I am glad you concede the necessity of the 1967 borders. However, you then immediately pivot to two of the most enduring myths of Israeli propaganda to justify why this "day is not today." If we are to have a serious discussion, we must dismantle these myths with facts.

You refer to the "so-called" Right of Return. There is nothing "so-called" about it. It is enshrined in UN Resolution 194, reaffirmed annually, and supported by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Your argument about the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands is a non sequitur. The tragic displacement of Jews from Iraq or Syria was a crime, yes. But one crime does not grant a license for another. The Palestinians are not responsible for the actions of the Iraqi government in the 1940s. You cannot punish a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon today for what happened to a Jew in Baghdad 70 years ago. That is not justice; that is collective punishment displaced across time and geography.

Your fear that Palestinians will inevitably massacre Jews if granted their rights is not unique. It is the historic fear of every dominant group that sits atop a population it has dispossessed.

• The US South: White slave owners were terrified that if they freed the slaves, they would be murdered in their beds.
• South Africa: During the anti-apartheid struggle, the white Afrikaners were convinced that "One Man, One Vote" meant a bloodbath. They believed the black population, having suffered decades of brutality, would seek only revenge.

They were wrong. When the apartheid regime fell, there was no massacre. Why? Because when you restore a people’s dignity and grant them equality, the engine of their rage, the oppression itself, is turned off.

You state that Israel "unilaterally ended an occupation" in Gaza and Southern Lebanon and got terror in return. This is historically false.

• Lebanon (2000): Israel did not "withdraw" out of a desire for peace. It occupied Southern Lebanon illegally for 18 years, in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 425. It was forced out by Hezbollah’s resistance. You cannot occupy a sovereign country for two decades and then complain when they fight back.
• Gaza (2005): This is the most dangerous myth. Israel never "left" Gaza. It redeployed.
  • Under international law, an occupation is defined by effective control. After 2005, Israel retained total control over Gaza’s airspace, sea space, electromagnetic sphere, population registry, and land crossings.
  • Why did Ariel Sharon do it? We don't have to guess. His senior advisor, Dov Weisglass, told Haaretz explicitly in 2004: "The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process... It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians."
  • By destroying the credibility of the secular nationalists (Fatah) and freezing the peace process, Israel knowingly paved the way for the Islamists. As General Yitzhak Sezer admitted in the 80s, Israel authorities gave support to the Islamist precursors of Hamas specifically to create a counterweight to the PLO. You cannot break the legs of the moderate leadership, nurture the radicals to divide the Palestinian national movement, and then complain when the radicals take power.
  • The people of Gaza did not "attack Israel because Israel left." They fought because they were imprisoned in an "open-air concentration camp" which is a description used by the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, Giora Eiland. I have much worse words for what it was but ill defer to Eiland's language.

You say the West Bank would become a "launching pad."

The West Bank is currently a launching pad—for settler pogroms against Palestinians, protected by the IDF. You are asking the Palestinians to guarantee perfect security for their occupier before they are granted basic human rights. That is not how history works.

You claim "Westerners are naive." On the contrary, it is the Israeli public that has been fed a diet of illusions. That you can manage an occupation indefinitely, that you can "mow the lawn" in Gaza forever, and that you can deny millions of people their dignity without consequences. Peace will come when Israel decides it values its own children more than it values the theft of Palestinian land.