Across the United States, “heads are rolling” at the top of some Ivy League universities amid a campus-wide crackdown on students protesting Israel’s war in Gaza, shining a spotlight on the question of freedom of expression worldwide, said UN Special Rapporteur Irene Khan.
There is only so much space on a protest sign, I’m not even sure what they actually mean. I’ll just explain what it means to me.
I just want civil rights for the Palestinians. Everyone deserves to be represented by a sovereign government. The Palestinians are denied this right by Israel. Israel has not made a good faith attempt in decades to resolve this, because it’s incompatible with their goal of taking all the land for themselves. Driving the Palestinians off of their land is not a solution, that’s ethnic cleansing. The Palestinians should be allowed to live on their ancestral land.
A solution could take the shape of two independent states, a single unitary state or some kind of federal construction as a middle ground. I don’t even care which solution they agree to, they’d have to figure that out among themselves. But if they opt for a two state solution those 700.000 colonists need to fuck off out of the West Bank. The Oslo accords dictate which areas belong to whom in a two state solution.
If the Israelis don’t want this they need to accept a solution where the Palestinians are represented in the government of all of Israel. I suppose in a way you could say that would be the end of Israel as we know it, but that doesn’t mean they’d have to leave. They would just need to accept that they live in a multi-ethnic country. UN peacekeepers would likely have to hang around for decades.
I don’t see any fair solution that isn’t somewhat disadvantageous to Israel, but they kinda brought this on themselves.
I don’t really disagree with anything you said, though I think it’s a pretty loose interpretation of the literal words on the protest sign, which was the crux of my question.
Though, I do agree that a protest sign has limited real estate, and there’s certainly an interpretation where the sign was more going for “vibes” than any attempt to be read literally.
I will say that, while I agree that Israel hasn’t exactly been champing at the bit for a two state solution, I don’t know that all the blame falls on them there.
As late as 2017 the position of Hamas was, “we will accept the 1967 borders, so long as we don’t have to recognize the state of Israel as existing and we retain the right to take over all of the Israel portion as well at some later date.” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/5/2/hamas-accepts-palestinian-state-with-1967-borders
There’s also the question as to whether any deal made with Hamas has much weight, as it’s not the only leadership structure amongst the Palestinians. Fatah still has significant pull, and have largely been sidelined by Hamas. So any agreement made might not even mean anything, as a lot of Palestine don’t align with the group you’re negotiating with.
Mostly I say all that to say, the position is more complicated than just “Israel are being a bunch of dicks.” Negotiating to any kind of peace is going to be a hugely uphill battle, even if the Israeli government was suddenly super invested in coming to a compromise. There is no clear solution to the problem.
Thank you for your elaborate response. Hamas is the inevitable result of what happens when you drive people off their land and lock generations of them up in a radicalization farm. Now they can’t be reasoned with anymore. It’s a monster that Israel created and later fed and exploited in some kind of divide-and-conquer strategy. Now they’re dealing with the mess this got them into. This is why I assign Israel most of the responsibility, although the rest of the West is also to blame for supporting them.
I don’t think Hamas would exist much longer if Israel were to commit to lasting peace in good faith. Or maybe they would transition towards a peaceful political movement, kinda like what happened with the IRA. The Palestinians would need help to get organized tho. Fatah taking over in Gaza seems like a reasonable first step.
I suppose you deserve some elaboration on the sign you were referring to in your initial comment. ‘Palestine’ could mean the West Bank and Gaza or that + all the territories that are currently considered legitimately Israeli. It’s impossible to tell what she means and I don’t really care.
I wouldn’t walk away from attending a demonstration if I saw this sign. People are understandably upset and gravitate towards powerful short statements. I’m sure this girl doesn’t wish harm on anyone innocent. Neither do I, but I do feel like Israel should be forced into one of the two solutions I listed in my previous comment if they don’t work something out with the Palestinians on their own initiative. If that means the end of Israel as we know it so be it. They’d still be allowed to live in the area peacefully if it were up to me and I don’t care if that country would be called Israel or Palestine