Not all violent resistance is the same, and you will not convince me that Palestinians have always fought clean, just like you won't convince me that all the actors of the Palestinian resistance merely want to be left alone. Previous Israel-Palestine flare ups have resulted in Israeli abuses with no condemnation from the countries that matter. That should be accounted for in the way Palestinian leaders confront Israel.
I never said Palestinians fought clean. That was not their intent. Their view is if they did not pick up arms, they would have been pushed into complete submission. Also, the point of the violent struggle is to bring attention to it.
The issue I'm pointing is that in fighting against Israel, they managed to alienate every other Arab nation, starting with their neighbors. We can't deny that their bad blood between Palestinians and Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, and Lebanese. These are all the nations that once fought alongside Palestinian militant groups to annihilate the concept of Israel.
Is there any reckoning within the Palestinian intellectual/political class about this?
I think some of this here lacks context. It was the Arab states that always neglected and alienated the Palestinians. Not the other way around. The Arab states were just using Palestinians as pawns. Let's remember that when the British carved up the Middle East, they propped them up with clans/tribes to rule over within conditions and agreements with them. That is the only reason in the first place these rulers came to rule the first independent sovereign states from their colonizers.
Also, we know how the story goes if you turn your back or push too much against the West/U.S., you will be toppled, go through enforced or aided regime change or assassinated (i.e. Saddam, Gaddafi, King Faisal, etc.).
What I really disagreed with was the idea that Hamas doesn't have support/a presence in the WB. We know the ineffectiveness of Abbas in confronting the power of the IDF in that region is pushing people towards more drastic measures.
Yes, they may have support, but I meant that the IDF cannot use the Hamas excuse on West Bank yet look at what has been going on there with the systematic human rights violations, apartheid, and occupation.
I think you're being extremely generous with the intentions of groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. It's not like some of them are hiding what their goal is.
I was just saying let them figure it out. But also, I do wish there will be no foreign interference to interfere either. Let the people themselves then topple theses religious extremists if it can reach there. Palestinians are highly educated and can figure it out. Like people think Hamas are the Taliban/ISIS, when you can clearly see Palestinian women in Gaza are not enforced to wear the hijab, and many are even the local journalists reporting live from on the ground.
But, culturally, Muslim families will vary in their degree of religiousness/patriarchy conditioning. Like my mom was engaged to a man before my dad, who had told her she would need to cut her university education short and stay at home. It didn't work out, but she met my dad who told her to finish university and even encouraged my mom to do her Masters education here in Canada. She is a hijabi woman and is a public servant, works in the federal government here.
So it has to be some form of government that reflects their culture and finds its own roots organically, whether it gets bloody and progresses or whatever. Isn't that what happened to our Western governments?
