Israel is wealthy, well armed and
strongly backed by western states.

It enjoys an exceptional international
status that absolves it of accountability for
whatever violations of law it commits.

The power imbalance between Israel and Palestine
could hardly be starker and it makes a mockery of
any peace plan not on Israel's terms, ever succeeding.

Independent journalist Antony Lowenstein tells Sky News
that the current Israel Palestinian crisis is "not a
conflict between two equal sides" with Israel being
the "occupier" and the Palestinians being the "öccupied."

"The context has to be seen of where this is coming from which
essentially is not just what's happening now." he said.

"I think a lot of the media gets overly focused on the question
of Hamas fires rockets - Israel allegedly fires back."

"This is an occupation. Israel has been occupying Palestinian
territory for over 72 years."

"The Zionist project that established Israel in 1948 had at
its core the aim of acquiring Palestinian land without its
native population."

"In the years of Israel's existence to
date, that aim never wavered. It led to the mass Palestinian
expulsion of 1947-9, the second mass expulsion in 1967, and an
ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing since then to denude the
Palestinian presence in the country still further."

If only a strategy could be devised where its thrust would
be to reverse Israel's attempt to annihilate the Palestinians
as a people and restore their rights. That would mean keeping
them on their land and enabling them to lead normal lives
instead of maintaining Israel's current apartheid state
structures. Through pressure a peaceful settlement is
achievable - but not just only on Israel's terms.

Lowenstein says, "Many Palestinians are rightly sceptical about
the Biden Administration sending someone to solve the conflict
because the US is in the pocket of Israel."

Dear Foxy,

"The Zionist project that established Israel in 1948 had at
its core the aim of acquiring Palestinian land without its
native population."

False.

Indeed as you say, by 1948 this was the dominant Zionist policy, but it was never a part of the CORE of Zionism.

Zionism, as founded by Theodor Herzl, originally intended to include the local Arabs and have them as equal members of the new Jewish homeland. Herzl believed that the Arabs would respond enthusiastically to his "enlightened" plans.

Zionist leaders, including Ben Gurion and Chaim Weizmann (Israel's first PM and president), initially strove hard to include the Arabs in the emerging new state, but alas, since 1929 the Arabs responded not with flowers but with knives and bombs, forcing the disappointed Zionists to forsake their romantic dreams and adjust their policy to suit the hostile reality on the ground.

Yuyutsu,

I suggest that you Google "Nakba," the catastrophe.

"Throughout 1948, Jewish forces expelled many thousands
of Palestinians from their villages, towns and cities
into Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt,
and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of others fled in fear."

"The purpose was to create a pure Jewish state, ethnically
cleansed of the original inhabitants who had lived there
for centuries."

"The creation of the state of Israel was the heart of this
cataclysmic historical event for the Palestinians - the
mass forced expulsion of people. The more than 50 massacres
carried out over the summer of 1948 by various Jewish
forces: the demolition of villages to ensure the refugees
could not return - all this is summed up in a single word
for Palestinians - NAKBA - the catastrophe."

"We must do everything to ensure they (the Palestinians)
never return ... the old will die and the young will forget."
said David Ben-Gurion, the founder of Israel 1949.

The young have not forgotten. The event is remembered every
year on May 15th.

The Jewish people have suffered horribly through the ages, particularly in the Christian world. The Nazi Holocaust was the culmination of centuries of Christian hate. Most people are not ennobled by suffering. They want revenge. Shakespeare said it well.

Shylock:

To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.

Dear Foxy,

You ask me to read about 1948.
By then, it is clearly agreed that no Arabs were wanted in Israel by mainstream Zionism.

But Zionism did not start in 1948 and I was referring to earlier events.
The reason I responded to your earlier post was that you wrote there:
"The Zionist project that established Israel in 1948 had at
its CORE the aim of acquiring Palestinian land without its
native population"

My point was that keeping the land free of Arabs is NOT a CORE aim of Zionism, but rather a later policy - and that point still stands.

The direction of Zionism in regard to the local Arab population was reversed between the years 1929 and 1936: before 1929 Zionism wanted the local Arabs to remain and be part of the Zionist project, while after 1936, and certainly by 1948, Zionism no doubt wanted them out.

Why so? because, from a Zionist perspective anyway, call that naive if you like, the Arabs disappointingly and unexpectedly failed to behave themselves and instead of showing gratitude for and welcoming the Jews who come to uplift them from their squalid poverty and ignorance into modernity, technology and hygiene, they stabbed and bombed the hand that fed them.

Dear Yuyutsu,

Referring to your post of Wednesday, 7 September 2022 10:59:02 PM the Arabs sound like some of the followers of Trump.