I blame the United Nations

[mushti]

The whole sorry mess in Gaza is all the fault of the United Nations. If UNRWA hadn't been created to provide for them, the Palestinians would have sorted their shit out decades ago, just like every other refugee situation from the second world war.

United Nations still providing for Polish refugees? No.

United Nations still providing for Indian refugees? No.

United Nations still provided for Jewish refugees? No.

Never mind Hamas, let's kick the UN out of Gaza. The problem will be fixed within six months.

Yes Jordan and Egypt know from past experience that taking Palestinian refugees can be troublesome for their states. Terrorism and riots are bad for their economies and the tourist industry that they both need.

When Jordan let Palestinians in they tried eventually to overthrow Jordan leader. This ended up with a conflict called black September. Where Jordan killed more Palestinians than Israel had done in about 50 years.

Egypt really did try and help Palestinians for a while however with an open border terrorists kept attacking western tourists and some riots were started too. So when Israel had enough of buses getting blown up / civilians getting stabbed and decided to start the blockad. Egypt also said sod this and built a blockade across their own border.

Israel getting rid of Hamas is doing the world a favour. It is especially doing the more peaceful these days neighbouring States a favour. That is why they may make the odd noise to keep their Muslim citizens happy. However they really are not acting like they want Israel to stop. All the neutral neighboring states got together with Israel and the west bank leader in the first week. They were all shaking hands and posing for photos. I would put money on the fake an agreement was made about what Israel will do.

Saying all that I don't think what Israel is doing is the world a favour if this many civilians die whilst this happens. My old hippie Jewish heart overrides my head and common sense sometimes.

Jews stopped the death penalty for crimes in around the 12th or 14th century (I can't remember which at the moment) because of the risk someone could be falsely found guilty. The Rabbis said that it was better 10 guilty men go free than 1 innocent man dies. This is something I keep thinking about in the current situation. However the idea of Hamas going free is sickening. Just glad I don't have to decide such things because this makes my head explode.

@Trulywonderful your posts have been, on this and many other threads, measured, kind and informative. Please keep posting despite the pain and anguish you must be feeling.

What you wrote below deserves a thread of its own. The reaction of the Jewish Left to the unspeakable on October 7th. Israeli internal politics will be changed forever.

Saying all that I don't think what Israel is doing is the world a favour if this many civilians die whilst this happens. My old hippie Jewish heart overrides my head and common sense sometimes

I see you. I've read your previous posts and believe you're Israeli and have posted some extremist views before. The things you're saying about Palestinians is awful. Shame on you.

There has been a Palestinian state, since 1922 - it's called Jordan.

Jordan is a Jordanian state, not a Palestinian state. To try and move Palestinians to Jordan is called ethnic cleansing.

The Mandate was broken up by the UN. The Arabs were given the biggest part. Jordan is what should be Palestine the poster is correct. However because the neighbouring countries attacked the new state of Israel in 1948 the land then broken up further during that war and subsequent conflicts. Jordan at one time ethic cleansed all the Jews from the area now know as the west bank. The 70k and their families only returned after Jordan left in the 60s. It is all way more complicated than people seem to think. However before anyone starts I don't agree with New settlements but think the people currently living on the land both arab and Jews should now stay and proper intergation needs to happen between everyone in the west bank

Also the very idea of a Palestinian people was thought up by Arafat in the 60s. The Arabs on the land didn't restore themselves as Palestinian until Arafat told them to in order to further the cause he said. The cause being clearly stated at the time as the destruction of Israel. Up until this point the Arabs living in the area normally called themselves Jordanians or after whatever state they had come from. This was mostly because the Arabs were mainly immigrants from surrounding states.

Population of pre-Mandate Palestine was 800k about 80k of whom were Jewish, the rest a mix of Turks, Bedouins, Muslim & Christian Arabs, & European ex-pats.

Over 500k of that initial 800k were Arabs who arrived between 1932 & 1944 attracted by the Yishuv's burgeoning finances.

This is such a measured and informed thread. Thank you for starting it OP.

@Trulywonderful erm OK. So in 1917 Palestine was a land without a native population?

You are not good at maths. I gave the break down of Arabs on the land pre 1948 in a post. I didn't say that there wasn't a Arab indigenous population on the land. The break down just shows is wasn't that big. Arabs and Jews were indigenous to the land. However most Arabs like Jews by 1948 were immigrants. Plus the Arabs didn't call themselves Palestinians. It is all in my posts you just need to learn to read and do the maths.

A rose by any other name.
They were people who lived there. Full stop.

Just to add for context:

Things were great between the Arabs and the Jewish before 1948. Oh except for example for Safed looting 1834, Hebron massacre 1834, Attack on Safed 1838, Jaffa deportations 1917, Attack on Tel Hai 1920, Jaffa riots 1921, the riots 1929, the riots in 1936... But other than that, yes, life was awsome before jews had independence!

Did you know that the original meaning of the word Palestine is "Invaders from a foreign country"?

The Romans renamed the holy land this as a way of being spiteful to the original Jewish population. Then in 1967 Arafat decided to use the name Palestinians for the Arab cause of dismantling Israel and ethnic cleaning of Jews from the land.

I have attached a fun quiz about Palestine. Just tap the image if you need to make it bigger. However you will definitely not be able to answer any of those questions because nobody can!

