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Israel declares siege of Gaza as Hamas threatens to start killing hostages
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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They should take down the walls, negotiate with Hamas, return lands to Gaza, end the blockade and start a very long fucking peace process.
Hamas has made it clear that taking down the wall would result in tens of thousands of dead Israelis. It's impossible to negotiate with an adversary which has vowed your demise at any price.
But from Hamas' side, the exact same thing is true about Israel.
I think it’s clear that you’re soundly in the pro Palestine camp after they murdered hundreds of Israelis. You find a way to justify that which works for you, that’s your business, it isn’t reflective of reality, it’s just your take on an issue that goes beyond your age by a number of decades.
If you’re purely in defense of one group or the other here, you’re just wrong and what’s worse is you’re feeding into the exact narratives each group is desperate to push.
Hamas is a terrorist organization that just committed the 3rd largest terrorist attack in human history. Israel is committing war crimes in retaliation and will no doubt invade and occupy Gaza which will cause thousands more deaths.
The complexities of this geopolitical issue have gone well beyond ‘this is all Israel’s fault, this is all Palestines fault’. If you can’t get past that, you’re just another ignorant fuck spewing half baked ideas on the internet that has no real idea what they’re talking about.
That sort of rhetoric is better served on twitter, not here.
The problem with your comment is that it assumes that this whole thing started with the Hamas attack. Go back in time 2 weeks and your whole argument applies with the sides swapped.
Israel has been killing Palestinians for decades. Hamas did what it did in response to that.
Like get some fucking context. Palestinian innocents died and got injured in much MUCH larger numbers than Israel for a very long time.
I'm pro-Palestinian people. I don't support Hamas and I think their tactics are bad and they can't butcher civilians.
You are replying to a person you think I am, not who I am.
Yeah but that list changes a lot if you count what Israel has done to Palestinians. When you remove that from the picture, you skew reality.
I don't have Twitter, and will never have Twitter, so get used to me being around here. Cheers.
There is a power imbalance. Israel could kill everyone in Gaza, with or without the wall. Taking down the wall would result in too many Palestinians killing too many innocent Israelis, so it will never happen. Nor should it.
And not taking it down will soon result in 2 million dead Palestinians.
You do realize that Israel withdrew completely from Gaza territory in 2005, right? They haven't occupied any land in the area for almost 20 years.
You left out the part where they put them under siege and control the influx of water, fuel, electricity, goods, and people.
So they haven't occupied them, they have just put them in an open air prison.
It's the sort of thing that happens if you keep attacking your neighbors. Hells, not even Egypt wants anything to do with the Hamas gov:t in Gaza. That's how bad it is.
You still are leaving out the part where Israel is the one controlling the siege. Things with Egypt are politics. The checkpoint there under Egypt's current government has been "open" (as open as it gets in this situation), which still doesn't mean much and you can't get anything through.
These people are under a blockade, completely controlled by Israel, with their own neighbours betraying them.
How Egypt and Israel feel about the Hamas gov't does not justify holding 2 million people hostage with no water or fuel or electricity.
Regardless of what we feel is justified or not, that is what war is - hell for everybody involved. Let's just hope that this doesn't get drawn out.
Isreal now sees Hamas as an existential threat. The only way to end the bloodshed would be Hamas offering an unconditional surrender.
And then what happens? Will Palestinians be guaranteed their basic rights? If Palestinians are not given the chance to be full citizens and have self-determination, this will only repeat in another 2-3 years.
I do not think you understand how bad this is going to get for Palestinians in Gaza. Hamas has just perpetrated the worst terrorist attack in Isreals history.
From everything I am reading these are not just retaliatory strikes. Isreal is preparing for a full offensive on Gaza involving tanks, artillery and infantry. This could very well end with Gaza looking like Grozny, Mariupol, or Bakhmut.
I hope that doesn't happen, but if Hamas cared at all about the Palestinian people they would do everything in their power to avoid that. Unfortunately they only care about power and I think this is going to get very ugly in the next phase of the war.
but if Israel cared at all about the Palestinian people they would do everything in their power to avoid that.
Everything goes both ways exactly the same.
Israel is out for revenge and as I have written elsewhere: When they enter Gaza, they want to get attacked. Because after an attack they will retaliate and every dead civilian, while retaliating against Hamas, will be considered collateral damage.
Hamas made the whole Gaza Invasion an easy sell for a lot of people. And no, I don’t think that it is ok to kill civilians.
My illusory wish for the Middle East would be something like a joint state of Palestinians AND Israelis - so that they can all access their holy sites. Forcing both sides to work together.
Hmmm, so if you were Hamas, for example, and you decide to deescalate in hopes of eventually reaching an agreement over a joint state, what would you do?
Also the same question but if you were Israel, what would you do (let's say today) to deescalate and seek a joint state solution?
