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It's either not occupied, it's part of Israel and Israel subjugates the Palestinians to an apartheid rule (with a big part of their lives controlled by Israel,

It's either not occupied, it's part of Israel and Israel subjugates the Palestinians to an apartheid rule (with a big part of their lives controlled by Israel, included where they can move, work, live, and different laws applied to them), and harassed by colonists. Or it's Palestine and Israel is occupying it. In any case the UN and the ICJ think it's occupied territory, and the colonies are a war crime.

tome 2y ago
Israel is in administrative control over that part of the land. It's not clear to me exactly how much it owes the people who reside there, who used to be Jordanian citizens and who had their citizenship stripped by Jordan. That part of the world has never been part of a modern state. Jordan doesn't want it. The Ottoman Empire doesn't exist. There is and has never been a state of Palestine. Abu Mazen turned down an from Olmert to make it into a Palestinian state. Arafat turned down an offer from Barak. When Jordan took control of that that territory, including East Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, they expelled or murdered all Jewish citizens living there. After the second world war ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia and Poland. Israel _didn't_ expel residents of the West Bank, after capturing it in a defensive war, and somehow that makes Israel not a democracy?
- mmustapic 2y ago
  People live in the West Bank. If you take control of the area for 58 years you need to give them some rights and either make them citizens or give them independence. Neither thing happened, and the reality is that they live in an apartheid system, with different laws than other Israelis living in the same area. Israel might be a democracy but Palestinians are not citizens of Israel. Germans expelled from parts of Europe was also bad, so?
  - tome 2y ago
    Why should they be given independence? They're formerly Jordanian citizens and formerly Ottoman subjects. It's not as though some country or civil polity has been eliminated and needs to be restored. There never was any. They were offered a country by the Peel Report in 1937 and then the UN Resolution 181 in 1947, but they rejected it. They were offered a country by Barak in 2000 and Olmert in 2008, but they rejected it. They were given de facto control over Gaza, but they used the opportunity to launch rockets at Israel for 15 years and then to commit Oct 7th. Germans expelled from parts of Europe was good! It was the natural consequence of Germany trying to take over all of Europe and failing. Germany has now lived in peace with its neighbours for 80 years. The people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have not demonstrated they can live in peace with Israel.
    - mmustapic 2y ago
      Then don’t give them independence, but if Israel has administrative control of the area, it must respect the human rights of the people that live there. If I’m a foreign national in a country I can do almost everything a national can do besides voting: I can buy land wherever I want, move freely, work freely, travel abroad. Palestinians can’t. So it’s one or the other, either you consider them a nation with whom you can have a peace treaty and thus all the “they are not a country” doesn’t apply, or they are foreign nationals and you have to treat them as such. Israel chooses the awful option: apartheid, because then it can still keep an ethnic state whiteout killing or deporting millions. It is debatable if Israel needs to be an ethnic state to protect Jews, but at least its apologists should acknowledge that.
      - tome 2y ago
        > If I’m a foreign national in a country I can do almost everything a national can do besides voting Certainly not in general! That very much depends on the country and the immigration status under which you are in that country. Most visas strongly restrict the right to work. If you leave, you may not be allowed back in, unless you can obtain fresh clearance. Under the Oslo Accords, signed by Israel and the PLO, the recognised representative body of the Palestinian people, the West Bank is partitioned into areas designated A, B and C. That agreement gives Israel control in area C, the Palestinian Authority control in area A, and B is somewhere in between. Israelis are forbidden to enter area A, by the way. Israel conducts itself in accordance with this agreement signed up to by the PLO. Anything else is pending further negotiation between the two parties, and perhaps a final status agreement (though I am increasingly pessimistic about the potential for a final status agreement). So, I absolutely do not think it's "one of the other". It's an extremely rare situation in human history with no specific well-trodden path for how it should be resolved. Israeli prime ministers have offered the Palestinian leadership their own state twice in the 21st century. Both offers were rejected.
        mmustapic 2y ago
        So are Palestinians immigrants in Israel, without a visa? Even immigrants have freedom of movement and are subject to the same laws as nationals. They are of course not illegals immigrants, because they were already there. So what are they? When it’s convenient, they are a nation that doesn’t want peace. When it’s convenient, Palestine was never a country. So what is it?

