Comment by pgeorgi
1 year ago
All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then?
Spend tons of money on iron dome to shoot down the rockets and hope that Hamas won't manage to conduct another massacre, even if "only" half the scope of October 7?
This mess features not one but two parties who currently reject the concept of a cease fire.
>All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then?
And then everyone who wants peace invests lots of money and expertise over a long time to build a modern, prosperous, stable Palestinian society, despite whatever setbacks, attacks, and sabotage occur from within and without.
The only way to have peace is to give people a better option than becoming terrorists.
This is not the approach the West took with ISIS, which involved similarly one-sided fights against terrorist forces [1], nor do I think it's an approach that would have worked. When "everyone who wants peace" doesn't include the people in control of the guns and rockets, who instead want to kill their enemies by any means necessary (and themselves do not respect international law), you can't simply dialogue your way out of it any more than Ukraine could have dialogued their way out of getting invaded by Russia.
The ICJ ruled that Hamas return the hostages unconditionally, but everyone knows that won't happen — Hamas is simply unaccountable. "Everyone who wants peace" can't even get the Red Cross access to the hostages, let alone get them returned. Vague calls for diplomacy with terrorist groups doesn't solve much, which is why people are asking you for specific solutions — it's easy to say Israel should stop fighting, but then: what should it do? How would you actually ensure it doesn't keep getting attacked, repeatedly, as Hamas continues to insist they plan to do?
1: Mosul alone had ~10,000 civilian casualties and that was less densely populated than Gaza City and didn't have tunnels: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/show/thousands-more-civilia...
And it similarly had about 1MM civilians displaced: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/world/middleeast/mosul-ir...
And that wasn't the end of the fight against ISIS!
A major problem is that the Gazan people have very legitimate problems with Israel, and this leads to a situation in which enough of them become militant to cause serious problems. Solving that seems like it needs a more wholistic approach than simply trying to get rid of the militants at the cost of causing everyone else to have an even bigger beef with Israel.
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Mosul had 40k civilian causalties (more than Hamas totals), the coalition just lied about it:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/mosul-m...
> The ICJ ruled that Hamas return the hostages unconditionally
To nitpick, the court did not rule that, they just "called" for that. It wasn't an order so its not binding. It was just a symbolic statement.
At most it was just a way for the court to acknowledge that the conflict is not one sided.
Israel needs terms with Palestine, not with Hamas
Note: ISIS was a bunch of European guys who got radicalized and then travelled to the middle east; Hamas is homegrown and was democratically elected by the people of the region.
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This is looking at the conflict from western eyes. Religious fundamentalists don't think like that
We could have said this about Germany and Japan after WWII.
Every human no matter their race and religion cares about having food, water, safety, opportunity, live in a law abiding society where their rights are respected and they get “some” choice to vote for their future.
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The notion that the problem is religious fundamentalists is itself propaganda. The people are just people; the problem is a brutal racist occupation that has gone on for far too long.
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I don't think it's too Western-centric to imagine that Palestinians want freedom, which is a universal human desire. Freedom means statehood and self-governance.
Oppression is fertile soil for religious fundamentalists, and radicals of every stripe.
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Worth pointing out that both sides have extreme religious fundamentalists.
Also worth pointing out that peace was achieved between Egypt/Israel but it took leaders like Carter, Sadat, Begin to transcend the conflict. Sadly, Biden is no Carter. And there are no Sadats or Begins anymore.
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And yet, women in Afghanistan were happy going to university until we let the fundamentalists back in.
All major conflicts and wars are fundamentally economic and have been so throughout history
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> And then everyone who wants peace invests lots of money and expertise over a long time to build a modern, prosperous, stable Palestinian society
When Israel left Gaza in 2005 it had no blockade and an airport. Israel blockaded them and bombed their airport because they kept using everything to attack Israel.
If Gaza and the West Bank were given complete independence with no interference, what makes you think it will turn out different and they won't use the open borders to bring in weapons to attack Israel?
That certainly will happen. It's part of the "despite whatever setbacks, attacks, and sabotage occur from within and without" aspect. Israelis need to be able to turn the other cheek in order to break the cycle of violence.
