By Henri Astier BBC News
Israel has suggested that the long-term aim of its military campaign in Gaza is to sever all links with the territory.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said that once Hamas had been defeated, Israel would end its “responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip”.
Before the conflict, Israel supplied Gaza with most of its energy needs and monitored imports into the territory.
…
Okay, so surely that will also involve removing the maritime blockade and giving Gazans responsibility for the land border with Egypt, RIGHT?
Though even if it did, I would tend to think that the flip side would be increased settlement and repression in the West Bank.
If there is no Hamas in power, why would they have continued blockade?
Tell me this, place yourself in the shoes of an average Gazan at the age of 18. With all the destruction, violence, and oppression you’ve witnessed, would you not become a “terrorist” against your oppressor? There won’t be an end to Hamas without an end of the abysmal material conditions and violence. Hamas was literally funded and legitimized by Israel to manufacture consent for their ethnic clensing campaign.
They will continue to blockade as long as Palestinians exist, I gaurentee it.
“Tell me this, place yourself in the shoes of an average Vietnamese at the age of 18 (in 1974). With all the destruction, violence, and oppression you’ve witnessed, would you not become a ‘terrorist’ against your oppressor?”
Feel free to replace with Japanese in the US in 1945 in interment camps, or Jews in Europe in 1945, or Mexicans in the 1930s, etc.
There’s quite a lot of populations throughout history that have been harmed by others, and yet within a generation live in peace next to them. People of the generation that were harmed often have prejudice and distrust towards those who carried out the harm, but rarely themselves harm in turn.
Don’t normalize terrorism and violence targeting civilians. It’s not a normal part of the cycle of things, and the exceptional factor here is religious orthodoxy, which does have a long history across many forms of barbarism carried out on innocents.
If we want peace in the middle east, the only path to it is promoting atheism in the middle east.
Because as history has shown over and over and over, you are 100% wrong about what humans might do to one another in retribution when the self-righteous entitlement to harm one another religion provides is taken out of the picture.
There’s so many problems with this take.
- I absolutely sympathize with the Vietnamese cause during that war. The United States were LITERALLY the invaders and deserved retaliation / defense.
- Gaza has been an open air prison for 16 years, with horrifying material conditions, which is precisely WHY the average age is 18. Here’s a short that explains them as concisely as I’ve seen. I would 100% sympathize with Japanese or Jewish terrorism under that level of barbarity. Also, to be clear, those camps in all those situations were wrong. Are you defending them?
- West Bank, which has no Hamas, is still an apartheid state where the people who are acting with the Israelis are STILL GETTING FUCKED OVER by Israel and subjected to settler colonial terrorism.
- Obviously I don’t like terrorism as a method, but at a certain point, it becomes the only option. Peaceful protests have been met with bullets and international silence. See the Great March of Return, 13,000 Palestinians wounded and 1,400 killed. What’s the lesson there do you think?
This is primarily not a religious conflict, it’s territorial and racial.
Please tell me you would be super chill with having your home stolen by some fucking white guy from Brooklyn because the newly formed government wants to form an ethnostate, because I sure fucking wouldn’t be.
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Something like 80% of the water they get from Isreal is contaminated.
The Israeli government counts the calories of the food they receive so they get the minimum amount to sustain their life.
The health care isn’t great (obviously)
And if you don’t know what “mowing the lawn” is, look it up.
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Obviously I don’t like terrorism as a method, but at a certain point, it becomes the only option.
No, it’s never the option, and always has blowback that harms the very people in whose interests it was rationalized in the first place.
Go ahead and point to when guerilla attacks on civilians achieved the original aims and didn’t result in retaliatory violence.
Also, to be clear, those camps in all those situations were wrong. Are you defending them?
Did you read my comment before going off on a rant?
The point of discussion was that people being harmed by other people inevitably results in generational retributive violence. And that’s simply not correct.
Nowhere am I saying that the initial violence is a good thing. I’m just pointing out that this sort of rationalization is BS. That’s not how it actually works. (Normal people realize that bad people of an identity group doing bad things doesn’t reflect all people of that identity group, so even if there’s a desire for justice against the specific people that did bad things, that doesn’t translate into a desire to do bad things to any member of that identity group for non-psychopaths.)
Most civilian victims of violence want nothing more than to avoid future violence. They don’t want to commit their lives to more violence.
The exception is religious violence, where there’s a long history of commitment to violence (retributive or not) out of a sense of justice inherent to it and an ‘otherness’ and superiority over anyone that isn’t part of the same religious group.
This is primarily not a religious conflict, it’s territorial and racial.
