Why there has not been an agreement for a Palestinian state
If your solution to the problem is "get rid of Israel," you can stop reading right here. I'm going to explain why the situation is complicated and what issues would have to be resolved to reach an agreement. This is not about a unified Israeli-Palestinian state either; I'm addressing the obstacles to the two-state solution.
1. Jerusalem: This city has holy sites sacred to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Any final settlement will have to address access not just by Israelis and Palestinians, but for people from all over the world. The Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque are built on top of the Second Jewish Temple, so it's not like the area can be divided. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is also nearby. The city could be placed under the control of an international coalition, but it's unlikely that either side will agree to this.
2. Settlements: Legal or not, there are close to 150 settlements in the West Bank with around half a million residents combined. Dismantling these and moving them into Israel proper would be a much larger undertaking than it was to dismantle the settlements in Gaza in 2006. That doesn't mean it would be impossible, just difficult. The settlers could also be given the opportunity to move on their own or become residents of the future Palestinian state.
3. Borders: Linked to the above concern is where the border between Israel and Palestine would be drawn. The 2003 proposal included land swaps, where settlements close to the Green Line would be part of Israel, while Gaza would get more land to make up for it. This also included a secure highway between the two areas.
4. Refugees: In 1948, around 700,000 Arabs were either expelled from what is now Israel or left voluntarily. Since then, they have been treated differently from any other group of refugees, with their own United Nations agency specifically for them (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East or UNRWA). They have also been prohibited from becoming citizens of the countries they reside in. The result of this has been to grow their numbers to around 6 million people today as they enter their fourth generation. The "Right of Return" is the demand that they be allowed to return to their homes in Israel as part of a peace agreement. Israel has resisted this as it would end the Jewish majority. Like it or not, sovereign countries are entitled to control who is allowed to immigrate into them for whatever reasons they choose. Past attempts to create a Palestinian state were derailed by this issue.
5. Security: Shortly after Israel pulled out of Gaza, Hamas was elected and began using it as a staging ground for attacks. Understandably, Israel doesn't want to create the same situation in the West Bank. A future Palestinian state would have to be demilitarized. The Palestinian leadership has shown that it either cannot control this violence, or in the case of Hamas, they're instigating it. Occupation of the Palestinian state by Israel would also be unacceptable. One proposal is for a coalition consisting of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia to provide security for Palestine, with the goal of handing power over to the Palestinians once they demonstrate their willingness to live in peace with their neighbors.
I'm fine with any disagreements with any of the above points as long as they're not just "Israel has no right to exist" or "everything is Israel's fault." I'm also aware that the current Likud government is opposed to a Palestinian state. However, one role the US could play would be to push Israel to work toward solutions to the above obstacles, but that would require not just the cooperation of Israel and the Palestinians, but the surrounding countries as well.
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1/ you are right in your statement that historic Palestine (modern day Israel +the Palestinian Territories) is an important place for all Abrahamic religions However using religion is not a good tactic here.
01/ You don’t have a Christian/jewish /muslim empire or army or country or government ruling over the land and its locals and influencing/pressuring /persecuting them to convert But you have a project of massive settler colonialism that is rooted and revolves around displacement of the locals and replacing them with foreigners of different origins as long as they identify with -zionist- Judaism in any way shape or form including conversion. The locals of historic Palestine’s issue has nothing to do with any religion in particular. If what happened to Palestinians was done to them by Christians or Hindus or Buddhists or Muslims their reaction would have been the exact same. If you displace internally And externally 70% of any land’s local population and continue to do it over the decades with various forms of supression you’ll get resistance. And resistance in history almost has never been peaceful.
