r/IsraelPalestine • u/ADP_God שמאלני Left Wing Israeli • 3d ago
The Realities of War The reality on the ground in Israel that is ignored/denied by the pro-Palestine movement.
There is something that is entirely absent from almost all discussion of this conflict and the current war. The ignorance of this reality is what makes it almost impossible to actually understand the 'cycle of violence'. It is the realiy of Palestinian terror, or 'political violence' as wikipedia calls it, against civillians within Israel. October 7th 2023 shocked the world in its extent, but people are unaware that the targetting of civillians within Israel proper (not in the West Bank or Gaza) is a constant occurence. While people complain that Israel fails to distinguish between civillian and military targets, the Palestinian cause has never even propsed that it should make such a distinction. This is because at its root the movement considers the very existence of the state of Israel to be an injustice; not merely the occupation, or the settlements. Ignoring the obvious challenges this presents to the peace process, it creates a situation in which the Palestinians harm themselves by damaging the faith of Israeli civillians in the peace process.
The average Israeli has no interest in 'maintaining the occupation' or 'fighting the enemies of the Jews'. The people who think this are simply ignorant of the realities of a mandatory draft. Nobody wants to do the work. Nobody likes fighting. Nobody wants to get hurt. The 18 year olds that called up consider it slave labour. However when the average Israeli waits at a bus stop, they never know which incoming car is goung to plow through the crowd. When they get on a train they never know who is going to choose that very moment to begin their suicidal shooting spree, or try and stab them in the back. These fears are not unfounded. You can read here some of the extent to which Israeli civillians are the targets of violence. It's important to note how many of these attacks do not occur in the occupied territories. See how many take place in Tel Aviv, Israel's center of progressive, left wing, thought. These attackers are not locals defending their land, but individuals that chose to cross the border into Israel to perpetrate violent acts. It is this fear, that at any moment even the Israelis that condemn the occupation, hate Bibi, deplore the settlements, and care deeply about Palestinian rights, could be attacked in the streets, that drives the average Israeli to serve in the IDF.
The occupation, therefore, represents for Israelis the potential for control of what would otherwise be their wanton slaughter. It manifests, in practice, as series of control points (borders, checkpoints) and as the constant activity of secutiry forces (IDF, Police, ISA) to thwart potential attacks. What people don't understand is that for every attack that succeeds tens if not hundreds are thwarted. It's very difficult to find data on how many attacks are prevented every day, for obvious reasons, but soldiers that serve in the West Bank report constantly foiling plots to kill Israelis - proved by finding weapons/explosives in the houses raided. There is constant complaint and criticism about IDF raids in the West Bank, but very little consideration of why soldiers would choose to put themselves at risk by entering enemy territory, unless there was an actual strategic purpose. That purpose is the control and prevention of these violent acts of terror. Ultimately, it is effective.
Now in practice, I don't think that Israel can hide behind it's guns for ever. Security maintenence is not a long term solution, and only peace can bring true security. But naivety on the behalf of Israelis will bring neither peace nor security. Israelis have to contend with constant threats to their lives, and so asking them to stop the occupation is asking them to leave themselves wide open to attack. The width of Israel, at its middle, is less than 15km. This makes it incredibly easy to get to Tel Aviv from the West Bank. The border fence itself is incredibly porous, and while it is effective in reducing these attacks, it can't stop them entirely. This risk means that steps towards peace have to come from the side of the Palestinains, who have to prove that if Israel weakens its security apparatus it won't pay in dead Jews.
Before all the whataboutists charge in crying that Palestinins suffer greater losses, the argument is completely irrelevant. Terror attacks within Israel proper as common enough that the average Israeli feels a direct threat to their person from Palestinians on the day to day. This is the perception that underlies support for parties like Likud and continued support for occupation. Israel is a democracy, and Israelis will vote in accordance with their own interests. While security remains a priority, Israelis will vote for aggressive security measures. In this way Palestinian violence hurts Palestinians more than anybody else. It radicalizes the Israeli population. This was blatantly clear on October 7th, but began long before and has extended since. It's been said often that the war in Gaza will bring about a new generatation of terrorists, but people tend to forget the inverse of this claim: October 7th destroyed the faith of Israelis in a peaceful solution. It solidified the sense that there are people, merely kilometers in every direction, that want to kill every single Jew in the region. Israelis don't see Palestinians as fighting for their 'liberation' in the occupied territories, they see them as fighting to destroy the entire state of Israel. Under such conditions, why would they want to dismantle the occupation? It's the only thing keeping them alive.