Oh really now? So how many of the Hamas terrorists attacking civilians in their homes and burning children alive were atheists do you reckon? 50%?
And how many Zionists who refuse to consider any kind of compromise regarding Palestine’s existence are atheist? My guess is not much more than the relative number of atheist Zionists in 66 CE who thought it would be a great idea to rebel against Rome because God was going to be on their side in the resulting conflict.
This is primarily a longstanding religious conflict.
Racial!?! WTF are you talking about? The DNA of Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians is effectively identical. They are the same people. The difference is primarily religious, and extends a bit beyond that to cultural differences. Sure, Ashkenazi and Sephardic only share half the DNA. So that portion of the population are simply partial relatives of the Palestinians, as opposed to effectively the same people ‘racially’ - the equivalent of a half Palestinian.
If at a snap of one’s fingers both sides suddenly became 100% atheist, there’d be nothing more to be fighting about. Just like the many, many peoples throughout history who have had atrocities committed against them by neighbors and yet generations after live in complete peace with one another.
This is almost exclusively a religious conflict, with Jews and Muslims at each other’s necks and with Christians only giving a crap because they think Jerusalem must be inhabited by the Jews for their zombie to float down from the sky. The underlying reasons are much more insane than the more palatable reasons that get talked about publicly by the parties involved, but those insane underlying reasons are the real ones, and the ultimate driving force behind why there will never be peace in the region as long as any of those three motivations have a seat at the negotiating table.
Look, you’re obviously a debate pervert. I’m not going to engage your entire diatribe, but a few things to note…
The blowback was the Hamas attack. The Israelis are the ones who created and have control over the conditions. The attack was the response. History did not start on Oct 7th.
This is an imperfect example, but if you mistreat a dog for long enough and it lashes out, who is at fault?
If it was religious, why would they be sterilizing Ethiopian jews?
If I’m a Palestinian, and I become a convert, can I join Israel?
What percent of Isreal has a Jewish faith, and what percent is non-religious?
This is an imperfect example, but if you mistreat a dog for long enough and it lashes out, who is at fault?
Pretty sure the dog gets put down, even if the owner was negligent.
What percent of Isreal has a Jewish faith, and what percent is non-religious?
Good first step. Now look at whether attitudes towards expulsion of Arabs from Israel is a minority view or majority view depending on that identification…
If it was religious, why would they be sterilizing Ethiopian jews?
Huh? I don’t see sterility listed as a side effect for the medication they were given. So “why were the Ethiopian Jews given birth control with ambiguous degrees of informed consent” is certainly a topic worth exploring, but is quite different from what you stated.
If I’m a Palestinian, and I become a convert, can I join Israel?
No, and that’s messed up, especially given the risks they face in Palestine.
The harm has to stop before anyone lives together though… Also Jews did rise up against Hitler’s regime several times but weren’t successful.
There’s a big difference between resisting a regime that’s harming you and carrying out violence against the people long after.
The Vietnamese also fought against US soldiers when they were invading their homes.
But they don’t go beheading US citizens afterwards, do they?
I’m exclusively talking about the notion of terrorism against civilians, not about resistance against the agents of active oppression.
Yes, Israel is currently oppressing the people of Gaza as I said. It’s basically a big open air concentration camp.
The civilians are?
Was 9/11 was justified against the people of NY because of the actions of the US government oppressing peoples in the Middle East?
And the discussion was on multi-generational commitment to violence, not whether or not there’d be resistance to oppression in the here and now.
Multi-generational commitment to violence is quite anomalous in history as I was saying.
Resistance against opposition oppressive military is not, and extensively patterned throughout history.
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A. You don’t know that, especially if the terms are seen as fair and just. An apartheid or an open air prison is neither.
B. What’s the alternative? Genocide and ethnic cleansing?
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I’m sure you got a credible source which confirms Hamas was funded by Israel
I don’t know if times of israel is credible or not, but you can find your own sources.
Thank you for the link. It does not mention however that Israel actively funded Hamas. It does mention the legitimisation but there is no proof of Israeli money flowing into Gaza. It’s very likely but it could also have been any other nation funding while Israel watches.
You’re right, to my knowledge that proxy nation was Qatar.
You don’t even need sources. Countries do it all the time. They want to destabilize their current enemies so they fund their enemies enemies. They fund the enemy successors. If they do it very, very, very well the successors are fractured and no one becomes stronger than the previous enemy. But that’s not usually the case. Usually there’s a runaway success, consolidation of power, and now you haven’t even more extremist enemy. And that might be a good thing for you, it might give you an excuse to cut diplomatic relations, or to not honor previous treaties, or to send in military units to take over resources.
