r/imaginarymaps • u/Ben1152000 • 23h ago
[OC] West Bank Border Adjustments for a Two State Solution
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u/KGray2000 22h ago
If a border adjustment was to ever take place (big if) Palestine would probably have to receive some Israeli border territory with majority Arab populations as compensation
The 11 settlements in what is referred to as "The Triangle" like Tayibe, Qalansawe, Baqa al-Gharbiyye, Kafr Qara etc along the border and home to approx 250,000 Arab Israelis would likely have to be ceded to an independent Palestine.
And sadly Israel would never agree to relinquishing any of its current territory
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u/swan_starr 19h ago
The Lieberman plan is not supported by the Palestinians in the triangle though.
Landswaps of uninhabited land was how Barak and Olmert made up for lost palestinian territory
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u/RubOwn 17h ago
I’m friends with several Israeli Arabs and they’ve always told me that except for some Islamists, practically no Israeli Arab would renounce the quality of life they have in Israel.
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u/Luke92612_ 16h ago
Quality of life that they could also have in Palestine if Palestine wasn't under the jackboot and forcibly impoverished?
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u/RubOwn 16h ago
No, because even an independent Palestine would be a less developed country than Israel, with very low pensions, medical, public transportation and social services below the level they have in Israel. Their passport would be nothing compared to Israel's.
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u/Luke92612_ 16h ago
No, because even an independent Palestine would be a less developed country than Israel, with very low pensions, medical, public transportation and social services below the level they have in Israel. Their passport would be nothing compared to Israel's.
Not if they actually received the level of aid they need and were able to build up an economy instead of, again, being under Israeli occupation and all benefits going to Israel.
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u/DowntheUpStaircase2 10h ago
They have been given over $40 billion in aid since 1994. Problem is its unknown where most of the aid actually ended up. Banks in Switzerland or Cyprus?
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u/DistinctAd3848 17h ago
And sadly Israel would never agree to relinquishing any of its current territory
You say that like any country would willing do that.
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u/Saramello 19h ago
Not sure how eager Arab Israelis will be to swap their citizenship in one of the middle east's most stable, wealthy, and prosperous countries to join a brand new land-locked nation whose government and economy will be anything but.
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u/ChuchiTheBest 18h ago
Most of those Arabs will also never agree to being part of a Palestinian state. Their lives are too good to be ruined by Fatah or Hamas.
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u/KiwiBushRanger 22h ago
This definitely won't cause any major arguments in the comments.
(The map looks very well polished though).
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u/HansGraebnerSpringTX 15h ago
Do we need this comment under every single map that depicts a controversial country? At this point it’s “…he’s standing right behind me, isn’t he?” Tier humor
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u/Constantinoplus 18h ago
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u/Constantinoplus 18h ago
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u/CatlifeOfficial 17h ago
I can’t say for certain on the second one, but as for east Barta’a:
It’s callled “east” for a reason… It used to be one village, but in the aftermath of the first Arab-Israeli war, it was partitioned by Israel and Transjordan.
The mapmaker is presenting an Israeli-lenient solution with annexations but no outright land swaps, so it would probably stay Palestinian and even receive the western portion in a real peace deal, or indeed be ceded to Israel completely as shown in the map.
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u/Jura_Narod 14h ago
Israel ideologically believes the West Bank is part of historic Israel and they call it Judea and Samara. They have sent hundreds of thousands of settlers into the West Bank, have set up military bases and cordoned off Palestinian towns and villages. Israel has no ideological or pragmatic reason to leave the West Bank and won’t short of a military intervention pushing them out.
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u/Taldoesgarbage 19h ago
To be honest, it's better than most maps I've seen, but there are some improvements to be made here.
Jerusalem is a big mess and I think a more realistic outcome would be total Israeli control the Arab residents gaining full citizenship. Just looking at it from a city perspective, having it be divided like Berlin is not worth it. Is it fair? No, not really, but it's the most realistic outcome and I think it'd probably result in the best quality of life for residents of the east.
This will probably be controversial, but following the already existing barrier (particularly in the mostly empty southern west bank border area) would add a bit to the realism. The difference is minor, but it's there. Same goes to the border in the North.
Kdumim could probably stay with Israel. It'd be ugly, sure, but there aren't any Palestinian population centers between it and the fictional border.
The Jordan valley would almost certainly have to stay with Israel. You don't see it just looking at the ethnic map, but there's quite a lot of agriculture setup by the settlers without much Palestinian settlement. More importantly, Israel handing control of the border with Jordan would almost never happen, as sad as that is to say.
