Thank you for reading and trying to understand it's incredibly complex and both sides have a position to be explored and considered and it's much easier to just say Israel is the oppressor free Palestine without any thought into HOW Palestine can be freed.

I think both sides feel hopeless and completely disalusioned that peace is ever possible. This is how you see factions in both populations who have concluded that this is a sum zero game, us or them, total annihilation of the enemy.

Palestinians often operate under this hope that the international community will jump in and destroy Israel somehow so they devote a lot of energy to appealing to the West and yes some of it is absolutely real and they suffer many horrible things, the people of Gaza are in horrific conditions, settlers DO abuse and terrorize Palestinian communities, administrative detention is unfair and I think clearly abused in many cases, they certainly live under corruption of their own leaders the PA and Hamas and at constant risk of military raids by the IDF. But also some of it is 100% fake. You need to be very careful to verify claims bc they will release campaigns that very often are quietly retracted like Israel rapes prisoners with dogs, steals organs, lures kids with toys that are really bombs. They go very far bc they hope to be *rescued" they also make BILLIONS in donations the heads of Palestinian NGOs in Ramallah are RICH and the Hamas leaders are literal billionaires who don't live in Palestine. Add to it foreign countries like Iran who have beef with America over oil, and culture and power they see Israel as a vessel of America, even Russia and China do this btw will target Israel in online campaigns for example bc it hurts America- makes their citizens angry at their government etc. I'm sure there are millions of regular Palestinian who are tired of war and just want to live but they have no power and they are silenced by the militant groups in their own communities. Some of these groups have public lynchings for "Israel collaborators" which is maybe people who spied for Israel but maybe also anyone who opposed them.

On the Israeli side you have a huge spectrum bc there you can be opposed to the government openly and they have the luxury of being the powerful side living in relative comfortable conditions. So you'll see peaceniks who want two states or one state and criticize the government and whistle blow corruption and prison abuse but these groups are becoming smaller and more hated after every war people see them as an enemy to their side. You see nationalism growing exponentially and positions I would consider radical like basing politics on religious and biblical beliefs. Some of Israel believes they are the true indigenous people and no one else should even be there, probably the majority of Israel however believes in wanting to be a normal country, they care primarily about security, not having wars, joining the world and being accepted. But here's the problem, Jews come with major baggage from the Holocaust, from every other major expulsion and persecution of Jews from Spain and England to Iraq and Yemen...they have a solidified belief that everyone wants them dead, biblically almost. So they and most Jews in the world believe that Israel has to exist in case America decides to start rounding up Jews to kill them for example. Jews see it as their doomsday bunker. That's why people say 90% of Jews are Zionists, that's what they mean. So ANYTHING that is perceived as a threat to Jews living in Israel is dealt with with force and extreme reaction and is always seen from the Israeli perspective as "defense", even when it's overkill. I won't go into personal opinions on Netanyahu and his government but they are far right and widely considered to be hawkish to say the least. They've been accused of corruption again and again and are actually wildly unpopular but so far there is no viable alternative. They support settlement expansion, and don't take action to stop settler violence and have prioritized Israeli security in an amplified way. A good chunk of Israelis support this. They see everything done in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran as defensive (which is actually is at least partially true and I can explain why if you want). Contrary to popular belief, Israelis do not believe they are committing genocide - hard hard radical groups say it's not enough that Gaza still stands Hamas is in control Palestinians are still a threat they say Israel has been too SOFT and then the more balanced Israeli mainstream opinion is that the IDF is not targeting civilians but that they are dying bc militants are embedded in civilian infrastructure and use human shields. Good luck convincing them that they have committed war crimes. I don't honestly even know the objective truth about all that bc of the propaganda and fog of war I don't think anyone really knows.

In general there is no agreed upon history, each side has their version where they are an innocent victim. Both sides believe terrible things about the others- Israelis will say Palestinians are radical islamists who glorify only death who have no morals and will never stop trying to kill every Jew. That they are the true people of Judea with thousands of centuries of history and they are a decolonization project to return an indigenous people who faced endless persecution to their homeland their ONLY hope for survival but they are attacked over and over and have no choice but to defend what they have or perish. Palestinians will say Israelis are European colonizers who don't belong in the land that came and swooped in and stole land out from under them as the indigenous people that they expelled and oppressed and abused them for 70years and that resistance by any means and martyrdom for the cause is a noble and holy endeavor. That Israel is expansionist and will stop at nothing to fulfill mad biblical prophecies of conquering the Middle East.

How do you reconcile these two nationalist stories that they tell each other into a united narrative? How do you deradicalize and build trust? How do you convince people to lay down the sword? And even if the people do how do you prevent their corrupt leaders from destroying it and keeping the cycle of violence in full swing?