G: Yes. The closest clean analogue I can think of is Western Sahara, with Northern Cyprus as a useful second case. They aren't legally identical to the Palestinian territories, but they give you the crucial feature you want: the distinction between effective control and internationally recognized sovereignty.

Western Sahara is probably your best test case

entity["place","Western Sahara","disputed territory in northwest Africa"] is still treated by the UN as a non-self-governing territory whose final status has not been resolved. Morocco exercises effective control over roughly four-fifths of it, while the Polisario Front/Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic controls territory east of the berm. Morocco claims sovereignty, but that sovereignty is not generally accepted internationally. citeturn0search5turn0news121

That makes it unusually useful for the thought experiment you're describing because you can substitute Morocco → Israel and Sahrawis → Palestinians without first assuming that either side's ultimate sovereignty claim is correct.

For example, consider the Israeli practice in Area C of requiring Israeli building authorization and then demolishing Palestinian construction undertaken without that authorization. OCHA reported hundreds of residential demolitions for lack of Israeli-issued permits in 2025 and describes those permits as extremely difficult or nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain. citeturn0search0turn0search2

Now translate the institutional structure:

Morocco controls disputed Western Sahara. Morocco establishes a planning regime under which Sahrawis need Moroccan permission to build homes, wells, barns, solar installations, etc. Sahrawis are routinely unable to obtain those permits. Morocco then demolishes the resulting unauthorized Sahrawi construction because it violates Moroccan planning law.

You don't actually have to decide whether Morocco or the Sahrawis ultimately possess sovereignty to see the problem. The occupying/de-facto-controlling power has made its own permission the prerequisite and then treats absence of that permission as independent justification for coercive action.

That's precisely why Western Sahara is such a good abstraction device. It strips away most of the Israel/Palestine-associated political reflexes while preserving the disputed-sovereignty problem.

Northern Cyprus gives you an even more intuitive version

entity["place","Northern Cyprus","de facto Turkish Cypriot administration in Cyprus"] is somewhat different legally but perhaps even easier rhetorically. Northern Cyprus has a functioning Turkish-Cypriot government, but its independence is recognized only by Turkey; Turkey maintains a substantial military presence there. The internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus claims sovereignty over the whole island. citeturn0news85

So you can construct something like:

Imagine Turkey saying that Greek Cypriots living in Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus may build only with permits issued by the Turkish-Cypriot authorities; the permitting system makes legal construction effectively unavailable to them; therefore Turkey demolishes Greek-Cypriot houses, wells and agricultural buildings because they were built "illegally."

Again, someone can argue endlessly about the history of Cyprus afterward. But they can't make the sovereignty problem disappear merely by saying "the construction violated local law," because the disputed legitimacy of the authority imposing that law is the entire issue.

And that seems particularly well suited to what you're trying to do. You're not looking for another oppressed population so that you can say Israel = Country X. You're looking for a control variable:

Hold the governmental action constant; change the ethnicities, religions, countries and historical emotional associations; then ask whether people still regard the action as reasonable.

Western Sahara is probably the strongest geographic substrate for that experiment. Northern Cyprus is probably the easiest one for an American/European audience to understand. Neither proves anything about Israel by analogy—the relevant rules and histories differ—but they are very good at exposing when someone's general principle quietly changes depending on whose flag is attached to the government exercising disputed control.

G: Yes. Western Sahara is populated enough for the exercise. The UN puts it at about 601,000 people in 2025, and it is overwhelmingly urbanized; Laayoune alone is on the order of a couple hundred thousand people. So this isn't a hypothetical involving a few nomadic communities scattered across empty desert. citeturn0search0turn0search37

But after comparing them more carefully, I think Cyprus is probably the better rhetorical laboratory, while Western Sahara is the better legal/geopolitical analogue.