I’m not gonna lie, ever since the fall of the ottoman empire Arabs have been getting their asses kicked left and right. There is simply no respect for them at this point, no non Arab nation actually thinks they are not beneath them.
If Israel actually does this, this is Palestines best chance to do a hard reset, take the L, and rebuild on the principle of “no more terrorism”.
That would necessitate Israel not engaging in state / settler-colonial terrorism, and that isn’t happening.
True Israel is an apartheid state.
Apartheid states breed violence.
Apartheid is never justified.
Oh yeah they’re not gonna do it, I’m just saying if it was true this is the chance to start over.
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No not “the jews”, Israel, don’t make this antisemitic. Dont try to turn what he said into racism.
Because it’s true, their jewishness is irrelevant to the conversation. Israel DOES control their open air prison by definition.
Why indeed
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I believe they have responsibility for the border with Egypt now.
Half the population are children, most of whom will dedicate their life to a blood feud.
lol the kids in Palestine already dedicate their life to blood feud.
this whole situation is sad, and cannot be summed up on an internet post.
this ancient blood feud will continue long after you and I are converted to fossil fuels
Ethnic cleansing is bad and a nation descended from Holocaust survivors should know better. Unfortunately that nation is ruled by a far right government intent on finishing the job their grandparents started in 1948.
Here in the US, our ancestors shot their foreign occupying soldiers over a lot less, and rightfully so.
Let’s not forget the native Americans who resisted their oppressors, and were ethnically cleansed
Yeah, unfortunately, by definition, Zionism is religious nationalism.
Imagine a nation run only by religious conservatives, and you have Israel.
Trump: “If I lose, you’ll never see me again.”
Israel: “If we get rid of Hamas, we won’t have to blockade Gaza anymore.”
[x] Doubt
Read the article. It sounds like they want to be off the hook for providing necessary infrastructure and services to Gaza and other occupied territories.
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Because currently Gaza is still officially occupied territory and Israel is reponsible
Nevertheless, moving to a separation of infrastructure is good. Israel should:
- permit and encourage international involvement on getting the Gaza strip self-functioning
- gtfo
They stole all the resources and then they make it look like they’re doing a favor to give something back. Shameful.
That’s… not bad?
It’s disengenuous. People complain about Gaza not having enough of its own water or electricity infrastructure and relying on Israel, but up until now Israel has required Gaza to get their permission on any new construction. So Israel have been holding Gaza hostage via water and now they’re cutting them off and making excuses for it.
It doesn’t help when the government in the region digs up infrastructure to construct weapons with and makes hype videos about it.
Man good point. Glad the Israelis aren’t using any weapons that are disproportionately more effective on a captive populace. The prisoners shouldn’t fight back against their oppressor through whatever desperate means they have available. Please die and suffer in silence, Palestinians.
I know right. Imagine they used air burst munitions or. Cheaper mass artillery barrages rather than the primary kinetic and precision strikes they use now. It would look like Eastern Ukraine in Gaza.
Ah yes, because the current bombing campaign against civilians and civilian infrastructure has been very humanitarian. So glad Israel has been showing “restraint”. Never mind the white phosphorous too, very legal and very restrained.
Do you know how and why wp rounds get used? You mark a target with wp rounds and now it has an IR signature. So your artillery round can be a single “smart” round that hits your target.
Without wp you’d need to send dozens of rounds in to only probabilistically hit your target and if there was unexpected wind or pressure you might need to try multiple times. That would level whole neighborhoods and sometimes would level them as a “miss”.
People talk about wp rounds like they’re mustard gas or something. It’s a wp round per target or it’s 10-40 artillery rounds per target.
How about, no rounds per target?
I love how you’re debate-lording me on the specifics of how civilians, children and their infrastructure get blown to bits. Even if you could justify it in that way, that shit is still a war crime for a reason.
That’s not making the point you intended.
My bad. Imagine civilians killed in the original slave raid weren’t Jewish.
They weren’t, the first civilian bombing in the conflict is objectively the bombing of a hotel that housed the Palestinian embassy of sorts, killed like 91.
Pointing fingers in this conflict is a bit idiotic, the protagonists are all ultra religious shitheads fucking over huge populations because of story time interpretations.
That’s very true, however I don’t believe Gaza had sufficient water supplies even before then.
The whole issue is a mess, with so many bad actors on both sides.
Gaza has a sizeable aquifer and it’s received enough aid where it could have and should have built desalination plants to augment it’s water supply (but instead spent that money on Condos in Qatar).
