You might perceive this as annoying, but can’t you see that I’m trying to get something more out of you, that I’m trying to encourage you to be at least a tiny bit intellectually curious, to think about this just a little bit? Hell, I would be ecstatic to sense anything resembling uncertainty from you. I might not always be showing it, but I am always second-guessing myself, am never even remotely certain about how I’m seeing the world. I am engaging in these discussions, because I want to both challenge and be challenged, but I’ve been mostly disappointed. There’s nothing I crave more than a good discourse, a proper exchange of words and ideas. Civil, but not to the point that genuinely valuable opinions are being held back.

As a last attempt to get anything resembling a proper opinion based on your own thoughts instead of that of others out of you: Can you name any other occupation similar to this alleged one? Have you ever thought about finding comparable occupations? I’ve tried finding one that comes close or is even remotely similar, but haven’t been able to.

The often cited South African Apartheid really doesn’t compare, because there are Palestinian citizens living in Israel with, at least on paper, full rights (and minus one obligation - they don’t have to serve in the IDF, but can voluntarily sign up, which a couple thousand are doing every year, more so after October 7th). There’s even a Palestinian supreme court justice. If there was actual Apartheid, then this wouldn’t be the case. In practice, Israeli Arabs are similarly discriminated against as people of color in countries like the US, but nothing in Israel comes close to what South Africa did to its Black citizens or what Jim Crow laws did in America. Feel free to pick this opinion of mine apart though (but please, with your own words for once - if I wanted to read Wikipedia articles, I would do this myself).

You can at least clearly see the difference between Gaza and the West Bank, right? In the West Bank, there’s an agreement with the ruling Fatah for Israel to assist in security matters, although in reality, the relationship is more that of a vassal proto-state that is too weak to both secure its own territory without being overthrown and meaningfully resist Israeli military supremacy after having lost against it multiple times in the past. Israeli soldiers and police officers are routinely carrying out raids against terrorists together with members of Fatah security forces. They are also setting up road blocks, impairing the movement of the Palestinians living there not just at the borders to Israel, but within the territory as well (seemingly randomly and often to a paralyzing degree - I’ve read reports of pregnant Palestinian women failing to get to hospitals in time, for example), etc. There are settlers in parts of the West Bank trying to expand their territory, often using violence and with help or at least tolerated by the IDF and Israeli police (and they are further emboldened since the start of the war). This is more or less (save for some contradictory peculiarities, like the Fatah’s controversial martyr’s fund) what a “normal” occupation looks like and has always looked like even going as far back as antiquity, down to getting rulers from the local population to do some of the dirty work for you. None of this applied to Gaza before this war - but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how Gaza might be governed and ruled after the defeat of Hamas, except with a likely even stricter security regime.

Meanwhile, another territory actually occupied by Israel, the Golan Heights, is effectively administered like any other part of Israel’s internationally recognized territory, with all Israeli laws applying to it since 1981. Locals there, including non-Jews like the Druze, are citizens of Israel, very much unlike Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. This is the kind of occupation that is labelled as such according to international law, because most nations outside of Israel don’t recognize it as actual Israeli territory. Israel annexed it for purely strategic reasons from Syria (making it arguably a cause separate from the Palestinian one), since otherwise, its heartland would be extremely vulnerable to artillery and other attacks from this area. It’s one of those cases where one can simultaneously acknowledge the clearly illegal nature of this occupation/annexation, while at the same time admitting that this tiny nation with extremely disadvantageous borders and lots of hostile neighbors can’t really afford not to hold onto this small piece of extremely strategically valuable mountainous terrain. It’s definitely a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” kind of situation, far from the only one Israel has faced and is facing. Once again though, this is completely different from Gaza.

Maybe I overlooked something totally obvious (wouldn’t be the first time), so I invite you to try and find a state acting similar to how Israel did towards Gaza and this being labeled as occupation. Alternatively, you can just ignore this lengthy diatribe and we go our separate ways without continuing this conversation. It’s entirely up to you.