It’s pretty easy to explain: It’s complicated.

Basically, it’s a conflict that had been running for a really long time.

Before WW1, the area of Israel/Palestine was inhabited by Arabs and controlled by the Ottomans.

During WW1, the Brits promised the Arabs that they’d back an independent arab state there, if the Arabs revolted and successfully kicked out the Ottomans.

The Arabs did their part, so Britain, being as trustworthy as ever, turned around and divvied the Ottoman empire up between them, and Britain got control over what was then called Mandatory Palestine, which the Arabs saw as a betrayal. The official plan was for the Brits to rule the Mandate “until such time as they are able to stand alone”.

At the same time, the Zionist Jews wanted to have a national state, where they could live without persecution, and many European nations, where antisemitism was rampant, wanted them gone from Europe, so they kinda had an agreement there. The original plan was to move them to a part of Uganda, but that fell through so Palestine was chosen.

Already long before the national state was created, lots of Jews moved there and created settlements. The Arabs there weren’t exactly happy about that massive influx of settlers and the Jews also weren’t happy about the natives. Each of them started an uprising over the following years, and with tensions rising, the UN drafted a partition plan.

While the opinion of the Jews over that partition plan was ambivalent, though leaning towards being happy about it, the Arabs were decidedly unhappy about it. They thought, that the UN was overstepping it’s rights and that the partition plan was violating the principles of self-determinism set forth by the UN charter.

So a war broke out between the Arabs (including surrounding arab countries) and the Jews there, which resulted in a victory for the Jews. After that, the area was divided up between Jewish Israel, the west bank area controlled by Jordan and inhabited by Arabs, and the tiny area called Gaza strip, controlled by Egypt and inhabited by Palestinians.

The area the Palestinians received after the war was significantly smaller than what was outlined in the UN partition plan.

In 1967, during the six-day war, Israel captured the Gaza strip and it’s been under Israeli occupation ever since. In 1993, Israel granted the Gaza strip limited self-government over the area. Basically, Gaza was allowed to self-government about matters of the populated areas, but Israel remained in control in regards to the airspace, the territorial waters and all border crossings except the one towards Egypt, which is controlled by Egypt.

In 2007, Hamas took over the government of Gaza. Most of the world classify them as a terror organisation, and they have been e.g. shooting home-build missiles into Israel and also have mounted a few small-scale insurrections and attacks against Israel.

Israel on the other hand has been casually bombarding and killing Palestinians for a very long time. Also, they let Israeli settlers illegally settle in occupied Palestinian territories, which the Palestinians are not so happy about.

From 2008 until 2020, roughly 5600 Palestinians and 250 Israelis (including many civilians on both sides) have been killed, and 115 000 Pakistanis and 5600 Israelis have been injured (source: https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/16516/israeli-palestinian-casualties-by-in-gaza-and-the-west-bank/).

The Gaza strip is pretty much an outdoor prison, with a massive population density, low life expectency and abysmal living standards. People are generally not allowed to leave from there. Israel routinely cuts water/electricity, which are both supplied by Israel in response to attacks from Palestine.

All in all, it’s a right mess that’s been brewing for over 100 years, with no easy solutions. By now, everyone who has been responsible for causing the original mess is dead. Of the leadership neither side is in the right, both sides are making everything worse. There is no solution in sight.

The Palestinians fight the oppression by killing civilians, the Israelis counter by killing civilians and making life even more hell for the people in the occupied territories, who in turn fight even harder and kill more civilians.

Reducing oppression is hardly possible, since that would allow the Palestinians to mount bigger attacks.

Which brings us to the current situation. Palestinians managed to break out of Gaza, at many places even destroying the perimeter fence. They then invaded some towns and a music festival in the border regions, killing a few hundred Israeli civilians and taking some more hostage. Israel countered by bombarding the Gaza strip, killing a few hundred Palestinian civilians. They also, again, cut power and electricity, and the whole western world then responded with cutting food supply.

