Opinion: Neither Israel Or Palestine “Own” The Land They’re Fighting For

I’m not here to argue over the history of the region’s inhabitance. It’s been established that the land’s dominant ethnic population has changed multiple times over thousands of years.

The struggle for those who believe the land is rightfully Israel’s or Palestine’s is the answer to the question, “But who truly was the first people to settle there?”

The answer to that question is this: Do you value having an ethnic state more than the lives of several million innocent people of a different race?

Currently, around 4 million Palestinians are being actively arrested, displaced, separated, or killed.

If Palestine was liberated and it became a unitary Palestinian state which kicked out Israeli’s, then we just end up with a similar problem, mirrored. Now instead of displaced Palestinians, you have displaced Jews — 7 million of them. There also runs the risk of the same atrocities currently being committed by the IDF being imposed on Jews because of how high-tension and long-standing this issue is.

The hard truth is that the only solution is a state that protects both Israeli’s and Palestinian’s from outside threats while guaranteeing the same rights to all people. No more imperialistic militarism, no more launching bombs at civilian buildings and homes, no more “us versus them”.

Accomplishing that is a beyond tall order, but that’s because the only people who are willing to talk about it are Israeli and Palestinian officials.

The phrase “money makes the world go round” exists for a reason. Because if the U.S. threatened to defund Israel, Israel would be scrambling for an “acceptable” solution within days. The U.S. government is not complicit in what is happening to Palestine, they are insinuating it. It is the duty of non-war-torn countries to help promote peace in situations where they can. Isolationism, or ignoring other countries’ conflicts has backfired on the U.S. arguably just as much as imperialism did. Promoting peace does not mean sending your military, it means sending leaders with the power to pull funding.