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The most generous answer I can give for why Americans think that, since I’ve been sympathetic to it myself, is that Americans have no concept of connection to land.

If you told me today that I have to move states, or move to Canada or Mexico, or else my family will likely be murdered and our house burned to the ground, I wouldn’t even hesitate.

I’d be upset obviously, I like where I live and don’t particularly want to be forced out of it. But I’ve lived here for a year, I lived in other states for most of my life, moved cities within those states multiple times, and none of those places were where my ancestors further back than my grandparents had ever lived.

The idea of “This land is where my family has lived for thousands of years, I will risk death to not leave it” is not a familiar concept to Americans. Honestly I find it confusing on both sides, I can’t imagine killing or dying over something that feels as meaningless to me as land. “Who cares just live somewhere else” is an argument with some weight, although I apply it more to the Israelis obviously.

Is it the consequences of settler colonialism? Yes, but I don’t even think because it’s like, imposing settler values, but because it’s created a group of people completely disconnected from any sort of homeland. I grew up in a place I had no strong connection to where the environment itself is hostile to my existence because my ancestors evolved to live on a cold rainy island where you see the sun like twice a year and then they put me in the tropics where the sun stung my skin.

This is not to justify anything obviously just to try and explain why Americans don’t seem to think of relocation as that big of a deal as long as it ends the conflict.