What's new

Israel-Hamas War

Are the majority of Gazans in Hamas? Seeing this in terms of "Israel has to keeps the Gazans down" is also myopic, simplistic, and wrong.

The Gazans sadly are pawns by the choice of their stupid leadership. Hamas are primarily responsible for the majority of the “keeping down” of their people. Imagine what life for Gazans would be like if their elected body had spent the last 20 years using all that international aid on you know, infrastructure, enterprise, etc instead of weapons of assault and terror. And be dedicated to protecting civilians instead of continuously and deliberately placing them in harms way ??

Israel do a great many things wrong but seriously what would you do if you were them ?? Just sit back and accept a steady flow of people and arms that get used to perpetually attack your civilians in the name of eradicating you ??
 
Yes Red! It sounds super fun! Did you read it?
What does it matter to you what I read, what I believe? You really need to try harder to stay out of my business. Stop being concerned with anyone other than yourself.
if you need to have explained to you why a human being would be disgusted by what Netanyahu is doing, what can I say to you, other than you do you, and leave me the hell out of it…..
 
What does it matter to you what I read, what I believe?
Despite your name being in it, the comment wasn't actually directed at you. Humor that you have to explain is always the best, but I was making fun of Unborn Gore trying to get you into his Nazi club. The comment I was responding to was Unborn Gore's, but if being a Nationalist-Socialist resonates with you then by all means take Unborn Gore up on his offer to join the Nazi group. I will make fun of you for joining because that ideology doesn't have the best image after the whole killing of 6 million Jews thing but Unborn Gore exists so they are around and they say they are 2,900 strong.
 
Okay @Red, I have a real question for you. I legit don't know the answer to this one.

The color scheme of red, white, and black feature prominently in Nazi iconography. Notice Unborn Gore's invite to the Nazi club used that color palate. Is there a significance to the use of red, white, and black? Do the new Nazis use red, white, and black because the old Nazis did and that is as deep as it goes? Or do the red, white, and black signify something to Nazis? I know you've said you studied this stuff long ago and might know the answer.
 
I'm well aware there are no good choices for either side any more.

There are still plenty of good choices left, but neither side is really willing to discuss them(and I particularly mean the specifics of any choice) because of their own public. If you speak to people in generalities, you don't have to explain any hard truths to them.

There is no one willing to tell the Palestinians that the refugees of 1948 and 1967 are never returning and there's no one willing to tell the Israelis that whether or not a land swap happens as part of a peace agreement, there will have to be a large dismantling of at least some of the settlements in the West Bank. These are just a couple of random examples. There are so many more.
 

“Rejecting the US State Department’s condemnation of calls for the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday reiterated his support for encouraging “voluntary emigration” of the Strip’s population to other countries as part of his postwar vision.

The leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party claimed in a statement that “more than 70 percent of the Israeli public today supports” encouraging emigration as “a humanitarian solution,” but did not provide a source for this statistic”.

……““The United States is our best friend, but first of all we will do what is best for the State of Israel: the migration of hundreds of thousands from Gaza will allow the residents of the [Gaza] envelope to return home and live in security and will protect the IDF soldiers,” Ben Gvir posted on X. “I really admire the United States of America but with all due respect, we are not another star in the American flag”.

In the relatively rare, unprompted statement, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller labeled the calls by the far-right ministers as “inflammatory and irresponsible.”
 
There are still plenty of good choices left, but neither side is really willing to discuss them(and I particularly mean the specifics of any choice) because of their own public. If you speak to people in generalities, you don't have to explain any hard truths to them.

There is no one willing to tell the Palestinians that the refugees of 1948 and 1967 are never returning and there's no one willing to tell the Israelis that whether or not a land swap happens as part of a peace agreement, there will have to be a large dismantling of at least some of the settlements in the West Bank. These are just a couple of random examples. There are so many more.
Hard disagree with everything you said. Israelis are willing to have whatever conversation is necessary but that conversation has to involve reality.

Reality #1: No matter where you put a wall, if life is objectively better on one side of it then there will be conflict.​
Reality #2: Given the atrocities committed on October 7, the walls currently in place must be strengthened.​
Reality #3: The pull-out from Gaza two decades ago was exactly the solution you just proposed and it made life worse for everyone involved.​

There is only one realistic path out of this mess.

  • Establish law and order in the occupied areas and the negative influences need to be removed from the economically disadvantaged side.
  • Build schools, including trade schools for adults, in the territories and tightly control the learning materials used.
  • Foster a climate friendly to entrepreneurship with low taxes and regulation, lower than in Israel itself.