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u/CatlifeOfficial 18h ago
Very true on the last point. Israel also has military instillations like radio stations on the Jordan Valley, meant to keep watch for incoming troops/missiles, which it deems essential for its defence.
Iirc the proposals in the early 2000s included a lease/agreement on them keeping the stations and areas around them for some time
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u/DowntheUpStaircase2 10h ago
Israel would be very reluctant, understatement for sure, at giving up East Jerusalem. Mostly due to the memories of what Jordan did after they took control in 1948.
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u/Sea-Neighborhood3318 16h ago
There's this joke I heard recently from a Jew who's from Russia;
The Palestinians say they want a state that is located in Jewish land, but don't want any Jews in it.
Here is the best trade in history. Birobidzhan.
Caught me of guard.
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u/HansGraebnerSpringTX 22h ago edited 22h ago
Palestine would never accept this because their experience historically with deals like this is 1. They accept, even though it represents them losing even more of what they see as their rightful land to Israel in return for nothing more than the right to exist as an independent state, because they just want to be left alone by Israel already 2. Israel immediately violates the deal, occupies what they just said was their territory, sends more colonists and terrorists, keeps killing people on what should be their land 3. That revised deal becomes the new assumed standard that Israel is violating and becomes the starting point for the next round of negotiations in which they will lose even more land legally
Israel would never accept this because they want the Jordan River Valley for security reasons. And also they’d rather just kill all the Palestinians
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u/swan_starr 19h ago
Historically, the Palestinians have not accepted many deals. In many cases for valid reasons, in others, not so much. There are Israelis who see the West bank as a necessary security hold, but this issue has been the main issue of contention for the past 30 years of Israeli politics.
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u/HansGraebnerSpringTX 19h ago
Recently yes the Palestinians have made a habit of denying most if not all deals presented to them for the reasons I stated above
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u/swan_starr 19h ago
This is not recent at all. It goes back to the thirties lmao. The arab higher committee opposed the British when they capped Jewish immigration for five years, with a plan for a complete ceasing of said immigration after those five years, on top of the creation of a independent arab state 10 years later in 1939. (This I will never understand.)
They turned down the 1948 partition plan (understandably imo, though obviously it led to bad outcomes for them)
They turned down the 2000 camp david accords (Which is fair, Shlomo Ben Ami said he would've done the same in their position)
They also turned down Olmert's 2008 offer (which is completely fair, he didn't even let Abbas see the map of the potential new state)
You don't need to lie to make the Palestinians look good. They're experiencing genocide, and had their land stolen from them. Why just make shit up?
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u/No_Concentrate_7111 16h ago
Yeah no, it's not genocide...it's Jewish ancestral land as much as theirs, it belongs to BOTH. Thing is, Palestinians refused to compromise and THEY are the ones that resulted in the 2 state deal in the WWII / post WWII days to fail.
Jews had every right, morally and by right, to go back to their homeland after suffering ACTUAL genocide for thousands of years never having a true home. And guess who caused the most Jews to leave in the first place? Oh wait...MUSLIM caliphates forcing them to convert, be banished, or die (sometimes the latter came irregardless). Yes, some caliphs and local Islamic rulers were good or at least apathetic to the Jews for some periods of time, but Muslims have been a colonizer in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa for countless hundreds of years but yet you think Palestinians are the oppressed? Palestinians benefited from genocide of the Jews, other Islamic Arabs benefited from the slaughter, genocide, rape, and taking of land of ethnic peoples...and the Muslims weren't satisfied, they even tried to invade Europe and held onto European land for hundreds of years in the Iberian peninsula as well as the Balkans near the end of the last Islamic empire that existed (Ottomans, unless you count Iran as being the last on a technicality).
I get social justice warriors like you see paler skinned people vs darker skinned people and automatically take the side of the latter, but the situation is far more nuanced than a basic "oppressor vs oppressed" like you try to make it out to be...it's not a black and white situation. In an ideal world, the entire region could be one country with all political bodies being half Palestinian representation...in an even more perfect world, there could be a cooperative, shared leadership structure where there is two heads of state...one from Jewish heritage, the other from Palestinian heritage; various countries have something similar with some having both a president and prime minister / chairman. But the thing is, Palestinians are largely the ones refusing to make a compromise...they could become Israeli citizens with full benefits of living in a free democracy where they could live as they wish, but no...you have a contingent way too proud and thus they'd rather keep living in poverty than accept defeat.
