What happened before 7th October is both long and complicated - would require almost a PhD in Middle East Affairs to undo. Palestinians have continued to push for change in Gaza for a very long time and I have done my best to follow the history. Here's me back in 2021 urging caution for those on the left getting caught up without doing the required reading.
https://medium.com/p/d866f7630b68
I conclude my opinion thusly.
This is about the British, the Americans, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, the second world war, the Cold War, historical anti-semitism, discrepancies between Abrahamic religions, territorial disputes, local governance, religious tolerance and intolerance, clandestine wars and spying, military supremacy, human rights, complex foreign machinations by multiple nations, the human propensity for in-group/out-group thinking, liberalism vs conservatism and the right to self-expression and self-determination of multiple groups of people with competing claims.For those reasons, ‘Free Palestine’ doesn’t quite cut it. Not for me and it likely shouldn’t for you either.It’s not that there’s anything wrong with these two words. It’s just a meaningless phrase, similar to MAGA. It sounds good when you’re typing it into your social media accounts — but what do you mean exactly?
And the situation in Gaza has not been helped by the 2006 civil war and the division between Hamas and Palestinian Authorities. The Gulf states, Israel and the rest of the world will sit down with the Palestinian authority - this was what was happening as a result of the Abrahamic Accords. In roads were being made for the Palestinians by both the US and the Saudis and Israel was reluctantly conceding on certain terms. We would also do well to remember that billions of dollars has been poured into Gaza over many years, much of which has been siphoned off and redistributed within Hamas. Further aid was cut from Gaza when some of the UNRWA were involved in the 7th October attack.
The reason I'm a Penguin is not for joking purposes - it is to allow people to consider whether identity plays into decision making. It does. Jewish identity and Arab identity figure large in these discussions with either being a pre-cursor to the position you're likely to take. Throw in skin colour and the rise of left-leaning race movements coming out against colonialism and you add a further complexity. Palestinian as an identity is quite complicated as the history will attest - and might be a product of the conflict itself rather than an antecedent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_name_Palestine#:~:text=The%20term%20Palestine%20first%20appeared,and%20Egypt%20in%20The%20Histories.
However, what this means in practice is that the solution has to be done outside of national identity, outside of religion and race, and largely in the centre ground based on secular humanism. If you ask me what I want, I'm a die-hard liberal. I would want both the Palestinians and Jewsish Israelis to be able to live in the sort of harmony that Arabs and Jews live in here in London. I would like that to be done under the banner of liberalism and people given as much individual freedom as possible to live their lives as they see fit. That is not what happens under the Iranian caliphate, it's certainly not what is happening under Hamas controlled Gaza.
In short, the war with Israel has been an endless growing boil, one which has receded a number of times and had the sting taken out of it, the Oslo Accords and the Abraham Accords both gave it a good go. On both occasions, the far right militaries on both sides have fired up their own base to continue this war for their own ends. If the world were to intervene, it should do so by arresting Netanyahu for war crimes against civilians and sending a UN peacekeeping force into Gaza with the sole purpose of maintaining peace and rebuilding society there. I suspect (but I don't know) that Hamas would attempt to fight this force or engineer a conflict by the back door - because it would provide the citizens a welcome relief, not just from Israel but from the machinations of Hamas, who have never acted in the best interests of their people.
The link you provided was great - it put real nuance into the situation. Biden's solution, as ignored by Netanyahu, to target the leadership via Mossad was what I thought they should've done too. Netanyahu is an idiot.
