It is extremely difficult to find English language writings or videos that I thought would be useful here. I have found one I link below.
98% of discussions I hear or read about Israel Palestine in English language are based on either/both substantially uninformed reactive drivel, or experience so emotionally charged that my only response is pity for the traumatized speaker, including posts on this board. Very few of my Palestinian/Israeli friends speak/write that way with me, because they know that I know more than the norm and they speak more deeply to me. And they rarely speak to me as they speak to each other (of those who do speak to “the other side” or struggle to try to speak deeply across the gaps).
This podcast is of Ezra Klein interviewing Ta-Nehisi Coates, both of whom I deeply respect, but with reservations and disagreements. I think it is very very worth listening with your full being.
The conflict there, similarly to Ukraine/Russia, is a wild card that will likely have far bigger effects on most of our investments and the economy we live within than most of the topics we discuss. But the discussion (as in the one linked) needs restraint and courtesy and mutual respect.
A super majority of Palestinians live in peace and security with Israel if you look at Palestinian Israeli citizens and Jordanian Palestinians. All of whom are actually Syrian tribesmen. Syria is very problematic.
The difference was a fundamental choice in the very early 1950s to run with the US or Russia. Mixed with the same choice was to live side by side in peace with Jews. By the early 1970s Jordan made her choice.
The minority of Palestinians who have rejected Israel have had Russian backing for about 75 years. This is not one war but an ongoing conflict.
Most of the world assumes this is the Palestinian’s plight. That is not true.
We have an ongoing cold war. Less warm more recently. And now hot again.
The human side of it is a need for the Palestinians at odds to own their own governments and settle down with Israel side by side.
The governments of an elected Hamas and an elected PLA have avoided settling down.
Were the individual tribes of the PLA and Hamas actually in Jerusalem back in 1948? A few people yes but mostly no.
The claims of the warring Palestinians are based on an old version of Jews in the most dire of situations in the Middle East while Muslims ruled a given country.
What rocks the apple cart, the Jews took reparations from the Arabs without permission. The Arabs would have preferred to limit that with their own say. Perhaps never.
Do the Palestinians at war need reparations? Yes and for decades the Israeli courts have paid out reparations.
The 98% does not have the benefit of ancient and modern history to base their outbursts on. How many know where and when the name Palestine came about? Palestine, the (uncircumcised) Philistines, the Sea People, the Roman Empire.
How many know who invented the two state solution and promised the land to two different people, then washed their hands of the whole affair?
How many can name the countries whose land was always their own? This is a trick question, there are none except maybe some Pacific atolls!
Leap, good point I would add that there are probably on the order of 100 or so other coherent points, some correlated with yours and some not.
On the ground, person by person, family by family, village by village, water well by well, local historical context by context, and random this by that, it is far more crazily random than you seem brave enough to accept.