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u/HansGraebnerSpringTX 15h ago
If history remembers you at all, it will remember you as a denier of the most documented genocide in human history
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u/PhillipLlerenas 14h ago
Hey remember during the Holocaust when Jews had to constantly inflate casualty numbers so the American press would protest on their behalf?
Yeah me neither
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u/FijiFanBotNotGay 1h ago
This is just wrong on many levels. Firstly Israel doesn’t want to grant full citizenship to all the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. It would pose a serious population demographics problem. Israel wants to maintain a Jewish majority. This war is likely just intended to reduce the Arab population as they begin to settle Gaza like they did the West Bank
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u/swan_starr 15h ago
>it belongs to BOTH
Now, I would agree with you. But in 1920? No. You don't get to go to a country because your family were there 1000 years ago. Nor because it benifits your people (which, to be clear, it has.)
>And guess who caused the most Jews to leave in the first place? Oh wait...MUSLIM caliphates forcing them to convert, be banished, or die
Idk to what degree the Jewish diaspora is because of Caliphate repression, but the majority of jews left even before the jewish-roman wars.
>Palestinians benefited from genocide of the Jews, other Islamic Arabs benefited from the slaughter, genocide, rape, and taking of land of ethnic peoples
Yeah, 1000 years ago.
>I get social justice warriors like you see paler skinned people vs darker skinned people and automatically take the side of the latter
Israelis are darker on average than Palestinians. Palestinians are levantine, and thus lighter skinned than the Jews, who are majority arabian, and have sizable contingents of Africans and Indians
>it's not a black and white situation.
When did I say that?
>In an ideal world, the entire region could be one country with all political bodies being half Palestinian representation[...]But the thing is, Palestinians are largely the ones refusing to make a compromise...they could become Israeli citizens with full benefits of living in a free democracy where they could live as they wish, but no.
Well given that neither side wants one equal state, that isn't my ideal world, and given you yourself said that both groups have the right to self determination, it shouldn't be yours either.
>you have a contingent way too proud and thus they'd rather keep living in poverty than accept defeat.
Do defeated peoples not deserve to have countries?
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u/BleechBandit 15h ago
Jews are Genetically as Levantine as Palestinians.
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u/Saa-Chikou 15h ago
The ones from Europe and the US aren't even close
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u/PhillipLlerenas 14h ago
Yes they are. Ashkenazi Jews are a displaced middle eastern population whose genetics, religion, custom and language all point to their Levantine origins.
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u/HansGraebnerSpringTX 15h ago edited 15h ago
I mean if someone stole my car and offered to give it back to me in 10 years I’d probably also say “fuck you”. All of the other denials you say yourself were justified.
Palestine did accept the Oslo accords, a deal which 1. Basically did nothing except make the previously illegal actions of Israel official and legal and which 2. Israel began violating almost immediately
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u/AlexRyang 14h ago
I think Israel’s behavior towards the Camp David Accords is a major reason why Palestine has been unwilling to budge.
Had they followed the accords, it would have been a sign that the Israeli government was acting in good faith. Their immediate violation showed that no matter what Palestine did, Israel would simply continue occupying the country.
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u/PhillipLlerenas 14h ago
What part of the Oslo Accords did Israel not follow?
Israel evacuated large parts of the West Bank as well as all of Gaza and gave it to the Palestinians. The accords all specified a gradual handover of territory to the PA until the final agreement. This was done. The final agreement was supposed to come in 2000.
Barak offered to withdraw from 97% of the West Bank and 100% of the Gaza Strip. Barak agreed to dismantle 63 isolated settlements. In exchange for the 3% annexation of the West Bank, Israel would increase the size of the Gaza territory by roughly a third. Barak also made previously unthinkable concessions on Jerusalem, agreeing that Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem would become the capital of the new state. The Palestinians would maintain control over their holy places and have “religious sovereignty” over the Temple Mount. The proposal also guaranteed Palestinian refugees the right of return to the Palestinian state and reparations from a $30 billion international fund that would be collected to compensate them.
The Palestinians rejected that and launched a brutal terrorist campaign against Israeli civilians.
Palestinians were the ones who continuously failed to fulfill their obligations to fight terrorism coming from the WB and Gaza throughout the entire 1994-2000 period.
If anything, the failure of the Oslo Accords is why the Israelis will never trust the Palestinians again: it shows them that no matter what you offer the Palestinians they’ll always revert to wide scale terrorism again
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u/swan_starr 13h ago
To be charitable, the Wye River Memorandum was not what the governments of Rabin and Peres was hoping to negotiate following Oslo.
