History puts pretty much everyone in the world living on land that was taken from someone else at some point in time. And if we all did our best to move to where our parents/GPs/GGPs came from we'd again face the issue of that land having been taken previously.
This line of thinking is turtles all the way down and in no way a helpful path towards getting two peoples who believe in opposing views to stop killing each other.
The thing is, 'at some point in time' happens to be 'right now, today' in places like the West Bank. 'This sort of thing has always happened in history' is an incredibly poor argument to deflect responsibility for ongoing oppression. Jewish critics of Zionism have repeatedly pointed out how these very arguments have been employed against Jews in the not-so-distant past. Why would anyone reasonly expect Palestinians to be any less committed to their own collective existence?
I'm not aware of wide scale mass displacement happening to Palestinians in the West Bank. A few thousand people are displaced each year, and it does look like a lot of these are unjustly kicked out of their homes, but it’s out of 3,000,000 Palestinians there and I do not otherwise see anything that looks like a mass forced relocation. I'm sure there are "thin end of the wedge" arguments that could be made here but that's poor soil on which to plant a war. Is there an alternative view that better supports a belief of Israel trying to take it all away from Palestinians?
I'm sure there are "thin end of the wedge" arguments that could be made here but that's poor soil on which to plant a war.
No one (in this thread) said anything about "plant[ing] a war". But (restricted to this particular issue), if there was one side looking for "soil on which to plan a war" -- it would have to be all of those currently involved in or supporting the expansion of the settlements (in any form, to any degree), of course.
Is there an alternative view that better supports a belief of Israel trying to take it all away from Palestinians?
Perhaps not literally all of it, but there are many indications that a plan is underway to annex at least very large chunks of (if not all of) the West Bank.
NYT: Israeli Official Describes Secret Government Bid to Cement Control of West Bank - https://archive.md/DQ1N3
As of 2019, 42 percent want to annex all or some of the West Bank, 28 are opposed, and 30 percent prefer to keep their heads in the sand, according to Haaretz:
A 2019 Haaretz poll investigated support for annexation among Israelis. According to the survey, 30% did not know, 28% of Israelis opposed any annexation and 15% supported annexing Area C alone. 27% wanted to annex the entire West Bank including 16% who opposed granting political rights to Palestinians and 11% who favored granting political rights.
So even back then -- a rough plurality in favor of some degree of large-scale annexation (if we ignore the 30 percent who claim not to have an opinion), and of those, some 2/3 in favor of full annexation.
On war, I intended that more in reference to Hezbollah's actions this past year, ostensibly on behalf of the West Bank issue, but more likely the catspaw of Iran's proxyism.
>settlement expansion
Yes, that is a huge problem for any attempt at long term two-state solutions to be considered. It would be less of a problem if Israel at least did not deny permits etc. to Palestinian settlers to Area C. Security vetting really shouldn't rule out 99% of applicants. In this respect especially Israel appears to have been less diligent about the land-use aspect of the Oslo Accords.
For annexation, I don't think we can go by Smotrich's word. He's only finance minister through political back-room dealing. Likewise the Likud's 2017 non-binding resolution appears to be more political theatre than policy. But yes, still troubling.
So again, I don't see this sufficient to support violent resistance. Support for annexation appears to be on the rise during this period, probably or at least in part as a result.
Everyone seems ready and willing to play into near the worst expectations of their perceived enemies in fear they'll suffer the consequence of that expectation even if it doesn't come true. That's the cycle that needs to break.
So again, I don't see this sufficient to support violent resistance.
That's a question of perspective.
The best course of action for all concerned would be for Israel not to continually take actions which seem specifically designed to drive an entire population into a state of permanent despair, against which non-violent actions seem to have very little to no effect.
I really don't think the fact that it's happening in relatively slow motion makes a big difference. One could argue that the ~2m living in Gaza are the ones who have experienced mass forced displacement, and while I am not in sympathy with many of Hamas' actions, I do think they can make a valid argument for attacking IDF bases and similar strategic infrastructure.
I honestly don't know one way or another, but I'm guessing many/most people displaced in this way probably resettle somewhere else in the west bank, perhaps from Area C to Area A. I know that's not much better but either way at roughly 1/10th of 1% this isn't slow motion displacement. Growth in each governorate of the west bank, even in Area C, of Palestinians has been about 2% or higher for a while. Without making a massive project out of back-envelop estimates, Israel would have to increase this behavior by a factor of 20x just to keep pace with population growth but make no proportional progress. That amounts to Israel's behavior being crappy by not really one of taking the land. But not (what I believe to be) a reasonable justification for an escalation to lethal military attacks.
