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In response to
"I know you're not asking, but I found this thread helpful. -- (link)"
by
mara
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I would say that pretty fairly sums up my view of things, with a a couple of caveats that I think are important to fully understanding what's going on
Posted by
pmb (aka pmb)
May 18 '21, 13:42
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First, the Palestinians, as noted, have been horribly represented and both unwilling and unable to hold up their side of any agreements which has led from real hopes for peace to the belief by Israelis that they just have to protect themselves and let the Palestinians figure out their own shit.
Second, that view also led to a vacuum that unsupported and vulnerable Palestinian people could only fill with Hamas investing and aiding them. Most Palestinians really would rather have nothing to do with Hamas, but they have pretty much nothing without them.
It's impossible to fully understand the Israeli's point of view without recognizing the massive and repeated traumas that the people have endured, from the holocaust to being surrounded on all sides and regularly attacked for their mere existence. Everyone serves in the military. Huge portions of the populace suffer from PTSD from their military experience to the rockets regularly lobbed at them, to terrorist attacks in the country. Everywhere you walk around Israel there are soldiers carrying machine guns. They act like people under siege because they generally have been, but there is a power imbalance in their favor with the Palestinians and they can't reconcile that with the repeated trauma. I hate how they approach all of this, but I still feel empathy for them. It's just insanely complicated.
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