I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

Here's a fact about Israel. It is illegally annexing other countries' land right now with impunity.

Is there any country that does this that isn't authoritarian and right wing?

Israel claims the Golan Heights as part of its sovereign territory. It captured the Golan Heights during a defensive war in 1967, when it also captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula. It gave back the Sinai Peninsula for a peace agreement with Egypt in 1979. The capture of all that territory happened under a left-wing Labor government led by Levi Eshkol. The return of the Sinai happened under a right-wing government led by Menachem Begin, of the party that is the forerunner to Likud. Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip to leave it in the hands of the Palestinian Authority in 2005. That happened under Ariel Sharon, a right wing prime minister (albeit in a centrist party, Kadima).

The West Bank is still occupied because the Palestinians have not agreed to a peace deal with Israel, despite being offered one including that land most recently in 2008. Given what happened on Oct 7th, I don't think there will ever be such an offer again.

Israel is currently occupying parts of Lebanon and Syria because Hezbollah fired 8,000 missiles at Israel from southern Lebanon during 2023 and 2024, and Hezbollah was supplied with those missiles through, with the consent of, Syria. Hezbollah's presence south of the Litani river was in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

So whether Israel captures or returns land has really nothing to do with whether its government is left or right wing. Israel is not authoritarian. It is a constitutional democracy.

The West Bank was occupied and colonised, which is a war crime. The peace deal involves leaving only a fraction of the territory to the Palestinians, and leaves Israeli citizens in the colonies.

The right of conquest, which you are invoking, was ended after WWII, due to the disastrous consequences of its implementation by a group Israel claims to be so against.

None of what you said changes the fact that there are no non-authoritarian, left-wing countries which annex land in war. Russia does it. Azerbaijan does it. Can you give some examples that contradict this? That's what I asked. I didn't ask for a flimsy justification to flaunt international law.

I will also say, though I hope you don't only respond to this and ignore the other parts, as you've done so far, that Israel is a democracy in name only. It has many subjects who have no right to vote who were born in the land Israel controls (The West Bank and Gaza), who have no other citizenship, and who are native to the land stretching back to at least before the founding of Israel. Of course, because Israel wishes to be an state controlled by a specific ethnicity, it cannot allow such people to vote. So how much of a democracy is it really? It's as if we called the US a democracy if it only allowed voting in such a pattern that white people were always the majority, or as if Saudi Arabia transitioned to a democracy but only in such a way that House of Saud members would always be the voting majority. How democratic would that really be?

Occupied from whom? Who was the previous government of that land? The fact is, there has never been an independent modern state in that land. Before 1967 it was occupied by Jordan. Before 1948 it was occupied by the British Mandate, and before that it was occupied by the Ottoman Empire.

The peace deal offered by Olmert to Abu Mazen was for 95% of the West Bank, plus land from Israel itself to make it up to 100%. Abu Mazen declined. I suspect that in a post-Oct 7th world, the Palestinians will never get an offer like that again.

If you read my post closely you will see I am not invoking any right, nor justifying Israel's occupation of those lands (although I do believe they were justified). I'm merely pointing out that occupation of those lands was carried out under a left-wing non-authoritarian government. If you're saying that occupation of land makes the occupying government by definition right-wing authoritarian then I don't think that's a very useful definition and can't help you further.

I personally don't see why Israel should be required to give influence over its government to a belligerent enemy population who have supported wars of annihilation against it many times. However, many Israelis disagree with me, including past prime ministers. That was why Olmert offered 95% of the West Bank plus Israeli land making it up to 100% to Abu Mazen in 2008. Abu Mazen declined the offer.

Before 1967 the Arab occupants of the West Bank were Jordanian citizens. After 1967 Jordan stripped them of citizenship. Perhaps Jordan is the one denying them democracy? (For what it's worth, the pre-1948 Jewish residents of the West Bank had already been expelled at best and murdered at worst).

It's either not occupied, it's part of Israel and Israel subjugates the Palestinians to an apartheid rule (with a big part of their lives controlled by Israel, included where they can move, work, live, and different laws applied to them), and harassed by colonists. Or it's Palestine and Israel is occupying it.