*Have been routinely denied permit, it’s been a thing for awhile.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/
You can blame Hamas for being shitty but they wouldn’t have support without Israel being shitty. Stop trying to point fingers, everyone is to blame and no one here has the moral high ground.
So we’re really saying that an organization that digs up water infrastructure to make weapons shouldn’t be held responsible for bad water infrastructure?
Jesus fucking christ, I swear you people don’t know how to read.
When the ruling party have publicly stated and action supported main goal in destruction of Jewish state, it is called security measure.
Wouldn’t it be a better solution though inevitably? I know nothing about the region so please don’t take offense, just seems if Palestine was granted autonomy while it would be rocky at first being free to govern themselves would probably be good in the end right or am I missing a lot on the situation?
Probably, however I don’t really think that Israel are looking to offer a better solution for Palestinians here.
Nah, definitely not especially right now.
There isn’t a happy ending here. They have nothing that makes a successful state.
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So they give them water and electricity it is because they are holding them hostage. But they take it away and that is also bad. So they need to offer Schrodinger’s utilities?
They keep them reliant on water from Israel by preventing them from building new infrastructure. At no point has Gaza had a sufficient water supply.
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the same group of people who, on video, showed how they dig up pipes to use for rockets right?
Yep, rocketing themselves in the foot-shaped hospital with that - or at least their government are. Even so, before they dug it all up I don’t think they had sufficient infrastructure.
It’s such a complex set of issues you can always whataboutism almost any point. Not that I’m knocking you for doing it.
And Israel bombed their civil airport, because it was representing a security concern for them. How not to love your oppressor, right?
The “moral” solution would be to provide electricity and water while they aid them in constructing their own infrastructure that they’ve been preventing them from building.
If I take you hostage on a boat and free you in the middle of the ocean, that’s not a good thing, right? You can’t put someone in a bad situation and then claim that they’re responsible for themselves now and not take blame for it.
Destroy people’s homes, utilities, food, etc, then pulling out and saying “not my problem” while people die from lack of basic necessities and medical care as a result of Israel’s destruction and Israel does a pikashocked face while continuing to do whatever they can to limit aid getting in still seems pretty bad. Like, better than stealing the Territory…
It is a long term goal, not immediate goal. Having Palestine state (without Hamas) responsible for itself is a good thing.
Seeing promising things about a 2 state solution being discussed at the Cairo peace summit. Let’s hope after the violence cooler heads prevail and we can see a lasting peace in the region.
I would just expect another militant group to take their place. Every bombing essentially creates a new radicals. Would you really expect Palestinians to just forget about all their dead realitives?
I hope they will remember why they have dead relatives. A lot of Germans died too during WW2, but they did make right conclusions.
Funny how you compare them to the Germans when the Palestinians are the ones being ethnically cleansed.
This is more like the Afghan war. Everytime you bomb a civilian you create a new enemy.
Do you know what ethnic cleaning means? That it is different from genocide. Genocide is a method of ethnic cleansing, but not all ethnic cleansing is genocide. For example, Gaza did experience ethnic cleansing when Israel agreed to demilitarize the area and remove all settlements. All the Jews were forced out and it became essentially completely Arab.
A peace deals that involves land swaps can be considered ethnic cleansing. But it doesn’t involve killing anyone. What is happening is a fucking war. It is between an underdeveloped region and a very developed nation, but it is war. And you can absolutely bring up war crimes, rules of engagement, etc. But at least know what those things mean.
See people always say this, but it isn’t some universal truth. Often people get exhausted and would prefer a shaky peace with a compromise over writing about random bombs and rockets.
The IRA and Ireland (I’ve often seen people comparing Hamas to the IRA situation, but just imagine if the IRA had been demanding not only a united Ireland, but they also wanted England, Scotland, and Wales too). ETA and basque country. Although there are a lot more extremist groups in that region that could take hold, I will admit. Which is why Israel is likely planning on a wider more strict dmz until peace can be agreed upon and sustained. And if it cannot, then Gaza should probably work on their Egyptian diplomatic relations and a 3 state solution is more likely here.
Because even if you want to think bad things about Israel’s government, they are working hard on diplomacy in the region and do not want repeated war with Gaza to sidetrack it. They were supposed to have diplomatic talks with Saudi Arabia until Hamas attacked them. Already have them with several Arab league nations. A large dmz, Hamas removed from power, and Gaza being forced to work with Egypt might accomplish that.
They’ll steal the territory after they’ve starved out anyone who was able to resist it.
They had complete control of Gaza and the whole Sinai Peninsula. Which quadrupled the size of land Israel controlled. But they gave control back to Egypt to make peace in 1978. Then in 2004-05 they completely withdrew from Gaza and dismantled and (sometimes forcefully) removed all settlements and settlers in an attempt at making peace.
