Palestinians live under Israeli Occupation and 50 years of dispossession. Palestinians are denied civil rights and subject to Military Court

At the mercy of Settler Violence, Torture and Abuse in Interrogations, have No freedom of movement, and also denied Water stolen and extorted by the occupying forces.

Palestinian Labor is also heavily exploited as they have no workers rights either: Haaretz, MEE, 972, CMEC

Gaza is under control by Israel’s Blockade which is still internationally recognized as Occupation.

Partition and later the Two-State Solution have been wielded by Israel to covet and annex as much Palestinian land as possible with the least amount of Palestinians.

Before 1948, Palestinian Leadership repeatedly advocated for a Unitary Binational State for decades.

The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948

Palestinian Arab Congress advocating for Unified State 1928

Arab Higher Committee advocating for Unified State 1937

Arab League advocating for Unified Binational State 1948

After the founding of Israel, the Two-State Solutions were utilized to further annex the Palestinian Occupied Territories and enact military control over Palestinians while denying them human and civil rights. Despite this, both Fatah and later Hamas have accepted a Two-State Solution on the 1967 borders, with the two most important factors being the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees and an end to the permanent occupation.

Oslo Accords MEE, NYT, Haaretz, AJ

History of peace process

Totally, it’s not like Israel has been deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. Including ‘safe zones,’ many times without any warning.

According to the sources who spoke to +972 and Local Call, the targets in Gaza that have been struck by Israeli aircraft can be divided roughly into four categories. The first is “tactical targets,” which include standard military targets such as armed militant cells, weapon warehouses, rocket launchers, anti-tank missile launchers, launch pits, mortar bombs, military headquarters, observation posts, and so on.

The second is “underground targets” — mainly tunnels that Hamas has dug under Gaza’s neighborhoods, including under civilian homes. Aerial strikes on these targets could lead to the collapse of the homes above or near the tunnels.

The third is “power targets,” which includes high-rises and residential towers in the heart of cities, and public buildings such as universities, banks, and government offices. The idea behind hitting such targets, say three intelligence sources who were involved in planning or conducting strikes on power targets in the past, is that a deliberate attack on Palestinian society will exert “civil pressure” on Hamas.

The final category consists of “family homes” or “operatives’ homes.” The stated purpose of these attacks is to destroy private residences in order to assassinate a single resident suspected of being a Hamas or Islamic Jihad operative. However, in the current war, Palestinian testimonies assert that some of the families that were killed did not include any operatives from these organizations.

In the early stages of the current war, the Israeli army appears to have given particular attention to the third and fourth categories of targets. According to statements on Oct. 11 by the IDF Spokesperson, during the first five days of fighting, half of the targets bombed — 1,329 out of a total 2,687 — were deemed power targets.

“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly"

• Yoav Gallant Minister of Defense

Hunger is most acute in northern Gaza, which has been isolated by Israeli forces and has suffered long cutoffs of food supplies. At least 20 people have died from malnutrition and dehydration at the north’s Kamal Adwan and Shifa hospitals, according to the Health Ministry. At the Emirati Hospital in Rafah, 16 premature babies have died of malnutrition-related causes over the past five weeks, one of the senior doctors told The Associated Press.

• It’s not just Israeli bombs that have killed children in Gaza. Now some are dying of hunger too

According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, at least 23 children and four adults have died of malnutrition and dehydration at hospitals in northern Gaza. The World Health Organization has warned of an “explosion” in child deaths if aid doesn’t reach people immediately.

• With aid headed to Gaza, risks remain to getting food to its starving population

For two million hungry Gazans, most days bring a difficult search for something to eat. The war, including Israel’s bombardment and siege, has choked food imports and destroyed agriculture, and nearly the entire population of Gaza relies on scant humanitarian aid to eat.

• The Daily Hunt for Food in Gaza

Over 64% of people in Gaza were food insecure before this latest Massacre due to the Blockade.

