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If Hamas wanted to protect Palestinian life, they wouldn’t launch thousands of rockets into population centers; they would not use their own people as human shields; and they would not invest in weapons instead of defense, food, or shelter for their own people.
As writer David French correctly notes, “There is absolutely no equivalence — either in morality or the laws of armed conflict — between firing unaimed rockets directly into civilian population centers and responding with aimed fire at militants hiding in civilian population centers.” One of the two governments in this conflict is a terrorist government, but it is certainly not Israel’s. //
It has also been suggested that anger over the evictions of four families from Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, is responsible for the violence. While this legal dispute going back to the 1970s understandably flared tensions, a more significant reason for the violence is the myth that Israel denies Palestinians the right to self-determination — a myth Hadid amplified.
In truth. the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict comes down to a basic fact: the Jews want to have a state where they can live in safety and security while the Palestinians will do anything in their power to prevent a Jewish state that is safe and secure. This has been evidenced by the fact Israel has accepted every peace plan offered while the Palestinians have rejected every peace plan offered. //
In Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz’s book, “The War of Return,” they point out that the reason for this continuous violence is that many Palestinians truly believe the war of 1948 is not over and that Israel is simply a temporary project. But if both sides can simply accept that the other has a right to live safely in a country of their own, then this conflict would be over.
After all, Israel was able to make peace with Egypt just two years after they said they wanted peace, a fact further bolstered by the openness to peace Israel displayed through the 2020 Abraham Accords. Until Palestinian leaders reach out a hand for peace, however, this tragic cycle of violence will continue.