...there is no question Gaza was the perfect environment to ferment radicaliztion and terrorists for 20+ years. A very young population, with no oppotrunities (very high unemployment), freedom of movement, etc. The same argument was used by the US to justify invading
and occupy Afghanistan for nearly two decades. We saw how that turned out...Israel would be wise to repeat it...but I digress.
I think it's also true the Arab governments and various Palestinan actors have utterly failed the Palestinian people by not reaching a political solution with Israel over the past couple of decades.
As David Brooks recently opined:
"Throughout this horrible week, my mind has repeatedly flashed back to Dec. 23, 2000. That was the day the Palestinians were offered a path to having their own nation on roughly 95 percent of the land in the West Bank and 100 percent of the land in the Gaza Strip. Under that outline, Israel would also swap some of its own land to compensate the Palestinians in exchange for maintaining 80 percent of its settler presence in the West Bank.
The Palestinians would control, in President Bill Clinton’s formulation, “Arab areas” of East Jerusalem. And on the most sensitive religious sites, there would have been divided sovereignty or jurisdiction, with Palestinians controlling the Haram al-Sharif (including the Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques) and Israel controlling the Western Wall and the holy space of which it is a part. There would also be a return of many refugees into the new Palestinian state (without the right of return to Israel itself).
There were a million complexities — and many errors made by the Israeli, Palestinian and American sides along the way. But this offer pointed the way to the sort of fair solution negotiators had been struggling their way toward for years. It is hard to see this kind of option ever being on the table again. And the Palestinians let it slip away."
...and
"Another reason I think back on this history is the way a simplistic oppressor/oppressed, colonizer/colonized, “apartheid Israel” narrative has been imposed on this conflict.
The real history is much more complicated. It is the story of the Palestinians who were offered a state in 1947 that the Arab states opposed. More recently, it is the story of flawed human beings on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, who were confronted with a devilishly complicated situation. They worked doggedly to secure peace and made real, if stumbling, progress toward that end. It is the story of how radicals on both sides undermined their efforts, leading to the bloodshed we see today. This is what happens when the center does not hold."
It’s hard not to wonder whether today’s suffering could have been avoided if in 2000 Palestinians had taken the offer of a path toward statehood.
www.nytimes.com