It is true that majority of the locals of historic Palestine are Muslim But Islamic conquest happened in 600s But the Levant only became majority Muslim in 12th century
“” Although Arab armies quickly established an Islamic empire during the seventh and eighth centuries, it took far longer for an Islamic society to emerge within its frontiers. Indeed, despite widespread images of “conversion by the sword” in popular culture, the process of Islamisation in the early period was slow, complex, and often non-violent. Forced conversion was fairly uncommon, and religious change was driven far more by factors such as intermarriage, economic self-interest, and political allegiance
the Middle East became predominantly Muslim far later than an older generation of scholars once assumed. Although we lack reliable demographic data from the pre-modern period with which we could make precise estimates (such as censuses or tax registers), historians surmise that Syria-Palestine crossed the threshold of a Muslim demographic majority in the 12th century, while Egypt may have passed this benchmark even later, possibly in the 14th””-Oxford paper
So historic Palestine only became majority Muslim in 12th century which is centuries after the Islamic conquest. Due to a slow process of conversion with ofc incidents of pressure and persecution to convert . There is also a historic and genetic census That Arabs from the Arabian peninsula DID not mass genocide / exile the locals of Palestine and replace them that simply NEVER happened . Some Arabs did migrate and settle there but it was homogeneous. They speak Arabic because the Middle East and North Africa was Arabized and Arabic became the language where all of these people could communicate under arab empires like Latin including the Jews who lived in mena.
The locals of historic Palestine by the time the British empire came to them Were a natural product of local people with various intermixing due to their long history of being ruled by various empires.
02/ if it was a civil war between the Muslim locals vs the Jewish locals due to religious beef I would say well we have no control over it it’s their issue. But that wasn’t what happened. The locals were majority Muslim even in ottoman and British mandate. It was the continuous mass migration of European foreigners that kept changing the religious demographic And worse , they wanting their own land on someone else’s land that was the issue. Israel was the product of European settler colonialism and imperialism. The other Jews came AFTER the creation of Israel Mainly from mena and they only migrated to Israel due to Israeli pressure , the deterioration of the Arab states due to internal problems post colonialism , and various persecutions as a reaction to Zionism which happened AFTER the nakba and the Holocaust the Palestinians experienced . Religious revenge happened throughout history
Many Christians did x massacre to take revenge on Muslim y Massacre and vice versa So Muslim lands persecuted their Jews to get revenge for majority Muslim Palestine being persecuted by Jews
Is it right? Obviously not but regardless Israel would have been created either way. So it is irrelevant. Even the mena jews r not local. Anyone who leaves his home to take someone’s home in another village city land etc is a criminal.
2/ “settlements legal or not “
Theyr illegal full stop don’t try to downplay it. Illegal settlements coupled with settler violence ignored by Israeli authorities, military violence, children military court , restrictions on movement and far more .
If an average American was undergoing this they’d not hesitate to grab their rifles and guns .
3-4/ Israel regardless of government have always opposed to two state solution and their continues illegal settlement expansions in the West Bank is an evidence of it . They keep postponing the two state solution while increasing the illegal settlements to make that an impossible option. Take any look at figures of how much the settlements have grown over the years. Not seeing the strategy makes you a liar and a b*tch with no due respect. Respect is given to who deserves it.
I have also noticed how the Zionist project keeps calling them “arabs “ This ambiguous word. Call them what they are Theyr the locals of historic Palestine. Because calling Them -just- “Arabs “ is a deliberate nasty move to create a different narrative Which everyone can see through. Call them the locals of historic Palestine .
There is no Israel and Palestine. It was one land bunch of foreigners came from abroad expelled masses of people from their local places (villages , cities , towns ) which now exist within what we refer to as the state of Israel created Jewish majority zone and said to them bye bye don’t come back lol Then kept expanding since with no boarders. And didn’t allow those it expelled abroad to return or those it expelled internally to return And imposed never ending occupation / apartheid over the remaining historic Palestinian Territories that r in the process of becoming Israel And Israel never allowed them to return in violation of international law so ur wrong you don’t have a right as you claimed you violated the Vienna Convention.
