1) Oppression: The "oppression" is a direct consequence of ongoing, rocket fire, suicide bombings, and innocents being murdered. ALL of that is omitted from the article that was posted in the OP. Specifically, Metis and I are discussing the ongoing rocket fire.
The oppression is a consequence. That means the rockets came first. The suicide bombings came first. THEN the oppresssion came after. This is self-determination of the Palestinain people. There are many of them who have determined that terroists can find safe harbor within their communities. Because of this, their borders are severely restricted just like the border between any two countries where one of them harbors terrorists.
You said the oppression is a consequence of the rockets fired at Israel. First of all I'm pleased that you agree with me that the Israeli government oppresses the Palestinians. Secondly you are trying to rewrite history, so you could justify the killing, oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
Jewish Historian and Political scientist Ilan Papi said something interesting..
"History lies at the core of every conflict.
A true and unbiased understanding of the past offers the possibility of peace.
The distortion or manipulation of history, in contrast, will only sow disaster."
Sadly we are witnessing this disaster. There needs to be an unbiased understanding of the events of the past if we truly want peace and coexistence. The oppression of the Palestinian people is not a consequence of rockets being fired.
Before 1917, residents of multiple faiths lived together in peace. In contrast to the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict, violence between faith groups was rare.
While Jews made up half the population of Jerusalem at the time, they made up 5% percent of the population of Palestine as a whole. Christians were about 10% and Muslims 85%.
The oppression started when Britain’s Prime Minister, then the Foreign Secretary from late 1916, Balfour had pledged the homeland of the indigenous population living there to another people. That promise was made on November 2 1917, on behalf of the British government in the form of a letter sent to the leader of the Jewish community in Britain, Walter Rothschild. At the time, Britain was not even in control of Palestine, which was still part of the Ottoman Empire.
Some people will say it's unfortunate that the Palestinians were already there, but the Jewish people needed to flee for their own safety and needed a place of refuge, and when they did it was the Palestinians who never accepted the existence of the state of Israel. They didn't accept the UN's partition plan, and everytime there has been a overture of peace from Israel it has been rejected wholesale by Palestinians out of a clinging to grievances and embedded antisemitism. I've read a couple of posts that mentioned something along these lines, yours included.
I would say the first part of that narrative is correct. The Palestinians did not accept the creation of Jewish state in a majority Arab country. They did not accept the amputation of what they understood as their country. They hadn't created the anti-Semitism that drove the Jewish people from Europe. They hadn't closed the doors to immigration to countries like the US and Britain which refused to take in Jews fleeing prosecution like the Balfour alien exclusion act or the refusal of US to let Jewish refugees in from Hitler before world war 2. So no they didn't accept that they didn't have a right to self determination in their OWN country. The Palestinians ended up being the victims of victims. They weren't the ones who created the first group of victims in the first place, it was the Anti- Semitism of Christian Europe( and this started long before world war 2).
The second part of the narrative is nonsense. The Palestinians did not accept the creation of a Jewish State and amputations of the larger part of their country in the partition plan. 55% was to be given to create a Zionist state. It was an unjust partition, to even suggest that the minority should get majority of the country is outrageous, but that was what the United Nations general assembly decided on. After that there were numerous attempts at a peaceful resolution. The United Nations pushed Israel hard to accept the return of refugees which the UN voted for in December, 1948. The Palestinians had the right to return and compensation. The UN, US and the International community tried to get Israel to return some of territories that belonged to the Arab state. They got nowhere with that, so that wasn't a Palestinian rejection of an Israeli overture but it was an Israeli rejection of a proposal that would have perhaps right some of the wrongs of the 1948 war.
There were also numerous attempts after this, most notably is when the PLO changed it's charter, changed it's objectives and abandoned violence in the 1980s. They tried to negotiate for an independent Palestinian state.
Why this never happened is a whole different discussion, but it was not because the Palestinians weren't willing to live in a Palestinian state alongside Israel. They were never offered a FULLY independent viable continuous Palestinian state by any Israeli leader or by the US. What was on offer was what Prime Minister Rabin said in his last speech in the Knesset " less than a state" basically an entity that was not sovereign and enjoyed autonomy under overall Israeli sovereignty and Israeli security control.
In regards to Palestinian resistance. Palestinians have resisted in different ways ever since the imposition of the British mandate( 25th April,1920) which told them they didn't have the right of self determination in their own homeland. They resisted with petitions, strikes, boycott, militarily, demonstrations and with attempts in international fora to achieve Palestinian rights.
In the 1970s a shift started to happen, the Palestinians went from wanting a single democratic state to the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It took many years for this evolution to take place from the early 1970s( after the 1973 war) up untill 1988 when the Palestinians openly accepted security council resolution 242 which says you accept every state in the region and you live in peace with them, they accepted the idea of the partition along the 1967 lines.
As you can see there was no Hamas..they emerged exactly at this point when the PLO, who were the recognized representative of the Palestinian people shifted its objectives and they said they were no longer aiming to liberate all of Palestine. They renounced violence and they were going to try to achieve their aims by peaceful means. Hamas appears in 1987, they preached arm struggle and the liberation of entire Palestine. Hamas has violated international humanitarian law and has probably committed war crimes and so has Israel( Israel has commited it on larger scale). You don't have to try convince me that Hamas commited horrific acts of violence.
I believe it has benefited Israel to divide the West Bank and the Gaza strip. It has benefited Israel to seperate the Hamas governed Gaza strip from the Palestinian Authority governed West Bank to weaken the Arab national movement. On the one hand they treat Hamas as a pariah while at the same time reinforcing its rule in Gaza which is what the Netanyahu government and previous governments have done for many years. So they could say there is no one to negotiate with, these are terrorists( Hamas) and the others ( PLO) are corrupt. There's no one to talk to so we continue stealing land, annexing and expanding into the occupied West Bank. And focusing on Hamas is part of this strategy.
In the early 2000s after the Israeli withdraw from Gaza. The US and Israel pushed for an election, Hamas won the election in 2006. Hamas agreed to a coalition government with Fatah, they accepted the Oslo process, entered the election, formed a coalition with Fatah and they let Mahmoud Abbas( who was elected president the previous year) to negotiate together with a coalition government on their behalf. Israel, United States, and some of the European powers refused. Tony Blair also refused and later said the refusal was a mistake. Well this mistake put the Palestinians in this position..a continued occupation, siege, colonisation.
Every attempt to launch a non militant form of resistance have been met with violence. For example the great march of return, which was people marching to the Gaza border unarmed was met with extreme violence. Over 200 people were killed, medics were killed and people were maimed by Israeli snipers. Snipers shooting at unarmed civilians. People say why don't the Palestinians use non violent tactics..they did and they were still gunned down.These are the things that create an explosive situation, and actually create more Hamas sympathisers. Hamas doesn't need to do any propaganda the Netanyahu government and IDF is doing it for them..26,000 civilians have died, more than
10, 000 children.
This will be my last post on this topic, some of these posts really make me loose hope in humanity. I was reminded again why I left RF, the amount of anti Arab/ Muslim/refugee hate is crazy
I'll quote Jewish Historian Yakov Rankin when he said that the international community is turning a blind eye to Israel’s attacks on the Palestinians by merely asserting Tel Aviv’s “right to self-defence” while the occupation is “a criminal who plays the role of the victim”.