This in turn will radicalize the Palestinians even more, who will fight harder, and who knows where it ends. Probably with the Israelis finally finding the same answer to “the Palestinian Question” that Germany found for the “Jewish Question” in the 1940s.

Israel/Palestine was the ancestral home of the Hebrew (ie. Jewish) people, up until about 700AD.

From then, right up until 1948, it was held by the Arab people in the region, the people now known as Palestinians.

At the end of World War II, there were hundreds of thousands of displaced Jewish refugees all over Europe and the rest of the world - and no country really wanted to take them.

So the United Nations put some weight behind a rather niche interest group (the Zionists) who wanted to reclaim Palestine for the Jewish people, 1200 years after they left.

Palestine wasn’t OK with losing a major chunk of its land with no recompense, but the UN said tough shit sucks to be you lol, and gave them no choice, establishing the modern country of Israel within its borders, kicking out the Palestinians who had been living there for the past 1200 years and settling vast numbers of refugees in a ready-made country.

This held a certain amount of strategic value to the West, as a political, economic and military power base smack bang in the middle of the Middle East, standing opposed to the Arab nations surrounding it, and giving the west a foot in the door and a finger in all the pies, as it were.

As a result, Israel has had virtually unlimited economic and military aid from the west ever since, and become comfortably rich despite having no exports, resources or trade to speak of.

Since 1948, Palestine has made various efforts to reclaim some of its land - and each time, has been beaten back by the combined military might of the entire west, losing ever more territory with each attempt.

Israel now holds virtually all of Palestine, except for tiny fractured and scattered pockets of land - which they keep ‘settling’ - eg. annexing and invading, killing the Palestintian inhabitants, demolishing their homes, burning their farms and taking their land. Palestinians are allowed into Israel, but as second-class citizens in an apartheid regime, exploited for cheap labour.

Palestine no longer has the resources, organization, wealth or strength to maintain an actual military or to mount actual resistance - with guerilla warfare being the only tactic available. And of course where you have poverty and oppression, that’s fertile ground for radicalisation - and this has lead to exploitation by various terrorist groups.

Now, Gaza is a small contiguous chunk of Palestine, bordering on Egypt - and Israel has been blockading it for decades, severely limiting access to food, water, building materials, etc - basically a giant open-air prison camp, with severe reprisals (such as bombing schools and hospitals - collective punishment, which is a war crime) for any attacks on Israel.

It’s this region that’s been the source of the latest conflict - with Hamas (a very unpleasant bunch of people) launching a major offensive, consisting of both rocket strikes and armed incursions, targeting Israeli civilians.

There’s every indication that this was planned and supported by Iran, who have their own agenda, and are happy to see Palestinians and Israelis both get killed.

Israel has responded to the attacks by bombing Gaza quite indiscriminately, and shutting off power, water and food supplies entirely to all of Gaza.

Israel is continuing to act the victim/hero for its actions, as always, and is receiving a vast outpouring of western aid, support and political clout in return.

To complicate matters, half of the religious right in the US is fervently pro-Israel, because despite disapproving of Judaism for rejecting Jesus, they believe that biblical prophesy is predicated on Jewish control of Israel. Yes, seriously. They can’t have their Armageddon and be carried up to heaven unless the events in Revelations come to pass, and yeah.

Also, ever since WWII, Israel has been playing the fuck out of the antisemitism card, loudly declaring that any opposition to their policy and actions must be rooted in hatred of Jewish people, and is obviously just softening up the ground for neo-nazis. And of course, no politician wants to get tarred with that brush.

Meanwhile, children in Gaza are dying.

My general sympathy is with the Palestinians who struggle from systemic oppression, but defo not with the atrocities committed by Hamas. How one can support and excuse the recent events is beyond me.

Just because you’re oppressed doesn’t mean you can just go out there and slaughter random people. I mean they even killed tourists, who have no role in this ethnical conflict. But I don’t think they even care…

An apartheid state experienced an attack from a terrorist group. More violence ensues.