Hamas = every international organization, independent news source, and every human rights org who is critical of Israel and Israeli propaganda. Gottem lol

When it comes to human shields, the only independent verification back in 2014 (Amnesty link) is of Weapons (not rockets) hidden at a vacant school, situated btwn 2 UNRWA schools housing displaced people, by a Palestinian armed group.

The Guardian journalists had encountered a couple individuals in 2014 too.

HRW on Laws-of-War Violations 2009

Amnesty on Hamas War Crimes 2023

Yet none of those come remotely close to making hospitals and schools bombing targets. Even if all the IDF claims were true, that does not exempt those hospitals and schools as protected under international law.

Additionally, let’s look at how the IDF uses Human Shields including Children (2013 Report)

Yet a multitude of international and human rights organizations have considered it occupation because Israel still controls Gaza through military force.

many prominent international institutions, organizations and bodies—including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, UN General Assembly (UNGA), European Union (EU), African Union, International Criminal Court (ICC) (both Pre-Trial Chamber I and the Office of the Prosecutor), Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch—as well as international legal experts and other organizations, argue that Israel has occupied Palestinian territories including Gaza since 1967.1 While they acknowledge that Israel no longer had the traditional marker of effective control after the disengagement—a military presence—they hold that with the help of technology, it has maintained the requisite control in other ways.

Specifically, experts from the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found “noting” positions held by the UN Security Council, UNGA, a 2014 declaration adopted by the Conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, the ICRC, and “positions of previous commissions of inquiry,” that Israel has “control exercised over, inter alia, [Gaza’s] airspace and territorial waters, land crossings at the borders, supply of civilian infrastructure, including water and electricity, and key governmental functions such as the management of the Palestinian population registry.” They also point to “other forms of force, such as military incursions and firing missiles.”

But I’ll assume you know more about the conflict than all of them. After all, you did mention that you read some history books. I’m sure they weren’t filled with revisionist history.

Permanent occupation is an endless war, not a One or Two-State Solution.

Both their official reasons and expert analysis show otherwise.

It’s a complicated history but even the Hamas Founding charter, which is certainly unreasonable in its fundamentalism with Sharia Law and is antisemitic, does not call for the extermination of all Jewish People. The 2017 Revised charter accepts a Two-State Solution of the 1967 Borders. Check Article 7 and 13 of the 1988 Charter to see yourself, compare it to Article 20 and 24-26 in the revised version. Hamas has committed atrocious acts, there’s no need to make things up about Hamas to show they’ve done terrible things.

Ending the occupation and having a Palestinian election for the Palestinian people to choose their own leadership is the way to diminish support for Hamas and other Armed resistance groups. Further terrorizing the West Bank and Gaza will only increase their support, which has been shown historically not only within the Occupied Palestinian Territories but throughout history.

The Blockade, described by the Israeli Defense Minister as a ‘total siege’ long before 2023, was a strategic decision in 2005.

History of Hamas supported by Netanyahu since 2012

Gaza Blockade is still Occupation

Dahiya Doctrine

Gaza March for Return Protest

AWRAD Gaza War Poll

PCPSR Public Opinion Poll Dec 2023

That’s literally a transcript of Netanyahu speaking at the UN… Interesting how you consider him a credible source.

Both their official reasons and expert analysis show otherwise. Something about liberation from a violent apartheid regime.

Ok dude, at this point you must be being intentionally obtuse. I don’t know if you’re in denial or you just like making up your own definitions, either way maybe you should try proving yourself wrong for a change.

Military occupation, also known as belligerent occupation or simply occupation, is the temporary military control by a ruling power over a territory that is outside of that power’s sovereign territory. The territory is then known as the occupied territory and the ruling power the occupant. Occupation is distinguished from annexation and colonialism by its intended temporary duration.

Straight from the wiki. The rules and definitions of Occupation have been very clearly laid out for a long time. And Israel has repeatedly violated international laws for a very long time.

