I’m trying to understand the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Not understand it enough to pick a team.
Not understand it enough to repeat whatever slogan happens to be trending.
Actually understand it.
Because the more I read, the more I realize how incredibly complicated this is—and how much of the conversation seems to require pretending that half of the history doesn’t exist.
And honestly?
I have questions.
A lot of them.
First: What does “Free Palestine” actually mean?
I hear people say “Free Palestine” constantly.
But free Palestine from what?
The Israeli occupation of the West Bank?
The blockade and restrictions surrounding Gaza?
Israeli settlements?
Israeli sovereignty over territory Palestinians claim?
Or does it mean eliminating Israel entirely?
Because those are very different things.
And I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask someone what they actually mean when they say it.
For many Palestinians and their supporters, “Free Palestine” means Palestinian self-determination—an independent Palestinian state and an end to occupation.
For others, it means a single state covering the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Those are radically different political visions.
And here’s the question I keep coming back to:
Can I support the Palestinian people’s right to freedom and self-determination without supporting Hamas?
Of course I can.
And can I believe Israelis have a right to live safely without believing every action taken by the Israeli government is justified?
Of course I can.
Why do we keep acting like those positions are mutually exclusive?
But here’s where history gets really uncomfortable.
I’ve heard people say:
“That land belongs to the Palestinians.”
I’ve also heard:
“That land belongs to Israel because it is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people.”
And I keep thinking:
Does land actually work that way?
If my ancestors lived somewhere 2,000 years ago, does that give me ownership of that land today?
Probably not.
But if my grandparents were born somewhere, lived there their entire lives, built a home there and then were expelled from it, does that mean their descendants have no legitimate claim whatsoever?
That doesn’t seem right either.
And that’s one of the things I’m struggling with.
Because Jews have an undeniable and ancient connection to this land.
So do Palestinians.
This isn’t a situation where one group has an ancient connection and the other just showed up recently.
The modern conflict, however, is much more recent than the ancient histories invoked by both sides.
The territory was part of the Ottoman Empire, then became the British Mandate for Palestine after World War I. In 1947, the United Nations proposed partitioning the territory into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem under a special international arrangement.
The Jewish state became Israel.
The proposed Arab Palestinian state did not.
War followed.
And the consequences of that war are still being felt today.
The Nakba is real.
During the 1948 war, more than 700,000 Palestinians became refugees. Some fled fighting. Others were expelled from their homes. Palestinian villages were destroyed or depopulated.
The Palestinian term for this is the Nakba, meaning “catastrophe.”
I don’t think anyone should minimize what happened.
Imagine being told that the place your family has lived for generations is no longer your home.
Imagine becoming a refugee because of a war you didn’t start.
Imagine your children and grandchildren growing up without ever being allowed to return to the place your family came from.
That’s not something I can just dismiss.
But then I have another question.
What happened to the Jews?
They didn’t disappear.
The Jewish people had also experienced centuries of persecution, expulsions and massacres in Europe and elsewhere, culminating in the Holocaust.
Six million Jews were murdered.
And after that, the idea of Jews having somewhere they could be safe wasn’t an abstract political theory.
It was an existential question.
So I find myself looking at this and thinking:
How can we acknowledge the catastrophe suffered by Palestinians without pretending Jewish historical trauma didn’t happen?
And how can we acknowledge Jewish historical trauma without pretending Palestinian displacement didn’t happen?
Why does acknowledging one seem to require denying the other?
Then there’s 1967.
This is another major turning point.
During the Six-Day War, Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, along with other territory.
Israel subsequently maintained control over the West Bank, while the political status of Gaza evolved differently after Israel’s 2005 withdrawal of its permanent ground presence and settlements there.
The West Bank situation is especially important because Israeli settlements have expanded there over decades.
And this isn’t merely something I have to take someone’s political word for.
In 2024, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion concluding that Israel’s continued presence in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 is unlawful and that its settlement policies and annexation-related practices violate international law and obstruct Palestinian self-determination.
That’s a pretty significant finding.
But then I have another question:
If Israel believes its security requires maintaining control over portions of the West Bank, how does that get reconciled with Palestinian self-determination?
And on the other side:
If Palestinians achieve an independent state, what guarantees Israel that another armed group won’t use that territory to attack Israeli civilians?
Those aren’t stupid questions.
They’re both legitimate questions.
And then there’s Hamas.
This is where I absolutely cannot get on board with pretending that Palestinian suffering somehow makes Hamas’s actions acceptable.
It doesn’t.
Hamas-led forces murdered civilians on October 7, 2023.
They kidnapped people.
They took hostages.
They committed atrocities against Israeli civilians.
Those aren’t legitimate acts of resistance simply because Palestinians have legitimate grievances.
You don’t get to murder a civilian because you have a legitimate political complaint.
Period.
And here’s something else I’ve struggled with:
Why should an Israeli mother have to explain to her child why someone wants to kill her simply because she’s Israeli?
Why should a Palestinian mother have to explain to her child why their home was destroyed or why someone they love was killed?
Why do either of those mothers have to carry the consequences of decisions made by politicians and armed groups?
But Hamas isn’t Palestine.
This distinction matters enormously.
Hamas is not every Palestinian.
A Palestinian child isn’t Hamas.
A Palestinian Christian isn’t Hamas.
