Former President Barack Obama said a way forward for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only possible if people acknowledge the “complexity” of the situation.
“If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas that what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it. And … that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable,” Obama said in an interview on the podcast “Pod Save America.”
The former president’s comments come as the Israeli military focuses its offensive against Hamas in Gaza City and northern parts of the enclave.
It’s not the government who is settling the West Bank. Yes, it is their policy, but it’s regular Israeli citizens who are killing Palestinians, burning their homes down or taking their homes from them and driving them away.
I mean, the government is incentivizing it and enabling it.
Settlers wouldn’t settle the West Bank if the Israeli military wasn’t protecting them. The government is absolutely the problem.
Go try and take someone’s home by force. It won’t go well. But it will go a lot better when it’s sanctioned by an overwhelming military force.
And in turn, Western governments are enabling the Israeli government. If the West sanctioned Israel as hard as they sanctioned Iran or Russia, they’d probably think twice about annexing the West Bank. But instead of sanctions they get weapons.