5/ the west loves to preach about democracy until it does not suit them. Hamas was elected democratically by the people of Gaza Once they came to power Israel immediately started a siege Israel never pulled out of Gaza btw they just pulled out the settlements that’s all. And it’s funny how you say the future Palestinian state must be demilitarized 😂who are you to demand ? “X security not y security “ IDF has a horrible criminal record Way too much violence Worse than Hamas. the IDF monkeys did everything you claim Hamas did but a million times worse.
You talk with a superiority tone And with that tone you definitely deserve all the hate you get. Get a psychological evaluation.
6/ as a Saudi Arabian ,don’t dump ur problems on us or others. Also i believe the locals of historic Palestine should deal with this the way they want. If they want to fight and try defeat their enemy they shall And if they want to make peace and forgive the bastards and create a two state solution they shall. I have no opinion regarding other peoples struggles . What’s funny tho major players in the region like my own already agreed with the two state solution The Palestinian authority which is mostly a slave to Israel also did It’s the Israeli government that has never wanted it.
“ Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.
According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.” - the times of Israel.
Hamas is purely the product of any violent settler colony and is moved by invisible strings by the Israeli government .
I don’t agree with Hamas strategies by the way But i don’t see any crime Hamas did that Israel did not do whether today or in the past and a tiny look at the current genocide will make anyone vomit over and over . So If u wanna designate Hamas as terrorist then go ahead but only if you include the IDF and the Israeli government . Hamas 100% had a legal right to attack Israel on 7/10 Did they do wrong things ? Yes Just like Israel does in almost all of its operations including the current genocide Step down from ur high moral horse
7/ there are millions of ethnic groups around the world and most nations r comprised of multi ethnic groups and not one. Many of those ethnic groups prefer to have their own state or at least a state where they’r the majority and most of the time you achieve it through power. So i do not blame the Jews for wanting a Jewish state But if you are gonna do it , do it by buying a piece of land or going to an empty land or starting a civil war in a land ur locals of But You went to a populated land thriving in culture and history and in the heart of the world and decided to make a majority non Jewish land into a majority Jewish state Not by conversion but by unnatural mass migrations and subsequent displacement that continues to this day.
The biggest issue is treating it as two sides and complicated issue
One is a nuclear regional power with the support of USA/nato with an army and navy and Air Force Against people they literally occupy under military rule with none of the above except a small resistance group in jenin camp their weapon collection consists of rocks , Molotov cocktails and some guns.
And Hamas in Gaza who also has none of the above except for snuck in or home made modest weapons .
All I ask is to respect my human brain cells I don’t think it is too much .
Please don’t come and say we are the locals but we have been removed 2000- 4000 years ago from our land and this justifies our crimes 😂 Not only is that not an excuse to displace a local population of at -least- 2000-4000 years according to ur counting but it’s not entirely true either
1. Your history lesson is irrelevant. I'm not talking about how the current situation arose. The fact that Jerusalem is sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam means that no Palestinian state will be established unless free access is available to all three religions. You don't address that or my suggestion of placing the city under international control. It's like you're responding to a completely different argument that I didn't make here.
2. What other people would do in this situation is irrelevant. The fact remains that the settlements are an obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state, because they either would have to be dismantled or incorporated into it. Again, your grievances prevent you from responding to my actual point.
3. Again, you fail to address what I'm talking about, in this case, the borders between Israel and a proposed Palestinian state. You then bring in the settlements again, which was my second point, and then go into another history lesson. And for some unknown reason, you link this one with my 4th point about the Palestinian refugees without addressing that issue either.
4. See above.
5. You use my description of the security issue to launch into a diatribe against the IDF. Obviously, the Palestinians should be secure in their own state.
6. For some reason, you lose track of the numbering as I only had 5 points, but at least you tangentially address something I said here. I'm not "dumping" anything on anyone. I'm proposing that Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt take control of the West Bank and Gaza, since the Israelis won't trust the Palestinians (at least not at the moment) and the Palestinians certainly won't trust the Israelis to do it. So I'm proposing that the three closest Arab countries handle governance, at least initially. Who would you prefer, the Americans? The British? Maybe we should let Turkey handle it; the Ottomans did a pretty good job of it before when they had it.
