Yes, I believe we are. I kind of have to be pro-actively defensive about the history, because lots of other people (even in this very thread) express exactly that - that Israel shouldn't exist, or that Israelis are uniquely evil, or something.
> The ethnostate nature of Israel now is what matters, and that it requires Palestinian statelessness is key. At least this is the approach of the current Israeli government.
I don't think this is fair, though. First, calling the "nature of Israel" an ethnostate is misleading - it's not any more an ethnostate than France is an "ethnostate" for the French. Indeed, Israel has a sizeable Arab/Palestinian minority (~20%) that have full rights and full voting rights.
And I certainly don't think anything about Israel requires Palestinian statelesness.
But yes, the current government is certainly of the approach that the Palestinians should never have a state - they literally voted on disallowing them ever having a state. The current government is awful, and not just for the Palestinians - dragging Israel towards dictatorship is (IMO, of course) a terrible thing for Israelis too!
> Leaving out that the PA renounced violence against Israel as part of the Oslo Peace Process, which only led to more land theft, that Israelis so badly did not want Palestine to have a state that they murdered Rabin to stop it, that multiple Israeli PMs constantly sabotaged the process to Palestinian statehood thru the PA (most notably Netanyahu preferring to allow Hamas to threaten their rule and ultimately expel them from Gaza). Let's be honest about failures on both sides, not prop up one story or the other solely.
I believe I am honest about the history, certainly honest about the experience of the Israeli left.
There was a genuine push for peace, sustained over many years and multiple PMs, and the experience of the country is that every push for peace ended up with more violence and less security, which just doesn't make any sense - why did the Palestinians ramp up the violence when on the way to getting what they ostensibly want? It makes sense from the POV of Palestinian extremists like Hamas, because they were explicitly against the peace process, and explictly refused to accept anything except getting rid of Israel. So for them, any concessions on the Israeli side were "proof" that Israel would eventually be able to be pushed out, which is what they really want, and represents (afaict) a majority view.
> Unfortunately, giving Palestine the one thing that can actually enable peace (deterrence) is also a huge risk for Israel.
I really, really disagree with this. Again, Mexico and the US have peace, but it's not because Mexico deters the US in any meaningful way. They just aren't fighting because they aren't competing over anything.
If Mexico tomorrow decided that it has a claim on (say) Texas, and were determined to conquer it - and started shooting rockets at the US and invading the US - would your reaction really be "well the only thing that can solve this is the US giving Mexico enough weapons so there was mutual deterrence"?
What brings peace is agreeing to live next to each other without killing each other.