Firstly:
Okay now for the post.
When Palestine is liberated, I think the vast majority of settlers will either be [redacted] or forced out of the region. There is no way that any Arab in the region will accept having a settler in their land, and the settlers know this. The plan will have to be a mass exodus for the west, both for their safety and livelihood (I can see many going into ghoul industries like defense, tech, and police training).
That being said, how would you react if your country decides to accept settlers? Would you support the move? If they were going to live in your community/ neighborhoods how would you feel?
Which Israeli citizens qualify as a settler? Every single one? Fine.
Unless you have a way to identify which settlers are real genocidal maniacs and which were just born in the wrong place at the wrong time, I don’t think you can treat every single one as the former.
I’m sure many Israelis don’t necessarily “deserve” refugee status. However, I believe in immutable human rights, and until you can prove someone engaged in or enabled the genocide, those rights still stand.
As for the optics of allowing settlers to be seen as refugees, I feel like that definitely takes a back seat to defending human rights.
I don’t think settlers are genociders necessarily, but that doesn’t mean that they have a right to any land either.
It’s not about optics, you’re doing every refugee and migrant a disservice by lopping ex-settlers with them. Refugees and migrants don’t steal land and attempt to turn the native population into second class citizens, that’s just a reactionary myth.
Except the Israelis actually did do that, so you can’t say they’re the same thing as Syrians, Sudanese, Congolese, etc escaping war and genocide.
You don’t have to “punish” people on behalf of the Palestinians, but you also can’t act like they’re the same thing as South/ Central American migrants coming to the US to escape poverty and violence just for a chance to give their family a better life.