[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

It seems to me, and this is almost certainly an oversimplification but here it is anyway, that the core of the problem is that neither side is actually disincentivized to kill innocent people on the other side. There's only political upside to it.

Hamas indiscriminately fires its rockets with a goal of random slaughter, which provokes an inevitable response from the Israeli government, who absolutely must retaliate in order to appease the people who keep them in power. That inevitable retaliation, of course, is the true goal of the initial attacks that provoked it, because more dead people in Gaza is only good news for Hamas - it just increases their influence. So why would either side stop doing what it's doing?

You have missed the trigger of events: Forced expulsion from their homes by the Israelis under some 'law'

Calling the catalyst of all this a "real estate dispute" is a particularly noxious way to diminish what's actually occurring: Nahalat Shimon, a U.S.-based settler organization, is trying to have Palestinians who have lived in the neighborhood since 1956 evicted. Once they are evicted, the property — occupied by Israel along with the rest of east Jerusalem since 1967 — would then be turned over to Jewish settlers under Israeli law. The six families who have been fighting to keep their homes since 1982 would get nothing to ease their displacement.

For years, the situation in Israel has been painted as a war of survival, the Israelis against the Palestinians and, by proxy, their Arab neighbors. That no longer reflects the realities on the ground, where the ability of one side to harm the other is in no way balanced. This "real-estate dispute," as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government calls it, is a microcosm of the wildly unbalanced Israeli-Palestinian situation today.

Many of these evictions, including those in Sheikh Jarrah, are ordered based on petitions from settler organizations that seek to seize the land the homes are built on. These groups have the support of Netanyahu's government, linked as they are to the far-right groups that he needs to retain power.

But what I'm also saying is that this is not a situation where the two sides are on equal footing. And I don't just mean militarily — as Israeli airstrikes bombard Gaza in response to the rocket attacks — or politically in the Knesset. I mean that under the current system, Israeli and Palestinian civilians aren't granted equal protection under the law. A Palestinian's permit to build a home for his family will never be approved without question; an Israeli citizen will never be told to bulldoze his home because it was built on Palestinian land. The system is broken.

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