tome 2y ago

Israel is in administrative control over that part of the land. It's not clear to me exactly how much it owes the people who reside there, who used to be Jordanian citizens and who had their citizenship stripped by Jordan. That part of the world has never been part of a modern state. Jordan doesn't want it. The Ottoman Empire doesn't exist. There is and has never been a state of Palestine. Abu Mazen turned down an from Olmert to make it into a Palestinian state. Arafat turned down an offer from Barak. When Jordan took control of that that territory, including East Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, they expelled or murdered all Jewish citizens living there. After the second world war ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia and Poland. Israel _didn't_ expel residents of the West Bank, after capturing it in a defensive war, and somehow that makes Israel not a democracy?

mmustapic 2y ago
People live in the West Bank. If you take control of the area for 58 years you need to give them some rights and either make them citizens or give them independence. Neither thing happened, and the reality is that they live in an apartheid system, with different laws than other Israelis living in the same area. Israel might be a democracy but Palestinians are not citizens of Israel. Germans expelled from parts of Europe was also bad, so?
- tome 2y ago
  Why should they be given independence? They're formerly Jordanian citizens and formerly Ottoman subjects. It's not as though some country or civil polity has been eliminated and needs to be restored. There never was any. They were offered a country by the Peel Report in 1937 and then the UN Resolution 181 in 1947, but they rejected it. They were offered a country by Barak in 2000 and Olmert in 2008, but they rejected it. They were given de facto control over Gaza, but they used the opportunity to launch rockets at Israel for 15 years and then to commit Oct 7th. Germans expelled from parts of Europe was good! It was the natural consequence of Germany trying to take over all of Europe and failing. Germany has now lived in peace with its neighbours for 80 years. The people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have not demonstrated they can live in peace with Israel.
  - mmustapic 2y ago
    Then don’t give them independence, but if Israel has administrative control of the area, it must respect the human rights of the people that live there. If I’m a foreign national in a country I can do almost everything a national can do besides voting: I can buy land wherever I want, move freely, work freely, travel abroad. Palestinians can’t. So it’s one or the other, either you consider them a nation with whom you can have a peace treaty and thus all the “they are not a country” doesn’t apply, or they are foreign nationals and you have to treat them as such. Israel chooses the awful option: apartheid, because then it can still keep an ethnic state whiteout killing or deporting millions. It is debatable if Israel needs to be an ethnic state to protect Jews, but at least its apologists should acknowledge that.
    - tome 2y ago
      > If I’m a foreign national in a country I can do almost everything a national can do besides voting Certainly not in general! That very much depends on the country and the immigration status under which you are in that country. Most visas strongly restrict the right to work. If you leave, you may not be allowed back in, unless you can obtain fresh clearance. Under the Oslo Accords, signed by Israel and the PLO, the recognised representative body of the Palestinian people, the West Bank is partitioned into areas designated A, B and C. That agreement gives Israel control in area C, the Palestinian Authority control in area A, and B is somewhere in between. Israelis are forbidden to enter area A, by the way. Israel conducts itself in accordance with this agreement signed up to by the PLO. Anything else is pending further negotiation between the two parties, and perhaps a final status agreement (though I am increasingly pessimistic about the potential for a final status agreement). So, I absolutely do not think it's "one of the other". It's an extremely rare situation in human history with no specific well-trodden path for how it should be resolved. Israeli prime ministers have offered the Palestinian leadership their own state twice in the 21st century. Both offers were rejected.
      - mmustapic 2y ago
        So are Palestinians immigrants in Israel, without a visa? Even immigrants have freedom of movement and are subject to the same laws as nationals. They are of course not illegals immigrants, because they were already there. So what are they? When it’s convenient, they are a nation that doesn’t want peace. When it’s convenient, Palestine was never a country. So what is it?