Yes absolutely. However the poster tried to put words in my mouth. I was correcting that

It is good for people to understand that both groups lived in small numbers on the land. Then how all the conflict grew. If we don't understand the past and what is happening now people will never learn from it. So the future is just a never ending cycle of hate. Nothing anyone posts here or shouts on marches will help stop the killing now but maybe we can stop another cycle of this happening on the land again

The borders of many continental countries change constantly. Check out Germany and this is just a short time frame

The UK is unusual in being an island state but we've had some Scottish / English border wobbles.

Palestine has been occupied by many others but it has been called Palestine fairly consistently since the 5th century BC . Compared to much of Europe, the borders have been reasonably stable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_name_Palestine#

The word Palestine has the same etymological meaning as the Hebrew word "Israel."

@Trulywonderful I checked your maths:

Population of pre-Mandate Palestine was 800k about 80k of whom were Jewish, the rest a mix of Turks, Bedouins, Muslim & Christian Arabs, & European ex-pats.
This is roughly the 1922 figures.

Over 500k of that initial 800k were Arabs who arrived between 1932 & 1944 attracted by the Yishuv's burgeoning finances.
This is a myth

According to a Jewish Agency survey, 77% of Palestinian population growth in Palestine between 1914 and 1938, during which the Palestinian population doubled, was due to natural increase, while 23% was due to immigration. Arab immigration was primarily from, Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan, and Egypt (all countries that bordered Palestine).
Many believes that the notion of "large-scale immigration of Arabs from the neighbouring countries" is a myth "proposed by Zionist writers"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)

There would be less conflict in the area if there was less disinformation.

Sorry guys by Wikipedia is not a good source of historical information. You need to cross reference everything with various sources from the time. Plus newspaper interviews and census etc. It doesn't take long to disprove an far amount stuff on Wikipedia. We advise are students at school to not use it at all for there homework or course work.

I will add below some examples of sources that are a bit older that the Internet and Wikipedia. However you should still research more and find various other examples of what was happening pre 1948 population wise for both Jews and Arabs.

The Romans renamed the land resentfully, as a punishment, to obliterate the link between the Jews (in Hebrew, Y'hudim and in Latin Judaei) and the province (the Hebrew name of which was Y'hudah). “Palaestina” referred to the Philistines, whose home base had been on the Mediterranean coast. Until they were on the area of land now know as Gaza. Hence why it is said that the meaning of the name is invaders from a foreign country, as in the Philistines!

Anyway sorry if all this has derailed the thread a little. Went a bit off topic there

Oh YouTube is not a viable much better than Wikipedia too. However you can get good interviews with hamas or brilliant videos about the tunnels on there at the moment

Did you know that the original meaning of the word Palestine is "Invaders from a foreign country"?

No, that's complete and utter rubbish. It comes from Philistia, the territory of the city state of Philistia.

What a response from a poster supporting a country that just bombed a refugee camp killing 100 civilians. Their justification being that a Hamas leader may be hiding there.

Diplomacy worked and 120 countries voted for the resolution.

Look you obviously believe what you need to need to believe or are told to believe and that's fine.
So for you:
*Ukraine is winning and has an abundance of weapons and soldiers.
*Israel will win a 3 front war against Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria.
*Russia and China will sit back if Iran is pre-emptively attacked.
*The USA is not 33 trillion dollars in debt and it's arms forces recruitment is not 15% down.

• China will not take this opportunity to seize Taiwan. *NATOs weapons are not depleted and it's factories are manufacturing 24/7.
• America is able to support 3 wars in 3 regions.

This. Gaza seem unable to run themselves, the terrorist Hamas grab the aid, launch missiles, even now, fail to govern the country after elected to do. Aid keeps the situation going and means no effort to sort themselves out. Terrorist leaders keep tons of money and move to other middle East countries and continue to blame Israel for every problem yhey have.

Egypt fed up and don't want the problem moved to their country. Sympathy from left keeps the situation from moving forward to a possible 2 state solution.

Eventually Hamas launch an attack that shows Israel they are being funded to more and more weapons from Iran and they say enough and strike back on a scale not seen before. People stuck in middle die.

Hamas must go and Palestinian people obviously need some government other than hamas to step up.

Great quiz.
Should be given to everyone that says it was stolen. They'd struggle

Well, if you think that increasing your population from 100,000 to 7 million by means of immigration and kicking the neighbours out so that they can live there isn't stealing their land, there's no hope for you!

And if you don't realise that there was a city state called Philistia, which the Romans called Palestine...

All probably good points - I don’t know enough about it but you seem to.

What worries me is that we constantly seem to be told that China is bad. China has hidden behind its wall for centuries to keep itself away from the neverending wars across Europe and the desert lands. It has huge armies and of course could cause huge problems. But it seems happy to continue to keep a distance. Just because China is not our friend doesn’t mean it has to be our enemy. Some elements of the West (by no means all) seem to want to stir up trouble for ourselves and Israel, to me, is a prime example of this. With a fair bit of effort - given all the historical fighting over the land - West meets East in Palestine it could have been a great success. But far from making an effort, Israel seems to have gone out of its way over the years to cause trouble and hatred and is really going hard at it now. And always expects the US to bail it out - which the US oil and arms dealers may love but which the average US citizen may get increasingly fed up of doing.

The Mandate - short for The Palestine Mandate

How did Palestine become the UN's problem to solve?
https://www.gchq.gov.uk/information/palestine-mandate

All sources of information as biased. Some happen to have an edit history and references. Alternative facts are always available.

Good points @Coughingdodger .
China is so culturally different to the West.

We (in the UK) view the world through a modern western lens. It can be difficult to understand that other cultures have their own valid lenses.