Sharing a perspective from a respected friend of mine Sarah Brown whose background includes a good mix of interacting with and understanding both sides. Take from it whatever you want. "This is one of the most thoughtful and insightful articles I have come across. As someone who was raised in a pre-millenial dispensationalist Zionist church yet simultaneously grew up with Muslim Arabs through public school, later studied at a university with a huge and highly influential Jewish population (many of whom became dear friends), and then worked in a Palestinian refugee camp for 2 yrs thereafter, my understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict simply can't be contained by a particular paradigm, label, or ideology. This writer hits the nail on the head though:
'But while it's accurate to say that "both sides" participate in this awful cycle, that "both sides" indulge their worst habits in ways that perpetuate the conflict, there is an essential truth that is not about "both sides": it is utterly disproportionate. Only the Palestinians are under military occupation. While the conflict hurts everyone here, any one Palestinian is far more likely to be hurt than any one Israeli, and is apt to be hurt more deeply.
This leads to other kinds of asymmetry in the conflict: while there are certainly exceptions to this, individual incidents of violence are often touched off by a Palestinian attack. Israelis may tell you this is because Palestinian extremist groups such as Hamas have embraced terrorism as a strategy, and this is true, but there's a structural cause as well.
The Israelis want to enforce the status quo, because they see the status quo as succeeding for them, while Palestinians want to blow it up. This makes the Palestinians the frequent instigator, as with Thursday's kidnapping, but Israelis' disproportionately greater power and their willingness to use it makes them the cause of on-net greater suffering and more numerous abuses. This is not a point about who is more or less morally righteous, but an observation on the structure of the conflict and how it shapes Israeli and Palestinian political behavior in such a way that hurts both and serves neither, but it hurts Palestinians much more and serves them even less.'
The end of 'both sides' Israel's occupation of the West Bank is indefensible
'But while it's accurate to say that "both sides" participate in this awful cycle, that "both sides" indulge their worst habits in ways that perpetuate the conflict, there is an essential truth that is not about "both sides": it is utterly disproportionate. Only the Palestinians are under military occupation. While the conflict hurts everyone here, any one Palestinian is far more likely to be hurt than any one Israeli, and is apt to be hurt more deeply.
This leads to other kinds of asymmetry in the conflict: while there are certainly exceptions to this, individual incidents of violence are often touched off by a Palestinian attack. Israelis may tell you this is because Palestinian extremist groups such as Hamas have embraced terrorism as a strategy, and this is true, but there's a structural cause as well.
The Israelis want to enforce the status quo, because they see the status quo as succeeding for them, while Palestinians want to blow it up. This makes the Palestinians the frequent instigator, as with Thursday's kidnapping, but Israelis' disproportionately greater power and their willingness to use it makes them the cause of on-net greater suffering and more numerous abuses. This is not a point about who is more or less morally righteous, but an observation on the structure of the conflict and how it shapes Israeli and Palestinian political behavior in such a way that hurts both and serves neither, but it hurts Palestinians much more and serves them even less.'
The end of 'both sides' Israel's occupation of the West Bank is indefensible
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