What do you mean by sensitive? The situation is ubiquitous. Usually, when it comes to this point, it is in fact resolved by ethnic cleansing. See Nagorno-Karabakh, 2023. See the aftermath of constant civil wars throughout Africa. See the aftermath of WWII. 1/

What makes Israel/Palestine so sensitive is that the rest of the world has wound itself up in the conflict, external partisans on both sides have emboldened and entrenched the two absolutely disgusting ethnonational projects. 2/

That has helped bring the situation to the point where any sort of integrated state (which might encompasses anything from French imperialism of internal neutality to US-style pluralism to Franco-Canadian style internal accommodationism to UK/Belgium-style regionalism) is impossible. 3/

Well meaning outsiders, whether diasporic liberal Zionists, or Arab nationalists who insisted Palestinians maintain permanent refugee status rather than be resettled, have made the conflict infinitely worse, helped to prevent any earlier human and humane settlement. 4/

In any case, the conflict has reached the point where the only likely settlement will be some kind of population transfer. Perhaps morally it ought to be the Jews of Israel that leave, but I suspect that's less likely. 5/

The language first of "national rights" — both of Jews, then of Palestinians — made this problem, and then the language of "international law" kept it simmering by absurdly keeping "a people" stuck in limbo when conflicts in fact end only by integrating the populations made refugees elsewhere. 6/

And now it will be a very hard pill to swallow, after all of the foolish, useless "sacrifice" and "martyrdom" for both detestable national projects, that "ethnic cleansing" will be the solution. Or it won't, and the Palestinian population will continue to be immiserated. 7/

Or Iran or someone else will throw in a monkey wrench, and a big war will become a regional etch-a-sketch. 8/

And if we collectively survive that war (only an if), the population transfers that will inevitable result at its end will be an afterthought, we'll have stopped worrying about "ethnic cleansing". /fin

i meant in the sense that i don’t know that we feel shy about applying the “g-label” to other conflicts! it’s always easier to add up the moral score if you’re not directly involved. the ambiguity the sense that it’s a trap happens if you have sympathy for the perp 😝