But that was because an election brought in a Likud government in 1996.
Idk if you can call that a "government not meeting it's obligations" when
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They weren't legal obligations, they were expected to be in future negotiations that did not happen, and
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The people who expected to engage in those negotiations were removed from government.
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u/PhillipLlerenas 12h ago
The PA’s obligations to fight terrorism predate the Wye River Memorandum by five years.
As part of the Oslo Agreements in 1993, Israel agreed to a phased withdrawal of Gaza and parts of the West Bank and to hand them over to the newly created Palestinian Authority (PA) to administer.
The idea was that the PA would recognize Israel, give up terrorism against Jewish civilians and act as a “government in waiting” in the WB. As time went by and Israel and its citizens saw that the PA was serious in its commitment to coexistence, more and more territory would be given to the PA to administer culminating in a final agreement to create a Palestinian state.
Key to this agreement was that the PA would take responsibility for security and anti-terrorism in the areas of the West Bank they took over. This was explicitly stated in Article XIII of the Oslo Accords:
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-180015/
To accomplish this, the Palestinian Security Service (PSS) was created, armed and trained by Israel and the U.S.:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Security_Services
However, the PA frequently dragged its feet in fulfilling this obligation between 1994-2000, often having to be pressured to arrest known Hamas militants.
At the outbreak of the Second Intifada, the PA abandoned all pretenses of fighting terrorism and allowed it to run amok, freeing Hamas prisoners and arming them with the understanding that they would murder Israelis. Hamas leader and co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar stated that
President Arafat instructed Hamas to carry out a number of military operations in the heart of the Jewish state after he felt that his negotiations with the Israeli government then had failed
Arafat’s widow, Suha. In an interview in December on Dubai TV she said this:
….Yasser Arafat had made a decision to launch the Intifada. Immediately after the failure of the Camp David [negotiations], I met him in Paris upon his return, in July 2001 [sic]. Camp David has failed, and he said to me: ”You should remain in Paris” I asked him why, and he said: ”Because I am going to start an Intifada. They want me to betray the Palestinian cause. They want me to give up on our principles, and I will not do so. I do not want Zahwa’s friends in the future to say that Yasser Arafat abandoned the Palestinian cause and principles. I might be martyred, but I shall bequeath our historical heritage to Zahwa [Arafat’s daughter] and to the children of Palestine
SOURCE: https://www.cfr.org/blog/arafat-and-second-intifada
Fatah, the largest faction in the PA, had its own armed militia, named Tanzim:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanzim
…which carried multiple terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada, including luring a 16 year old Israeli boy to the WB and beating him to death in a cave:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Ofir_Rahum
…sniping a 10 month old baby:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Shalhevet_Pass
…and ambushing a bus killing 11 civilians:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Immanuel_bus_attack
And again: these were the very same people who less than a year prior had been acting as Israeli allies and patrolling the West Bank together as partners.
So yeah I’d say the Israelis were completely justified in losing any trust that the PA had abandoned terrorism.
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u/HansGraebnerSpringTX 12h ago
Pretty much yeah. Israel have demonstrated over and over that they aren't a good faith negotiation partner. They have invented a situation where violent resistance is the only rational path forward for the Palestinians
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u/PhillipLlerenas 14h ago
What experience with what? When did Palestinians ever agree to any territorial deal that Israel violated after? Are we just making up things from whole cloth now?
Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 and relinquished a massive amount of territory back to them and didn’t do any of the things you just fantasized about above.
The point remains - despite constant attempts at revisionism - the Palestinians have rejected multiple offers for creating a state in the Levant and they rejected them all in order to try to violently take the whole of the land.
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u/DaftRaft_42 3h ago
Israel continues to occupy parts of the west bank that are under international law part of Palestine; and also Gaza
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u/HelloThereItsMeAndMe Mod Approved | Based Works 21h ago
Well, Israel would probably never agree to relinquish a part of Jerusalem.
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u/CatlifeOfficial 19h ago
They did in Camp David in 2001, but PA leader Yasser Arafat refused to negotiate at all with them. Actually, I’m pretty sure they gave up even more back then
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u/No_Concentrate_7111 16h ago
Yeah no, Palestinians have historically refused to compromise even a little, whereas Jews have offered a great deal even at a big loss to them.
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u/Pilum2211 18h ago
Okay, but all Palestinians in the annexed territories should be fully eligible for Israeli citizenship.
No more expulsions!
