This is a question I can answer objectively because I’m an historian. While I didn’t focus my studies on this part of the world, the history is key to the current crisis.
The Israelis captured the Gaza Strip and other lands in the area during the Six Day war in June 1967. The reason for going to war then was just. Egyptian forces invaded the Sinai Peninsula. So yes, when a country is invaded by a foreign army, a war is just. The capture of land in a war is just conduct. The Israelis then held the land during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, when a coalition of Arab Nations attacked them. My reckoning is that by the laws of war, this is incontrovertibly Israeli land. Each war that involved Israel has been started by the Arab Nations in this region.
If we are being honest, it has nothing to do with the land and everything to do with religion. They hate each other for worshipping a different God. That’s the real problem and it’s sad.
I think you need to go further back.
The [Nakba](https://imeu.org/article/quick-facts-the-palestinian-nakba) was certainly not just. And those executing were certainly not doing it for religious reasons. I don't see how anyone can justify an Apartheid state or an open-air prison like in Gaza.
Murray Rothbard, [War Guilt in the Middle East](https://mises.org/library/war-guilt-middle-east)
See also, Alison Weir, [Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel](https://amzn.to/45Gtfgl)
I thought I was being generous by going back to anytime before 2005, when Israelis left Gaza completely. The Gaza Strip was offered to Jordan and Egypt who refused to take it. It has been under the control of Hamas, a terrorist organization that was elected in a landslide victory in 2006. They enjoy massive support from the Palestinian people. Their charter quite literally calls for the extermination of Jews and the Jewish state.
I think it is shameful to draw a moral equivalence between the intentional murder of thousands of civilians and the situation in Gaza. Hamas intentionally kills Jews because they hate them. They went into Israel to kill people. There was no military purpose in this, nothing to be gained from this. I saw the videos that Hamas released on their own social media. This was barbarism on a civilian population. They raped and murdered human beings and were proud of it. There is no moral equivalence to be drawn. Even taking a middle line on this seems like an act of evil.
These are sad and dark days, and there are more to come.
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