> In the West Bank, Palestinians are not allowed to form an army, have control over borders, or even control of travel around the West Bank.

Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") isn't officially part of Israel as far as I understand. Naturally they don't have voting rights in Israel.

The democracy inside Israel is as I said above somewhat functioning, at least compared to the rest of the region.

This is absolutely not true. All Israeli citizens of age can vote, which is the main component of a democracy (though there are other points).

When talking about the "part of the populace that can't vote", as you put it, I assume you mean the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza. However, they are not Israeli citizens, and are represented by their own government, the Palestinian authority, which is ostensibly committed to pursuing an eventual negotiation with Israel to turn into an official state.

It's also a state recognized by multiple countries, a fact much applauded by "pro-Palestinian" activists.

Given that designation as a separate state, complaining that they can't vote in Israeli elections is like complaining that Canadians can't vote in US elections.

Except it isn't. Just because you draw an arbitrary border between the populations under your control doesn't mean those people don't exists.

Israel is in control of these population, and they have no right to vote.

In my opinion that makes them not worthy of being called a democracy.

What a laugh. A Palestinian in Hebron whose family has been there for thousands of years gets no vote, whereas a Jew from Brooklyn who just got off a plane and steals his land does get a vote in the Knesset. This is a democracy? How deluded do you think we all are?

The millions of Palestinians unable to vote for the government that controls their movement, trade, and lives in general would probably disagree with your characterization of Israel as a democracy.

Netanyahu says the West Bank is Israel, and within Israel de facto and de jure it is. Yet Palestinians in the West Bank can not vote, and there is talk in the Knesset of disenfranchising Palestinians outside of the West Bank. Yet a Jew from Brooklyn can move to the West Bank, seize a Palestinian's land, and vote in elections.

Yet this is termed a democracy in comparison to Iran.

I can vote in my local Elks Club elections as well.

People in the West Bank live in Israel but can not vote in Israeli elections.

Actually - Palestinians living in Israel in the West Bank can't vote. A haredi Jew from Brooklyn who arrived in the West Bank yesterday and stole land from a Palestinian family who has been there for centuries, he has a right to vote in the elections of the country he is living in.

It's incredible how persistently you miss the point.

What people are asking Israel to do is let Palestinians have a say in their own affairs. That can be done _either_ by letting the Palestinian government meaningfully control Palestine (as the West German government did relatively soon after the war ended), _or_ by letting Palestinians have a say in the Israeli government that rules over them (one state solution).

Why not? Isn't that an universal right? How are Sudanese or Lebanese better than Palestineans in that regard?

Your attention is worthless because it did not led Israel to implement two-state solution. What would you want? Retirement benefits?

Wait, are you saying that they would not vote for Israel's government?

Muslim Israelis have representation in the Knesset. Their community simply hasn’t aligned itself with the American pro-Palestinian movement. (There are absolutely racism issues in Israel. But it’s not Jim Crow.)

Israel is rich. Palestine is poor. It would be on par with a German or Korean reünification in terms of cost.

Also, Israel has a relatively-liberal voting population. Palestine does not. One could have reasonable concerns around losing valued freedoms if a single Palestinian state drifts towards regional norms.

Doesn't the US have a bunch of territories that don't have representation? Like Puerto Rico. It seems like this sort of arrangement is not alien even to Western politicians, although the treatment of people certainly differs.

The palestinian is a Jordanian citizen and can vote in whatever election process Jordan allows its citizens. Or, at least, was until Jordan revoked that citizenship (which it has been doing for a while, incidentally because palestinians were threatening the Jordanian rulers[0]). I think Jordan at some point voided all of its claims to the west bank.

> Plenty of statements from Netanyahu and the ruling Likud are that the West Bank was annexed.

No, there aren't. Some of them wish it was annexed, and are working towards this, but fifty years later, there has been zero official movement towards. Those same people, by the way, talked exactly the same way about annexing Gaza -- which was unilaterally pulled out from.

> Then you say Palestinians are separate so should not be in the Knesset.

Yes. Just like the Gazans before them. It is likely that Israel will pull out, possibly unilaterally, out of the west bank, possibly following some forced land exchange.

Soundbites not withstanding, pre-1948 Palestinians that accepted Israel at its founding are Israeli citizens to this day (about 16% of the population, of which ~90% are Muslim and ~10% are christian).

