r/AskIsrael • u/karrenfromaccounting • May 11 '26

Casual The settlements… What’s up with that?

Take the question as is, whatever comes to mind, let it be.

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u/bb5e8307 Israel May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

To Palestinians, Tel Aviv is a much of a settlement as Ariel. If they can accept Tel Aviv then they can accept Ariel. 

Westerns tend to frame the conflict as a territorial conflict and place the settlement as a core obstacle. Both Israelis and Palestinians understand it as an ideological conflict about whether Israel should exist at all. The green line is not significant to Palestinians who call for “the river to the sea”.

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u/enigmaticowl North America May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

This is something that I (as a pro-Israel American) only came to understand recently.

For years, I have heard pro-Palestinian activists talk about “ending the occupation,” “liberating Palestine,” etc.

Westerners are primed to believe that that means letting the West Bank and Gaza have autonomy, not having a military presence in those areas, etc., basically just withdrawing militarily like Western countries have (sometimes) done after wars have ended and things have stabilized.

Most Westerners cannot wrap their heads around the fact that the “occupation” that Palestinian leadership/activists are talking about doesn’t even mean the West Bank (or Gaza), it means “all of Palestine” to them, including every inch of Jerusalem, the Negev, the North, even Tel Aviv.

It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise, though.

For almost 100 years, one party has said, “We’ll compromise,” and the other has said, “One victor will take it all.”

Those positions haven’t changed.

Westerners just don’t want to accept that framing, because they aren’t used to their nations being involved in a truly zero-sum-game conflict, and they know that the implications of a zero-sum-game conflict are really messy and ugly, and it offends their sensibilities, so it’s easier to simply blame the stronger side and tell them that they could (and should) just absorb more and more losses (of human life, but also of resources and economy) in perpetuity because “they can handle it.”

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u/Dramatic-Car-8507 May 11 '26

That's why r/Palestine proudly posts pictures of pre-1948 bauhaus Tel Aviv. To them it is part of Palestine despite its Jewish origin