Introduction
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is a decades-long struggle marked by deep historical grievances, competing nationalisms, and profound human impact on both sides. It defies simple explanation: both Israelis and Palestinians have narratives of victimhood, survival, and rights that often clash directly. This report seeks to navigate the complexity by presenting each side’s core claims in a neutral, analytical tone. The goal is not to advocate for one perspective, but to clarify what each side argues and examine those claims against factual records and international law. By unpacking the accusations that Israeli and Palestinian voices level at each other – and then analyzing those accusations with evidence – readers can gain a clearer understanding of this conflict’s reality. The tone throughout remains measured and academic, avoiding emotional or partisan language. In the end, the evidence will guide us toward recognizing where each side’s claims hold up, where they do not, and how an imbalance of power and accountability underpins much of the conflict’s dynamics.
Section One: Israeli Accusations Against Palestinians
Israel and its supporters accuse Palestinian factions – particularly Hamas and other Islamist groups – of a range of severe offenses. Presented in the strongest terms as an Israeli official or advocate might, these accusations include:
- Hamas Terrorism: Israel emphasizes that Hamas (the Islamist militant group governing Gaza) is a terrorist organization responsible for relentless attacks on Israeli civilians. Since the 1990s, Hamas has carried out suicide bombings, shootings, and rocket barrages that have killed hundreds of Israelis. Israeli officials point to incidents like bus bombings during the Second Intifada and the more recent October 7, 2023 massacre, when Hamas-led fighters breached Israel’s border, murdering around 1,400 people and taking civilian hostages in an unprecedented attack (October 7 Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes by Hamas-led Groups | Human Rights Watch). Hamas’s tactics – from indiscriminate rocket fire to mass-casualty terror attacks – are cited as clear evidence of its commitment to terrorism and its rejection of peaceful coexistence.
- Use of Human Shields: The Israeli government frequently accuses Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups of using Gaza’s civilian population as human shields. According to Israeli claims, militants deliberately embed their personnel, weapons, and command centers within homes, schools, hospitals, and mosques in order to deter Israeli strikes (What is a human shield and how has Hamas been accused of using them? | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian) (What is a human shield and how has Hamas been accused of using them? | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian). For example, Israel asserts that Hamas has built a command bunker under Gaza City’s main hospital, Al-Shifa, effectively “placing its military assets beneath a civilian target”. In Israeli narratives, such behavior not only endangers Palestinian civilians by drawing fire to protected sites, but also represents a cynical war crime on Hamas’s part – prioritizing propaganda against Israel over the lives of Gaza’s own residents.
- Rejection of Peace Proposals: A recurring Israeli claim is that Palestinian leaders have consistently walked away from opportunities to achieve peace and statehood. Pro-Israel voices argue that Palestinians squandered multiple historic chances to resolve the conflict. They note that the Arab and Palestinian leadership rejected the United Nations partition plan in 1947, which would have created both a Jewish and an Arab state (United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine - Wikipedia). Later, at the Camp David Summit in 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak – with U.S. support – offered the Palestinians an independent state in Gaza and most of the West Bank, yet Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat refused the deal without presenting a counter-proposal (Bill Clinton: Young Americans shocked to learn Arafat turned down Palestinian state | The Times of Israel). Similarly, Israel recalls that in 2008, PA President Mahmoud Abbas turned down a far-reaching peace offer from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that included nearly all of the West Bank and a share of Jerusalem (Abbas admits he rejected 2008 peace offer from Olmert | The Times of Israel). To Israeli officials, this pattern suggests a Palestinian unwillingness to compromise or accept any solution that recognizes Jewish statehood, reinforcing the narrative that “Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
- Antisemitic Rhetoric: Israeli representatives accuse Palestinian factions of engaging in antisemitic hate speech and incitement. They point to Hamas’s founding charter of 1988, which is rife with anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and tropes. (For instance, the charter explicitly cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an infamous antisemitic forgery, as factual (Hamas’s Genocidal Intentions Were Never a Secret - The Atlantic).) In Israeli discourse, Hamas’s ideology is characterized as genocidally antisemitic – portraying the conflict not just as political opposition to Israel, but as a religiously and racially driven desire to kill Jews. Beyond Hamas, Israel also highlights instances of antisemitism in Palestinian society, such as school textbooks that erase Jewish historical ties or officials’ speeches that invoke hateful stereotypes. This accusation holds that hostile propaganda has poisoned Palestinian popular attitudes, with terrorist violence being incited by a steady drumbeat of antisemitic messages from political leaders, media, and mosques.
