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You're missing a factor: 3) The Palestinians, both officially and according to opinion polls, want the land inside the Green Line, and refuse to end their "irr

You're missing a factor: 3) The Palestinians, both officially and according to opinion polls, want the land inside the Green Line, and refuse to end their "irregular militancy" (aka: war but you want to pretend their hands are clean) until they get it. This issue becomes more urgent after Israel withdrew all its forces and civilians unilaterally from Gaza in 2005, with a plan to do the same in the West Bank, and gets in return a militarized statelet that maintains a state of war with Israel. Worse, Hamas, the PLO, and their Western supporters start moving the goalpost of what constitutes "occupation", so that it stops meaning the presence of active military force and starts referring to the simple state of war between neighbors. Then you can keep telling Israel to "end the occupation of Gaza" so that "ending the occupation" becomes solely defined as meeting the demands of Gaza's ruling government. Now, I'll bite my political bullets and say that I still think the Gaza Withdrawal was the right thing to do, but I also find it totally obvious and sensible that Israeli voters don't want to repeat the experience with the West Bank, which has high ground from which a rocketeer or a sniper can take easy pot-shots at Israeli civilians down below. I can especially see why most voters don't want to repeat the experience, given that even our supposed Western "friends" and "allies" are willing to redefine words so that we somehow become the perpetrators of a crime whose commission is entirely in someone else's control. To wit, if someone is accused of assault, it is in fact an alibi to have been a hundred miles away when the supposed assault took place. If Israel is accused of "occupation", an alibi becomes a contradiction-in-terms: "occupation" is now when you have no troops on the "occupied" soil but your neighbor keeps up a state of war with you for their own political reasons.

tsimionescu 5y ago
Israel maintains control of all Palestinian airspace and the Gaza coast. Israel maintains the right to march its military or police inside the West Bank or Gaza or to bomb them without considering this an act of war. They have regularly arrested Palestinian elected officials. They control all resources entering Gaza and the West Bank, particularly water, food and construction materials, and punish people by reducing rations if they feel they are not complying with some decision. The withdrawal from Gaza was also not some gesture of autonomy towards Palestine as you make it out to be. It was a demographic calculation, again going back to the problem of the Jewish state - the balance of Jewish people and Arabs in Israel was getting too low, so the leadership at the time decided it was more important to stop the colonization effort and bring the Jewish population back into Israel. This was widely reported and the official public reason given at the time. This policy has also been illegally reversed recently, so new illegal Israeli colonies are again popping up, though I believe mostly in the West Bank. So, by all possible measures, even if they do not have permanently stationed troops there anymore, Israel is occupying Gaza. Imagine if China were flying fighter jets over Taiwan, refusing entry to any ships they didn't inspect, refusing to allow concrete or food to be delivered, and had a tight grip on water resources. Further imagine if Chinese troops were freely entering Taiwan and arresting people the regime deemed "terrorists" or simply "problematic", and they were regularly bombing Taiwanese buildings in retaliation for terrorist acts, or just in response to democratic choices they didn't like. Would you not say that China was occupying Taiwan, or at least doing something very very close to it? It's also important to note that Israel itself does not recognize Palestine as a state, so it is very hard to see by what measure Israel could claim that it is at war with Palestine.
- eli_gottlieb 5y ago
  >Israel maintains the right to march its military or police inside the West Bank or Gaza or to bomb them without considering this an act of war. No we don't. These are acts of war. We're at war with Palestine. >The withdrawal from Gaza was also not some gesture of autonomy towards Palestine as you make it out to be. I didn't say anything about motives. I said we took our soldiers and settlers out of Gaza. That is a material fact. >Would you not say that China was occupying Taiwan, or at least doing something very very close to it? I would say that China was blockading or besieging Taiwan, with which it was at war, and would apply the same terms for Israel's war against Gaza. >It's also important to note that Israel itself does not recognize Palestine as a state, so it is very hard to see by what measure Israel could claim that it is at war with Palestine. This is metaphysical special pleading.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    > No we don't. These are acts of war. We're at war with Palestine. You keep insisting on this historical revisionism. When did this war start? Between which two states is it happening? When did the declaration of war happen? At most, you can call this is a civil war, since it is taking place entirely on Israel's territory (according to Israel's own definition!). The more historically correct way to look at it is that there is a resistance movement fighting against Israel's occupation. This is the simple, undeniable historical truth. Israel is, undeniably, the original aggressor against the people of Gaza and the West Bank, though over the years there have been many heinous acts committed by all parties.

tsimionescu 5y ago

Israel maintains control of all Palestinian airspace and the Gaza coast. Israel maintains the right to march its military or police inside the West Bank or Gaza or to bomb them without considering this an act of war. They have regularly arrested Palestinian elected officials. They control all resources entering Gaza and the West Bank, particularly water, food and construction materials, and punish people by reducing rations if they feel they are not complying with some decision. The withdrawal from Gaza was also not some gesture of autonomy towards Palestine as you make it out to be. It was a demographic calculation, again going back to the problem of the Jewish state - the balance of Jewish people and Arabs in Israel was getting too low, so the leadership at the time decided it was more important to stop the colonization effort and bring the Jewish population back into Israel. This was widely reported and the official public reason given at the time. This policy has also been illegally reversed recently, so new illegal Israeli colonies are again popping up, though I believe mostly in the West Bank. So, by all possible measures, even if they do not have permanently stationed troops there anymore, Israel is occupying Gaza. Imagine if China were flying fighter jets over Taiwan, refusing entry to any ships they didn't inspect, refusing to allow concrete or food to be delivered, and had a tight grip on water resources. Further imagine if Chinese troops were freely entering Taiwan and arresting people the regime deemed "terrorists" or simply "problematic", and they were regularly bombing Taiwanese buildings in retaliation for terrorist acts, or just in response to democratic choices they didn't like. Would you not say that China was occupying Taiwan, or at least doing something very very close to it? It's also important to note that Israel itself does not recognize Palestine as a state, so it is very hard to see by what measure Israel could claim that it is at war with Palestine.

eli_gottlieb 5y ago
>Israel maintains the right to march its military or police inside the West Bank or Gaza or to bomb them without considering this an act of war. No we don't. These are acts of war. We're at war with Palestine. >The withdrawal from Gaza was also not some gesture of autonomy towards Palestine as you make it out to be. I didn't say anything about motives. I said we took our soldiers and settlers out of Gaza. That is a material fact. >Would you not say that China was occupying Taiwan, or at least doing something very very close to it? I would say that China was blockading or besieging Taiwan, with which it was at war, and would apply the same terms for Israel's war against Gaza. >It's also important to note that Israel itself does not recognize Palestine as a state, so it is very hard to see by what measure Israel could claim that it is at war with Palestine. This is metaphysical special pleading.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > No we don't. These are acts of war. We're at war with Palestine. You keep insisting on this historical revisionism. When did this war start? Between which two states is it happening? When did the declaration of war happen? At most, you can call this is a civil war, since it is taking place entirely on Israel's territory (according to Israel's own definition!). The more historically correct way to look at it is that there is a resistance movement fighting against Israel's occupation. This is the simple, undeniable historical truth. Israel is, undeniably, the original aggressor against the people of Gaza and the West Bank, though over the years there have been many heinous acts committed by all parties.