Again, if you don’t understand the occupation, the setter colonialism, the apartheid. You will never understand the armed resistance against the Israeli occupation.

Seems like you’re not only confidently incorrect, but you also have no interest in learning a comprehensive history about the founding of Israel, the violent occupation, or a potential resolution. Because they are all intertwined. Hopefully I’m wrong, and you’ll choose to learn more. Here I have aggregated events that date back to the early 18th century all the way to present day, with multiple sources when I can. I only made that page as a jumping off point. If you are genuinely serious about learning the truth, you need to read the works of New Historians. Ideally multiple of them. I listed out the three I find the most comprehensive in my previous response. Ilan Pappe even has a few books on Audible so you can listen instead of read his works.

The answers? No, the context is. That context being setter colonialism, occupation, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid. This isn’t a chicken and egg scenario. No ancestral claim to any land justifies ethnic cleansing of the native population living on that land.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947-49 was deliberate, the concept of Transfer is fundamental to zionism. It didn’t matter that the Palestinian leadership repeatedly advocated for a Unitary Binational State.

The Israeli occupation of the rest of historical Palestine in 1967 was deliberate. For half a century, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip has resulted in systematic human rights violations against Palestinians living there. with the goal of further annexation while excluding Palestinians.

Gaza has been under occupation, Hamas has been internally governing Gaza since 2007, under the Blockade occupation of Israel. Hamas is a resistance movement that has done acts of terrorism, yes. That doesn’t change the fact that Hamas and other Armed resistance groups are the only ones fighting back against the Israeli occupation, a right which they have under international law. That doesn’t exempt them from war crimes, which is why you see Human Rights Orgs report on them when committed.

Resistance movements only get bigger as the oppression worsens, like it is now in both the West Bank and much more so in Gaza.

What do you know about what it’s like to live under Israeli occupation? If you don’t understand that, you’ll never understand why people choose to violently resist the occupation.

Advocating for a One-State or Two-State Solution is not “wiping a Democracy off the map,” it’s advocating for Palestinian people to have basic human and civil rights. If you think that Israel committing Apartheid or ethnic cleansing are ‘shallow and poorly reasoned conclusions’ then you haven’t taken a look at the facts. This has nothing to do with instincts, it has to do with media literacy. That’s why as a serious source to learn more about the conflict, I point to Ilan Pappe or Avi Shlaim or Nur Masalha. They are magnitudes more knowledgeable about the history of Israel-Palestine.

We can find quickly in the wiki:

Hamas officials said shortly following the attack that it was a response to the Israeli occupation, blockade of the Gaza Strip, Israeli settler violence against Palestinians, restrictions on the movement of Palestinians, and imprisonment of thousands of Palestinians.

Mohammad Deif, the head of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, said in a recorded message on 7 October that it was in response to what he called the “desecration” of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and Israel killing and wounding hundreds of Palestinians in 2023. He called on Palestinians and Arab Israelis to “expel the occupiers and demolish the walls”. Deif also called on “Muslims everywhere to launch an attack” against Israel and to urged supporters to “kill them [the enemy] wherever you may find them”. He continued, “in light of the continuing crimes against our people, in light of the orgy of occupation and its denial of international laws and resolutions, and in light of American and western [sic] support, we’ve decided to put an end to all this, so that the enemy understands that he can no longer revel without being held to account.”

It wasn’t even the first time, not only had Israel shelled hospitals prior (both during this war and in previous wars) they also shelled Al-Shifa days prior. It was simply the one instance where it wasn’t obvious what was responsible for the explosion. The investigation for that hospital is still ongoing, meanwhile Israel has targeted nearly every other hospital still in operation.

Considering the extent of the Settlements in the west bank, I agree. The West Bank is in bantustans, re-creating the 67 borders isn’t possible with the decades of annexation. But it absolutely needs a lot of international pressure for it to work, and it would be quite complicated to put into practice.

