Serious Israeli Palestinian Conflict

[Rugi]

IGNORE MY SIG IT'S A STUPID FIREBOT JOKE

I'm assuming many people with anger and opinions boiling are already about to start typing but hear me out. As a Jew I'm for the existence of an Israeli state and its high level of development and economic prosperity shows that its more than capable of managing itself and becoming an important player. That being said I have never visited Israel myself and the only information I get are from my Israeli relatives.

If possible and if any are on Smogon I would like to hear the opinion of Israelis, Palestinians, Muslims living within Israel and Israelis living on beyond the green line. As America is a major supporter of Israel I want to know what opinions in there are like and what sort of solution to the conflict people individually support.

I honestly don't have enough information and haven't talked to enough people to feel like I can come to any conclusion and there comes a point where you start feeling like Vox videos aren't the best source of information.

I mean no offence to anybody with this thread I just want to know opinions and information on the topic.

 

[Codraroll]

My opinion is that the conflict has become too stale and toxic for the issue to be discussed civilly in most places. So far, Cong and Smogon has proven itself to be exceptionally patient with a good climate for discussions (the US election thread in most other forums I follow has devolved into a cesspit of memes and poop-flinging, but here it's pretty civilized and calm. Elsewhere... it's a hornet's nest of tragic proportions. Most discussions descend into passing blame rather than trying to find a solution. That goes all the way from news articles, their comment sections, to international politics. Establishing who is the "bad guy", thus justifying the actions of the other side, seems to take prevalence over, you know, working to put a stop to it all.

The last line of your post says it all, really. "I'd like to hear your opinion" and "I don't want to offend anybody". Because as it turns out, those with an opinion on this matter are extremely easy to anger. You can bring up a fair point about one side, say, how Hamas for some reason insist on firing rockets as if that would help their cause in any way, or how Israel keeps building settlements, and that side's supporters would jump on you like a howling horde of rabid baboons. Any attempt to be neutral or objective is interpreted as hostility from one or both sides. Unless you explicitly hatehatehate Palestinians, you implicitly hatehatehate Israelis, and vice versa. There's apparently a proverb in journalism: "You know you've written a balanced piece on the Israel/Palestine conflict when you get an equal number of accusations for being biased from both sides." For me, it's got to the point that I now consider a strong opinion on the conflict as a negative trait. Because on both sides, there are people who refuse to move an inch from status quo - or even admit that their position might have some negative traits - before the other side does. "They do nothing, we do nothing. By the way, the other side are assholes, we're the real victims, and let me spend an hour or two telling you why..."

As for what I think about the actual conflict, and not in a meta sense: It's still a nightmare. You've got a piece of land, with two groups of people feeling historical connections and ownership to it, identifying themselves as citizens of that land. They also feel that the other group is unjustly trying to take it from them. People have been born into those sentiments for generations now, lived with them all their lives, and pretty soon you'll have people dying of old age who've lived with the gridlock their entire life. "Historically, this land is ours, and we'd be living here in peace had the other group not existed". In a sense, both are right. Too bad it's followed up with "Therefore, we must fight the other group, and beware, they'll kill all of us if we turn your backs, show mercy, or if they start to think they can get away with it." Currently, one group feels exiled/marginalized from their rightful land by people who have no right to be there, while the other feel their rightful land is besieged/infiltrated by people who have no right to be there. This mentality at the crux of the conflict is increasingly becoming a part of many people's very identity. And the problem will be pretty hard to solve if you need to not only change people's attitudes, but also their identities.

I can't honestly say I have a good solution to this mess. If forced to suggest something, I'd go for the "If they can't agree on it, let none of them have it" approach. Both sides should abandon Jerusalem, at least. Make the city an independent country, or just bulldoze it all. In either case, the Dome of the Rock and the Wailing Wall ought to be demolished, or at least disassembled and moved several hundred kilometres in opposite directions, while the Temple Mount itself should be walled off completely until the region has seen peace for at least a hundred consecutive years.

 

[The Quasar]

I was born and Six-Day War was fought only few months before. Well, fifty years have passed and what was changed? How many political mistakes I see, one after the other. On the other hand, when someone is thinking about their own manifest interests above everything else, the scenario is always the same! Is there one way to solve it? It's difficult to say. But perhaps help them to build a unitary state, without frontiers and multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-cultural could force people to live with each other.

