Israel did want peace with Gaza (Gaza specifically, not West Bank). After the 2005 Gaza disengagement, Israel did a lot to normalize relations with Gaza. They wanted peace until they gave up all attempts to do so, after October 7th.
Peace implies disengagement by maintaining long-standing borders. India wants peace by maintaining Line of Actual Control (LAC). Be it China or Pakistan, India has never been the one to escalate first. When engaging with nations that want peace, India has been able to resolve complex border issues. Eg: Srilanka[1] and Bangladesh [2].
Russia and China do not want peace because they are invading past their effective borders into lands they do not control.
All wars are not defensive. All countries are not the same. Each war is different, and it is fair to impose different judgements on the participants of each war.
> Peace implies disengagement by maintaining long-standing borders.
Before I write a novel of a response, can you rigorously define "long-standing borders", as well as the implied words of "nation", "country", and "state"? How far back in history is "long standing" valid for? Some of these things are matters of history, how do you deal with historians disagreeing on the ground truth? What happens when someone strongly asserts something that is factually untrue?
All wars are defensive in that the combatants are told they are defending, not attacking. Russians in Ukraine don't think they are attacking, they think they are defending Russia from NATO or de-nazifying Ukraine, or at least that is their national narrative.
Mostly I think your post proved my overall point, which is that peace is not a meaningful word because its meaning is relative to its speakers beliefs rather than in reference to a universalize-able moral framework describing about what justice is.
In what possible sense can you possible mean that "all wars are defensive"?
And it is absurd to claim that Russia wants peace. It can literally have peace anytime it wants by simply pulling its troops out of Ukrainian territory and ceasing the launching of missiles and drones on the populace.
The US threats on Canada and Greenland are not made with "peace" in mind.
OP's point is warhawks and propaganda can easily weaponize their position as the aggressors as being "peace seeking".
The best example of this is the Iraq war. The US invaded another country and sold it as a peace keeping mission because "They are building weapons of mass destruction!".
In fact, the US has decades of history doing such actions (see: banana republics and the CIA's anti-communism efforts).
> In what possible sense can you possible mean that "all wars are defensive"?
I think the argument is all wars can be defensively spun. Russia apologists falling for the imminent-Ukraine-membership lie, MAGAs falling for the idea that we’re defending our Arctic interests by invading Greenland, Hitler’s argument that the Nazis were defending against a jealous Jewry and Europe, et cetera. The justifications for war are always, in part, however flimsily, couched in terms of defence (in modern times).
Common street robbers want peace too. They want to rob you of your property as peacefully as possible. They very much want you to just surrender and let it happen.
Violence is usually conditional. It comes with instructions on how to avoid it. Let the criminal take your things and he won't shoot you. Let us take this territory and you won't be killed. If you surrender and submit to our rule, you will have your peace. It's just that the cost is your land, your economy, your freedom, your secuity, your dignity, your pride, your self-determination
The key fact about violence is nobody actually wants it. Everybody wants peace. At the same time, everybody also wants scarce resources that others are unwilling to just hand over to them. So they use the threat of violence to get what they want. Actual violence is risky and all bets are off once it escalates. Without the threat of violence though, why negotiate when you can just take?
So there's a lot of nuance to "peace". India cannot claim to want peace and then suspend a treaty that provides vital water resources to Pakistan. Pakistan cannot claim to want peace and at the same time support insurgency against India. All of these things will obviously escalate the situtation until it erupts into war.
I didn’t read it that way. I read it more that saying India is a peaceful nation is probably not the full truth. As a third party I always had the impression this was one of those tit for tat forever wars. Each attack there is usually an antagonist but over the whole course it’s muddy.
You have to be careful with that word, peace, because all wars are defensive.