The struggle for water access in this strip of fertile land reflects a wider contest for control of the West Bank — and in particular the Jordan Valley, which Palestinians consider the breadbasket of their hoped-for future state and Israelis view as key to protecting their eastern border.
“People are thirsty, the crops are thirsty,” said Hazeh Daraghmeh, a 63-year-old Palestinian date farmer in the Jiftlik area of the valley, where some of his palms have withered in the bone-dry dirt. “They’re trying to squeeze us step by step,” Daraghmeh said.
Think of it this way:
It’s indisputably evil what the United States did in stealing land and commiting genocide against the Native Americans. (I’d argue that Israel’s founding was far more just, but let’s say for a moment that it was equally horrific).
So, if today, Native Americans were launching thousands of rockets from their reservations, targeting civilians, targeting kids, and saying they won’t stop until we give them California, New York, New England, half of Washington DC, AND adopt a political reform that will inevitably lead to dissolving democracy and replacing it with a theocracy…
What the hell would you say the solution to that is?
At what point would you say to the Native Americans, “what happened to you was a tragedy, but the reality is we’re so far down this road it will never be undone. We need to find a way to move forward with that shared reality”?
Because that’s the situation in Israel.
The Palestinians are demanding (with no leverage) that Israel adopt a peace deal that would destroy Israel’s form of government and their ability to defend themselves from hostile nations (which they are surrounded by).
Israel will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever do that. They can’t. It would be governmental malpractice to do it.
So what, they are just supposed to let the Palestinians launch thousands of rockets at them … out of guilt?
There’s only ONE way this ends: Palestinians admit that they lost. It might not be fair. It might not be justice. But it is REALITY.
And then they need to take the best peace deal Israel is willing to offer.
… this is the reality they walked away from 20+ years ago.
That’s an entire generation of Palestinian children growing up in an incredibly shitty situation.
Meanwhile, Israel said “fuck this”, built an iron dome defense system, built a border fence, and have economically thrived.
They can literally keep going like this indefinitely. And as time goes on they only get more and more bitter at the Palestinian terrorism. So they keep leaning harder and harder on hardliner politicians, who say "well, if Palestinians are going to be our enemies no matter what, why shouldn’t we just take and take and take?
You do know that the native Americans absolutely fought the United States every step of the way right. They used to scalp captured americans, hang them from trees burn down their towns. You’d also know after they were forced to surrender due to the colonizers overwhelming power, and signed treaties, the colonizer constantly broke the treaties, and slowly but surely took every scrap of their native lands. Then thet forcibly moved them to some of the most desolate lands in the US and stole their children to civilize them from their barbarian ways. And today, the once thriving native tribes are forced to live on reservations that have some of the most extreme poverty in the United States.
