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Palestinian leaders have always been terrible strategists
Even if you think it is your land, it is not really yours if someone else is ruling over it. First it was the Ottoman Empire, and then the British Empire.
The Jews have been better at championing for their cause. During the First World War, they gave their support to the British. Chaim Weizmann, a Jewish  chemist found a way to make cheap dynamite with acetone, this was a great benefit for the British.
Thankful for their help the British leaders showed their support to the creation of a Jewish state on Palestinian land.
In 1936, the Palestinian were offered 80% of the land and 20% for the Jews. The Palestinian refused.
After World War II, the British gave up the land to the UN. In 1947, the UN proposed two states dividing the land 50/50. The Palestinian refused again, and went to war with the new state of Israel.
They lost the war and part of the land.
In the next decades, Palestinians declared war to Israel a few more times, lost every wars and lost territory every time.
The Palestinian leadership by refusing any kind of compromise and win-win ended up losing almost all the land, and causing thousands of death of their own civilians.
Hi Jack,
Quote from Jack on January 13, 2024, 3:18 pmEven if you think it is your land, it is not really yours if someone else is ruling over it. First it was the Ottoman Empire, and then the British Empire.
I have to disagree with you, this is basically saying "might is right" if something was seized by force, it cannot became theirs rightfully The Palestinians were there long before anyone else, Israel is the occupier, they are the immigrants that took over the native land of the Palestinians.
In 1936, the Palestinian were offered 80% of the land and 20% for the Jews. The Palestinian refused.
Of course, how can one country offer a second country a chance to make a third country its homeland, this is absurdity.
After World War II, the British gave up the land to the UN. In 1947, the UN proposed two states dividing the land 50/50. The Palestinian refused again, and went to war with the new state of Israel.
Neither UN nor Britain had the right to propose anything, The Balfour declaration according to many legal experts is null and void as it went against all principles of natural justice and fairness, added to this the Palestinians were not consulted during any of the proceedings.
The Jews have been better at championing for their cause. During the First World War, they gave their support to the British. Chaim Weizmann, a Jewish  chemist found a way to make cheap dynamite with acetone, this was a great benefit for the British.
Chain Weizmann was the one who helped the British to start the despicable practice of Chemical warfare in the Trenches.
In the next decades, Palestinians declared war to Israel a few more times, lost every wars and lost territory every time.
The Palestinian leadership by refusing any kind of compromise and win-win ended up losing almost all the land, and causing thousands of death of their own civilians.
I agree with you, it is disheartening and a terrible thing when lives are lost and even more so when it is innocent lives be it on any side of the war.
Israel's Policy and actions towards Palestinians was more of a Win - Lose than a win - win, and what would a Win - Win with an illegal occupier even look like?
Mav
Hello Marv.
My point is that you have to face reality and respect power dynamics. If someone is ruling over you, you are not in charge. They are not just going to give you the land because you say so, even if you were there before. That is why you need to be strategic.
You need to do some power accounting.
You want 100% of the land?Can you overthrow the power in charge? If you can’t maybe it’s better to look for a compromise.
By wanting hundred percent of the pie they ended up with a lot less. And they kept repeating the same mistake over in over again.
You keep fighting out of spite when you are weak, is just terrible management.
strategically the  attack of October was useless.Now it is costing thousands of innocent life, and probably the whole territory of the Gaza Strip.
Quote from Jack on January 13, 2024, 8:42 pmMy point is that you have to face reality and respect power dynamics. If someone is ruling over you, you are not in charge. They are not just going to give you the land because you say so, even if you were there before. That is why you need to be strategic.
I agree with your statement "If someone is ruling over you, you are not in charge. They are not just going to give you the land because you say so, even if you were there before", the common expression "freedom is taken not given" comes to mind and I think that is exactly what the Palestinians are doing.
How would you be strategic about this?
You want 100% of the land?Can you overthrow the power in charge? If you can’t maybe it’s better to look for a compromise.
If the Palestinians continue to fight and resist, it's just a matter of time before they get their country back,  when they stop resisting and accept a compromise, that is when they start to lose.
By wanting hundred percent of the pie they ended up with a lot less. And they kept repeating the same mistake over in over again.
If an intruder occupied X's house, X would want X's whole house back, X would never agree to anything else, I'm sure you would agree with me on this Jack, and so is the case with Palestinians. The world even knows of the Palestinian plight because they fight and refuse to be silenced, this cannot be considered as a mistake.
You keep fighting out of spite when you are weak, is just terrible management.
Talking is not going return their homeland, No one else is going to fight for them, Every one who could have helped have either chosen to remain mute spectators or support the occupiers. This is the only way to free their homeland
strategically the  attack of October was useless.Now it is costing thousands of innocent life, and probably the whole territory of the Gaza Strip.