I realize that this goes against human nature and may be impossible.
Unfortunately , pouring money in gaza while hamas is in power only funnels it to weapons and terror infrastructure.
How do we know it ? We've been doing that for the past 15 years.
It is an incredibly naive outlook as that has been in place since 2005 in Gaza.
Only for Israel to bomb it all away after one setback? What a waste. The Oct 7 attacks were horrible but the response was not proportionate or productive.
Over 47% of Palestinians are under the age of 18, meaning they have grown up only knowing the post-2005 situation. Which can rightly be described as an open air prison with no hope of the opportunities all humans deserve.
Israel - and the rest of the complicit world - allowed a generation of prisoners to be born under Hamas and is now massacring them like fish in a barrel. You can call that a naive view too, but I doubt history will look kindly on all the justifications.
Doesn't matter how much people who want peace invest when terrorists who want to continue fighting are in charge. There is no "modern, prosperous, stable Palestinian society" when terrorists are in charge.
They have had better options... and still choose the path they are on.
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47% of Gaza's population is under the age of 18, meaning they have lived completely under the blockade and Hamas. Politically they only "want" what they have been indoctrinated to want.
Give them school, art, romance, the option to travel the world, choose their career... and they probably won't care as much about their parent's grievances. Give them no such options and you are guaranteed to have more combatants.
No one said it would be quick or easy. This will take multiple generations. It requires the Israelis to make a bet on the Palestinian youth.
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> And then everyone who wants peace invests lots of money and expertise over a long time to build a modern, prosperous, stable Palestinian society
What makes you think that’s even possible? Name any other Arab country you could plunk down next to Israel that wouldn’t constantly be trying to destroy Israel?
Israel has had peace with Egypt and Jordan, for a long time now.
People said Apartheid South Africa couldn't end without a bloodbath. People said peace in Northern Ireland was impossible. People thought the Cold War would never end. Impossible things are impossible until they aren't. I'm not saying that any of these things are easy - they clearly are not. But history shows us again and again that change is possible when people work towards it in good faith. From a practical point of view, I think that the international community needs to be allowed to help - both to maintain the peace and broker a way forward. The status quo will not reach peace. Israel will never have peace and security until Palestine has peace and security.
The Palestine/Israel conflict is significantly longer than any of the examples you gave.
Which is not to say that its impossible. But the older I get, the less hope I have.
The ethno-religious conflict in Northern Ireland dates back to the seventeenth century and the question of Irish sovereignty dates all the way back to the twelfth century!
Ethic conflicts all end eventually. A historian: https://archive.is/zADeF
TLDR: the ways they end are:
- partition
- equal representation
- one side driving out/murdering the other
It does seem like a lot of people have given up on the first two, but if it's not one of those then it's the third one. So we have to work towards making it one of the first two.
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Apartheid started in 1948. It was around for quite a long time. And the roots of the division in Northern Ireland went back centuries. But yes, long running divisions are harder to solve. Harder != impossible. And look at history - stuff changes.
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Peace could be achieved fairly easily if both sides said they want to live in peace. However only one does. I think that will change eventually.
“Peace while continuing to seize land” is a peculiar-enough type of peace to not really qualify for simply “wants to live in peace” by many people’s definition.
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That is an unhelpful and incorrect view
If I knew the answer to that question I would be a high ranked politician. But for me it's important to keep in mind what he is saying here and also in another part explicitly: a diplomatic solution is possible and history proves that. So what I can do is reject the notion that what is happening is unavoidable.
How does history prove any such thing? That's neither how history or proof work. Most of the wars that have been resolved to everyone's benefit have done so by the unconditional surrender of the aggressors, followed by amicable reconstruction.
> How does history prove any such thing?
Because there are Jews living in Germany nowadays?
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It provides examples that it happened and thus proves it's possible.
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Who is the aggressor here?
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Well, the alternative to diplomatic solution is total annihilation of palestinians in west bank, be it by forcing them off the land which is impossible since they have nowhere to run and other islamic states refuse them (so much for inter-muslim brotherhood, I guess Iran should take them), or murdering them one by one which seems to be going on now. Or what we had till now, which led to what we have now. It doesnt matter that the other side plays dirty, all sides eventually do. It just doesn't matter for statement above.