7. Again, your history is deficient. The initial Jewish refugees who emigrated to Israel starting in the late 19th century did purchase land there. There was no "thriving populated land," Palestine was a malarial wasteland that experienced an influx of Arabs (and they were Arabs, not "Palestinians" as that designation didn't exist at the time) once the Jews began developing it. As much as you try to characterize this as a "colonial" project of foreign invaders displacing the "natives," that didn't happen until 1948 when Israel managed to survive against the onslaught of the Arab armies that sought to destroy it. And as you should know, the Arabs, Bedouins, Druze, and other non-Jews who remained there became Israeli citizens, while the Jews of MENA were ethnically cleansed.
The Palestinians deserve their own state where they can exert self-determination. They will only get it when they demonstrate that they're interested in that, and not at the cost of obliterating Israel.
1/ “Your history lesson is irrelevant. “ It was relevant. because your first point mentioned how historic Palestine is an important place to all abrahamic religions and while that is true it is irrelevant to the Palestinian struggle. The Palestinian struggle revolves around displacement and colonialism . What I said is that the Palestinians r the locals of the land. their religious make up is irrelevant today or Tomorrow. Your issue lies with your refusal to accept the fact the majority of historic Palestine’s local population embraced Islam. Also Historic Palestine always had free access to religious tourism and would always do You are insinuating that if the occupied displaced local people who are being oppressed get their rights you christain American viewer will not be able to visit Jerusalem. I am not stupid i can read through the lines.
2/I never denied that the settlements are not an obstacle to a Palestinian state I actually agreed with you and said that the the entire reason for those settlements and their continuous expansion is so a Palestinian state could never be created😂
See the violence you get? It’s called you reaping what you sow. What I said however is that they are illegal Because you said “legal or not “ downplaying it So I wanted to make things clear that they are barbarous and illegal I also mentioned how it’s not just settlements it’s an entire illegal occupation And I mentioned other examples of human right violations. It is not just “settlements “
Also according to international law occupied people can resist through armed struggle so again it is you reaping what you sow. As long as there is occupation do not complain about armed resistance . Whether the armed resistance is actually helping or not and if they commit crimes or not in their resistance is another matter of course.
3-4/ here ur still talking about settlements so please refer to point 2
5/you were talking about a Palestinian state having to be demilitarized which shows ur bias and u simply being a bigot. Why not Israel too? IDF have a monstrous record In fact the IDF was first established by the usurpation of various militia
6/ I did not lose track of numbering I just organized my response to ur post in my desired manner . The palestians do not trust the Israelis why didn’t u propose for Israel to be controlled by USA ? If palestians r incapable to govern themselves as u claim so do Israelis .
7/ “Again, your history is deficient. The initial Jewish refugees who emigrated to Israel starting in the late 19th century did purchase land there” There was no Israel in the 19th century. Don’t start a history lesson with a lie for fucks sake😂 And Jews immigrants purchased a very tiny piece of land not anything significant.
“”There was no "thriving populated land," Palestine was a malarial wasteland “”
The typical European settler colonists lie/ logic to justify their existence and their crimes😂 Copy paste 😵💫 it’s like a textbook they copy from.
Either way it was a land populated by its locals with their settlements and rich culture. Books history journals registry etc prove this .
“I stole ur home and kicked u out of it but while u were kicked out I turned it into a bigger house so no you cannot have ur home back and no I didn’t do anything wrong “
——-
“experienced an influx of Arabs”
You are trying to insinuate that the palestinians are decedents of people who came from modern day Saudi due to the Islamic conquest in 600s but we have already refuted that many times. Genetically and historically they aren’t altho intermarriage and migrations of some Arabs to the land happened.