 

[Aramonia]

If possible and if any are on Smogon I would like to hear the opinion of Israelis, Palestinians, Muslims living within Israel and Israelis living on beyond the green line. As America is a major supporter of Israel I want to know what opinions in there are like and what sort of solution to the conflict people individually support.

I'll bite.
Before I make this post I just want to be frank and say that although I'm an israeli my thoughts are quite scattered and I don't have a strong connection to any of the sides in the arguements. Also, everything written in this post comes from my personal experience.
Just so you can understand my point of view better I'll begin with my status:
I'm a 17 year old,twelfth grader ashkenazi male jew from a city near Tel-Aviv Called Herzelia and as such I'm still not a soldier in the IDF. Also politics wise, my close environment is a left-wing bubble (e.g in a mock-elections project my school threw together last year the hard left-wing party "Meretz" won with quite a big majority). Also, both me and parents were born in israel. My grandparents came to israel in two different immigrations: One in 1914 (before the decision in the UN) and after the holocust.

When reviewing this subjact as an israeli I think that at the moment solving the conflict is near immposible, not until we get some better politicians but that won't happen unless the people will choose them and well we chose Nethanyahu 3 times in a row so we obviously don't want good politicians. Something that I hear alot is that the people want peace but politicians won't deliver but in the end of the day israel is a democratic country and we choose these politicians so what does it say about us? Do the majority of people want peace? Im not sure myslef at times. Altough im not cutting the palestinians slack, say w/e you want but showing public support in terrosim is not a peace advancing at all, a recent example of support like this happened well, today. Yesterday there was a shooting in a site near jerusalam where two inocent israelis were shoot and 8 were injured. 24 hours later, during the funerals of the victims, there celebration riots supporting the terroist calling"With spirit and blood we will redeem you". Another called "Hail to the Izz al-Din al-Qassam, Hamas ' military wing

Hide

the riots themselves

An israeli cop that as hurt during the riots from a rubber bullet

And terroism like that gets support from palestinian politicans aswell for example Abu-Mazen said during the wave of terror attacks last year that "It's a rightous uprising of the people" he also visited the families of terroist's that were killed during their terror attacks by cops and soldiers as an act of self defence.
(Note: I'm not saying all palestinians support this kind of terroism, just stating that terror attacks like these get support both from the people and leaders.)
With all that in mind, the thing that bothers me the most about Abu-Mazen is that in his UN speeches he always talks about advancing peace processes and is always pointing an accusing finger towards israel but then in his speeches to his people he can be quite violant and populistic. He also ignored a peace offer before which was very compromising from the israeli part (100 million dollars from palestinian tax money, a proper exchange in territory, giving the palestinians the Temple Mount and allowing 5000 immigrants to comeback to israel) if anyone is intrested in the subjact I can leave some links to relevent articals.
So right now what i've tried to establish is that Abu-Mazen is a really mediocre peace-partner to say the least.
However that doesnt mean that Nethanyahu is any better. He made no peace advancments,he knows how to give a speech but he didnt anything pretty in any of his terms aswell as saying some very questionable things (i.e in elections day, to make people go to vote he said that "The Arabs flock to polls, they are coming is buses") and he isn't the first dumb prime-minister that we had as so so many wars could have been prevented if the prime minister at that time would have been wiser (The 6 Days War, the war is Lebanon etc). And when we did have a good prime-minister that tried (and succeeded!) he was shot by an extremist jewish terroist.
Israelis fuck up alot, we choose these politicians like I said, some times it really seems like israelies don't want peace. A poll that strengthens this point futher shows that almost 50% of israelis support transferring arabs.
I feel like i'm writing for a long time so I'll stop here, will drop more of my thoughts as disscussion continues.Also I'll tag the other semi-active smogon israeli that I know if he wants to share his thoughts. Also I'm very intrigued to see more opinions of people outside of israel.
Entei

 

[Dubby]

Yeah I agree I think it's really sad that this issue can become too contentious for discussion. I am a Palestinian-American, lived in the US my whole life and have never travelled to the Middle East, and I do have some strong opinions on the topic but I can restrain myself. My grandfather fled to Jordan during the Six Day War and eventually made his way to the US years later. It's clear that there's no trust on either side, whether it's the Palestinians about IDF or the Israelis about Abbas and his party. Only thing I'll say really, just remember that one historian's definition of terrorist is another historian's definition of freedom fighter.