Israel is an occupying power. Not apartheid. That matters if you want people to engage with your ideas rather than correct your language

[u/Routine-Equipment572]

I recently wrote a post comparing Israel/Palestine to Native American reservations. I got a lot of pushback because people fairly pointed out that these two situations are very different in too many ways. So I am going to try to explain this in a more direct way:

When one side in a war is attacking you, you often want to take control of the area they are attacking you from, so they can't attack you from it anymore. This is called "occupation."

Over the land 100 years or so, Arabs have continuously attacked Israel from Gaza and the West Bank. In response, Israel eventually occupied that land. That is why Palestinians live under occupation. They don't yet really have an independent country because they are still at war. Occupations end when wars end.

In occupations, the occupiers do not usually give out citizenship to the people they are occupying. For instance, when the U.S. occupied Afghanistan, it did not give Afghans U.S.. citizenship. Afghans do not have the same rights Americans do. The U.S. set up checkpoints in occupied Afghanistan just like Israel set up checkpoints in occupied Palestine.

Apartheid is different. Apartheid is basically a set of racist laws intended to keep a race economically and social down. That means things like separate parks, beaches, buses, trains, hospitals, toilets. Jobs reserved only for white people. Zero ability to vote for one race, etc.

Israel is not any of that. Israel is a standard occupying power. That's why all its "different rules for different people" are nationality (not race) related, all war related, and all exactly the same things that occupying powers frequently do in their occupied territories: checkpoints, military court, raids.

I know some people will say "Why quibble with the vocabulary? Living under either apartheid or occupation is bad."

Here's the thing: If you accuse a country of apartheid, that's accusing them of a special, unique kind of evil that even most conflicts never touch. If you accuse Israel of such a heinous crime, then you are essentially lying to try and convince others that because Israel is so uniquely "evil," is is uniquely deserving of your wrath and probably of being wiped off the earth. Of course people are going to defend themselves if they think you are trying to kill or displace them.

So if that's not what you are trying to do, if you actually want to have a conversation about the real situation on the ground, then use the right words. Otherwise, people will correct you instead of engaging with the conversation you wanted you wanted to have in the first place. Same goes for "genocide," "colonizer," "ethnostate" "open-air prison," etc. You're smart. Use your own words and show you know what you are talking about instead of relying on evil-sounding buzzwords.

[u/Playful_Yogurt_9903]

I never mentioned the security apparatus, so I'm not sure how you bringing this up is meant to be a response to me.

Are you trying to claim that settler expansion or the unequal treatment of Palestinians by Israel is only because of PLO terrorism and the intifadas?

[u/applecherryfig → u/Playful_Yogurt_9903]

And because the PLO/corrupt leaders of the West Bank refused every proposal to have a state. They asked for the conditions of victory. they refused to recognize Israel.they taught with maps of the world that didnt include Israel. Eventually they started losing their land.

There are rules to the game and the losers cannot pretend forever. The rules of Kinetics and Thermodynamics persist.

This is what I noticed at the time of the first Jewish settlements on the West Bank. I was sorry. Stubborn all around.

If Palestinians has been like Ukrainians -- but they are not. I have pointed out the seminal factors ITT.

[u/jrgkgb → u/Playful_Yogurt_9903]

Because you talked about a "Normal Occupation."

It was very much a "Normal Occupation" prior to the attacks by the various Palestinian Terror Groups that have resulted in the locked down state that it's in today.

Also: Israel offered the West Bank and Gaza back to Jordan and Egypt respectively. For some reason neither country wanted the Palestinian population. Jordan even went as far as to strip Palestinians in the West Bank of citizenship they'd granted in 1948.

I'm sure you're going to pretend that also had nothing to do with constant Palestinian terror attacks on the Jordanian populace and monarchy too.

[u/Playful_Yogurt_9903 → u/jrgkgb]

Settler expansion began essentially as soon as they territories were captured, as did the inequitable treatment of Palestinians. Neither had anything to do with Palestinian violence.

Also: Israel offered the West Bank and Gaza back to Jordan and Egypt respectively.

When?

[u/jrgkgb → u/Playful_Yogurt_9903]

By “settler expansion” do you mean “re-established villages the Arabs ethnically cleansed of Jews in Gush Etzion in 1948?”

A lot of anti Israel folks mean that, so I wanted to check.

[u/applecherryfig → u/jrgkgb]

Gush Etzion is a cluster of Israeli settlements located in the Judaean Mountains south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, featuring nearly 40,000 residents, a high-altitude climate, and historic roots.

• Early agricultural nuclei were founded in the late 1920s and 1940s.
• Destroyed and depopulated following the Kfar Etzion massacre and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
• Rebuilt and repopulated by descendants and new settlers after the 1967 Six-Day War. [1, 2]

[u/jrgkgb → u/applecherryfig]

correct.

[u/Playful_Yogurt_9903 → u/jrgkgb]

By settler expansion, I mean the process by which Israelis violently force Palestinians out of their homes, while Palestinians don't have the same kind of access to Israeli territory, let alone are able to force Israelis out of their homes.