It doesn't matter a nanofraction of a bit what government(s) publicly say, those are farts in the wind to be polite, I don't understand why people even care about such PR, its like what Putin says, what does it matter when its clearly said for a specific purpose and truth is optional?
I honestly dont understand the resistance to their own state. Yes they will hate Israel, just like till now they did, just like every single its neighbor since its creation. So what? How did we/they move from this utter hate of neighbors to cca peace? Well certainly not by following the path of trying to eradicate the other, history is pretty clear there. Yes its a bit easier to invade and kill if you want compared to invading a foreign state, but preventing it should be a good thing. Also, US is effectively giving them a blank check, just empty words flying around, I really expected a bit more. A room for Russia or China to step up.
Its like counting some destroyed tunnels or killing few brainwashed young guys mattered in long run, in same vein as say counting Vietcong losses and comparing them to US ones didn't matter. That's whats happening now. What's the plan for rest of existence? I dont see that part, I mean 0. But maybe current Israel government likes this situation, I mean the top guy is former special forces guy, so this is not unusual situation and a bit of blood doesn't matter to them and if there is war people don't focus so much on how effectively he erodes democracy.
So what is this, state-sponsored genocide? Because 100% this is not how Hamas disappears for longer than few months (in same vein al qaeda didn't) and I think literally everybody involved realizes that, this will actually make it much stronger long term, think about all those eager volunteers from places like Saudi arabia. Soviet war was what created Osama. US invasion of Iraq is what pointed him to US.
Suffice to say, when doing grocery shopping I don't buy products from Israel these days, we don't need more wars in middle east and massive refugees waves in Europe. Tiny wallet, but its all I have (apart from vacations but for that Israel was very low in the list anyway).
Why should the Palestinians leave? Palestinians leaving is ethnic cleansing.
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The Palestinian people can oust Hamas, reject Islamic extremism without exception and reform their society to be compatible with a peaceful relationship with their neighbours.
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> Well, the alternative to diplomatic solution is total annihilation of palestinians in west bank,
This conflict is taking place in Gaza.
> Well, the alternative to diplomatic solution is total annihilation of palestinians in west bank, be it by forcing them off the land
What makes you so certain it's the Palestinians and not the Jews this will happen to? It's the stated goal of the Palestinians and much of the extreme Muslim world surrounding Israel to drive away the Jews and it's not far fetched to see them eventually succeed.
> If I knew the answer to that question I would be a high ranked politician
The solution is simple, avoiding the solution in order to create a western military power ally in the middle east is what high ranked politicians do.
>avoiding the solution
The West isn't the one avoiding the solution. If it were up to us, two state would have been sorted decades ago, as evidenced by the repeated peace summits the US has hosted.
Israel believe they can't integrate the bulk of the Palestinian population, and there to afraid of attack to live next to an independent Palestinian state.
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> The solution is simple
Please explain.
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> All correct and yet, what should happen?
Happy, fed, employed people do not become terrorists. They have too much to lose.
That is certainly not true. Exhibit A: Osama bin Laden’s father was literally a multi-billionaire and he himself inherited $30-50 million.
He's not "people", he's a "human". One human could be significantly off from the expected behavior; many people are less so.
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You think Osama was happy? The man was clearly very, very angry about something, and I doubt it was inheriting a bunch of money.
Too bad gaza has no land or economy to feed and employ themselves.
they've tried. I saw this youtube video awhile back about a man from gaza who built an inland fish farm to raise food to feed people because the fishermen were forbidden by isreal fro boing to the areas where the fish were.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxEqXkdJUWY&ab_channel=Insid...
Doesn't mean they can't build it.
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Not if they have more to gain in 'heaven'. Remember, Hamas are religious fanatics.
They have to be religious fanatics because that’s all they have to cling to. If I’m going to fight a losing battle against a grossly superior enemy I also want to believe that I’ll end up in paradise for it.