- Deliberate Targeting of Israeli Civilians: Another key charge is that Palestinian militant groups intentionally target civilians as a strategy. Unlike the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which Israel says tries to avoid non-combatant casualties, groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are accused of aiming to kill and terrorize Israeli civilians wherever possible. Israeli officials cite the firing of thousands of unguided rockets at Israeli cities, which by design cannot distinguish military from civilian targets. Human Rights Watch and others have documented that such rocket barrages killed numerous civilians and are indiscriminate by nature (Palestinian Rockets in May Killed Civilians in Israel, Gaza | Human Rights Watch). Suicide bombings during the 2000–2005 intifada targeted buses, cafes, and markets – places chosen to maximize civilian death tolls. From Israel’s perspective, these are not accidental tragedies but deliberate war crimes. The very goal of Palestinian “terror” attacks, they argue, is to spread fear among Israelis by massacring innocents – a stark violation of the laws of war and a fundamental reason Israel must take tough security measures.
In sum, the Israeli narrative portrays Palestinian militants, especially Hamas, as morally reprehensible actors: terrorists who glorify killing civilians, use their own people as shields, spurn every chance for peace, and spew antisemitic hatred. These accusations form the basis of Israel’s case that its own actions are taken in self-defense against an implacable enemy.
Section Two: Palestinian Accusations Against Israel
Palestinians and their advocates level equally grave accusations against the State of Israel, focusing on what they describe as decades of structural oppression and violations of Palestinian rights. Articulated here in the voice of a knowledgeable Palestinian human-rights advocate, the primary claims include:
- Occupation: Palestinians assert that Israel has illegally occupied Palestinian land by force since 1967. In the Six-Day War, Israel seized the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip – territories that Palestinians view as the site of their future sovereign state. Ever since, Israel has retained military control over these areas (Gaza’s direct military rule ended in 2005, but Israel still controls its borders and airspace). The occupation is seen as inherently oppressive: an entire people kept under military administration without basic political rights. Palestinians emphasize that this occupation defies international law and numerous U.N. resolutions. They note that the U.N. Security Council in Resolution 242 called for Israeli withdrawal from lands occupied in 1967, and the International Court of Justice has affirmed the territories’ occupied status. To Palestinians, the enduring occupation means daily reality of soldiers, checkpoints, land seizures, and humiliating restrictions – a system they describe as foreign colonial domination that has denied them freedom and nationhood for over 55 years.
- Apartheid: Increasingly, Palestinians accuse Israel of practicing apartheid, a term originally used for South Africa’s system of racial segregation but now defined in international law as systematic oppression by one racial group over another. They argue that from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, one regime (the Israeli state) governs two peoples with unequal rights. In the occupied West Bank, roughly 700,000 Israeli settlers live in exclusive communities with full Israeli citizenship rights, while millions of Palestinians next door live under military law and have no civil rights in the overarching system. Within Israel proper, Palestinian Arab citizens (about 20% of the population) face institutional discrimination as well – for example, laws that favor Jewish communities and restrict Palestinian access to land and resources. Palestinian advocates cite major human rights organizations that have concluded that Israel’s policies constitute apartheid: a 2021 Human Rights Watch report accused Israeli authorities of an overarching policy to “maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians”, amounting to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution (Israel is committing the crime of apartheid, rights group says | Israel | The Guardian). In Palestinian eyes, the label “apartheid” encapsulates the depth of Israel’s systematic bias – a dual legal and political system that privileges Jews and represses Palestinians across all areas under Israeli control.
- Forced Displacement: Palestinians charge that Israel was founded and expanded through the forced displacement of Palestinian Arabs, and that this process continues today. The seminal trauma is the Nakba (“Catastrophe”) of 1948, when over 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes during Israel’s creation (Nakba generation relive trauma of displacement in Gaza | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian). Hundreds of Arab villages were depopulated and destroyed, and those refugees and their descendants (now numbering in the millions) have been denied the right to return to their homeland for over seven decades. Palestinians describe the Nakba as an act of ethnic cleansing and note that Israel’s refusal to allow refugees back violates U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194. Moreover, Palestinians say Israel has never stopped displacing Arabs: in the 1967 war, another wave of Palestinians were uprooted, and under occupation Israel has continued to demolish Palestinian homes and evict families, especially in areas desired for Jewish settlements. For instance, in the occupied West Bank (Area C), Palestinian communities like those in East Jerusalem or the Jordan Valley face home demolitions and land confiscation. Israel’s policies of not issuing building permits to Palestinians and demolishing “unauthorized” structures – while simultaneously expanding Jewish settlements – are viewed as a systematic effort to push Palestinians off their land (‘A new Nakba’: settler violence forces Palestinians out of West Bank villages | Palestinian territories | The Guardian). Palestinians thus see a through-line from 1948 to today: a deliberate Israeli project to remove or reduce the Palestinian presence and take control of as much land as possible.
