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Comment by tsimionescu | Hacker News Reader

> Gaza was given to the Palestinians for free in 2005.

That doesn't mean anything. Israel was illegally occupying Gaza before 2005, and has been illegally blockading it since.

And every single year for the past 50 years or more, Israel has murdered more Palestinians than the Palestinians have murdered Israelis - most years, at least 2 dead Palestinians for every dead Israeli. Not to mention, Netanyahu has been one of the biggest international supporters of Hamas in the world, and he has admitted to as much repeatedly: the PLA having control of Gaza would have risked a real two state solution, and he will never allow that to happen.

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And Egypt was occupying it before Israel, and the British and the Ottomans and the Romans.

And that justifies things for you some how? If someone was beating by someone else before, then it's ok to beat them now?

It points out the hypocrisy. Israel was bad for occupying Gaza decades ago, but Egypt was fine for occupying Gaza decades ago.

The Ottomans had conquered the whole of Palestine, including Gaza, and had been ruling it for some few hundred years at the time their empire crumbled and the British Empire acquired it from them. The vast majority of the population, both Arabic and Jewish, and either Muslim and Jewish and Christian, were regular citizens of the Ottoman Empire. It was not being "occupied" by the Ottomans, any more than Turkey is "occupying" Istanbul today.

Then, the majority of this population, and the vast majority of the Arabic parts of this population, were displaced to make room for the novel state of Israel, most of the population of which were Europeans and Americans of Jewish descent. They came in and took the homes of the Palestinians living today in Gaza and the West Bank, or their parents or grandparents. And then they have occupied the lands where these Palestinians had been driven away to, with direct military presence for a long time, and then with "just" a blockade and controlled movement.

The Jewish and Arabic population became the state of Israel. Where do you think the millions of Israeli Arabs came from?

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