The settlements represent land-grabbing, and land-grabbing and peace-making don’t go together, it is one or the other. By its actions, if not always in its rhetoric, Israel has opted for land-grabbing and as we speak Israel is expanding settlements. So, Israel has been systematically destroying the basis for a viable Palestinian state and this is the declared objective of the Likud and Netanyahu who used to pretend to accept a two-state solution. In the lead up to the last election, he said there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. The expansion of settlements and the wall mean that there cannot be a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity. The most that the Palestinians can hope for is Bantustans, a series of enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements and Israeli military bases.

So a two-state solution is no longer a viable option and that is why I have become a supporter of the one-state solution, a single state with equal rights for all its citizens. Ideologically, I don’t have any problem with a one-state solution. Ideologically, it is very attractive, it is a noble vision of two communities living in harmony in one space with equal rights for all its members. But, I am not naïve enough to think that the one-state solution is a realistic prospect because there is no support for a one-state solution in Israel. And if pushed really hard I think Israel would withdraw to the wall on the West Bank and annex whatever bits it wants of the West Bank. It would annex the main settlement blocks in Ma’ale Adumim, and the whole area around Jerusalem, and it would do so unilaterally rather than have a one-state so I am not in the least bit optimistic that the one-state solution is a viable proposition. But this is where I stand and I blame Israel for eliminating the alternative of a two-state solution.

- Avi Shlaim 2017

Additional Links to One and Two State Solutions

That’s the thing, the links I provide are to show exactly what you’re getting wrong.

UNRWA is part of the UN, same as UNHCR. It’s development and continuation separate to UNHCR has to do with denying Palestinians Right of Return. The most recent false accusations are used by Israel to futher destroy and cripple any aid infrastructure for Gaza. To intentionally force millions to suffer from famine, disease, and dehydration.

https://academic.oup.com/rsq/article/28/2-3/229/1584825

https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/features/exploding-myths-unrwa-unhcr-and-palestine-refugees

https://books.google.com/books?id=80j612aFo_4C&q=UNRWA+"jewish+refugees"+1952&pg=PA12

Pan-Islamism and Pan-Arabism were both movements born out of anti-colonialism and opposed western political involvement, but they are not the same and have different history. There is no monolith in the middle east. Neither a Muslim nor an Arab Monolith. If you think all Muslims or all Arab people think the same you’re just being racist.

Hamas, while associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in the past, is not the same as the Muslim Brotherhood.

When Israel occupied the Palestinian territories in 1967, the Muslim Brotherhood members there did not take active part in the resistance, preferring to focus on social-religious reform and on restoring Islamic values. This outlook changed in the early 1980s, and Islamic organizations became more involved in Palestinian politics. The driving force behind this transformation was Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a Palestinian refugee from Al-Jura. Of humble origins and quadriplegic, he became one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leaders in Gaza. His charisma and conviction brought him a loyal group of followers, upon whom he depended for everything from feeding him and transporting him to and from events to communicating his strategy to the public. In 1973, Yassin founded the social-religious charity Mujama al-Islamiya (“Islamic center”) in Gaza as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The idea of Hamas began to take form on December 10, 1987, when several members of the Brotherhood convened the day after an incident in which an Israeli army truck crashed into a car at a Gaza checkpoint, killing four Palestinian day-workers, the impetus of the First Intifada. The group met at Yassin’s house to strategize on how to maximize the incident’s impact in spreading nationalist sentiments and sparking public demonstrations. A leaflet issued on December 14 calling for resistance is considered its first public intervention, though the name Hamas itself was not used until January 1988

To many Palestinians, Hamas represented a more authentic engagement with their national aspirations. This perception arose because Hamas offered an Islamic interpretation of the original goals of the secular PLO, focusing on armed struggle to liberate all of Palestine. This approach contrasted with the PLO’s eventual acceptance of territorial compromise, which involved settling for a smaller portion of Mandatory Palestine. Hamas’s formal establishment came a month after the PLO and other intifada leaders issued a 14-point declaration in January 1988 advocating for the coexistence of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

One of the multiple bombing operations used for collective punishment of the people in Gaza.

