Do people fully support Palestine?

[Dawk]

I read this article and the scales fell from my eyes a bit: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/11/amid-the-ceasefire-wrangling-how-popular-is-hamas-in-gaza-now

I hadn’t realised that a majority of Gazans want a conservative Islamist state and the complete destruction of Israel to create an Islamic state covering the whole country (from the river to the sea I guess). They also support violence and even the sacrifice of their own lives.

I am appalled by the destruction and loss of life in Gaza, but having read this article I can’t understand why support for Palestine isn’t more caveated. Why are people waving flags and supporting Gaza so unconditionally? When you look at the polling described in the article it seems fairly clear that many/most don’t actually want peace unless it follows the complete destruction of Israel.

For me it’s a bit like supporting Iran. I would never wave the Iranian flag around because of what the country stands for. In this case I am horrified by the scale of destruction wrought by the IDF so support Palestine completely in that respect but I’d never wave the flag or chant the slogans.

If you consider yourself ‘pro-Palestine’, what do you think of the ideology described in the article?

As a gesture of truly wanting peace. Israel should take Benjamin Netanyahu and deliver him unto Rafah, and the Gazan's can give him a shovel and tell him to start clearing up.

Israel withdrawing to its 1967 borders and the creation of a Palestinian state.
Marwan Barghouti, the most popular of all the Palestinian leaders, espouses this
But that will require trust on the part of the Israelis, along with an end to its expansionist plans

@mouthpipette
See the problem with your position here, is that you are trying to pretend the barrier is Israel not being trusting enough, rather than the fact that so many Palestinians want to eliminating all Jews and all of Israel. If Palestinians want Israel to trust them, then Hamas committing October 7th and Palestinians celebrating in the street was not the way to achieve this.

Yeah, because that is what would happen to BN if he went into Rafah. They'd tell him just to clean up. Yeah, BN and Israel should 'trust' that is what would happen. 🙄

Benjamin Netanyahu is a lot of things but he is not the biggest obstacle to peace. The biggest obstacle to peace is that Palestinians, (no, of course not all of them, but really rather a lot), want Israel and the Jews to cease to exist.

This 💯 %

Without trust, a peace process will never start. It'll be endless conflict. Don't think for one moment that Palestinians are going to forget this.
Palestinians have to believe that a life without conflict, in a land they can govern themselves is better than waging war.
They know 9 million Israelis aren't going anywhere. They know that they have absolutely no hope whatsoever of defeating one of the worlds best equipped and best trained armies. They also know how an army fights when defending its homeland. See 1967 and 1973.
For Hamas, "Dismantling the Zionist state" might look good on paper, but is unachievable. And anyway, Hamas will be fringe if Barghouti leads.

BN came from the same mould as Putin and Trump.
They are all vainglorious people who revel in power, are of low moral standards think they are far better than they actually are, and are belligerent.
Apart from that they are all lovely guys.

The peace loving Bibi, let’s just forget the crimes against humanity , using starvation as a form of warfare and other heinous crimes against civilians. If Israel wanted peace they wouldn’t unleash violent settlers into the West Bank.

Those celebrations weren’t just happening in Gaza

Definitely, all as bad as each other, how has the world come to this

I agree. Working at the kibbutz and then giving information so that the people whom you work with will be targeted. Traitors. Evil Traitors. Nasty sick vile. No sympathy for hamas and the vile supporters and the scum who gave information so the peaceful people at the kibbutz could be slaughtered. I'd never work with them again, how could you trust.

Ending the occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state would go a long way towards peace. This fiction that Palestinians want to kill all Jews is so fucking stupid. Most Palestinians want the same thing everyone else wants, and has. Freedom, autonomy, dignity and the ability to live and raise a family in peace. They can't do that under Israeli occupation.

Israel have been preventing this for decades though.

@ImmediateReaction
Traitors. Evil Traitors. Nasty sick vile. No sympathy for hamas and the vile supporters and the scum who gave information so the peaceful people at the kibbutz could be slaughtered. I'd never work with them again, how could you trust.

So, just let the hate continue.

Well ive heard plenty of people on here saying that Hamas declared war on Israel on Oct 7, are you saying those are not murders either then, or does it just work one way? Of course a nation is going to defend itself against an attacker, knowing when to stop before it commits war crimes and breaks International Law is helpful, otherwise they end up looking no better than the attacker

Perhaps October the 7th might not have happened if the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians had been better.

Unlike hamas and many "innocent" Palestinian following them I don't want to kill them, don't believe rape should be used and don't believe in kidnapping.

I wouldn't trust them though, that would be foolish. I'd want a zone between them and I and spend lots on defence for my people just in case the thousands of them want another October 7th where they can shout Allah akbar as they do what they seem to enjoy, rape, torture and kill.

I think we should ditch the pro-Palestine pro-Israel speech, because it is confusing and it cannot describe most of the positions in this conflict.
I agree with OP that some of the activists waving the Palestinian flag are Hamas supporters indeed and I do not want to associate with them, at all.
But I am still pro a Palestinian State, with a reasonable leadership able to work on the final peace process. With their own borders, parliament, banking, schooling, and so on. Fully independant. A country where the children born have a future, freedom, a nation. And I support this because I think that a civilian that is treated fairly and has a future to look forward gets busy with finding a job, getting the children to school, what to have for dinner... normal everyday life, where there is no place for all this hate and violence.
There is only one solution to this conflict: both nations have to share the land available. This anhilition of each other is just not feasible. It will never happen. They have to live together.
I do hope they can get rid of their current leaders, because they are all full of hate and utter useless, and materialise the two State solution. Years later, I would love for them to become a confederation, as they are so close and entangled geographically.
Today that seems crazy, an impossible dream. But it is just the only way: sharing.

I also think that Netanyahu's party and government are as much of an obstacle to peace as Hamas and Hezbollah are. All these guys need to make it to jail.

I also believe that civilians are innocent, yet they are taking the weight of the punishment. How can anyone say that civilians are not innocent is beyond me. Specially when so many of them are children.

FGS 🙄

Why that reaction ?

Simply an observation.

Perhaps WW2 might not have happened, if reparations after WW1 had been different.
There's another.

I wonder about this. How do you know this? Because I think it's easy to assume that 'everyone' wants freedom, autonomy and so on, but actually not all cultures put freedom, autonomy and peace as number one priority. That tends to be our culture in the UK, but some cultures prize honour, religious virtue, strength, duty or social conformity, for example. And in the UK we haven't always valued freedom, autonomy and peace as highly as we do now. So I wouldn't assume that all Palestinians want peace above all things.

Do you think there is a solution that would be acceptable to the Israelis and that would also result in Hamas being willing to stop attacking Israel? I honestly don't think there is.

I can’t think of any people that would tolerate a violent occupier, absolutely no one.Israel could start with the West Bank and withdraw all the settlers. A simple gesture that would be peaceful, would improve security issues, decrease violence and show that Israel is the peaceful one. This will never happen under Bibi

It would be a good start.

They had a fairly peaceful life until hundreds of thousands of them were displaced and ethnically cleansed. Now they live under occupation. They want a resolution. Of course they want to be left in peace.Their own state is central to this.

As Patrick Pearse said long ago, "Ireland unfree shall never be at peace". Not technically true nowadays of course but I'm just trying to explain the sentiment.

I'm not sure how Brits feel about all this - you've never been in a position to have someone take this away from you. Britain has always been the one taking it away so maybe you don't understand the strength of feeling.

Religion absolutely did play a part in it. You just have to go to Belfast where it’s blatantly obvious which parts are Protestant and which parts are Catholic. The murals tell a story