Go back in history and you will find out that after the second World War, the decision was made that the Great Israel would be built on Palestine’s land.

As time passed, Israel got larger and larger on the Map by taking control of Palestine.

The location belongs to Palestine, and it was always their home. However, because they are the weakest in the Middle East, Israel took advantage of this weakness to grow.

If you check out the live news you will always read something about the  amount of civilians killed in Palestine, or you will hear things like “Israeli soldiers entered a mosque with their boots..”

It always struck me as unusual that following the second World War, when everyone was decolonizing and advancing self-determination, that in one little corner of the world the powers that be declared that this one particular people should have to give up their right to self-determine for another  people's right to self-determine on land that hitherto everyone agreed was theirs.

As Gandhi wrote in 1938, “And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it the wrong way. The Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their hearts.

But if they must look to the land of Palestine as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs.

They should seek to convert the Arab heart. The same God rules the Arab heart who rules the Jewish heart. They can offer satyagraha in front of the Arabs and offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them. They will find the world opinion in their favor in their religious aspiration.

There are hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only discard the help of the British bayonet. As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them.”

Of course, Gandhi proposed the same form of nonviolent resistance of the Jews in Germany, perhaps not expecting that the Germans or the Palestinians might have very well taken them up on that offer, and it has been said that if Gandhi had actually lived in Palestine he would have given up nonviolence in about a week.

But his point still stands: you cannot bomb people into liking you. It doesn’t matter how high Israel builds its walls if it’s still afraid of what’s on the other side of them, and Israel’s recent policies regarding the expansion of settlements, the blockade, and the building of the wall across 9% of West Bank territory, does not seem calculated to win the Palestinians over.

Many defenders of Israel on Quora have argued that Israel cannot be an apartheid state because the Arab citizens of Israel have full voting rights, but in almost the same breath they say “We can’t give a right of return to refugees and their descendants because then they might actually use their voting rights to alter the country.”

I wonder what Israel’s plan would have been if Al-Naqba hadn’t happened and all those millions of Palestinians were still in Israel’s borders. It’s almost like a threat: “Israel is a Jewish democratic state, but don’t make us choose between the Jewish part and the democratic part because you may not like which one we pick.”

Of course, there is the objection, “Haven’t the Israeli Jews the right of self-determination as well?” As to that, I wonder if self-determination is really a zero-sum game.

My country, the United States, has the largest Jewish population after Israel, and I don’t think anyone seriously thinks that American Jews do not have the right to self-determination. As Gandhi wrote earlier in the same letter “Why should they [the Jews] not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?”

Obviously, the answer comes “Because the Germans won’t let them, or the Russians won’t let them, or the King of Spain won’t let them, or the Arab countries around Israel won’t let them.” However, this doesn’t justify inflicting the same injury on another group that they have suffered themselves.

I said above, though, that I support the Palestinians in spite of the efforts of the Palestinians, and I do. Israel, at least within the 67 borders is a fait accomplit now, having gained international recognition, and so the goal of destroying it as an excuse for not negotiating is pointless (although I do wonder what the international response would be if the Palestinians and the Arab countries decided to ratify the 1948 partition lines after all this time).

Likewise, the firing of unguidable rockets out of Gaza, or committing terrorism or attacks on civilians, is indefensible. But neither do these tactics, in my view, erase the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause.

The simplest solution is for Israel to give up most of the West Bank (except where Jewish population blocks reside) for an independent, but de-militarized Palestinian state; Israel to compensate the Palestinians financially for their suffering as refugees, and the Palestinians to give up “the right of return” to Israel, for ever, and recognize Israel as a national home for Jews.

This solution was attempted partially in the Oslo accords, but so far has led only to more violence. It seems like most Israelis and Palestinians don’t support such a deal anymore, or if some do, they are too silent, letting the hard liners have their say.