If you ask for the “Why” often enough, it always comes down to Antisemitism.

Israel wouldn’t exist if not for the unhinged antisemitism of German Nazis in the 1930/40s.

In the last 20 years, Israel found itself to need new settlements, with all the accompanying political changes and pressures. Why? - because many Jews from all over the world migrated there. Why? - Antisemitism in their home countries makes those a less habitable place than an Israel, even though it is continuously on the brink of a war.

And this doesn’t even touch the rampant antisemitism in the Muslim world that wants to drive the Jews into the ocean and doesn’t accept a state Israel under any circumstances.

This pretty much sums up the whole story

The safe position is, Israel did bad things but Hamas is bad for wanting to commit genocide/attacking random festival. I think.

It’s a complicated can of worms. Good luck getting a thorough, unbiased opinion from strangers on the Internet. The more you read about all the different political and religious factions involved in the Israel-Palentine conflict, the more you will find that it’s a tangled mess of alliances, political desires, religious convictions, and international proxy fights that reach back a century or more.

So. Basically this conflict goes back a long way, much longer than the current tensions and most recent history would have people believe. But both Israelis and Palestinians stem from the same original ancestors, both have claims to the land, and both are fighting what amounts to a religious war against one another spurred on by the US (on the side of the Israeli’s), and Iran (on the side of Hamas/Palestinians).

They each want to oust the other, and have increasingly done some really really war crime worthy things to one another in the name of oppression or rightful ownership and “peace negotiations”. As a result neither one is really honestly looking for a peaceful resolution and the US gets to sell weapons to Israel, and Netanyahu gets what he wants which is destabilization of the region. All at the cost of innocent civilians on both sides.

I also have no insight into this, but it seems like another political war.

They both deserve to be nuked ☢️

Let’s just cut the shit. People are losing interest in the Ukraine money laundering op. Military industrial complex needs fresh conflict to go brrrrrr.

I don’t remember all the details but after, I think ww2, a bunch of land was promised to Israel but that same land was also promised to Palestine. Do these two groups had a claim to the same land to call their country.

It couldn’t just be divided in half as they both claimed some areas as their religious sites and didn’t want to give that up.

Eventually it was settled and the land was divided between the two countries. But through legal loopholes and stuff Israel was able to claim some additional land.

But the end result is that there are two groups who have been at each others throats forever.

I’m not from this region or have a say in it. The facts I stated are not entirely accurate, it’s just what I could remember at the moment from some video I watched at some point.

So, if you read or hear conflicting information just go with what the other person said.

If I got something wrong please post the correction.

If you are going to tell me that something is wrong and I shouldn’t post it because it’s misinformation, then fuck off. No one else has posted anything and I’m just trying to help out based on memory. If you can do a better job explaining it do it and I’ll delete my comment.

Ill give you my two cents:

Palestinians are justified in fighting Israel until that occupation is no longer considered a country, however, the Hamas are committing atrocities against civilians, leading many to refer to them as terrorists. The argument for the Hamas (not all Palestinians) is that Israel has committed atrocities against Palestinians for almost a century, while being backed by the most powerful countries in the world, and that retaliation from the Hamas is justified.

Personally, I’m happy to see anyone resisting Israel, and don’t believe any political compromise (although preferable) will cut it except the dissolution of Israel.

TBH I don’t really care either, but here is the simple fact. The ongoing war in Gaza, is HAMAS against Israel.

HAMAS is not Palestine. HAMAS are liars and terrorists, and promote themselves with propaganda and lies, so they can grow in numbers. HAMAS are not interested in making a better Palestine.

Let this Palestinian explain it to you: https://www.prageru.com/video/a-palestinian-explains-hamas

Oh and if you are uncertain: the enemy is probably the one driving around with naked dead people in the back of their truck, bragging about what they did. That woman, they killed, stripped naked and mounted on the back of the truck to parade around - was a German.