I always wonder why people talk about the root causes of a problem. It really goes nowhere.
Because to say there is X historical background to why they are doing Y now is no more of a justification than saying that they are doing Y for any reason at all.
For example, there was once a land where there were Germans-speaking and Czech-speaking people. They lived in complete peace for most years, until Czech nationalists started gettting fervourous and persecuted the Germanics in that region. One particular Germanic person from there crossed the mountains and went back all the way to Germany, started a nationalist movement there, and then started conquering back the last areas where Germans were being pushed out of and went marching onto the Czechs. And when this particular nationalist went too far, all the way into Russia, he started losing the war, and then the Czechs started moving back on them and re-persecuted the Germans for persecuting them.
Now, we COULD say that Czechs were having their due revenge, and then by that very collectivist logic, say that the Germans were also having their due revenge. And then you go back a little further, and all it starts off with is people who were living peacefully among each other, until they decided to start killing each other for no reason at all. Of course, maybe the Germans did go too far, and conquered the entire Czech region, but then again, anybody would be fanciful to think that somehow the Germans would have done nothing, and the violent Czech movement somehow wouldn’t have gone all the way to their soil, and with respect to the Czech’s own violence against Germans, it’s not like they would have done nothing, and the German nationalist movement wouldn’t have eventually come and started to purge them on their own soil as well. So that’s what I wonder - trying to find historical justification seems pointless, because you’ll never find the root causes there. The root causes are just rotten moral character, inability to respect peace, and prefering violence to a simple life of honest work. For both sides. I wouldn’t say there is some moral equality between the sides here - in fact, for each specific situation in isolation there’s always a clear aggressor and a clear victim.
I think it’s the same for all such cases. Whatever you may say about Israelis, Arabs, or Palestinians doing what they are doing, the root causes swing back to the Israeli appropriation of land, and yet they again also swing back to Ottoman era persecution of Jews, and we are again fanciful to think that Israelis can somehow do nothing, and their prejudiced and suspicious neighbours wouldn’t commit violence against them anyway. And yet, we’d also be fanciful to think that the neighbouring Arabs can make peace and do nothing, yet still not have fierce prejudice and suspicion from Israelis who’d suspect them of being potential threats to their nationalist movement. However deep you dig back into the whole conflict, it only comes back to a time when Jews and Muslims tolerated and didn’t mind each other back in the Ottoman days, until xenophobism and slow collapse made peaceful ethnic groups spontaneously commit violence against each other. Utlimately again, there is no root cause other than rotten moral character, inability to respect peace, and prefering violence to a life of honest work.
Of course, the Germans and Czechs, or the Arabs and Jews could have just drawn the line and taken what was theirs and left the rest, but restraint is not typically human, nor is staying your hand while knowing possible future threats. But all these issues somehow just start from, “I don’t like this guy and I want to start killing him and his kin.”