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Right, and I respect your position; it seems consistent. It does mean you make strategic considerations take precedence over moral principles like “internationally recognized borders must be respected”. It's fine if you think that way, but at that point, you no longer have the moral high ground: it's clear you're okay with violating borders when it's in your interest.
My complaint was that most people, including most world leaders, limit themselves to the moral argument: they support Ukraine because Russia illegally violated its borders. But their simultaneous support of Israel shows that it's a lie: apparently invading foreign territory is fine when an ally does it.
Because Israel has been occupying Palestine territory for more than 60 years! Why is it surprising that people try to fight off an invader? That's literally with Ukraine is doing right now. I'll grant you that a difference is that Ukraine so far has not attacked within (pre-2014) Russian borders, but the situation isn't quite comparable, in that the Palestinian claim to Israelian territory is much stronger while Ukraine has no claim to Russian territory beyond the recently-annexed territories.
The comment I originally replied to likened Israel to a big dog that snaps back at a little dog that has been harassing it for no reason. Again, this was an analogy based on a moral argument (it's acceptable to snap back after being bullied/harassed), but that analogy falls apart when you realize it's the big dog that was the aggressor in the first place.
Anyway, I think we've covered a lot of common arguments here, and I probably want to stop discussing this further. If you choose to reply I will definitely take the time to read what you wrote, but I may not respond to it.
The arguments do get a bit circular and confusing, and I think it's useful to take time to reclarify what exactly your argument(s) are.
For me, the facts are:
Israeli, Palestinian, and American leadership should be pursuing policies that first make their own citizens better off, and have a secondary but lesser priority of making people in other countries better off
It is in the interests of Israelis to enforce the current de facto borders and not allow for right of return to displaced Palestinians
It is in the interests of Americans to have a military alliance with Israel
Palestine is never going to militarily defeat Israel, especially not as long as America backs them and probably not even if America stopped backing them
Now, going off those facts, the Palestinian leadership needs to choose a policy that improves life for their citizens. The current strategy of "launch missiles at Israel" and "whine at the international community that Israel is violating international law" does absolutely nothing to improve life for their citizens. Therefore, Palestinian leadership should choose a different strategy. I guess you as an individual might not actually care about Palestinian citizens and you might think it's in your personal interests to have a stronger norm against invasion, so that's why you condemn invasion. Or maybe you just don't like hypocrisy, and consider Israel's taking of land to have happened recent enough that is should be condemned where as other land that's been stolen happened 150+ years ago so it's fine enough now.
This part goes in circles a lot too. Israel steals Palestinian land 80 years ago, so Palestine attacks Israel in vengeance, so Israel attacks Palestine in counter-vengeance, so Palestine attacks in counter-counter-vengeance. My point is looking at how Palestine loses in every cycle of vengeance and counter-vengeance, it's stupid of Palestine to keep playing the game, they should just fold and salvage what they can. And that as a first step, they should lay out some concrete demands that they would consider acceptable reparations, so at the very least negotiations can begin. I think what Israel's done is wrong in the sense they should pay a large amount of reparations. I don't think reverting to 1948 borders would be utilitarian, I think it'd cause a lot more damage than it'd help, on top of being something Israel would not actually agree to.
If Russia was in a vastly better military position, I think I would be calling for Ukraine to stop fighting and cede regions to Russia in exchange for reparations. But that is not the reality, Ukraine is perfectly able to get a better deal than what Russia's currently offering by fighting more, and I don't think Russia is unable to accept changing the de facto borders because of how many Russians it would displace.
I agree that this is getting a bit dull and there's not too much more point in replying.
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