I served in the IDF in the last military ground operation in Gaza and led a squadron in the West Bank. AMA 

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why hasn’t a two state solution worked? 

what’s the single highest leverage thing Israel could do as a state today to solve this for the future?

cypherpunk • human rights lawyer • actress • queen  // hosting /aaina • also indivisible.fm 

Two state solution hasn’t worked for a ton of reasons but main ones might be that West Bank is too strategically/religiously important for Israel to un-occupy w/o guaranteed peace (like we did with Gaza) and Gaza isn’t large enough to be a country (resource-wise).

why do many people (including Israelis) call Gaza an open-air prison, while others say that’s absolutely not the case? 

what’s the point of interpretation here that is so divergent?

Difficult one to tackle but some points of interpretation: 

Gazans can all leave if they want, just not to Israel and they can’t come back which is complicated 
Egypt also has a border with Gaza, dislikes them, rarely gives aid and no water/electricity, no one talks about this 

On flip side Gaza is the size of Philly and that’s not sustainable for a nation, border is crazy tight with Israel and we’ve bombed the crossings to Egypt in the past, massive surveillance of the gazans by Israel even from outside, I can see why they’re unhappy 

Also tons of Gazans work in Israel or West Bank and had work permits to leave. Israel even eased up on that front, gave out way more permits, which is one of the ways Hamas pulled off their attacks, making it hard to be lenient with them. Our peaceful attempts are used against us

Gaza is autonomous internally and lots of the poverty isn’t really Israel’s fault. Hamas destroyed factories farms and plants we left them in 05, used concrete to build tunnels instead of streets until we blocked. Their leaders are billionaires and syphon most funds out of Gaza

Like the Palestinians displaced in 48 and 67, assuming they fled to Egypt, they won’t be able to return to Gaza or Israel ever. 

Besides disliking them this is one of the reasons Egypt won’t take them and why Hamas doesn’t want them to leave: to keep the Palestinian demographic up

Also why Israel wants them to

what do you mean they can’t come back? would it be better if there was a more open border between the areas or is that too unsafe because of Hamas?