“and they were Arabs, not Palestinians as that designation didn't exist at the time “
Majority of the world was under the rule of empires , majority of countries did not exist until recently making ur statement invalid . But the ppl and the settlements did exist. Also locals of historic Palestine Have identified with the empires That ruled over them or city state since antiquity . But regardless of what they called themselves or what they got called they’r the locals.
As for namings I’m pretty sure no one in modern day Saudi called themselves Saudi a 100 years ago And examples continue Filipinos did not call themselves Filipinos because the Philippines is named after a Spanish prince . What is your point?
It doesn’t matter what we call them Let’s call them “the hulamatata” Theyr still the locals. Theyr the people who were living in the land in their various villages and towns before the settlers arrived displaced them and stole /destroyed their villages /towns and turned them into refugees.
Also Arab means anyone who speaks Arabic. You cannot go to Djibouti Displace them and say oh ur Arab so just go to kuwait . You cannot go to a village or city in modern day Saudi Arabia like Mecca even before the establishment of the country and displace the people in it and replacing them with others telling them to go to Muscat Oman.
“ as much as you try to characterize this as a colonial project of foreign invaders …” It is a colonial project of foreign invaders. It even written in the early Zionist writings. Ur bias and inability to be truthful is ur problem. It’s okay to try to find modern solutions and make peace but ur problem lies in you denying what happened Then I’ll deny the holocaust. Denial is a very easy thing to do.
“”displacing the “natives”, that didn't happen until 1948”” Theyr the natives deal with it. And Not true the displacement was happening beforehand in the 1920s and so on but on lesser amounts . The 1948 was the nakba or the Palestinian holocaust when 70% of the locals of the land were forcefully displaced by settlers internally or externally in violation of the Vienna convention which continued since.
You downplaying it is fine I’ll also downplay the holocaust It’s a two person game .
“And as you should know, the Arabs, Bedouins, Druze, and other non-Jews who remained there became Israeli citizens,”
It’s literally almost impossible to 100% ethnically displace a local population due to international pressure 😂 The goal was to create a Jewish majority state And they did it by forced displacement of as much locals as they could.
“The Palestinians deserve their own state where they can exert self-determination. They will only get it when they demonstrate that they're interested in that, and not at the cost of obliterating Israel.”
Israel was created by the obliteration of the locals by a group of foreigners who came from abroad And Israel since then opposed a two state solution. So with ur own logic Israel does not deserve a state .
Like it or not the fact is majority of historic Palestine was only minority Jewish. Majority of the Jews (not all) in the land are the result of recent mass migration to the land they’r not locals. It’s all documented and happens until this And they wanted a majority Jewish state on a land that isn’t theirs nor is majority Jewish. And created the state of Israel through depopulation and displacement A Holocaust. Israel achieved what hitler wanted . If you say they’r actually natives like the Palestinians the only difference is that they left 2000-4000 years ago I say that is fine But that means the Palestinians have been living in the land for 2000-4000 years with natural migrations intermixing etc like every other land. so if ur the ones that left and they aren’t the ones who left That means they’r more local and native than u.
“while the Jews of MENA were ethnically cleansed.” You did ethnically cleanse the palestians as I just explained above and I already replied to that before
8/ As a Saudi , Saudis are individuals and each Saudi has their opinion on various things however the majority of us in the end of the day accept and trust whatever our government decides. If tomorrow our government tells us to go to war with Israel we will. If tomorrow our government makes peace with Israel we will accept it and respect this peace treaty as long as they don’t break it. So my opinion in the end of the day really doesn’t matter. Saudi Arabia has over and over said they’d recognize Israel if two state solution happens. Saudi could recognize Israel regardless of that being achieved or not if USA bribes Saudi with nuclear program or nato like alliance Just like Israel/USA bribed Morocco by telling it they will recognize Western Sahara as Moroccan if they proceed with the normalization. That’s just my speculation but I hope my country never normalizes until a two state solution is achieved . Also
I disagree with Hamas not because they attacked Israel on 10/7 as they have the legal right to but for crimes they did (Like the ones the IDF does altho the IDF is much worse ) And because they attacked when they were not ready so it was a dumb and suicidal decision. Hamas does not have the resources infrastructure or allies yet it decided to embark on a stupid suicidal futile journey that only benefits Israel.