On the evening of 12 June 2014, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped in the West Bank. Israeli leadership has placed the responsibility for their abduction on Hamas. On 30 June, corpses of the teenagers were found. Other commentators, such as Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, and NBC reporter Ayman Mohyeldin, queried the abduction and murder of the Israeli teenagers as being the real start of the chain of events leading to the major conflict. They saw parallels in the earlier killing of two Palestinian teenagers in the Beitunia killings. The autopsy report confirming that live IDF fire had been the cause of death of one of the Palestinian teenagers had become public knowledge the day before the kidnapping of the Israeli teenagers. The operation was also preceded by the jailing of hundreds of Palestinians, by air strikes on Gaza in which 3 Palestinians were killed and more than a dozen injured, by the killing of at least 6 Palestinians, injuring of dozens, house demolitions and lootings in the West Bank, by the kidnapping and killing of a Palestinian youth, and by massive rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip to southern Israel.

During the previous 50 days of armed conflict 2,104 Palestinians were killed, including 253 women (12 per cent) and 495 children (24 per cent). During the same period, 69 Israelis were killed including four civilians (6 per cent). According to the UN, at least 69 per cent of Palestinians killed were civilians. It is relevant to note that during Israel’s last major ground operation into Gaza in 2008 (“Operation Cast Lead”), the proportion of Palestinian civilians killed was 55 per cent.

It is estimated that 10,224 Palestinians, including 3,106 children (30 per cent) and 1,970 women (19 per cent) were injured. Preliminary estimates indicate that up to 1,000 of the children injured will have a permanent disability and up to 1,500 orphaned children will need sustained support from the child protection and welfare sectors.

Wiki and Reliefweb sources

If you stopped constantly dehumanizing palestinians for a second, maybe you’d recognize Hamas began due to the terrible material conditions of Occupation, and has the goal of ending the occupation. Maybe you’d even recognize collective punishment has been a deliberate Israeli tactic for decades with the Dahiya doctrine. Hamas is very different from ISIS, but they both were born out of Terrorism from Israel and the US respectively. Hamas wants an end to the Apartheid, not genocide. That claim is both untrue, and holds no weight when Israel is currently engaging in genocide. This is about the state of Israel being founded on ethnic cleansing and it’s most recent ethnic cleansing campaign. Not Jewish people, stop being antisemitic by thinking they’re the same.

Hamas in its early days, according to former Israeli officials, was seen by the government of Israel as a counterweight to the PLO. Israel supported Hamas as a way to break the PLO’s hold on the region. Retired official Avner Cohen, who worked in Gaza in the 1990s and oversaw religious affairs in the region, told the WSJ in 2009, “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation."

In the 2006 election, Ismail Haniyeh led Hamas as the head of Hamas’ parliamentary bloc, while the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas, led Fatah, as well as the PLO and Palestinian National Authority (PNA). (Haniyeh is now chairman of Hamas’ political bureau, and Abbas remains in his positions, as of this writing.) With Haniyeh at the helm, Hamas won around 44% of the votes across the region, according to a 2006 ABC News report, a total that secured a majority of seats in the legislature under election rules.

And in the backdrop of the 2006 election were geographic and political divides between Gaza and the West Bank. Contrary to what Bennett claimed, Israel restricted Palestinians from moving in and out of Gaza, as well as between the strip and the West Bank, since at least the 1990s, after the first Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, according to Al Jazeera. In addition to Gaza’s borders, the Israeli government controlled its coastline and airspace, allowing for military incursions into the territory, and, in 2007, established the blockade on goods and people that still exists as of this writing.

People Claim a Majority of Palestinians in Gaza Elected Hamas — Here’s Why It Isn’t That Simple

Hamas founding charter and Revised charter 2017