You might note that that brand of fanaticism goes down rapidly in countries that have high standards of living.
and the IDF is not? There's a lot of videos showing the IDF dancing holding up Torah scroll in destroyed hospitals or buildings.
hamas != palestine
Israel must face the reality that is an apartheid state that exists on occupied land. There is no solution until that happens. Just like apartheid South Africa was dismantled, Israel has to face the same fate or forever be locked into warfare and oppressing Palestinians.
Isn't that exactly the view of reality that the Israeli right wing holds? They would agree that the choices are either dismantling the state of Israel, or eternal warfare. Since they don't want to dismantle the state of Israel, they elect for eternal warfare.
It's funny how on some questions, the most extreme people on both sides agree on the answer. Hamas and the Israeli right wing both agree that the only viable solution is for one ethnic group to control all the land from the river to the sea.
No. The Israeli right wing is trying (and succeeding at) making all of the land between the river and the sea exclusive property of the Jewish people. A quick glance at how the borders have evolved since 1948 makes this evident.
Most Palestinians (and thankfully also a good number of Israeli citizens) want a pluralistic solution, without checkpoints and borders, with equal rights and equal representation for all.
A two-state solution was possible 20 years ago, but with the current settlements in the West Bank with 450k or so Settlers and Gaza's total dependence on Israel for water, internet, electricity and many other of life's necessities, all paths towards a two-state solution have been severed.
Now that Gaza has been bombed and bulldozed what possibility is there for a Palestinian state? All records have been destroyed. The courts are gone. The universities are gone. It's all gone.
Israel will accept neither a one-state or two-state solution. By systematically destroying everything Palestinian the question resolves itself. That seems to be the strategy. And if we can take Israeli politicians at their word, this seems to have been the strategy for the past 20 years at least.
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This is a good summary of Islamic radicalization propaganda that seeks to use Palestinian civilians as pawns, with no regard for them. It is this narrative that keeps the Palestinains in prison.
The counterpoint is that you "must" face the reality that this is never going to happen, and that asserting that it will or should is equivalent to damning the Palestinians to the existence that they currently occupy.
Greater Islam does not have an army that can stand against the West, let alone do the Palestinians. All that they have are manipulated terrorists whose actions always cause much more destruction on their side than the inverse.
So I say again, the only realistic and humane view is to take your oppopsite position, recognize the immovable force, and actually attempt to save Palestinian lives via deradicalization and a relocation campaign.
> that is an apartheid state that exists on occupied land
I’ve heard this line from people who say the West Bank and Gaza are the occupied land, to those who say all of Israel is occupied land. The former makes sense. The latter is extreme.
> like apartheid South Africa was dismantled
South Africa wasn’t as militarised as the Levant has become, unfortunately. As long as Iran seeks the destruction of Israel, itself and through its proxies, any Mandela-type accounting is probably fruitless. (I am open to being convinced otherwise.)
I specifically think the mixed use of the word "occupation" to imply that the state of Palestine should include all of the current state of Israel one of the largest trust busting tricks in the modern discourse. I think it is natural to think that the Gaza and West Bank situation is bad and I suspect the majority of even slightly western views would agree.
What shocked me, is that there are some on the far left that fully think all of Israel is an occupation of Palestine. More, they got rather upset when I pointed out that that line of thinking is, ironically, in support of people that have shown genocidal intent.
Curious if you have numbers on how many intentionally refer to all of Israel in this way? (Also curious if my take on that is unfair to folks?)
> to those who say all of Israel is occupied land. The former makes sense. The latter is extreme.
In what way is it not? The state was created by western powers less than 100 years ago and has aggressively pursued European and US immigration since then.
The current state of things is an entirely manufactured situation and it's becoming more and more farcical. There's only so many times you can interview a guy with a British or New York accent talking about his ancestral right to the desert before things start looking a little bit weird.
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Anyone can go on Google Earth, look at the official UN borders of Israel, then do a search in Hebrew or "synagogue" (obviously not every synagogue is Israeli) or "checkpoint" and very clearly see the Israeli settlements outside Israel's legal borders. Search "Hizma" for a good example [1].
To make it even more obvious, toggle the "street view" layer over one of these areas and see what gets highlighted.