@Moon3624 Until you recognize that Jews have just as much a right to remain in Israel and exert self-determination there as the Palestinians do, you're only prolonging the conflict.
@LeopoldBloom your comment has not addressed any of my points which i understand is due to ur inability to have a proper discussion or u were incapable of refuting them. If you do not have anything to response with you don’t need to respond.
And for the billionth time,
It has nothing to do with Jews. It has to do with setter colonialism.
as I stated a million times This was / is not a civil war / conflict between locals
The vast majority of the Jews ur referring to are foreigners who came to the land through various recent/current migrations and created a majority Jewish land through forced depopulation of the people already living there.
Your claim that every self proclaimed Jew is someone who left or made to leave 2000-4000 years ago and the palestians r the locals who haven’t left so y’all the same Even if we go with that then it still did not give u the right to displace and replace the local population .
I am not prolonging the conflict as the conflict has nothing to do with me I literally stated the reasons for the conflict and who’s the one really prolonging it
@Moon3624 Both groups are descended from both indigenous people and immigrants. Even Yasser Arafat was Egyptian. What you can't seem to understand is that people have a right to live in peace based solely on where they reside, not where their grandfather came from. By that standard, I have no right to live in the US, and I should give my house to a Yamacraw, assuming I can find one. Ultimately, it doesn't matter where the Israeli Jews and Palestinians came from. What matters is where they are now.
You missed the entire point of my post, which had nothing to do with the reasons for the conflict. I was talking about the current situation and making suggestions for moving forward. You are prolonging the conflict by focusing on the past. I'm trying to solve it by understanding the present and looking toward the future - a future which should include both Israelis and Palestinians.
@LeopoldBloom “Both groups are descended from both indigenous people and immigrants. Even Yasser Arafat was Egyptian”
Arafat’s grandmother from his father side is Egyptian but his mother’s side is Palestinian and his family home is in Palestine. And even if we say he’s 100% Egyptian Few examples here and there aside , the massive chunk of palestians r locals. Whether the one still in it or forced abroad out of it.
Plus Things like intermarriage and legal migrations are not a good example bc that’s the norm anywhere.
Or are you claiming that the Jewish immigrants who came in late 1800s and mostly in 1900s arrived to an empty land with no one living in it ?😂 I can literally give you name of a village / city after the other with their population count before the Zionist project.
It’s not about jews having a right to live in the land or not It’s about how the land was majority non Jewish And then a massive flock of foreigners from abroad who just happened to be Jewish too Came and depopulated the land massively through violence and force to create a Jewish majority demographic. You denying how horrible this was Is like someone denying the Holocaust You literally downplay it as if it’s nothing. It’s not a jews it’s about settler colonialism.
“. What you can't seem to understand is that people have a right to live in peace based solely on where they reside, not where their grandfather came from. ”
I actually agree that’s why a massive group of foreigners coming to the land from abroad displacing and replacing 70% of the population who were residing in that land based on the claim that each one of them decedent from someone who was here 2000-4000 years ago Is what started this mess in the first place. and they still come from America or elsewhere while the locals residing in the land r suffering or kicked out of it unable to return to their homeland.
“You missed the entire point of my post, which had nothing to do with the reasons for the conflict. I was talking about the current situation and making suggestions for moving forward. You are prolonging the conflict by focusing on the past. ”
I did not prolong the conflict or focus on the past I just fixed or added commentary to ur points . Im pretty sure the conflict was started by Zionists and prolonged by Zionists.
@Moon3624 White Trump supporters are upset about the number of Latinos, Haitians, Arabs, and other "non-white" immigrants that they think are entering the country and changing its culture. Do you support them?
