@hightor,
Michelle Goldberg wrote:For me, it happened over several visits to the West Bank. I’d inherited, without really thinking about it, a set of default liberal Zionist beliefs about Israel as the good guy in its confrontation with the Palestinians, whose hostility I understood to be atavistic and irrational. This view collapsed the first time I walked down Shuhada Street in Hebron, in a part of the city where more than 30,000 Palestinians live under Israeli military control for the benefit of 1,000 or so Israeli settlers. Palestinians whose homes are on Shuhada Street aren’t allowed to walk out their own front doors, because the street, constantly patrolled by Israeli troops, is reserved for Jews.
If Muslims were not always trying to steal other people's holy sites, they'd not have trouble clashing with religions who legitimately belong at those holy sites.
If Palestinians wouldn't try to murder Israelis, these settlers would not need military protection.
If the Palestinians had been willing to make peace with Israel, these settlers would have been withdrawn long ago, even though this amounts to Islamic theft of a Jewish holy site.
These settlers and the soldiers who protect them are only in a small part of the city. If Palestinians there dislike being under Israeli control, they could just move away from the small Jewish section of the city and stay in the majority of the city that is under full Palestinian control.
