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RI's avatar

Boiled down, the Arabs - Palestinians included - went all in on a military victory. And lost. They left no wiggle room for real compromise with Israel. When even Arab countries gave up on the idea of attacking Israel yet again (and losing), the Palestinians went all in on terror (bus bombings, etc.). Then the Israelis took that card out of their hands by building a wall. They have no more cards to play against Israel, yet are still clinging to this fantasy of a military victory, driving Jews out of Jerusalem, etc. It's frankly nuts.

The Arabs simply lost the decades long war, and lost it without ever coming up with a real plan to negotiate peace, or figure out what's next. There could be a Marshall plan type peace arrangement, if they wanted it, but they don't. Not yet, anyway.

This does not, of course, make sympathy for people in the West Bank or Gaza Strip antisemitic - far from it. But rather, the onus is also on the Palestinian leadership to surrender, like any other party that has clearly lost a war, and has to move on to a real peace plan. The revanchist fantasy of "liberating Al Quds" has long since been proven impossible. Israel would love nothing more to get rid of this problem, but ironically, it is the Palestinian leadership clinging to the existence of the problem itself as their best, and only, card to play.

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person1's avatar

On March 4, 1996, a suicide bomber blew himself up, along with 13 others—12 civilians, 1 soldier—outside Dizengoff Center, the largest shopping mall in Tel Aviv, located on one of the busiest streets in the country. A former partner of mine was about 6, and headed to a birthday party at the mall’s arcade. He was there, and while he remained physically unscathed, he did not walk away unharmed. Do you know what it looks like after a bombing? Do you know what it looks like to a child? This person is a good Tel Avivi lefty—votes Meretz, refers to “the occupation,” not “the territories,” not “Israel-proper” or “Judea and Sumeria” (in Israel, the words you use to describe “the situation” are designators of your politics, and the only issue with political salience is “the situation.”) But does this good leftist go to the protests? No. He cannot be in crowds. He is traumatized. He is not a wall. A bomb is not an egg.

I have another friend, a Palestinian woman a few years younger than my ex. Technically, she is an “Israeli Arab,” but she would never call herself that, least of all to her parents in Jerusalem who have suffered violence and theft and hate, who cannot visit their parents in Gaza, whose parents in Gaza are poor and stuck and have never known safety. My friend will never know her grandparents because Gaza is 5 billion miles away from everywhere. Gaza in on the moon. Though she doesn’t, her family hates Jews because the boot on the neck of all Palestinians is a Jewish boot.

So how exactly does a one-state solution work? The Jews will be pushed to the sea. The Palestinians will be slaughtered. There will be no successful power-sharing arrangement. Most of the Palestinians living under brutal occupation do not want to live in a secular democracy alongside Jews, and the Israelis do not want to live in a secular democracy alongside Arabs. A one-state solution in a Western fairytale that the people in the region are untied in rejecting.

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