There is a clear apartness between the neatly-planned Israeli settlements, often built on demolished Palestinian villages, and the organic scattering of indigenous, primarily Arab Palestinian villages. With militarized checkpoints in between. Anyone can see it, if they have the will and a web browser.
[1] - https://earth.google.com/web/search/Hizma+checkpoint,+Sderot...
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apartheid is a loaded term of opinion, not of fact. comparing israel to other true apartheid regimes, such as south africa, is hyperbolic. there exist discriminatory policies that ought to be reformed but i do not believe that word is appropriate.
israel does, in fact, exist on some occupied land that she should return, including many west bank settlements. however, there is something to be said for keeping parts as a bargaining chip against those motivated largely by religious and nationalistic fervor mixed with some basic hatred. other parts of her land were obtained legitimately, going all the way back to the first aliyah after the kiev pogroms in which tens of thousands of jews were massacred. many immigrated legally, though the ottoman empire later threw up some barriers to immigration with hopes to limit their numbers. many were later moved legitimately under the authority of the british in mandatory palestine.
legal immigrants are not necessarily "occupiers". there is also a period past which land becomes naturalized, just like most of the world has been taken and settled by force at some point or another. most of the people who are descendants of those ancient conquerors are just as indigenous as those who were there before. i'd venture to say much of israel, while it ought to be shared better, is populated with naturalized inhabitants.
All metaphors are wrong, some metaphors are useful. The word "burn" applies to both first and third degree burns.
Characteristics of apartheid can exist even if it is not at the severity experienced by black south Africans. The analogy here has utility, and racism towards Palestinians is unfortunately a huge problem in Israeli society.
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It's not "hate speech" to call to the end of an apartheid government.
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"Everybody else in the region" is mostly descendants of various Semitic peoples who lived in that area for just as long. Palestinians in particular seem to be related to Canaanites, which - if you take the Torah at face value - would actually make them the indigenous people that were a target of genocidal conquest by the original Jewish settlers in the area (although archeologists say that this was more likely intra-ethnic warfare between different groups, and the whole notion of Canaanites as distinct peoples was created to justify the conquest of neighbors).
Actually, if you believe that the bible is true, they killed the indigenous people there first
More historically certain is that there was a stream of people living and moving through that area during waves of human immigration outside of Africa (look up the Sahara pump theory).
Well they are not not indigenous.
But calling them "the indigenous" is not correct. DNA studies done by Israeli scientists on Palestinian subjects show that they descend from indigenous groups including Judea.
So are there 6 million Stateside Puerto Ricans living in one of the 50 United States who have equal rights to other US citizens. Puerto Rico is still a colony of the United States. Mind you that the Puerto Ricans living on the island of Puerto Rico have infinitely more rights then Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank or occupied East Jerusalem.
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> All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then?
It remains a mess, but less of a mess? Look, it's all bad guys running the show in that hell hole of a desert. There are no trusted entities anywhere able to run a government that isn't somewhere between actively antagonistic and actively genocidal toward half the local population.
Nonetheless a status quo with less shooting and death is better than a status quo with more. Hamas killed fewer people than Israel did/is, so... yeah, I guess. An occasional October 7th is a better choice than levelling Gaza is. Incrementally. But none of this is going to get better, likely within our lifetimes.
> Hamas killed fewer people than Israel did/is
That's an understatement, Hamas killed less than 1,000 civilians, Israel killed 20,000+
Hamas directly and intentionally targeted civilians. Israel is doing what it can to limit civilian casualties while destroying Hamas. Hamas is making that very difficult by blending in with the population, putting command centers under major hospitals and so on.
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All Palestinians deaths are civilians by your measures.
> An occasional October 7th is a better choice than levelling Gaza is
Better for who? For Hamas yes, killing Israelis with impunity would be a boost. But for Israel - I don't know of any democracy that can keep going with an 'occasional' October 7th. A country can't sustain that without collapsing at some point. Think about 9-11 but with 80k killed instead of 3000, and around 10000 kidnapped. And the entity responsible is just around the corner and gonna keep doing it on occasion. Those are the proportions. How many of these would the U.S be able to endure before its economy and society collapsed?
