This is an oft-cited contention regarding pre-Zionist Palestine. The Jewish population pre-aliyah, never more than 6% of the total, was mostly poor, elderly & confined to cities like Jerusalem. They were seldom heard from & never seen. Anything like a return to that circumstance (which some do advocate) seems impossible.

It's hard to imagine a Hamas-run Palestine resembling anything like a democracy, not given their treatment of the opposition in Gaza.

You say it's not yours to judge the way people resist their oppressors, but forming the state in the first place was a way the Jews resisted both the Holocaust & post-war antisemitism. Many Holocaust survivors would have preferred to immigrate to the US or Great Britain, but even after the war they were not welcome there. Some remained in DP camps into the 1950s because they were stateless. Ultimately only Israel took them in.

The killing of those food aid workers, along with Bibi's attempt to widen the war by attacking Iran, were the final straws for me. I don't support the IDF or its mission in Gaza. But neither would I compare Israel with the US, Britain, France, etc. Those were empires with colonial outposts peopled from metropoles. Israel has no metropole. So I continue to support it, just as an American I support my country, even should it choose to re-elect He-Who-We-Do-Not-Name, & yet again abandon allies abroad while restricting the rights of women & people of color & the poor.

What we need here is an immediate ceasefire, Israeli w/d from Gaza & the West Bank. Israel can't forcibly withdraw settlers from the West Bank (you recall the problems they had evicting just a few thousand settlers from Gaza in '05!), so give them the choice of repatriating to Israel or become Palestinian citizens. Natural gas & oil might become the bases for rebuilding Gaza & creating opportunity in the West Bank.

What I'm suggesting is highly unlikely given the maniacs currently running things, but I think it's Israel's only chance for long-term survival & prosperity.