Some partially thought out thoughts on Israel/Palestine

Before I came here, I honestly did not know much about the conflict. I thought that I knew the basic facts, but it turns out that I was wrong about that too. This post is a number of things that I have found extremely helpful to think about while I have been here, sprinkled with a bit of my opinion about them. I hope it is helpful to others like myself, who balance their concern with their ignorance.

One of the most important things to notice, is the way that some of the key questions of Israel/Palestine are phrased. The debate is often guided and maintained in two separate spheres: moral and political/legal. I question such as, "Is Israel justified in using force to defend itself?" is a moral question. The question, "Does Palestine exist?" is a legal one. Now this may not be a significant issue to many people, we are very comfortable with our tendency to separate things into the specific area of knowledge but I want to explore these two questions within and outside the frameworks we commonly give them.
Let look at the first. To start, the answer is that yes, Israel is morally allowed to defend itself with force. It has a right to defend itself, specifically its innocent citizens, against any type of attack. All nations do. I would like to bring up two points. One, the question "Does Palestine have a moral right to use terrorism (specifically targeting civilian populations) to defend itself?" It is strange that this question never gets asked, at least in the West. It is also strange that one is self-evident while to suggest the other is foolish. Many reasonable people note that the conflict is dynamic and complicated and that there is no clear aggressor. Then why is one side have a disproportional amount of deaths? It is clear that there is a disproportional amount of power. If it was true that Palestinians wanted to, and had the power to "push the Jews into the sea" would Israel be morally justified in using a nuclear weapon to defend itself? What about if the question of defence is put into legal terms. Well that is much easier. The UN has routinely condemned the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the building of the separation wall. Palestinians, like all countries, are also legally entitled to defend themselves with armed resistance from a colonial power.
What about the second question. It also has an easy answer. The answer is no, Palestine does not exist. It has never legally been a country. It has never had sovereignty. It even rejected UN Resolution 181. The problem with this answer though is that it is quickly translated into two things. That there never was a Palestine and that there is no such thing as Palestinians. Both of these statements are false. The only difference between the truth and the lies is power. Palestine is not a country because it is not recognized by people of power. Did you know that the land of Palestine was given to the British after WWI to help run the country? Did you also know that while the areas of present day Jordan, the creation of Israel is based on a document called the British Mandate, The reason that Palestine is not sovereign is because they have not been recognized by the UN. A good way to look at Palestine and Palestinians is to compare them to Indigenous people of North America. It is true that they never had a sovereign nation, but they were a people who lived on the land long before an outside colonizer arrived. Considering that most of the people reading this are probably from North America, I hope that I do not need to spell out the moral catastrophe of European colonialisers dealing with indigenous people.

It is very interesting to equate Indigenous people with Palestinian people. One of the common arguments that I have come across is: "Why should Israeli go back to the 1967 boarders, they won the territory fair and square in the war?" This is often followed up with: "Should the Americans give back their territory to the British?" No, they should give it back to the Native Americans. This is a very simple but powerful argument. Because if we dare to argue against it, we must also accept the normative power that we have placed on violence and war to shape our own countries. Do we dare to support the indigenous Palestinian population, and fear the repercussions of our own indigenous populations crying hypocrisy against us?

I used to think that Palestinians only wanted to have a state of their own - that a two state solution was the best possible answer for all of the issues. I have learned from Palestinians on the ground that many of them want a one state solution, but they do not see this as practical. They want a one state solution because Palestinian refugees want to go back to where their villages where, before they were evacuated and destroyed in 1948. In fact, it is seen as one of the primary means of justice; one of the common phrases on signs or painted onto the wall is "No Peace Without Justice." The Palestinians that I have talked to think that a two state solution might be a good step to build trust towards working for a one state solution.

Before I came here, I knew two concrete things about Israel: One, It is a pillar of Jewish heritage and struggle, two it is an island of democracy within the Middle East. It took me a long time to realize that maybe these things are not exactly compatible. To hold them both up as values of the society, it would be necessary to always have a clear Jewish majority in every section of the country. Otherwise a democratic election could choose someone who does not agree with Jewish values, or God forbid, isn't Jewish. If a country wanted keep up the idea that these two pillars were equal values, they might need to bring in large amounts of people that already agree with the the more important value, and remove large portions of the population that do not agree with that value. It is funny because a lot of the Israeli rhetoric is that the Palestinians (they usually just say Arabs, remember that Palestinians don't exist) only want the destruction of Israeli. Though that is not at all the message that I have received from EVERY Palestinian that I have met, maybe Israeli is right. The refugees want to go back to their home and if they are allowed, it would either destroy the Jewishness or democracy of Israel.

I have a lot more to contemplate but I figure that I need to get this out before I delay any longer thinking about  these issues. There will be more posts like this.