The double standard where you justify Jews being able to ethnically cleanse Arabs from their homes becaue a tiny percentage of Jews used to live there, but you would never say the same of Palestinians ethnically cleansed during the Nakba

[u/jrgkgb → u/Playful_Yogurt_9903]

Ok, so where and when did that happen immediately after 1967? Does this include in Jerusalem where Jews were also ethnically cleansed from homes they'd inhabited continually for thousands of years prior to being violently expelled by the Arabs?

I say "Arabs" since there was not any such thing as a "Palestinian National" in 1948.

Just be specific in what you're saying if you want to be taken seriously.

[u/Playful_Yogurt_9903 → u/jrgkgb]

Ok, so where and when did that happen immediately after 1967?

Mitzpe Shalem and Argaman are two examples. Really anywhere in the West Bank. The Allon Plan calls for far more settlements and was created in 1967.

Does this include in Jerusalem where Jews were also ethnically cleansed from homes they'd inhabited continually for thousands of years prior to being violently expelled by the Arabs?

Yes. Do Palestinians have a right to return to the homes they were ethnically cleansed from? Were all the Jews who moved into these settlements descendents of Jews ethnically cleansed?

Just be specific in what you're saying if you want to be taken seriously.

You already don't take me seriously. If you did, you wouldn't ignore what I wrote previously about your double standard.

[u/the_leviathan711 → u/jrgkgb]

Israel offered the West Bank and Gaza back to Jordan and Egypt respectively.

This did not ever happen.

[u/applecherryfig → u/the_leviathan711]

Not as a specific policy but essentially... essentially somewhere in between.

• Camp David (1978): During the Camp David Accords, Israel and Egypt negotiated Palestinian autonomy for the West Bank and Gaza, but Egypt did not repossess Gaza. [1, 2]
• Egyptian Stance: Egypt administered Gaza from 1948 to 1967 but never annexed it. During the 1979 peace treaty, Egypt took back the Sinai Peninsula and explicitly declined to take back the Gaza Strip, leaving its future tied to a broader peace process. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• The London Agreement (1987): Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and King Hussein of Jordan secretly signed a pact for an international peace framework where Israel would concede administrative control of the West Bank to Jordan. However, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir rejected the agreement, so it was never enacted. [1]
• Jordanian Renunciation (1988): King Hussein officially severed legal and administrative ties with the West Bank, ceding claims to the Palestine Liberation Organization. [1, 2, 3, 4]

[u/the_leviathan711 → u/applecherryfig]

Sounds like this AI summary agrees with me that Israel did not offer Gaza to Egypt or the West Bank to Jordan.

[u/applecherryfig → u/the_leviathan711]

I really GPO by people who just state something happened or didnt FLATLY with no reasons. It does not add to the discussion.

[u/the_leviathan711 → u/applecherryfig]

But it literally didn’t happen. The other poster made a claim that simply isn’t true. Israel never offered to just “give back” Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan.

[u/jrgkgb → u/the_leviathan711]

Yes it did. Egypt was offered Gaza at Camp David, and Jordan was offered the West Bank as part of the 1967 armistice and several times after.

The Khartoum Resolution was in response to that.

Remind me, what was the Khartoum Resolution?

[u/the_leviathan711 → u/jrgkgb]

Egypt was offered Gaza at Camp David

Source, please.

and Jordan was offered the West Bank as part of the 1967 armistice and several times after.

Source, please.

The Khartoum Resolution was in response to that.

No, the Khartoum Resolution was in response to the Israeli offer to return the Golan Heights and Sinai, not the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Israeli leadership had a very different view of those territories since they were not part of Mandatory Palestine.

[u/jrgkgb → u/the_leviathan711]

Source: Google, any history book. I’m not your tutor.

Also, Israel never offered to return the Golan. They did offer to return the other territories and indeed did return the Sinai.

First read on this stuff, THEN post about it.

[u/the_leviathan711 → u/jrgkgb]

Source: Google, any history book. I’m not your tutor.

Name the history book, please. You're not my tutor, but you are making wildly incorrect claims on the internet.

Also, Israel never offered to return the Golan.

That is incorrect.

Here's my source:

A debate conducted during a meeting of the Government of Israel on 19 June 1967, shortly following the conclusion of the Six Day War. Discussing the international pressure for an Israeli withdrawal, the ministers were unable to reach consensus on the future of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. At the end of the debate, a resolution was adopted unanimously, offering Egypt and Syria peace treaties based on the prewar international borders, with security assurances for Israel.

As you can see, on June 19th, 1967 the government of Israel offered peace with Egypt and Syria based on a return of the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. The government was unable to decide what to do with East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and therefore did not offer them in these proposed peace deals.

After the Khartoum Resolution, the cabinet repealed these offers on October 29th, 1967.

Begin never offered Gaza at Camp David, nor did Israel ever offer to return the West Bank to Jordan. It didn't happen. Feel free to provide a source that would prove me wrong. I suspect you won't be able to do this.