Publish a roadmap with specific metrics that when achieved will trigger concrete step changes that progressively increase freedoms, self-rule, and normalization between annexed and occupied regions.
Build a path, show the people where the path leads, and put the people on it. The only solution is to make life better in a sustainable way for those living in the unannexed areas. Trading land for peace does nothing to promote that process. Life is going to suck for the authorities in the line of fire, and the work is going to be hard for the people but there is no magic wand to make it all fine.
 
Okay great, but this sounds like compulsion. Obviously, one of the sides is essentially immune to that, while the other one has not shown great response to compulsion.

Never mind whether and how this would work, though? Who is going to do the compulsion? Who will occupy Gaza for a sufficient amount of time for all these changes to happen, because that's what would be needed: an occupation. Israel doing it isn't going to end well, we know that. The Palestinians would probably not react great to most countries who are friendly with Israel doing it, and most countries in general would be unlikely to want to get involved in something like this to begin with. Really, the only real candidates would be other Arab countries.

You can remove ones like Morocco or Algeria or Mauritania from this equation since they're not really in that region and have few incentives to do this. They're far enough that whatever happens will not destabilize them. You can also remove Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan since they have their own civil wars going on. You can also basically add Lebanon and Iraq to this category. They may not have civil wars happening, but you can see them breaking out in one if they got involved in occupying Gaza. A few of the smaller ones like Bahrain or Kuwait simply don't have the population to allow for an adventure like this. That leaves us with Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and perhaps UAE who may well be in the too-small category.

Now, even if one of these countries(or perhaps multiple ones) wanted to step up, this isn't your classic peacekeeper/observer mission. The soldiers on the ground would be the sole force responsible for security in Gaza. Hamas is Hamas. They're not simply looking for a Palestine from the river to the sea, they're looking for Palestine from the river to the sea that is ruled by them, according to their views. We saw from the example of their civil war with Fatah that they have no qualms fighting against their own. They will treat the security presence of an Arab army the same way they'd treat the presence of the Israeli army. And even if by some miracle Hamas leadership agreed to this, it wouldn't matter. There will still be Islamic Jihad, there would likely be groups that would split off from Hamas, or you'd simply have new, more radical groups emerge on their own.

Even if these groups would not necessarily look for confrontation with an Arab force, they would certainly still be looking to attack Israel. If and when a terror attack happens, what then? Will this Arab force be able to deal with that with as much severity as Israel will demand? Will they hunt down the perpetrators and turn them over to Israel, knowing full well that this would require bloodshed? No Arab country is democratic, especially not the four candidates here, but they still have to worry about public opinion. The Palestinian cause is immensely popular in the Arab world, and the optics of an Arab force killing Palestinians would be awful. I think about the only country that could get away with it is Egypt, due to the decade-long insurgency in Sinai by Islamists close to Hamas leadership. Their populace may be able to swallow the idea that Hamas means ill to Egypt and need to be eliminated. Again though, Egypt is not a democracy and their treatment and the blockade of Gaza have not been much better than Israel's. It is entirely possible that Egyptian crackdown in Gaza would escalate into something very similar to what we're seeing now. Wanton destruction and callous disregard for the lives of Gazans.

And this is just security. What about the fact that so many of the problems in Gaza stem from the 80-year existence of massive refugee camps. 2/3 of Gaza's population are registered refugees, and something like a quarter of the population lives within refugee camps. Many of those who are registered refugees but don't live in camps live in what are essentially unofficial camps: shanty towns bordering refugee camps. Not only were Gaza's housing stock and infrastructure woefully inadequate before, but they have been almost destroyed in this current war. Even if they weren't, Gaza Strip has one of the highest population densities in the world. It doesn't matter what you do or how much you invest, it just can't support 2.5 million people. You can't just build housing for the million and a half with refugee status. This is a poor, arid area without a lot of economic potential.

The refugees can't be settled in Gaza, and they can't really be settled in the West Bank without causing mass upheaval there. They obviously can't "return" to Israel and that idea borders of fantasy. It would require a concerted effort by both Western and certain Arab countries to resettle and absorb these refugees. The refugees who, of course, would not want to leave. Now, Gaza could probably absorb a couple of hundred thousand, but that would still leave you with more than a million people you will need to force to leave. Of course their lives would be infinitely better if they were resettled in USA or Canada or Germany or UAE, but this is a hugely emotional issue. How do you do this? Which Palestinian (moral) authority will tell them to give up what they believe is their just claim on their homeland to be dispersed into exile? Who would have both the courage and the position to do it? What occupying force would compel these people to move?

And don't get me wrong. All the things I listed above ought to be done. You could even say they must be done for a comprehensive settlement, but who's going to undertake such a thankless job?
 
Back
Top