In any case the UN and the ICJ think it's occupied territory, and the colonies are a war crime.

Israel is in administrative control over that part of the land. It's not clear to me exactly how much it owes the people who reside there, who used to be Jordanian citizens and who had their citizenship stripped by Jordan.

That part of the world has never been part of a modern state. Jordan doesn't want it. The Ottoman Empire doesn't exist. There is and has never been a state of Palestine. Abu Mazen turned down an from Olmert to make it into a Palestinian state. Arafat turned down an offer from Barak.

When Jordan took control of that that territory, including East Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, they expelled or murdered all Jewish citizens living there. After the second world war ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia and Poland. Israel _didn't_ expel residents of the West Bank, after capturing it in a defensive war, and somehow that makes Israel not a democracy?

People live in the West Bank. If you take control of the area for 58 years you need to give them some rights and either make them citizens or give them independence. Neither thing happened, and the reality is that they live in an apartheid system, with different laws than other Israelis living in the same area. Israel might be a democracy but Palestinians are not citizens of Israel.

Germans expelled from parts of Europe was also bad, so?

Why should they be given independence? They're formerly Jordanian citizens and formerly Ottoman subjects. It's not as though some country or civil polity has been eliminated and needs to be restored. There never was any. They were offered a country by the Peel Report in 1937 and then the UN Resolution 181 in 1947, but they rejected it. They were offered a country by Barak in 2000 and Olmert in 2008, but they rejected it. They were given de facto control over Gaza, but they used the opportunity to launch rockets at Israel for 15 years and then to commit Oct 7th.

Germans expelled from parts of Europe was good! It was the natural consequence of Germany trying to take over all of Europe and failing. Germany has now lived in peace with its neighbours for 80 years. The people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have not demonstrated they can live in peace with Israel.

Then don’t give them independence, but if Israel has administrative control of the area, it must respect the human rights of the people that live there. If I’m a foreign national in a country I can do almost everything a national can do besides voting: I can buy land wherever I want, move freely, work freely, travel abroad. Palestinians can’t. So it’s one or the other, either you consider them a nation with whom you can have a peace treaty and thus all the “they are not a country” doesn’t apply, or they are foreign nationals and you have to treat them as such. Israel chooses the awful option: apartheid, because then it can still keep an ethnic state whiteout killing or deporting millions. It is debatable if Israel needs to be an ethnic state to protect Jews, but at least its apologists should acknowledge that.

> If I’m a foreign national in a country I can do almost everything a national can do besides voting

Certainly not in general! That very much depends on the country and the immigration status under which you are in that country. Most visas strongly restrict the right to work. If you leave, you may not be allowed back in, unless you can obtain fresh clearance.

Under the Oslo Accords, signed by Israel and the PLO, the recognised representative body of the Palestinian people, the West Bank is partitioned into areas designated A, B and C. That agreement gives Israel control in area C, the Palestinian Authority control in area A, and B is somewhere in between. Israelis are forbidden to enter area A, by the way. Israel conducts itself in accordance with this agreement signed up to by the PLO.

Anything else is pending further negotiation between the two parties, and perhaps a final status agreement (though I am increasingly pessimistic about the potential for a final status agreement).

So, I absolutely do not think it's "one of the other". It's an extremely rare situation in human history with no specific well-trodden path for how it should be resolved. Israeli prime ministers have offered the Palestinian leadership their own state twice in the 21st century. Both offers were rejected.

So are Palestinians immigrants in Israel, without a visa? Even immigrants have freedom of movement and are subject to the same laws as nationals.

They are of course not illegals immigrants, because they were already there.

So what are they? When it’s convenient, they are a nation that doesn’t want peace. When it’s convenient, Palestine was never a country. So what is it?

Not all of them were already there. Many immigrated there from Jordan (and to the Gaza Strip from Egypt) post 1948.

In the West Bank they are former Jordanian citizens who had their citizenship revoked post 1967. Egypt never offered residents of Gaza citizenship, so I suppose they are former Ottoman Empire subjects without any new state to become citizens of. Remember that they rejected the creation of an Arab state in 1948 under UN Resolution 181, and Israel supported the creation of such a state.

