holocaust, who were settled there against the Palestinians' will.

In 1947 Britain and the UN formalised the plan for partition and began withdrawal. In 1948 the state of Israel was declared, and many of the Palestinian inhabitants of the area forcibly expelled. The Arab countries in the region declared war on Israel. Israel won that war, establishing its present day borders (including most of what was supposed to be Palestine). The area of Palestine known as the West Bank became part of Transjordan; the area known as the Gaza Strip became part of Egypt.

As neither side ever really acknowledged the other's right to the area, there were ongoing skirmishes and conflicts. The most important of these was the six day war in 1967, which again ended in Israel's favour, and they seized control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These are known as "occupied territories" - the inhabitants are not full citizens of Israel, but are not free to pursue their own political freedom outside of it either.

Naturally there's much resentment of Israel's occupation among the Palestinian population there, which results in periodic violent protests and attacks of various kinds. Israel in turn views these as evidence that its neighbours don't acknowledge its right to exist (which is largely true), and that it therefore needs to maintain the territories as a security "buffer zone".

The current attack by Hamas is the latest of these but much larger and more effective then usual.

Naturally there's much resentment of Israel's occupation among the Palestinian population there, which results in periodic violent protests and attacks of various kinds. Israel in turn views these as evidence that its neighbours don't acknowledge its right to exist (which is largely true), and that it therefore needs to maintain the territories as a security "buffer zone".

And how on earth do you resolve this?

I don't think you can. That is the problem. Even if Israel agreed to a two state soluion and agreed to a Palestinian free state ( unlikely) there are still countries that dont recognise Israels right to exist. Hamas is in control of Gaza. They will continue to attack Israel because it exists and Israel will continue to attack Palestine in retaliation under the guise of attacking Hamas.

Israel spends a small fortune on its intelligence service, far more than other countries of a similar size. It clearly failed as they had no clue a massive attack was going to take place.

Ukraine is somewhat different. It was no surprise to anyone that Russia invaded. They massed their army on the border for weeks beforehand.

Gaza is in essence is an open-air prison, according to human rights groups. The United Nations have described the occupied territory as a “chronic humanitarian crisis.”

How can you not expect conflict when you cage people and create a humanitarian crisis.

I don't think you can. That is the problem. Even if Israel agreed to a two state soluion and agreed to a Palestinian free state ( unlikely) there are still countries that dont recognise Israels right to exist.

So nowhere to go

Thank you for those explaining. It makes sense for me now ! Tricky as you can see both sides of it.

I wonder if you could have some sort of no man's land in between Israel and other countries, but I doubt that would be adhered to. Israeli settlers gave encroached on Palestinian land when people lived there, and no one did anything about it, so I can't imagine a buffer zone with no one on it would last more than 5 minutes. Palestinians need to not be treated like prisoners in land that should have been theirs. But they are not helped by being run by terrorists.

I wonder if you could have some sort of no man's land in between Israel and other countries, but I doubt that would be adhered to. Israeli settlers gave encroached on Palestinian land when people lived there, and no one did anything about it, so I can't imagine a buffer zone with no one on it would last more than 5 minutes. Palestinians need to not be treated like prisoners in land that should have been theirs. But they are not helped by being run by terrorists.

It's a bit chicken & egg isn't it.

Where would the no man's land come from?

It's quite a big deal, shame you don't think it's worth discussing

Not read the whole thread but am currently watching this on iPlayer.
View from both sides
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001k3wj

@Aaron95 my point is that the rhetoric is always how Israel caused this, Israel should have prevented this. Where is the acknowledgment that Israel was attacked by crazy people who don’t built an army by the boarder but paraglide in and kidnap old women? No other country on earth suffers through the constant attacks like Israel has to.