Comment by ars
4 days ago
I credit Trump's pressure on Hamas - Hamas eventually softened a lot of their positions because they realized they had no choice.
And I wish Biden had done a better job of supporting Israel, this war could have ended a lot sooner if Hamas had realized that the entire world was pressuring them to surrender. Instead the message got diluted with support for Palestinians, which Hamas interpreted as support for themselves.
Did you hear a single call by any country for Hamas to surrender? I didn't.
Edit: I got a very quick -4 mod on this, I assume because people don't like to realize Trump is doing more for both Israel and the Palestinians than Biden, and the Democrats lost the election partly because of their lack of support for Israel.
> Did you hear a single call by any country for Hamas to surrender? I didn't.
US, UK, France, Germany, Italy in a joint message: https://it.usembassy.gov/joint-statement-on-israel/
Spain: https://www.politico.eu/article/pedro-sanchez-spain-humanita...
Italy, France, Germany ask for EU sanctions to force Hamas surrender: https://www.reuters.com/world/italy-france-germany-call-ad-h...
Secretary of State calls out other countries for not demanding Hamas to surrender: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/20/politics/blinken-israel-hamas...
You should expand your media diet.
Except for the Sec of State no other article is calling for a surrender.
The first one condemns the attacks two days after. The second one is "Humanitarian cease-fire", and condemning Hamas for attacks - Not a call to surrender. The third one is sanctions.
I'm not seeing the call to surrender in your links. I'm seeing sanctions. I think parent is asking for explicit calls that Hamas surrenders (i.e. lays down their arms and returns the hostages). Not a ceasefire, a surrender.
The first two links are just weak platitudes. The 3rd link is a year old and the sanctions never happened. The last one is just Blinken talking, not a serious demand.
So I maintain what I said.
They agreed to the same terms from last May, so where did the soften anything?
Looks more like the Iranian hostage situation when Carter lost against Reagan.
>if Hamas had realized that the entire world was pressuring them to surrender.
I guess you mean the entire western world. The rest doesn't care or doesn't Israel vs Hamas as good vs evil. Same with Russian vs Ukraine.
> so where did the soften anything?
That's not true. Hamas agreed to:
* Allow Israel to patrol the Philadelphi corridor.
* Allow Israel troops to remain in a buffer zone
* Provided an actual list of hostages which they refused originally
* Agreed to a temporary ceasefire with hopes of negotiated a permanent one (they wanted the whole thing in one shot).
Israel on the other hand changed nothing except possible the specifics of who would be released (Israel will releases murderers, which earlier they did not want to do).
* Trump's pressure on Israel.
Trump started posting Jeffrey D Sachs videos on Truth Social and the chosen people got Hamas (which the chosen people also largely control, by the way) to accept the deal.
> And I wish Biden had done a better job of supporting Israel
What a weird take. Without Biden's support of Israel this genocide would not have been possible. How do you mean it should have supported Israel more? Allow these psychopats to nuke Gaza?
What genocide? Since when is there a genocide? Do you mean when Hamas tried to genocide Jews?
And you think Hamas wanted to nuke Gaza? Do you mean Hamas wanted all this destruction of their country? What did they gain from that?
Biden should have told Hamas to surrender, he should have told Palestinians that their Hamas leadership is leading them to death and destruction, and if the Palestinians don't stop the US will get involved. Which is what Trump did, and now there's a ceasefire.
Hamas feeds off of Palestinians support, believing it's for them. They need to know that everyone wants them dead and destroyed. But that didn't happen till Trump. Biden was weak, and did very little helpful.