Broadly, they are a stateless population that has made war on Israel since 1948 (and against Jews in the area since before then) and it is hard to see why it's Israel that owes them something, as opposed to their Egyptian and Jordanian allies who were in control of those territories and their lives for 20 years.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordanian_annexation_of_the_We...

Israel owes them something because they control the territory where they live. If you are fine with countries anexing territories and then discriminating people based on ethnicity, then no, they don’t owe them anything.

Then why didn't Jordan and Egypt give them a country when they controlled the territory where they live? The answer is because they didn't want a country there, they wanted the land that is called "Israel". Egypt never gave them citizenship, but that didn't seem to be a problem to them. They tried to attack Israel, not Egypt. There's more to this story than you're telling.

So because in 1966 Egypt didn’t give them citizenship, Israel can do the same in 2025 plus occupying then military, displace them, jail them and kill them? Until when? 10 years more? 100? 1000?

Here’s more to this story https://conquer-and-divide.btselem.org/map-en.html

The point is if they wanted a state they would have agitated for one during the UN Resolution 181 vote. But they didn't. Or they would have agitated for it between 1948 and 1967, when they were occupied by Egypt and Jordan. But they didn't. They didn't attack Egypt and Jordan to try to force their hand to give them a state. They attacked Israel, when Israel didn't occupy any land outside its currently "internationally recognised borders"! And now they supposedly want a state on the land that they already had? They only decided they wanted a state on that land once Israel occupied it.

Here's Hasan Zomlot, Palestinian ambassador to the UK, claiming yesterday that "We will leave back to our homes inside the '48 areas, we will go back to our land, we will go back to Yaffa and Haifa!".

https://x.com/koshercockney/status/1901248223580160056

I'm not surprised Israel is being cautious.

Maybe they don't like Israeli occupation which has been going on for 58 years, while their access to land has been reduced more and more.

And besides, I'm not even talking about statehood, my main point is Israel's awful treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank, based only on ethnicity.

Maybe they don't like it, but if so then I would have thought they would have chosen statehood when they were offered it in 2000 or 2008. Moreover, they never even had any land to begin with! No country of Palestine has ever existed. To reiterate, it was previously Jordanian-occupied, British-governed, Ottoman-ruled. Something else is clearly going on, beyond what you're saying.

I don't like the word "treat" in this context. I don't believe Israel "treats" Palestinians in any way. Rather, the state of Israel has a particular policy on the Palestinian issue because of their shared history, no small part of which is the Palestinians repeatedly attempting to eliminate Israel.

But if you insist on using the word "treat", then I'll add that I don't like the way Palestine treats the Israelis either.

Israel's policy is not based on ethnicity, it's based on citizenship, as is usual in a western democracy. Arab citizens of Israel have the same relationship to the state as any other citizens of Israel, for example.

I agree that many Palestinians are in an awful situation. I disagree that Israel bears the blame or the responsibility to resolve the issue.

So the country that military occupies the territory where the Palestinian live, jails them, shoots them, restricts their movement, restricts their ability to build, restricts their airspace and borders, and they bear no responsibility? Israel’s primary policy is ethnicity, just check the “ Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People” enacted in 2018.

I just can't understand, if they are suffering all that, why they didn't jump at the chance for their own state one of the many times they were offered one. It's not as though Mahmood Abbas or Yasser Arafat are hated Palestinian figures for turning down a state. Something else must be going on.

So if they don’t accept the offer Israel is giving them then they must suffer? It’s either what Israel offers or military occupation?

You're presenting that dichotomy, not me. I'm sure they have plenty of possible courses of action. I'm just trying to say that it's not obvious to me that they actually want a state, and if they don't then there's not much Israel can do about the situation.

Sure there is, they can stop the military occupation and leave.

Interesting idea! How do you think it would turn out? You might like to reference in your answer the time in 2005 when Israel did exactly that, and the consequences that occurred on Oct 7 2023.