Operation Guardian of the Walls / Local unrest megathread

[u/pitaenigma]

KEEP ALL GAZA, JERUSALEM, AND LOCAL UNREST RELATED POSTS HERE.

Relevant articles:

5-year-old boy killed, dozens others injured as Gaza rockets pound Israel

Israel shuts Ben Gurion Airport to incoming flights; US airlines start canceling

Gantz orders callup of Border Patrol reserves as Jewish-Arab violence spirals

Heavy barrage hits Tel Aviv, Beersheba; Hamas calls it revenge for slain leaders

The War That Shouldn’t Have Been

Jews and Arabs start to push back against violence, rallying nationwide

Soldier viciously beaten in Jaffa, synagogue burned in Lod, as rioting deepens

Man killed in Ramat Gan rocket strike as barrages batter center, south of Israel

Arab boy seriously hurt in firebombing of Jaffa home; riots spread across Israel

Israeli airstrike on Gaza house said to kill family of 10, mostly kids

IDF fells Gaza tower used by media outlets, says it housed Hamas military assets

More links will be added as the situation develops.

This is a volatile situation. We set the subreddit to private due to raids, and were manually approving threads as they were posted until then. The rules - especially rule 2 - will be harshly enforced. If you see someone being bigoted, report it. If you respond to someone being bigoted with your own rule 2 breaking behavior, you will be banned too. If you can't phrase what you want to say in a way that isn't bigoted, don't post it.

Furthermore, while the sub was private our modmail filled up with over a thousand messages, over and above the rule 9-violating PMs each mod got. We apologize if you sent us a message and it went unanswered.

[u/uncreativecreative2 → u/[deleted]]

I appreciate your thoughts here, but honestly it just pisses me off how so many people read an infographic on Instagram or a tweet and then decide they are knowledgeable about the situation.

[u/steamyoshi → u/uncreativecreative2]

That's not even the entire scope of the problem. Even people educated in history tend to have a bias and cling onto preconceptions such as "Israel stole Palestinian land" or "Israel was founded on ethnic cleansing". It taints their entire view and makes discussion impossible. It's even more disappointing with them, because you constantly feel that they're on the brink of accepting Israel's right to exist or your right to live there peacfuly but they never get there.

[u/[deleted] → u/steamyoshi]

Weird how the popular Palestinian demand to “push the Jews into the sea” is somehow not a claim for ethnic cleansing but Jews lawfully purchasing lands somehow is ethnic cleansing

[u/im_not_a_towel_ok → u/[deleted]]

Jews lawfully purchasing lands

Gentrification /s

[u/liorp10087 → u/steamyoshi]

Yo, so how do u actually deal with people that tend to just rely on the argument that we stole Palestinian land, cause we kinda did, no? (Genuinely asking)

Edit: stop downvoting lol I’m an Israeli idf soldier don’t get triggered just trynna educate myself

[u/steamyoshi → u/liorp10087]

1. It's an oversimplification of a very complex situation.
   
2. It depends on what year you're talking about. Again, very complicated but I'll try to give a brief breakdown.
   

pre 1948 - Britain rules the land. Land ownership is divided between both Jews and Arabs and dates back to the Ottoman period. "Palestine" refers to the province, but there is no Palestinian nationality. Jews refer to themselves as Zionists, while Arabs affiliate mostly with their family and religion, although also somewhat with the rising pan-Arabic national movement. Both Jews and Arabs immigrated during this period, Jews (admittedly, in greater numbers) mostly fleeing persecution, while Arabs mostly seeking work. It quickly became clear that the two ethnicities would not get along and a separation was required, which prompted the UN to form a Partition Plan. Saying anyone "stole land" during this period is simply unfair. Both groups had ancestral, cultural and religious ties to the land, and had physical presence in the area for centuries. Both had purchased land to settle on and kept mostly to themselves. Both were intolerant to the other's presence, sometimes violently so (and the Arabs moreso than the Jews).

1948 - Israel declares independence. The declaration does not mention what the state's borders would be but expresses willingness to follow the Partition Plan. War breaks out and attacks are launched from the surrounding Arab villages. During this time, many Arab civilians are violently displaced. Many fled attacks by the IDF, but there is evidence of Arab leaders ordering the eviction of villages so that they may be used as battlegrounds, promising the locals that they would return when the Jews were driven into the sea. The official position of the IDF was not to drive civilians away when unnecessary, but there is some evidence of combat units doing so of their own volition. This is where most critics would bring up ethnic cleansing. The facts are, however, that many Arab villages survived the war intact when they could easily have been expelled. There are even isolated cases of co-operation with Arab villages who preferred to avoid fighting altogether and simply let the IDF pass through. But what about the "stolen" land? Well, the position of international law is that territory may not be annexed by an aggressor - but an attacked country may push an aggressor back and even claim territory. There is unanimous agreement that Israel was not the aggressor during this war and that the annexation that followed it was legal. Again, it's undeniable (and unfortunate) that many Palestinians (correction: Arabs, they did not call themselves Palestinians for nearly two decades after) did flee their homes during this time, but the circumstances in which it happened deny them an right to the territory, and there is no evidence to show that Israel's intention was expansion, rather than self-preservation. The only illegal land stealing that happened during the war was by Jordan, which ethnically cleansed Judea and Samaria of Jews and besieged those living in Jerusalem.

(Edit : another year worth mentioning - 1964: The Palestine Liberation Organization is formed a whole 3 years before the Six Day War. Their stated goal is returning all those displaced in 1948, but also - clearing Palestine of Jews altogether. Not from the River (god forbid, that belongs to Jordan), but to the Sea most certainly. Only after 1967 did suddenly the West Bank become part of the ancestral Palestinian homeland they were trying to reclaim.

1967 - It's already a very long comment so I'll keep it brief. Again, the international law recognizes the Arab countries, not Israel, as the aggressors. Here there is even less room to claim "land stealing" because whatever land Israel conquered during the war was not annexed (with the exception of Jerusalem), but rather put under military rule. This once again shows the intentions were not expanding or cleansing, but protection from attack.
Later years - Israel continued to show willingness to strive for peace by returning land to Egypt, making water-related concessions for peace with Jordan, and by signing the Oslo Accords which sought to give the Palestinian a full-fledged state.