2 min read

On Palestine

A few years ago, I could see a few possible endpoints for the Israel-Palestine situation. They were:

  • the two state solution. Israel and Palestine are two separate countries, both of which can exist independently of each other. Separate governments, water, power. Neither has control over the other. I couldn't see this happening, because that relies upon Israel giving up control, which they seemed anathema to.
  • the one state solution. Non-Jews are given equal rights within Israel, and Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank become part of that society. This never seemed especially popular, but the argument in favour of an ethnostate seemed hard to justify to me.
  • things continuing, messily and painfully, as they have been. This isn't really an endpoint, but when something has been happening for decades it feels silly not to call it such.

Recent events have shown that there was a fourth option that I was not considering. That is:

  • the killing or expulsion of Palestinians from all Palestinian land, and the population of that land with Israeli settlers.

In retrospect this was foolish of me. But I didn't think that Israel, a prosperous state that is engaged fully within the networks of international trade and diplomacy, would commit genocide.

I think that what is happening now in Gaza is a genocide. It breaks my heart to see it happen. I don't know any way I can help to stop it from happening. I have donated a little to various funds - to provide eSIMS, to evacuate this particular family. I have marched. I've shared some things online. Not much, really. I think I haven't given more, done more, because it is so hard to hold what is happening squarely in my mind. How can you?

When I go on Bluesky, I see Gazans posting begging replies under the posts of people who have advocated for them in the past. I believe (I have been told by people who I have no reason to doubt) that those posts are real, that each is a real person currently trapped within a territory where no food is being permitted to enter. But it would be so much more comforting to live in a world where they're scammers trying to take advantage. And the same logic applies elsewhere. A genocide is currently happening, with the explicit or implicit support of most of the western world, and holding that fact in your head is not something that people want to do. So they aren't. And so it keeps happening.