What is the deal with Palestine and Hamas?

I hate to wade in but I see a lot of misinformation being posted.

The reality is both Israel and Palestinians are victims; victims of each other, their neighbors, and the world around them. You can make one side look better or worse depending on when you start the clock on the discussion.

When Israel was formed in 1948 there wasn't a Palestinian state, but rather a collection of towns with various ethnic populations including Jewish and Muslims peoples. The area was controlled by Britain in the time before WW2 under a mandate from the league of nations, the precursor to the UN.

In 1948 the UN set a border for Jewish and Palestinian states in the territory that is today known as Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. The Jewish peoples, some who could trace their ancestry in the area to biblical times, and others who settled the area as either a Zionist effort or fleeing the Holocaust, accepted the borders which were much smaller than today's Israel, because it meant they would finally have their own state and land.

The Arabs didn't accept the border for a variety of reasons, and the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia attacked the fledgling Jewish state.

Notably, the Palestinians didn't attack. Though there were tensions between the Jewish peoples and the Palestinians who felt the encroachment of Jewish settlers from Europe, the Palestinian cause was really created and coopted by their Muslim neighbors.

During the war Israel expanded their borders, 700,000 Palestinians were displaced while some were massacred. Some Palestinians fled the war, some were forced out, some left at the call of their Arab neighbors, and some left in fear of being massacred. The armistice that ended the war left Israel larger, Jordan in control of the West Bank, and Egypt in control of Gaza. Note, this was before the West began to provide military aid to Israel.

So the Israel narrative or myth is that they have the pure moral high ground where they win a war for the right to exist. The Palestinian narrative and myth is that they were all violently dispossessed by the Jews and are pure victims. To this day, children born in Palestinian refuge camps are taught about the village they are "from" which often doesn't exist and their family does 70 years ago. Though many were not forced out during the war, the narrative is they were all forced to leave by the Jewish army.

So you have these competing ideas passed down on both sides that are in conflict, and neither one quite right.

When you look at how Palestinians have been treated by their Arab neighbors you see how they have been abused further. For example, Jordan and Egypt could have made the West Bank and Gaza independent Palestinian states, but they didn't. They continued to occupy them, and ultimately lose control after going to war with Israel again in the six day war in 1967, which set the stage for many of the problems today.

Over the years these narratives in conflict have bred real world violence in a tit for tat escalation that spans decades. Israel continues its narrative that it is in a war for its right to exist, which is true, but also doesn't accept responsibility for worsening the situation at times over the years and human rights abuses such as the 24 documented displacements.

Palestinians continue to define themselves as a dispossessed people, teaching their children that they need to reclaim what they lost, while being used by their surrounding Arab religious state neighbors as a proxy battleground against Israel. Palestinians have refused offers to develop permanent housing for fear of would weaken their claim to being refugees, and really live in entrenched slums that they call refuge camps.

The recent events were caused by Hamas, fearing the normalization of Israel relationships and the fading of the Palestinians cause to retake lost land, attacking Israel. Then of course, you have Israels grossly disproportionate response and the horrors therein.

So really the situation is quite a mess, and made worse by people ignorant of the history rushing to support one side or the other. In reality, both sides are prisoners of their own history, and unlikely to set themselves free anytime soon.

If you want a short podcast that goes over this in more detail, I recommend "The Daily" podcast titled 1948, which was released this past November 3rd and interviews the NYT Israel correspondent from 1970.

Let me know if you have any follow up questions.

For everyone else who is blindly on one side or the other waiting to bait me into a never ending argument by selectively framing the situation: no thanks, I have a weekend to enjoy.

Have a great day!