> .... So Israelis condemning Hamas carries little weight.

So? The west supported Saddam Hussein up until the day they didn't. Alliances change. The Hamas of 1980 was against PLO and not throwing rockets at Israel, so it was supported by Israel. The Hamas of 2006 is throwing rockets at Israel, so is condemned by Israel.

> Also, Israel has a large and rapidly growing population of Jewish religious fundamentalists who control ALL marriages in Israel .... Israel has a large population of Jews like this.

You are deeply misinformed about this (and I suspect about other issues as well). Indeed there are jewish sects that are as horrible in their approach to freedom as Hamas and Saudi Arabia is, but

(a) they absolutely no control of "all marriages" and not even jewish marriages (and legally, not even within those same sects, although believers may choose to adhere), and

(b) even though they might like to, they cannot shoot or jail gay people or drop them off buildings the way Hamas and Saudi Arabia do, because that's not the law of the land. In fact, one of them just got life in prison for stabbing a gay pride participant. and

(c) While it this population is of nontrivial size, it is still a very small minority.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September

The Western countries and Israel have been doing everything they can for the past century to keep Arab democracy weak.

In the soi disant "only democracy in the Middle East", the West bank, claimed by Israel, where ultraorthodox right off the plane from Russia can go to a West Bank settlement to vote, but in which Palestinians who have been there for thousands of years can not vote for any government which Israel or the US recognizes - why not let the Palestinians vote? Israel is no democracy - they claim the West Bank is Israel, in a defacto sense it is, and they do not let Arabs vote. We see the contemplation of Islam causing problems, why don't we look at Judaism in the same manner in how it is against democracy? Meir Kahane said as much himself, and his policies have been running Israel, and the US and European backing of Israel for the past years.

Meanwhile the US and UK destroyed Iranian democracy, its parliament, Mossadegh, and installed a dictator whose CIA-backed secret police arrested, tortured and killed those who wanted a return to democracy. We had France, the UK and Israel invade Egypt in 1956, and on and on and on.

The economic and military might of the west and Israel has been fighting autonomy and democracy in the Middle East for a century, and will continue to in the next century.

Despite this, as we can see the beginnings of in the Arab Spring, as well as a history rooted in pan-Arab nationalism, in the years to come Arabs will see themselves freed from the shackles of imperialism and Zionism, and restore power in the the Middle East to the people of the Middle East.

The rhetorical sleight-of-hand that you are obscuring is that most Arabs living in Israel are not, and will never be allowed to become Israeli citizens. This is despite both being born, and living on a territory that is very clearly under the military control of the Knesset.

It's either an indeterminate military occupation, or its apartheid. I don't care what you want to call it, but you have to pick one or the other, because in 2022, Palestine simply does not exist as a free, sovereign nation. It's either a civil territory of Israel, or occupied by Israel.

> I don’t remember the US ever occupying Canada.

I'm confused by this.

Normally under international law, it is illegal to allow people in occupied territory to vote or otherwise integrate them into civil government.

Israel has even gotten criticized by the UN human rights council for allowing elections in occupied territory (in golan heights, so not Palestinian occupied territory) http://undocs.org/A/HRC/37/L.18

Because it is Abbas (PA President) who decides when there are elections and he was always going to lose badly?

> If the Israeli government had done anything to help Palestinians have viable jobs or elections, for example, then the Hamas leaders would have had to justify their positions rather than blaming all of their problems on Israel.

This doesn't answer to my argument, that Hamas has quasi-state resources, and no outside radicalization could compete with the radicalization they can create by simply controlling education.

Anyway, your argument is that it's Israel's job to manage the country next door. That would make sense only in a non-two-state reality where Israel is legally responsible and controls the relevant areas. You can't run elections in areas you don't control. But Israel hasn't controlled the Strip since 2005...

> The underlying problem is that Netanyahu liked having Hamas as a justification for why they couldn’t allow Palestinians to have a state, and as a bogeyman...

Partially true. But consider the alternative was to wage a war like this one. For this reason, nearly all of the Israeli Left supported the same policy... How many people would have supported this war without radical Hamas aggressive to begin it?

Did the majority of the Knesset not vote for this government, and if not, how did it form?