When was the "looking the other way" happening?
The region has been locked in tit-for-tat since (at least) Israel broke the initial colonial independence process.
There was never any intention whatsoever from the Israeli side to live in peace with its neighbors. I'm not sure it's incumbent upon the existing residents of an area to welcome someone who quite clearly intends to take all of your land.
Ben-Gurion wrote this to his son eleven years before Israel was created. Before the holocaust started even!:
> A Jewish state in part of Palestine is not an end, but a beginning... We shall bring into the state all the Jews it is possible to bring... then we shall expand to the whole country... We will break through the borders imposed on us...
Same letter:
> If I were an Arab I would have been very indignant... What we really want is not that the land remain whole and unified. What we want is that the whole and unified land be Jewish... [underlined]We want to change the status quo.[/underlined]
Note that he refers to this being a state created in Palestine. He refers to bringing people from elsewhere into this state.
No sympathy from me. Both sides are sufficiently horrible and indefensible to be simply horrible and indefensible.
The region has been locked in tit-for-tat since (at least) Israel broke the initial colonial independence process.
There was never any intention whatsoever from the Israeli side to live in peace with its neighbors. I'm not sure it's incumbent upon the existing residents of an area to welcome someone who quite clearly intends to take all of your land.
Ben-Gurion wrote this to his son eleven years before Israel was created. Before the holocaust started even!:
> A Jewish state in part of Palestine is not an end, but a beginning... We shall bring into the state all the Jews it is possible to bring... then we shall expand to the whole country... We will break through the borders imposed on us...
Same letter:
> If I were an Arab I would have been very indignant... What we really want is not that the land remain whole and unified. What we want is that the whole and unified land be Jewish... [underlined]We want to change the status quo.[/underlined]
Note that he refers to this being a state created in Palestine. He refers to bringing people from elsewhere into this state.
No sympathy from me. Both sides are sufficiently horrible and indefensible to be simply horrible and indefensible.