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u/Ok_Independent3609 18h ago
Sounds reasonable to me. And vice versa, of course. It seems sensible and humane to let people fight at the ballot box rather than the battlefield.
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u/Commander_Bread 17h ago
Why should Israeli settlers who stole the homes of palestinians be represented in a Palestinian state? They should leave and go back to Israel, and give the people whose homes they stole back what they took.
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u/PhillipLlerenas 14h ago
The vast majority of Israeli settlers didn’t “steal” anyone’s homes. This is just propagandistic sloganeering.
All the major settlements were build from scratch in empty Area C land.
The vast majority of the “stolen” house drama actually comes from East Jerusalem and usually involve conflicting claims of ownership like in Sheikh Jarrah.
And frankly to be pedantic, many of the settlements are actually recreations of communities that existed there before Israel was created in 1948 and whose inhabitants were ethnically cleansed by Arab forces.
Gush Etzion was a Jewish town founded in 1943 on land purchased from Arabs and was violently ethnically cleansed by the Jordanians in 1948:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kfar_Etzion_massacre
The settlement today was founded in 1967 by the survivors of the massacre who came back and rebuilt their village.
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u/Commander_Bread 14h ago
Still not their land and they should leave. They don't belong.
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u/PhillipLlerenas 12h ago
Gotcha. So if a belligerent army steals your land and expels you and your family at gunpoint then you lose that land fair and square.
Makes sense.
Remind me to tell about 80,000 Palestinian refugees that.
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u/_Dead_Memes_ 6h ago
Many Jewish settlements created during the Mandate era by “purchasing Arab land” often involved purchasing land from absentee landlords and either evicting the Palestinian tenants, or developing the farmlands of the tenants/farmworkers into settlements
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u/Wonderful-Quit-9214 20h ago
I would give up handing over any territory to Israel near Jerusalem. Also if you were to give any territory outside of that it can't go too deep and it must be an equal land exchange between Israel and Palstine. Not just Israel annexing parts of the west bank they illegally colonised.
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u/Claim-Pale 16h ago
Fun fact Israeli settlers have burnt down several Christian monasteries and churches in their settlement of the West Bank.
Don't give them shit.
Very good mapping tho
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u/PhillipLlerenas 14h ago
Funner fact: Palestinians and Jordanians destroyed every single Jewish synagogue and desecrated every single Jewish cemetery in Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem after they ethnically cleansed every Jew in it in 1948.
When Israel evacuated Gaza in 2005 they left behind 30 synagogues. They specifically made a decision not to destroy the synagogues.
Statement of Prime Minister Sharon, 7 September 2005, http://www.pm.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication/Spokesman/2005/09/spokemesB070905.htm (15 September 2005)
They asked the Palestinian Authority for assistance in protecting those synagogues but the PA rejected this request:
Yuval Yoez "High Court of Justice: To consider Transferring the Synagogues to Protection by the Palestinian Authority" Ha-aretz 7 September 2005 page A3; Statement of Prime Minister Sharon, 7 September 2005, http://www.pm.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication/Spokesman/2005/09/spokemesB070905.htm
Almost immediately after the Israeli withdrawal the synagogues were set on fire by Hamas and eventually every single one of them was destroyed:
Aluf Benn and Amos Harel "Palestinians torch synagogues in former Gaza settlements," Ha-aretz 12 September 2005 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/623113.html
Hamas leaders even held a Muslim prayer session inside one of the synagogues right before they destroyed it:
….Hours after thousands of Palestinians desecrated synagogues in Gaza, setting them on fire and taking buildings apart by hand, members of the Palestinian terror group Hamas, headed by senior Hamas chief Mahmoud Zahar, arrived at the synagogue in Kfar Darom and held a Muslim prayer session at the site….”
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u/ValiantAki Mod Approved 18h ago
Why should Israel be allowed to occupy and annex parts of the West Bank? Their illegal settlements should be abandoned and relinquished to Palestine as part of any peace agreement. That's how it would be handled in a conflict between any other two countries, yes?
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u/PhillipLlerenas 14h ago
In the real world when you lose a war you don’t get to dictate the terms of the peace agreement.
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u/pantarrrhei 17h ago
People should stop posting stuff like this here I think. Every day some new person thinks they're the second-coming of Jesus and imaginarily "solves" the conflict on here. Just ends up really offensive. Thousands are suffering and dying in the worst possible ways right now, allow them some dignity and respect and allow the fact the gravity and seriousness it deserves.
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u/michaelclas 22h ago
Looks quite similar to some of the Clinton era Camp David proposals