A Palestinian who hates Hamas isn’t Hamas.
A Palestinian who wants peace isn’t Hamas.
And the same principle works in reverse.
The Israeli government isn’t every Israeli.
An Israeli child isn’t Netanyahu.
A Jewish grandmother in Tel Aviv isn’t responsible for every policy of the Israeli government.
An Israeli who protests against settlement expansion isn’t responsible for it.
So why are ordinary people constantly being assigned collective guilt for the actions of governments and militant organizations?
And Israel isn’t innocent either.
This is where I think conversations get dishonest.
Israel absolutely has a right to protect its citizens.
But does having a legitimate security concern give a country unlimited authority?
No.
International humanitarian law doesn’t work that way.
The International Court of Justice has found serious violations relating to Israel’s policies in the occupied Palestinian territories, including settlement activity, annexation-related practices and restrictions affecting Palestinians.
And there have also been extensive allegations and findings concerning Israeli conduct during the war in Gaza.
So I have another question:
If Hamas commits a war crime, does that make an Israeli response automatically lawful?
No.
And:
If Israel commits a violation, does that somehow make Hamas’s attack on Israeli civilians legitimate?
Also no.
Why can’t we condemn both?
This is where “both sides” gets tricky.
I often hear:
“Both sides are guilty.”
I think that can be true.
But I also think we need to be careful with what we mean.
“Both sides have committed wrongdoing” does not mean every action is equivalent.
Hamas is a non-state armed organization.
Israel is a sovereign state with a powerful military and different legal obligations.
The scale, circumstances, capabilities and responsibilities are not necessarily identical.
So I’m not interested in saying:
“They’re both equally bad.”
That’s too simplistic.
I’m interested in saying:
Civilians on both sides have been harmed. Armed groups and governments have committed serious violations. Historical grievances are real. And none of those facts cancels out another fact.
But here’s the question I keep getting stuck on:
Who does the land actually belong to?
And the more I think about it, the more I think maybe that’s the wrong question.
Because what does “belong” even mean?
Does a piece of land belong to the person whose ancestors lived there 2,000 years ago?
The person whose grandparents lived there?
The person who currently lives there?
The government that controls it?
The person who has a legal deed?
The people who have historically inhabited the region?
The people who were displaced from it?
These aren’t the same thing.
And maybe that’s the fundamental problem.
Two peoples have developed national identities and political claims around the same piece of land.
There isn’t a magic historical deed sitting in a drawer somewhere that says:
Congratulations. You win Palestine.
So what does “Free Palestine” mean to me?
I’m still figuring that out.
But I know what I don’t think it should mean.
It shouldn’t mean:
“Free Palestine by eliminating Israel.”
And I don’t think Israeli security should mean:
“Palestinians can remain indefinitely without genuine political freedom.”
I don’t think Palestinian liberation requires hatred of Jews.
And I don’t think Jewish safety requires hatred of Palestinians.
I don’t think supporting Israel’s existence requires supporting every Israeli government policy.
And I don’t think supporting Palestinian statehood requires supporting Hamas.
Those distinctions seem incredibly obvious to me.
So why are they so difficult to make?
And then I get to the question nobody seems able to answer.
When does it end?
How many generations have to inherit the trauma?
How many children have to grow up knowing the names of people killed before them?
How many families have to bury sons and daughters?
How many homes have to be destroyed?
How many people have to become refugees?
How many terrorist attacks can a population endure before fear becomes part of its identity?
How many military operations can another population endure before anger becomes part of its identity?
At what point do we stop asking:
“Who started it?”
and start asking:
“How do we stop it?”
Because if the answer is that peace can only happen after one side completely defeats the other, then what exactly are we waiting for?
Another generation?
Maybe the hardest question is this:
What if neither side gets everything it wants?
What if Israel doesn’t get every piece of territory it considers historically or strategically important?
What if Palestinians don’t get every piece of territory they consider historically theirs?
What if refugees don’t get every outcome they want?
What if Jerusalem requires compromise?
What if security requires international guarantees?
What if Palestinian sovereignty requires Hamas to give up armed control?
What if Israeli settlements require painful political decisions?
What if peace requires both peoples to accept something they believe is profoundly unfair?
Because that’s what compromise usually looks like.
Nobody gets everything.
I don’t pretend to have solved this.
I’m not an expert on the Middle East.
I’m not Palestinian.
I’m not Israeli.
And I’m certainly not going to pretend I understand what it’s like to grow up fearing rockets, terrorism, occupation, displacement or war.
But I do think we’re capable of something better than shouting slogans at each other.
I can believe Palestinians deserve freedom.
I can believe Israelis deserve safety.
I can condemn Hamas.
I can criticize the Israeli government.
I can acknowledge the Nakba.
I can acknowledge the Holocaust.
I can acknowledge Jewish historical ties to the land.
I can acknowledge Palestinian historical ties to the land.
I can believe that civilians on both sides deserve to live.
And I can still ask uncomfortable questions.
Actually, I think we need to ask them.
Because maybe the goal shouldn’t be figuring out which people have the better historical claim to the land.
Maybe the goal should be figuring out how two peoples who believe that land is home can both have a future there.
And maybe the first step toward peace isn’t deciding which side we’re supposed to hate.
Maybe it’s being willing to say:
“Your suffering is real. Mine doesn’t become less real because yours is real too.”
