system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Israel is under no obligation, morally or legally, to withdraw from it's 'occupied' states

Hello! First off, I should specify that I'm a white atheist who lives in the hills of Kentucky. I don't have a personal stake in the matter, other than a slight prejudice of affection towards the Jews, for instance how I feel really bad about what happened to them in 1945. (Don't bother trying to absolve me of guilt, that's not the CMV)

Secondly, I doubt anyone on Earth is fully educated about all the stuff that goes down over there, let alone some bum in Kentucky, so I could be wrong or over generalizing.

Anyway, it's my understanding that when Israel was created, it was MUCH smaller than today. However, a GROUP (3 I believe) of nations attacked Israel very shortly after creation and when Israel won the ensuing war "with one arm tied behind it's back" they acquired the land around them and nearly doubled their size.

On top of this, the nation itself was created from land 'acquired' through wars we (the allies in WWI and WWII) didn't start. First it came from the defeated Ottomans, then Palestine allied with the axis powers and subsequently lost again.

This seems to me like a clear case of "screwed around too much and got burned". An occupation, to me, is when an aggressor invading army takes control of a country through force but doesn't exactly annex it into the larger nation. (Not a defender) For example, the Nazi occupation of France. (AFAIK the nations conquered by Germany were not absorbed into a larger Germany but instead kept their names as opposed to the Roman empire, the Sengoku period, or the U.S. civil war)

Instead it seems to me like Israel 'won' this land fair and square. And we are using school yard rules otherwise the whole area would get along. This is like someone getting jumped on the playground by three people, fighting them off, then being held liable for hospital bills, or taking their wallets. If someone comes into my house and I fight him off, I'm taking his wallet.

So why, then, do people exclaim that Israel is 'occupying' those lands and should forfeit them? Why do the surrounding people have such hostilities?

I understand that Israel should probably just give it up to ease tension, but I do not think they are obligated to anymore than we were obligated to free Japan (Though of course we did) or allow Germany to remain intact, albeit in two halves, as opposed to that country being annexed into the U.K., U.S., or surrounding countries like Poland.
gpt
What you're proposing is called the "one state solution" where the peoples of the West Bank and Gaza are fully integrated into the Israeli state and have an equal basis in citizenship with all other Israeli citizens.  Though most people involved don't like that solution for a variety of reasons, it would certainly comply with the legal and moral imperatives of equality and sovereignty.

It is not however the reality of how Israel treats those territories today.  The residents of the West Bank and Gaza are not considered Israeli citizens, nor are they citizens of any other country.  They are subject to the control of the Israeli government, but do not have a vote in how that government operates.  It is widely considered immoral and unacceptable in modern societies for people to lack any democratic means to influence their government.

> An occupation, to me, is when an invading army takes control of a country through force but doesn't exactly annex it into the larger nation. 

This is exactly what is going on in the territories.  Israel purposely does not consider all of their land to be fully "Israel" where people born there would be entitled to citizenship.  They treat it as effectively a colony where the people are stateless and subject to Israeli control, but not Israeli rights.