At the moment there probably isn’t any will on either side to cooperate. Reasonable people with a will to compromise have to get involved…
Hamas publicly admitting that they fucked up by killing the civilians, releasing the hostages and calling for negotiations would be a first step in my opinion. Netanyahu would probably not know what to do in that situation.
If Israel were to make a first step: Netanyahu would only have to say that it cannot continue like this.
I mean look at France and Germany for example. Being archenemies for centuries caused immeasurable death and destruction in Europe and the whole world. Only after the Second World War those people realized that it cannot continue like this… and both countries murdered the shit out of each other before becoming something like friends.
Only if both parties are willing to break the cycle of violence, this will end.
Sounds pretty balanced. I agree that Netanyahu would probably not know what to do readily since it would be very unexpected.
I'm was also watching the latest TL;DR video on YouTube about this and it seems that the reports say civilians are the ones who carried out the kidnapping of lots of civilian hostages while Hamas focused on military targets. I don't know to what extent this is confirmable (since the source is Hamas itself).
If you are Hamas you cannot do anything now, they are bloodlusted and will not stop until you are dead and your culture is wiped off the earth.
Okay, but for the sake of this example, imagine you are Hamas and have changed your mind, what would be step 1?
That is not something Hamas would ever consider though so we are just in the realms of fantasy at this point.
So if Hamas "surrenders" to Israel, how is this going to stop Israel's daily oppression of Palestinians? What would Israel have to give back to Hamas?
It would stop the ground invasion that is about to happen.
Isreal is not going to give anything to Hamas after the massacres this week. That is no longer an option.
Israel has had options for so long and have waited for this moment to say they are out of options so they had to cut water off 2 million people of which one quarter of a million are now homeless and displaced.
Step 1 is to accept your demise. The West will no longer tolerate your version of your beliefs because they are incompatible with the rest of the world's status quo; a certain version of Islam that hypocritically hates the West but enjoys all the products they produce (including cultural like Hollywood action films), but also wants to destroy it and have something akin to what the Taliban have.
Women deserve bodily autonomy and the right to exist as a man or love another woman. Hamas version of Islam hates that way more than regular Islam or even the Catholics and Jews do.
Okay, but let's say your step 1 is what you would do if you didn't want to accept your demise (because I don't think this choice is one that anyone would really take).
If I were Hamas, my existence is at stake. So I would be brutally fighting for my life in the most savage way possible, taking hostages, fighting dirty, and killing indiscriminately so as to demoralize them and destroy them as much as possible.
How the fuck do you negotiate with a state that does not beleive Israel should exist?
The Palestinians brought this on themselves.
How?
They support a government that refuses to talk peace. The position of Hamas, in its founding documents, is that the state of Israel should be exterminated. You reap what you sow.
But the state of Israel is also trying to "exterminate" Palestinians. Everything from their far right gov't to people chanting "Death to Arabs" on the street.
It takes two to tango. If Hamas should step down, then Israel should step down at exactly the same moment.
For better or worse (and frankly, I take quite a lot of issue with how Israel was founded, looking at you Misters Sykes and Picot), Israel exists now. Most of its population was born there and knows no other home. To suggest that Israel should no longer exist is to endorse the violent elimination of millions of people from their homes, and we've literally just seen what Hamas' method of doing so would look like. Even setting aside ethics, the fact of the matter is that Israel will not let that happen and will do everything in its power to ensure it.
That said, what absolutely should not continue is any further expansion of Israel into Palestinian lands. West Bank settlements are considered illegal by literally every country in the world and are a deliberate method of ensuring that a Palestinian state is never viable. There is a, now almost entirely implausible, viable solution where Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, swaps some land in the West Bank to account for East Jerusalem, stops the blockade of Gaza, and allows the creation of a Palestinian state that operates as a close security partner.
What will never happen is any future where Israel no longer exists, no matter how much it might be argued about where it should have been created or anything else. Practically all nations of the Americas shouldn't exist. Most European nations exist out of random decisions by monarchs. Tons of African and Middle Eastern nations were created by dropping some random lines on a map. This is a rabbit hole that does not end, and anyone who actually cares about finding a peaceful path forward has to accept that Israel exists today.
"How can we support colonisation and genocide in this day and age."
"Israel shouldn’t exist."
I think the answer was inside yourself the entire time.
How do you say I'm antisemtic without saying I'm antisemitic.
He didn't say a word about Jews, how's that antisemitic? Israel country does not equal Jewish people.
How do you negotiate with a state that does not believe Palestine should exist?
False. From its inception, Israel has recognized the need for Palestinian autonomous territory.
The Israeli rhetoric is that Palestine never existed.
Then why does Israel keep occupying Palestinian territory?
Members of Netanyahu's cabinet openly advocate annexation of large parts of the West Bank and have accelerated settlement construction.
Cutting off food and water for 2.3 million people.
The irony of Israel recreating the Warsaw ghetto is amazing.