What do the Palestinians in the Disputed Territories Want?

It’s not an easy question, considering that it’s not easy to generalize the thinking of the entire population, and we don’t know if what comes out of their mouth is honest, considering the leadership keeps on giving conflicting messages depending on who is listening. There is a youtube interviewer called Corey Shuster who goes around Israel and the disputed territories and asks some tough questions to both Israelis and Palestinians. I honestly feel he is doing a fair job being neutral, considering that he annoys me sometimes when he puts Jews in bad light just for the sake of transparency. When it comes to Palestinians, he often asks questions like what is your solution for the conflict, and should both Palestinians and Jews have independence? And if Israel left the West Bank and Gaza, would there be peace with Israel? Unfortunately, more than 90% of the Palestinians interviewed answered that the entire land belongs to the Palestinians and the Palestinians have been pushed out, so they won’t stop fighting and struggling till the Jews leave back to Europe. That puts aside that 60% of Israel is descended from Middle Eastern Parents. Even a question like, should you have accepted the 1947 UN partition plan, which would give them far more than everything they could negotiate, the answer was no for most of the Palestinian responders. Now to be fair, we don’t know who are the interviewees that volunteer to go on these videos. Maybe they are the outspoken overzealous minority, or maybe they Fear the consequences of not criticizing Israel. So I still have some optimism that at least a solid minority understands that most of their problems come from their own oppressive leadership more than anything from outside. Saying that if they fear precautions from their leadership, at least you can’t deny that their leadership is preaching this message. Saying that, even though just half of the interviewees believe what comes out of their mouth, their message is incredibly scary.  When you say, that you want the enttttttiiiiirrrrreee Palestine to be pre-1948, that means they don’t want Jews to be there. Considering that everyone knows that Israelis are not going to give up on the country, not having Israelis in Palestine does not really mean going back to where they came from; it means genocide. In a way I can’t blame them, under UNRWA run schools, Palestinians are being taught that they are an ancient indigenous population and Jews are simply invaders that took over their country. It is really tough to combat this level of brainwashing

This survey show enforces this reality. Only 22% of the people support a two-state solution. And the good side, they are also not happy with their leaderships.

If you need to prove to someone that the Palestinians of today are not interested in peaceful solution. Show him/her the Corey Shuster videos with the questions above. You can always point out that every time there is a protest across the world, there is a continuous reminder in form of a genocidal chant that goes like this,”From the river to the sea, Palestine would be free.” (make sure to clarify that from the River to the sea really means all of Israel). Once you make the point that the majority of Palestinians really want aaaaaaaaaallllllll of Israel, bring it back to the offense of saying that you are really supporting a people that want genocide. “No one wants to say it, but this is really what it means”

Now leaving on an optimistic note. I do believe Palestinians’ minds can change. If you can simply stop funding UNRWA and their stupid brainwashing schools and give Palestinians a break from the heavy oppression, we can see a major change.

About five years after the Oslo accords, an agreement to begin the peace process, about 68% of the people living in the west bank and Gaza were supportive or strongly supportive of the negotiations, while about 24% were opposed or strongly opposed. These numbers stayed fairly strong until 2000, where the second Palestinian intifada started. I truly believe that with the right leadership and the removal of oppressive factors, Palestinians can quickly change their opinions.

Coming soon…

Coming soon…