Consideration	Western Sahara	Northern Cyprus
Enough population?	Yes — ~600k	Yes
Disputed sovereignty/control	Excellent match	Excellent match
Foreign military/control relationship	Strong	Very strong
Two identifiable populations competing over same territory	Yes, but demographically complicated	Very clear: Greek/Turkish Cypriots
Settler/population-transfer analogy	Potentially very useful	Useful, but historically loaded
Occupation/disputed-administration analogy	Excellent	Excellent
Checkpoints/movement/property hypotheticals	Possible	Extremely intuitive
Dense towns where everyday-life examples make sense	Yes, especially coastal cities	Yes, naturally
Audience already knows enough to visualize it	Poor	Much better
Audience has strong preexisting emotional position	Usually almost none	Some, especially Europeans/Greeks/Turks
Requires explaining background before hypothetical works	High	Moderate
Risk audience starts arguing about the analogue instead	Relatively low	Moderate
Overall rhetorical usefulness	8/10	9/10

The peculiar advantage of Western Sahara is ignorance—ironically, including your own initial reaction. Most Americans have essentially no emotional investment in who ought to own Western Sahara. The UN still lists it as a Non-Self-Governing Territory; Morocco controls the populous western portion while the Polisario controls territory farther east and south. citeturn0search2turn0search6

That makes it exceptionally clean for something like:

Don't worry about who should ultimately own Western Sahara. For this example, Morocco controls it, another population disputes Morocco's sovereignty, and the sovereignty question remains unresolved. Now imagine Morocco does X.

Then you can import a particular Israeli policy as X and ask whether it sounds proportionate. You aren't claiming that Morocco actually does X, or that Sahrawis and Palestinians have identical legal statuses. You're deliberately constructing a counterfactual.

The weakness is exactly what you just demonstrated: "Wait, does anybody actually live there?" Every time you use the analogy, you're going to spend thirty seconds teaching Western Sahara before you can make your point.

Why I think Cyprus ultimately wins

Cyprus gives people a much better mental map.

image_group{"aspect_ratio":"16:9","query":["Cyprus Green Line map north south Cyprus","Nicosia Green Line Cyprus buffer zone map","Western Sahara Morocco Polisario berm map"]}

You have an island with cities, houses, roads, farms, property deeds, two populations, displacement, a dividing line, a militarily dominant neighboring state, a locally functioning government whose sovereignty is internationally disputed, and an internationally recognized government claiming the entire territory.

Consequently you can construct hypotheticals that require almost no imaginative machinery:

"Suppose Turkish authorities announced that Greek Cypriots in the north could no longer travel down this road."

"Suppose a Turkish Cypriot family attacked a Greek Cypriot family, and the military responded by bulldozing the attacker's family home."

"Suppose Greek Cypriots needed permission from Turkish authorities to build houses on their own land, permission was almost never issued, and unauthorized houses were consequently demolished."

"Suppose Turkey established communities of Turkish citizens on land whose ultimate sovereignty was unresolved and protected those communities militarily."

The listener can evaluate each proposition before you tell them what Israeli practice you're mapping onto it.

And I think that's closer to your actual purpose than finding the jurisdiction whose international-law status most closely resembles Palestine. You're essentially trying to construct a moral/legal wind tunnel: remove Israel, Jews, Palestinians, Muslims, the Holocaust, antisemitism, terrorism, October 7, the Nakba, Zionism, colonialism, British policy, etc., and see what judgment someone makes about the conduct itself.

There is an important methodological limitation: don't transplant conclusions; transplant facts. Cyprus and Western Sahara aren't legally interchangeable with Gaza or the West Bank. So rather than saying "If this is illegal in Cyprus, therefore Israel is doing something illegal," the stronger exercise is: "Here are the actors' legal statuses and here is exactly what the authority did. What would you consider proportionate or legitimate?" Then bring Israel/Palestine back afterward and determine which legally material differences actually change the answer.

For that exercise, I'd choose Cyprus as the default fictionalized map and keep Western Sahara as the backup whenever someone objects that Cyprus's particular history makes a hypothetical inappropriate. Western Sahara's greatest strength is almost precisely that nobody at the American dinner table has spent the previous thirty years accumulating opinions about it.