Now in the first situation since for 45 years, the two groups have maintained peace. The other Arab nations were less peaceful with Israel, however. Islamic jihadists even assassinated Sadat. But there has been peace with Israel.
In the second, they used it an opportunity to essentially become a terrorist controlled territory. And increased the attacks. And reject any peace negotiations.
So what should Israel do? What solution might you suggest.
If they want to make Gaza a independent state, then let them have unrestricted maritime trade access with the world. Build them enough water and power capability to self sustain - then they can truly say ‘we did all that we could do, our responsibility is over’
This escape from new york style prison city with no trade, no water, no electricity, and no imports, isn’t going to make peaceful neighbors.
Populations that co-depend on each other for economic success are more peaceful, trade, and integration are keys to long term stability.
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It’s only responsible that any decolonization process have the colonizer ensure basic services exists at the time of independence. In this circumstance the colonizer has prevented any imports of technology which could be used to create energy and water independence. Not to mention the bombing of infrastructure over time. They had more power generating capacity, but it’s been bombed.
So if you want to get to a clean slate, clean hands, you need to provide the bare minimum so that there’s not an immediate humanitarian crisis when you give them full independence, and you’re no longer responsible.
That being said I’m sure the Palestinian people would value independence over water and electricity, as long as they’re allowed to trade with other countries, they will take independence and a humanitarian emergency any day over no independence. It’s just not a good look for the colonizer
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Removed under Rule 4. We aren’t going to let people call for the dissolution of a state or people. It doesn’t matter if they’re Israeli or Palestinian.
Okay but you have to understand that by doing so you are decidedly and actively shifting the discourse to favour the Israelis, right?
Not if the discussion moves towards the Israeli talking points of the Palestinians are animals who need to be exterminated.
Atticles exposing that outlook are definitely allowed, comments advocating it are not.
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Why would they do that? They pulled out of the territory in 2004 in an attempt at peace. Every Jew who wanted to live there has been forced out.
Really? No settlers on Palestinian land since 2004? Really?
They are talking about Gaza.
Palestine is more than just Gaza. You think they are going to be okay with Israel stealing their land as long as they are notstealing land from the giant open air prison?
If the government of the West Bank was organizing this violence I’d be a lot more understanding of the violence.
0 in the Gaza Strip. 0 in the land that Hamas administers. 0 amongst the people that started the conflict.
Ah yes, “Israel continues to maintain direct control over Gaza’s air and maritime space, six of Gaza’s seven land crossings, maintains a no-go buffer zone within the territory, controls the Palestinian population registry, and Gaza remains dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities.”
I guess Gazans should have been really grateful for that…
Edit: responded to the wrong comment.
Well it’ll be a DMZ inside Gaza with a very hard border that nothing may cross so it will all be Egypt’s problem.
Israel aims to cut Gaza out entirely: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-brandishes-map-of-israel-that-includes-west-bank-and-gaza-at-un-speech/
Ya he’s part of the party that wants to assimilate the West Bank and Gaza. The parties that wanted a two state solution have been out of power since their “prove it” move to establish peace in the Gaza Strip backfired.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said that once Hamas had been defeated, Israel would end its “responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip”.
On Friday, Mr Gallant told a parliamentary committee that the first stage of the campaign was meant to destroy Hamas’s infrastructure, according to a statement from his office.
The US and Egypt have reached a deal allowing some supplies to start bringing relief Gaza’s 2.2 million residents.
An initial convoy of 20 trucks had been expected to enter southern Gaza through the Rafah border crossing on Friday, but they are still stuck on the Egyptian side.
Meanwhile Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has confirmed that he will join several world leaders at a summit in Cairo on Saturday aimed at achieving a ceasefire.
The event, hosted by Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, will involve talks on trying to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on a two-state solution.
The original article contains 460 words, the summary contains 150 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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Israel: loses control of its colony Israel: “didn’t want it anyway”
Gaza hasn’t been an Israeli colonization target since 2004 when they evicted every Jewish settler from the territory and re-established the 1967 borders in the name of peace.
You can’t run a de facto siege against the territory, a total isolation of it, and claim you’re being peaceful. That’s an act of war. The Gaza territory simply doesn’t have a military to fight that war.
So import and export blockades, does not make a hands-off independent state.
Which came after Hamas took over the territory and committed itself to eliminating every Jew in the region.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say they’re at peace, but they’re also at war. You have to choose
Since the pullout there have been a series of conflicts and ceasefire between Hamas in Gaza and Israel. So over that time they have been at peace and at war.