- War Crimes in Gaza: Palestinian officials and human rights groups accuse Israel of repeatedly committing war crimes during military operations in Gaza. They point to the extraordinarily high civilian death tolls and destruction in conflicts such as the 2008–2009 Gaza War, the 2014 Gaza War, and other rounds of fighting. In these assaults, Israeli airstrikes and artillery have leveled residential neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, and U.N. shelters, killing thousands of Palestinian civilians (including many children). For example, during the 2014 Gaza war (Operation Protective Edge), over 1,400 Palestinian civilians were killed, among them more than 550 children (Key figures on the 2014 hostilities | United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - Occupied Palestinian Territory). Such figures, Palestinians argue, cannot be excused as collateral damage – they indicate a pattern of indiscriminate and disproportionate force. Palestinian accusations include specific alleged war crimes: the use of heavy firepower in densely populated areas, targeted killings of civilians like children on a beach, white phosphorus munitions over civilian districts, and punitive destruction of infrastructure (electricity, water, press offices). They contend that Israel’s blockade has trapped Gaza’s population, and then its bombardments (as in 2021 and 2023) inflict collective punishment. U.N. investigations and NGOs have indeed found credible evidence of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza. From the Palestinian perspective, Israel’s military might is wielded with gross impunity, repeatedly inflicting massacres on a defenseless civilian population – acts they say amount to war crimes or even crimes against humanity.
- Unequal Laws: Palestinians allege that Israel operates a framework of dual laws and policies that grant Jews superior rights and relegate Palestinians to inferior status. In the occupied West Bank, two different legal systems exist side by side: Jewish settlers are subject to Israel’s civilian law and have democratic rights, while Palestinian residents live under Israeli military law with far fewer rights and harsh penalties (Applying the law by ethnicity: Israel's dual legal systems explained - +972 Magazine). This dual system governs everything from freedom of movement to access to resources and justice, and Palestinians argue it is blatantly discriminatory. Within Israel proper, Palestinian citizens face a host of discriminatory statutes – for example, laws that restrict Arab towns’ growth and favor Jews in state land allocation, or a ban on Palestinian family reunification that doesn’t apply to Jews. A focal point is the 2018 Nation-State Law, an Israeli Basic Law that declares Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people and that only Jews have the right to self-determination in the country. Palestinian leaders denounced this law as enshrining Jewish supremacy; one Arab Knesset member said it told Palestinian citizens they will “always be second-class” in their own homeland (Israel’s controversial new “Jewish nation-state” law, explained | Vox). In sum, Palestinians claim that from land, housing, and citizenship laws to the administration of justice, Israel has codified inequality – a regime in which rights and privileges are contingent on one’s ethno-religious identity, not on universal principles.
- Systemic Restrictions on Basic Rights: Finally, Palestinians enumerate the many ways Israel restricts fundamental freedoms and quality of life for Palestinians under its control. These include freedom of movement – Palestinians in the West Bank must navigate a maze of Israeli checkpoints, roadblocks, and the separation barrier, which often make travel for work, education or family visits arduous or impossible (A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution | HRW). In Gaza, 2.3 million Palestinians live under a tight blockade imposed by Israel (and Egypt) since 2007, severely limiting the flow of people, food, medicine, and goods. This blockade has been widely condemned as a form of collective punishment of Gaza’s entire civilian population, depriving them of normal life and opportunity (Blockade of the Gaza Strip - Wikipedia). Freedom of speech and assembly is curtailed by military orders – Palestinians can be arrested for protesting or even social media posts deemed incitement. Economic development is stifled by Israeli control over resources: Palestinians have restricted access to their agricultural land and water (especially in the West Bank’s Area C), and Gaza’s economy has been strangled by closures. Movement between Gaza and the West Bank is almost entirely banned for Palestinians, splitting families and communities. Palestinians also face arbitrary detention, including Israel’s use of administrative detention (imprisonment without trial) affecting thousands over the years. In East Jerusalem and Hebron, Palestinians live under heavy surveillance and police control. Collectively, these restrictions amount to what Palestinians describe as an all-encompassing system of control over their lives – a denial of basic human rights and dignity on a mass scale, implemented through military might and bureaucratic regulations.
In summary, the Palestinian narrative portrays Israel as an aggressor state that has dispossessed and subjugated an indigenous people. The accusations paint a picture of systematic injustice: land theft, apartheid-like governance, violent repression, and a web of discriminatory laws – all enforced by a powerful military with little accountability. These are the core grievances Palestinians insist must be acknowledged and remedied to achieve a just peace.