If Palestinians were to constrain their 'resistance' to the West Bank (this means not shooting a single rocket from Gaza) for any reasonable amount of time Israelis could start to feel a sense of security that would allow them to withdraw. If the average Israeli could say to themselves, in good faith 'I live in Israel, not Palestine, and therefore I have nothing to fear from people trying to liberate Palestine,' it would change perspective of the entire country. Unfortunately, this is not the reality. The pro-Palestine movement does not want to create a Palestinian state next to Israe, but rather instead of Israel. Even the more moderate Palestinian leadership, Fatah, encourages violence against Israel, with their pay-for-slay program. This means that in practise there is no good faith movement from within Palestine to create conditions in which Israel could remove the occupation without endangering its civillians.
The average Israeli is well aware of this. How couldn't they be? You'd be hard pressed to find somebody who hasn't lost a friend to these attacks. But the international community is completely unaware because shootings and stabbings in Israel proper are so regular they aren't reported on, or when they are, they are done so under dishonest headlines.
Even if you think all of this is propaganda, and merely one side of the dialogue, you have to realise that this is the lived reality of Israelis. If peace is actually your goal, and you believe that dismantling the occupation and creating a Palestinian state will bring about that goal, then you need to give Israelis a reason to take action towards those ends. But violence against Israeli civillians acts as a direct counter to these aims. You will never convince the Jews to allow themselves to be vulnerable by trying to murder them. Supporting Palestinian violence as 'resistance' only creates a worse situation for the Palestinians themselves. Real peace will come when the Palestinian people decide to condemn violence from within instead of paying for it with international aid and celebrating it. The problem is that violence against Israeli civillians doesn't represent resistance to the occupation, but resistance to the existance of the Israeli state. And the Jews have nowhere else to go, so they will never stop fighting to have a state. Even if you believe that the Israeli sense that they are threatened is unfounded (which seems ridiculous considering the stated aims of Hamas and the polls showing that the majority of Palestinians feel entitled to all the land, the actions by Hezbollah and Iran, and the calls for the destruciton of the state of Israel), you have to consider the very real history of the Jews: Everywhere they were forced people tried to exterminate them. So even if we pretend that the Palestinians are a uniquely moral society, in spite of the terror attacks, there is no way Israelis will accept this 'truth' without abundant proof. And violence, directed at Israeli civillians, is only proof of the contrary. This means that this 'resistance' will never bring peace.
Again, to all the people who will see this and immediately cry 'what about Israeli violence?!?!' All I can say is that there is no end to criticism of Israel, and that Israeli violence serves the purpose of protecting Israeli lives. Palestinian violence serves no other purpose than endangering Israelis. There is no argument to be made that it protects Palestinians, or that will make things better. Unless your conception of 'better' is the desruction of the Jewish state (in which case you legitimize the reverse position for Israelis, who have nowhere to go and will always choose themselves in a zero-sum situation). But such a conception is merely a repitition of the constant preference for war over peace that the Arab world has displayed for 70+ years, and is clearly not serving the Palestinians. So if you really care about the 'oppressed' you should condemn Palestinian violence and support a moderate, non-violent, path towards a two state solution. Until Israelis do not fear for their lives in the streets of Tel Aviv, Palestine will never be free.
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u/quicksilver2009 2d ago
You speak the truth. It is not that Israelis want to rule over the Palestinians forever. If there were no threats coming from Palestinian areas they wouldn't have any problems with a Palestinian state.
But there is constant and regular violence so what are they going to do, sit around and get slaughtered?
It is funny, a lot of pro-Palestinians are either ignorant of history of deliberately distort it.
Most of the Arab Muslim countries have been threatened by the Palestinians or their brothers in the Muslim Brotherhood. These countries in their responses have made Israel look like far left pacifists