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Notes -
Palestinians are in a sucky situation and Israel treats them badly(although partly their situation is also sucky because they just can’t stop behaving badly), but in this particular case Israel tried treating them as well as can be historically expected- Israel withdrew from Gaza and left them to govern themselves, they elected literal terrorists who prioritized shooting at Israel over their people’s well being, Israel still didn’t invade until they launched a ground invasion of Israel that everyone who isn’t crazy could tell you they were going to lose.
I’m a Catholic and the part of just war that people keep leaving out is ‘reasonable chance of success’. In a world where Hamas had conventional parity with Israel, they would probably be justified to invade Israel and seek to seize territory. But that isn’t what they did, they ran around raping and kidnapping, and also they had to know they were going to lose in the long run.
Israelis have no more inherent right to the land than Palestinians, and Palestinians have no more inherent right to the land than Israelis. They’ve been fighting over it for 80 years; Israel isn’t the bad guy because they’ve been consistently winning. Some of their treatment of the West Bank could stand to be softened, but Israel’s harsh policies exist for a reason, and the Palestinians need to get over having lost.
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