Hacker News Reader

Comment by mmustapic | Hacker News Reader

So are Palestinians immigrants in Israel, without a visa? Even immigrants have freedom of movement and are subject to the same laws as nationals.

They are of course not illegals immigrants, because they were already there.

So what are they? When it’s convenient, they are a nation that doesn’t want peace. When it’s convenient, Palestine was never a country. So what is it?

View on HN

Not all of them were already there. Many immigrated there from Jordan (and to the Gaza Strip from Egypt) post 1948.

In the West Bank they are former Jordanian citizens who had their citizenship revoked post 1967. Egypt never offered residents of Gaza citizenship, so I suppose they are former Ottoman Empire subjects without any new state to become citizens of. Remember that they rejected the creation of an Arab state in 1948 under UN Resolution 181, and Israel supported the creation of such a state.

Broadly, they are a stateless population that has made war on Israel since 1948 (and against Jews in the area since before then) and it is hard to see why it's Israel that owes them something, as opposed to their Egyptian and Jordanian allies who were in control of those territories and their lives for 20 years.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordanian_annexation_of_the_We...

Israel owes them something because they control the territory where they live. If you are fine with countries anexing territories and then discriminating people based on ethnicity, then no, they don’t owe them anything.

Then why didn't Jordan and Egypt give them a country when they controlled the territory where they live? The answer is because they didn't want a country there, they wanted the land that is called "Israel". Egypt never gave them citizenship, but that didn't seem to be a problem to them. They tried to attack Israel, not Egypt. There's more to this story than you're telling.

So because in 1966 Egypt didn’t give them citizenship, Israel can do the same in 2025 plus occupying then military, displace them, jail them and kill them? Until when? 10 years more? 100? 1000?

Here’s more to this story https://conquer-and-divide.btselem.org/map-en.html

The point is if they wanted a state they would have agitated for one during the UN Resolution 181 vote. But they didn't. Or they would have agitated for it between 1948 and 1967, when they were occupied by Egypt and Jordan. But they didn't. They didn't attack Egypt and Jordan to try to force their hand to give them a state. They attacked Israel, when Israel didn't occupy any land outside its currently "internationally recognised borders"! And now they supposedly want a state on the land that they already had? They only decided they wanted a state on that land once Israel occupied it.

Here's Hasan Zomlot, Palestinian ambassador to the UK, claiming yesterday that "We will leave back to our homes inside the '48 areas, we will go back to our land, we will go back to Yaffa and Haifa!".

https://x.com/koshercockney/status/1901248223580160056

I'm not surprised Israel is being cautious.

Maybe they don't like Israeli occupation which has been going on for 58 years, while their access to land has been reduced more and more.

And besides, I'm not even talking about statehood, my main point is Israel's awful treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank, based only on ethnicity.

Maybe they don't like it, but if so then I would have thought they would have chosen statehood when they were offered it in 2000 or 2008. Moreover, they never even had any land to begin with! No country of Palestine has ever existed. To reiterate, it was previously Jordanian-occupied, British-governed, Ottoman-ruled. Something else is clearly going on, beyond what you're saying.

I don't like the word "treat" in this context. I don't believe Israel "treats" Palestinians in any way. Rather, the state of Israel has a particular policy on the Palestinian issue because of their shared history, no small part of which is the Palestinians repeatedly attempting to eliminate Israel.

But if you insist on using the word "treat", then I'll add that I don't like the way Palestine treats the Israelis either.

Israel's policy is not based on ethnicity, it's based on citizenship, as is usual in a western democracy. Arab citizens of Israel have the same relationship to the state as any other citizens of Israel, for example.

I agree that many Palestinians are in an awful situation. I disagree that Israel bears the blame or the responsibility to resolve the issue.

So the country that military occupies the territory where the Palestinian live, jails them, shoots them, restricts their movement, restricts their ability to build, restricts their airspace and borders, and they bear no responsibility? Israel’s primary policy is ethnicity, just check the “ Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People” enacted in 2018.

I just can't understand, if they are suffering all that, why they didn't jump at the chance for their own state one of the many times they were offered one. It's not as though Mahmood Abbas or Yasser Arafat are hated Palestinian figures for turning down a state. Something else must be going on.

So if they don’t accept the offer Israel is giving them then they must suffer? It’s either what Israel offers or military occupation?

You're presenting that dichotomy, not me. I'm sure they have plenty of possible courses of action. I'm just trying to say that it's not obvious to me that they actually want a state, and if they don't then there's not much Israel can do about the situation.

Sure there is, they can stop the military occupation and leave.

Interesting idea! How do you think it would turn out? You might like to reference in your answer the time in 2005 when Israel did exactly that, and the consequences that occurred on Oct 7 2023.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com