Then we'll deal with that "at some point" I guess? Again, Israel is a bad guy too. It's all bad guys. All options suck. So pick the one with less death and just shuffle along until some unknown event in the far future acts to break the stalemate and produce a peaceful region (or, more realistically, acts to break the equilibrium and we get a genuine demographic disaster that returns the area to a "single ethnicity" state, which sucks even more, but may be unavoidable).
Tough love: Israel can't expect to continue to act as it has in the decades since the fall of the PA. It ultimately depends on international support and that support will eventually run out, c.f. the linked article. It won't happen soon, or all at once, but it will happen and there needs to be a plan for regional coexistence, and as you'd surely agree there really isn't one beyond an imagined (and largely impossible) total military victory.
While I'm not a military expert, I think it would be reasonable to rule out the possibility of a similar massacre any time soon, for decades at least. It seems unlikely that Hamas would get away with it a second time? They put everything into a one-day surprise attack. The Israeli defense was caught unprepared despite being warned, but they have much more power and they can learn.
What happens in the wider conflict (with other Iran-backed militias) is another question.
> While I'm not a military expert, I think it would be reasonable to rule out the possibility of a similar massacre any time soon
I'm not sure its reasonable. No one in Israel is thinking that way at least, and for good reason imo. The motivation to kill is there, so you have to assume there's a lack of ability. OK maybe for a couple of years Hamas will have to regroup, but how much time does it take to get a couple thousands more guns and grenades and bombs when Iran is giving them for free? It doesn't have to be another attack of this magnitude, even killing "only" 100 Israelis would be a huge blow.
You prevent this type of shit from happening again by being dead serious about countering terror, about deploying sufficient defense and not assuming too much about what the enemy can do because you might not have an accurate picture. Israel has been doing none of that in Gaza in the last decade or more.
Seems like I'm assuming the Israeli defense will learn enough from this attack to prevent anything similar, and you're assuming they won't. Either way it's a guess; we don't know the future.
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Hamas doesn't get away from it this time already.
Hamas has quite a bit of leadership outside Gaza, and as far as I know, most of them are doing fine. They may even have more political capital than before the attacks. I’m not convinced they didn’t get away with it.
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You need an anti Hamas Palestinian force that credibly fights against Hamas and has the support of the Palestinians but it is too late for that now.
Yes, that is exactly what Israel should do. The "dont let gazans interact with Israelis" strategy was icnredibly effective until Israel got soft on border security. Israel easily is capable of ensuring no Gazans ever escape again. The iron dome is largely succesful at keeping Israelis safe, certainly more so than a long term gazan invasion which would open up the Israelis in gaza to terrorist attacks.
"dont let gazans interact with Israelis" is exactly the definition of apartheid though, unless you're advocating recognising Palestine, and giving them autonomy wrt water, electricity and so on. However the comment "ensuring no Gazans ever escape again." Is rather telling, it implies a recognition that Gaza is effectively a prison - dehumanisation like that fosters this sort of conflict, so really this sort of attitude is far less helpful than say learning from lessons in Japan and Germany post WW2, South Africa post-apartheid and so on.
Gaza absolutely is a prison. Keeping Gazans there is the only way to ensure Israelis safety. Is that unfair? Absolutely, but I dont think Israelis are especially interested in fairness here, theyre interested in their security. You cant compare Gaza to post ww2 countries. Gaza has no economy, and a vastly different culture. There is no path toward peace between gaza and Israel. Not even on the 1000 year time span, because that would require gazan quality of life to improve, and they just dont have the land or resources for that to happen.
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I think you have a slight misconception about living under Iron Dome.
It's not 100% effective and you still have to run to the nearest shelter. In some areas close to Gaza, you have less than 10 seconds to run to the shelter.
So I wouldn't consider that "normal life" by any standards
There are no 100% effective solutions here. Ive spent a considerable amount of time in Israeli and realize living under the iron dome isnt ideal, but it is the best Israel can do. Long term occupation would lead to more Israeli deaths than a return to the pre october 7th status quo. The only other solution for israel is a legitimate genocide of all Palestinians, and I just dont see that happening in the next century.
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