Not really, The October attack set the stage for isolating Israel and turning the Public opinion against the Israelis, never have the Israelis looked so bad in the eyes of the public. Today the Israelis are being tried in the International court of Justice for the charge of Genocide ironically.
Mav
Yeah, I think it's very difficult to discuss this without politics/preferences/biases.
I have my own bias in the tendency to side and/or sympathize for the underdog.
Speaking from the incredible lows of my ignorance in the topic, it seems a fair assessment that seems in line with what (little) I'm aware of.
You may be totally right to say "it's mine, your request to share it is baseless".
But you may achieve better results acting with power in mind, rather than fairness.
Hello, guys
This is indeed a thorny subject. I think Jack makes really compelling points, as well as Maverick and Lucio. As an exercise in study of power dynamics, I agree with what you say about the need to face the reality of power of power dynamics. And, sure, there are historians on both sides of the conflict. But what if the historians who say that Israel's motives are win-lose from the outset are right?
Even if we analyse it from a purely realist/power dynamics point of view, many scholars make the case that the situation has always been dire for the Palestinians. The Arabs, as well as the Jewish, lent their military support to Britain against the Ottoman Empire. In exchange for that Britain promised them independence and... The very same lands they would promise to the Jewish - but with the difference that, unlike the western Jews, the Arabs have been there for centuries.
According to this view, the dominant Zionist project, from it's very beginnings, has always been about creating a Israeli State encompassing the whole territory, with Israeli institutions, Israeli culture, Hebrew language etc. It has never been about integrating the local Arab population or dividing the land. The point of it all has always been about dominating the whole territory and expelling locals to make room for Jewish immigrants from all over the world. Israel, wich by UN's Resolution 181 would have received 56% of the land (and lands of far better quality), never really intended to respect that limit (the same way Israel ignores UN's resolutions concerning settlements outside of its 1967 borders), not even before the 1948 Arab coalition attack. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza has always used Arab attacks (which can also be seen as fighting for independance from a colonial power) as pretext for advancing a project that would have happened with or without aggression.
In this case, Palestinians would fight because there is no real option. To negotiate you need something to barter. You cannot negotiate with someone who wants everything you have and give you nothing, and this is another side of the reality of power dynamics. A typical Palestinian family has nowhere to go and accepting Israel's conditions would mean saying "yes, take my house, my lands, give it to western immigrants, I'll be homeless and provide cheap/free labour for you. Sure, no citizenship, no civil, social or political rights for me, got it, no problem".
In this view, wouldn't fighting, instead of accepting the western power's terms, be a matter of survival, instead of bad strategizing? After all, how can one negotiate with someone who goes for win-lose and relies on force to get what he wants?
Realpolitik:
Both parties have their own agenda. Both never really trusted each other from the start.
Israel capitalised on every opportunity to consolidate their power and territory.
Palestinian offensives are a succession of failures. They lose power, territory and humans.
They keep fighting when they are weak and  have no chance of winning,
Looking at the October attack, you have to wonder what was in it for them? From a human perspective it was disgusting. From strategic perspective it was absolutely useless.
They will now most likely lose the Gaza strip and tens  of thousands of civilians.
They are either psychopathic imbeciles. Or they did it for the benefit of Iran, who were seething that the Israeli were getting closer to the emirates. They basically got sacrificed for someone else benefit without getting anything in return.
that is why I believe Palestinian leaders are absolutely terrible.
The one "positive" thing from Hamas' point of view it may be that it managed to shift a (good?) chunk of the world's opinion unfavorably towards Israel.
And a bigger hatred towards Israeli around the word, which can have real-life costs for Israelis -I found out firsthand the difference it can make when I was out with an Israeli and he'd lied to someone he was from the US. Then I asked, and he explained. And that was even before the recent huge flare up-
Israel's most notorious supporters (zionists?) don't seem to be doing it many favors by taking the hard line and coming across as rather unlikable to anyone outside their own supporters -see Shapiro-.
But yeah, that's not a huge win when the costs are so high, and you're losing everything else.
More like a lose-lose for all but the biggest extremists, actually.
Quote from Kavalier on January 15, 2024, 3:15 amHello, guys
This is indeed a thorny subject. I think Jack makes really compelling points, as well as Maverick and Lucio. As an exercise in study of power dynamics, I agree with what you say about the need to face the reality of power of power dynamics. And, sure, there are historians on both sides of the conflict. But what if the historians who say that Israel's motives are win-lose from the outset are right?
