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?

Israel withdrew completely from Gaza; that worked out well didn't it?

Israel forcibly withdrew settlers from Gaza in 2006. Look where that got them.

Perhaps you expect the Israelis to be Christian and 'turn the other cheek'? LOL

That wasn't done as a peace gesture. It was expedience.

Jinx

???

Of course it was a peace gesture, what do you want, they should farm their land for them?

And please tell me in which peace process it featured and in exchange for what.

When Ariel Sharon withdrew more than eight thousand Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, his principal aim was to consolidate Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank, where the settler population immediately began to increase. But ‘disengagement’ had another purpose: to enable Israel’s air force to bomb Gaza at will, something they could not do when Israeli settlers lived there. The Palestinians of the West Bank have been, it seems, gruesomely lucky. They are encircled by settlers determined to steal their lands – and not at all hesitant about inflicting violence in the process – but the Jewish presence in their territory has spared them the mass bombardment and devastation to which Israel subjects the people of Gaza every few years.

The Israeli government refers to these episodes of collective punishment as ‘mowing the lawn’. In the last fifteen years, it has launched five offensives in the Strip. The first four were brutal and cruel, as colonial counterinsurgencies invariably are, killing thousands of civilians in retribution for Hamas rocket fire and hostage-taking. But the latest, Operation Iron Swords, launched on 7 October in response to Hamas’s murderous raid in southern Israel, is different in kind, not merely in degree.

Adam Schatz
London Review of Books
June 2024

It was a gesture keeping the Palestinians easier to lock in and contain:
This was written by the Norwegian Refugee Council 2018 (5 years before Oct 7).

More than 50 years of occupation and 10 years of blockade have made the lives of 1.9 million Palestinians living inside the Gaza Strip unbearable. That is why they now are protesting and risking their lives.

www.nrc.no/news/2018/april/gaza-the-worlds-largest-open-air-prison

👏👏

Well again, I don't think your 'of course' is inevitably true. As I said, for some cultures peace isn't everything.

My view is that it is incorrect to compare Gaza and Ireland. The situations couldn't really be more different.

It feels good to paint situation as having a clear villain and a clear victim - it makes it easy to take sides. In reality though, it is rarely as straightforward as that. Even where one country is very clearly the aggressor (say for example Russia in Ukraine) there will be groups and individuals who are more or less complicit. If you consider Israel, there were people who brutally displaced Palestinians in the 1940s. On the other hand, there were Jews there long before that. The area was colonised by the Ottomans before WW1. The new state of Israel did not displace a 'nation', as there wasn't one. At that time in history borders were shifting all the time. Many of the people who came from Europe after the war were refugees and bought land. Most modern-day Israelis are descended from those who were persecuted in other parts of the Middle East. So it seems really simplistic to say that the Palestinians were always there and then the Israelis came and displaced them. It makes it easier to take sides but it doesn't feel right to me

Do you think they prefer to live under occupation with constant harassment and grief?

Edit: I wasn't comparing Ireland to Gaza. I was trying to explain the mindset for people living under occupation.

No, but I think the removal of occupation would come with compromises that they wouldn't prefer. I think many might prefer constant struggle to any compromise solution.

The major compromise being giving up on destroying the state of Israel. Neither Hamas nor Iran want to do that.

How utterly bizarre. I don't know what you're hinting at but I think you're misunderstanding what drives people in the situation Gazans find themselves in.

Well I'm not just assuming that I understand, I'm basing it on what I've read about poll results in Gaza. If you have a source of info that gives an alternative perspective on what the population wants, please do share.

I've told you that Gazans have the same basic needs as the rest of us but you don't believe me. They want their own state. It's not a secret. Maybe because you don't understand not having freedom and peace because you've always had it.

The problem is that what their leaders want is for that state to encompass what is currently Israel. Sure, have a Palestinian state, but alongside Israel, not instead of.

The Palestinian Authority support a 2 state solution. Israel prefers to support settlers to terrorise people there (the West Bank) and steal their land. Allowing Hamas to grow and thrive in order to kill the two state solution was a terrible strategy, with absolutely tragic and horrendous consequences for Palestinians and Israelis.

It's not fair to say that Palestinians don't want it.

@BaMamma wrote
Sure, have a Palestinian state, but alongside Israel, not instead of.

I fully agree.

@Lalaloveya
It's nor fair to say that Palestinians don't want it.

MB proposes 2 state solution, with Israel at '67 borders. He shouted out in court about "peace". He seemed genuine.

I'm not using my own personal experience to try to understand this. My personal experience is irrelevant because I am not Palestinian or Israeli.

As I said, yes of course they want their own state, but if their vision of their own state is the whole of Israel then they may not support an end to violence if they are offered less than that. It's very clear to me just looking at human behaviour throughout history that people don't want peace at any cost. Humans have always been willing to wage war and die for what they believe in. In this case, the Palestinian vision of 'freedom' (from the river to the sea) may conflict with and trump any desire for peace.

Historically, this is such a complicated situation, with rights and wrongs on both sides and no easy solution in sight, that I find it hard to do anything other than sit on the fence. The content of the Guardian's article doesn't surprise me (other than it's more balanced than usual.) I do believe that the eradication of Israel (and the Jewish people) is the primary objective of Hamas and October 7th really was poking the metaphorical bear, a bear with infinite resources and an iron will to fight back.
A pro-Palestine supporter recently asked me for my take on things and left me gobsmacked when she said that Hamas weren't really involved, that was 'social media talk.' She looked genuinely surprised when I told her that all the major news channels were naming Hamas. It's difficult to know where she is getting her information from but she has a very black and white view of the situation: Palestine good, Israel bad. I could see that the discussion was going to be pointless and frustrating so I defaulted to fence-sitting.
The supporters I find hilarious are the 'Queers for Palestine'. Currently, there aren't enough tall buildings left in Gaza to throw them all off but when they rebuild they'd probably be lucky to last a day.
How can they not know this?

@AcquadiP
I do believe that the eradication of Israel (and the Jewish people) is the primary objective of Hamas

It may be their objective, but it's never going to happen.