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There's a tendency to overstate the uniqueness of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Take the basic point of contention: Palestinians dispute Israel's "right to exist." That's true, but an odd way of understanding the dispute. If Israel was in Idaho, the residents of the Palestinian state would not much concern themselves with its prospects. Rather, they dispute Israel's right to exist there. Which is to say that this conflict, like many others, is fundamentally about land. There's a religious and ethnic overlay, but at the base, this is about land. And if you understand the conflict as a question of land, then certain aspects look different. Matthew Yglesias, for instance, has a sensible post focusing on the fact of the settlements:
All throughout the “peace process” years — through the good ones and through the bad ones — Israel continued expanding both the geographical footprint of its settlements and the population living upon them. For most of this time, Israel has often appeared unwilling to enforce domestic Israeli law on the settler population, to say nothing of abiding by international law or agreements made. And while Israel has stated a desire to leave the Gaza Palestinians alone in their tiny, overcrowded, economically unviable enclave, the “disengagement” from Gaza has never entailed letting Palestinians control their borders or exercise meaningful sovereignty over the area. The proposal has basically been that if Palestinians cease violence against Israel, then the Gaza Strip will be treated like an Indian reservation. Israel’s policy objectives in the West Bank appear to be first seizing the choice bits of it, and then withdrawing behind a wall with the residual West Bank treating like post-”disengagement” Gaza.Indeed, in the U.S. "road map," which both Israel and Palestine agreed to, phase one included a freeze on settlement expansion. Expansion did not freeze, as PeaceNow has ably documented. But beyond settlement expansion, "illegal" outposts began to emerge. These were new settlements, with roads, electricity, sewage, and security provided by the Israeli taxpayer. George W. Bush -- no harsh critic of Israel -- has demanded that the outposts be dismantled.Palestinians see the settlements and outposts as very simple, and very traditional, land grabs. They create a built reality in which Israel controls as much land as possible, and in which Israel's settlements act as barriers between various Palestinian population centers, thus ensuring the impossibility of a viable Palestinian state. And that is the point. It may not be Israel's point, but it is the point. The outposts and settlements alike are home to extreme elements of Israeli society -- elements that don't believe in a peace process, and that believe in full Israeli control of the Biblical lands. And these settlements -- which are supported and protected by the Israeli state -- expanded during the whole of the peace process. It is true that Hamas does not believe in Israel's right to exist. But it is also true that Palestinians don't believe that Israel means ever offer them a dignified and autonomous existence, and thus far, the evidence has supported their position. For a state, survival is analogous to land. And for the past decade, the Israeli state has taken more and more Palestinian land. Even the Israelis admit this, calling the outposts "illegal." That doesn't justify the Palestinians' violent response, which has been both morally atrocious and wholly ineffective, but it's important to understanding why Palestinian society sees itself in a war for it's own survival, not for Israel's.