Even if we analyse it from a purely realist/power dynamics point of view, many scholars make the case that the situation has always been dire for the Palestinians. The Arabs, as well as the Jewish, lent their military support to Britain against the Ottoman Empire. In exchange for that Britain promised them independence and... The very same lands they would promise to the Jewish - but with the difference that, unlike the western Jews, the Arabs have been there for centuries.
According to this view, the dominant Zionist project, from it's very beginnings, has always been about creating a Israeli State encompassing the whole territory, with Israeli institutions, Israeli culture, Hebrew language etc. It has never been about integrating the local Arab population or dividing the land. The point of it all has always been about dominating the whole territory and expelling locals to make room for Jewish immigrants from all over the world. Israel, wich by UN's Resolution 181 would have received 56% of the land (and lands of far better quality), never really intended to respect that limit (the same way Israel ignores UN's resolutions concerning settlements outside of its 1967 borders), not even before the 1948 Arab coalition attack. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza has always used Arab attacks (which can also be seen as fighting for independance from a colonial power) as pretext for advancing a project that would have happened with or without aggression.
In this case, Palestinians would fight because there is no real option. To negotiate you need something to barter. You cannot negotiate with someone who wants everything you have and give you nothing, and this is another side of the reality of power dynamics. A typical Palestinian family has nowhere to go and accepting Israel's conditions would mean saying "yes, take my house, my lands, give it to western immigrants, I'll be homeless and provide cheap/free labour for you. Sure, no citizenship, no civil, social or political rights for me, got it, no problem".
In this view, wouldn't fighting, instead of accepting the western power's terms, be a matter of survival, instead of bad strategizing? After all, how can one negotiate with someone who goes for win-lose and relies on force to get what he wants?
Hi Kavalier,
Like you said, I have also observed this to be a very polarizing and thorny issue, at one point before the October attack I was firmly behind the Israeli camp and always thought the Palestinians must have the sense to stop this needless fighting and recognize that it's over.
Then I realized the situation cannot possibly be all that black and white, I started digging around and immediately I found out that there are two types of people, on one hand there are people who rely exclusively on main stream media  for information, news and narratives, on the other hand there are people who look at alternative media as well, based on this is where the divide starts.
Considering other sources of Information it is abundantly clear Israel is no saint to put it mildly and the Palestinians are not the devils they are told to be. It has been an eye opener for me, and now when I interact with people who firmly are entrenched in the opinion that Israel is justified in what they do, I try to enter a discussion that there is more this than meets the eye.
Quote from Kavalier on January 15, 2024, 3:15 amHello, guys
This is indeed a thorny subject. I think Jack makes really compelling points, as well as Maverick and Lucio. As an exercise in study of power dynamics, I agree with what you say about the need to face the reality of power of power dynamics. And, sure, there are historians on both sides of the conflict. But what if the historians who say that Israel's motives are win-lose from the outset are right?
Even if we analyse it from a purely realist/power dynamics point of view, many scholars make the case that the situation has always been dire for the Palestinians. The Arabs, as well as the Jewish, lent their military support to Britain against the Ottoman Empire. In exchange for that Britain promised them independence and... The very same lands they would promise to the Jewish - but with the difference that, unlike the western Jews, the Arabs have been there for centuries.
According to this view, the dominant Zionist project, from it's very beginnings, has always been about creating a Israeli State encompassing the whole territory, with Israeli institutions, Israeli culture, Hebrew language etc. It has never been about integrating the local Arab population or dividing the land. The point of it all has always been about dominating the whole territory and expelling locals to make room for Jewish immigrants from all over the world. Israel, wich by UN's Resolution 181 would have received 56% of the land (and lands of far better quality), never really intended to respect that limit (the same way Israel ignores UN's resolutions concerning settlements outside of its 1967 borders), not even before the 1948 Arab coalition attack. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza has always used Arab attacks (which can also be seen as fighting for independance from a colonial power) as pretext for advancing a project that would have happened with or without aggression.
In this case, Palestinians would fight because there is no real option. To negotiate you need something to barter. You cannot negotiate with someone who wants everything you have and give you nothing, and this is another side of the reality of power dynamics. A typical Palestinian family has nowhere to go and accepting Israel's conditions would mean saying "yes, take my house, my lands, give it to western immigrants, I'll be homeless and provide cheap/free labour for you. Sure, no citizenship, no civil, social or political rights for me, got it, no problem".
In this view, wouldn't fighting, instead of accepting the western power's terms, be a matter of survival, instead of bad strategizing? After all, how can one negotiate with someone who goes for win-lose and relies on force to get what he wants?
Yeah, fair point.
From my point of view, I should have boldened my caveat of "speaking from total ignorance".
If it is as you say, then it's either roll over, or fight.
May as well fight, at that point (albeit of course, you should still do your best civilians who want to live don't pay the price of your choice)
