Gallant is the big one, and the one who could get others to follow too; we aren’t gonna play this game where I name other ministers you’ve never heard of and have no interest in.
If Netanyahu is stupid enough to fire him from the Defense Minister post again, that could set things off.
Wait a second, you’re saying they could peel off Likud members. I think that’s a bit different.
Your comments above seemed to heavily imply that the centrist parties other than Likud were at issue, apologies if I’m misreading your previous posts.
Ah, I see what happened. Fuck.
When I initially wrote an earlier post on the topic, I used the term ‘opposition’ (as well as ‘government’) colloquially, but then I figured that would be confusing, so I rewrote the post using the terms “in government” or “in opposition” the way they are used in parliamentary systems - if you’re an elected member of parliament but not part of the administration, you are “in opposition” and not “in government”.
But I missed one colloquial use of “opposition” which probably makes my post incomprehensible. My bad on that.
Revisiting this, even with your later explanation, it seems false on the facts, unless “centrist or center left” is expanded to an absurd degree.
Even if Gallant got disgusted and left, how do you know 4 or 5 others would follow?
Probably because of this:
Ahh, so when you said “The only place in the world”, it was bullshit. Since you acknowledge all these other occurrences of the exact same phenomenon. Down to the actual genocide (just like in Gaza).
Aah, got it - all the babies born in all those other UN refugee camps - magically no longer refugees.
If you live in the same place where you were born then you cannot by definition be a refugee.
This is so easily disproven, I have to wonder your purpose in posting it. Stupidity or blind resistance to facts that disagree with your desired narrative?
Under international law and the principle of family unity, the children of refugees and their descendants are also considered refugees until a durable solution is found.
Which definition would that be?
Well, that’s monstrously cruel. And you’re OK with this?
The “durable solution” is for them to become citizens of the land in which they have been born.
I don’t see how being made citizens of an occupied state where they are subject to genocidal actions by their occupiers is a durable solution, but you clearly have your own definitions of other terms, so maybe you saw “durable” and substituted the “Final” you’d clearly prefer.
Revisiting this - the main reason there’s no significant organized negotiating partner for peace among the Palestinians is that Netanyahu and his allies have systematically and purposefully defunded and disempowered the real possible partners and helped fund and empower extremist groups like Hamas.
Lol, no.
If that’s the “main reason” that there is no partner for peace on the Palestinian side, why has there not been any genuine partner for peace between 1947 and the late 90s when Bibi first rose to prominence? Netanyahu has a lot of influence over parliamentary politics, less so over space-time.
The main reason that there is no significant voice for peace among the Palestinians is that at the moment too many Palestinians view the Jews as colonizers to be completely removed, not as neighbors to get along with. Hence the popularity of revanchist, maximalist slogans like “from the river to the sea”. This has been true since Palestinians rejected the partition plan in 1947 until today.
The reason people like Netanyahu and his allies have any political clout whatsoever is that the Palestinians have shown over and over that they are not interested in a two-state solution. Until that changes, overwhelmingly defeating that bloc will remain a monumental task for those of us in Israel who do support peace.
You’re talking distant past, I’m talking the last decade plus. In the last decade plus, Netanyahu and allies systematically and purposefully disempowered any possible reasonable Palestinian partners for peace, and purposefully empowered extremist groups like Hamas. Do you deny this?
History didn’t start in the last decade plus. And it’s not like there was strong (or really any) support for a two state solution on the Palestinian side that Netanyahu torpedoed.
Who are these reasonable Palestinian partners for peace who were sidelined?
I agree that Netanyahu’s policies have led to the entranchment of Hamas, but it’s not like Hamas was replacing a viable pro Peace alternative.
And also, isn’t there another source of agency that you’re leaving out entirely here? Neither Netanyahu nor Israel is responsible for Hamas taking over Gaza in the first place.
You mean, when Netanyahu “gave Hamas briefcases of money” as he is often claimed? I mean, he did do that, but the money was humanitarian aid from Qatar. Should he have just said “sorry Gaza, now that Hamas took over in a coup, no humanitarian aid will eneter Gaza, period”?
Maybe that IS what he should have said, but I’m pretty sure Israe’s critics wouldn’t approve of that policy, either.
Should he have rooted out Hamas over a decade ago? Yes, in hindsight, he probably should have. (Not that you guys would have liked that - it would have meant doing precisely what we are doing now in 2014 or 2008. Which, again, in hindsight, would have probably been a better move than kicking the can down the road to 2024.)
Did his policies lead to Hamas becoming the threat it is today? Yes, absolutely. He needs to own that.
Did he “purposefully empower extremist groups like Hamas”? That depends on your definitions. You can make that case, but IMO you’re really stretching it.
According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to me.
The current Israeli government is part of the perpetual war party, alongside Hamas and Hezbollah. There’s no chance for peace, and therefore no chance of security, as long as they’re in charge. And further carnage just helps all of them move further and further away from any chance at peace.
That article highlights the catastrophic mistakes I think Netanyahu has made in dealing with Hamas. It doesn’t mean he is responsible for Hamas taking over Gaza. And let’s both be honest here, it’s not like the anti Israel crowd would have approved of we kinetically removed Hamas back in 2008, or if we cut off all the Qatari aid money that was going into Gaza because we didn’t want to risk it falling into Hamas’ hands.
If there was a genuine peace offer from the Palestinian side, Likud would have to engage with it, or it would not survive. Just like they did when the hawkish Likudnik Begin made peace with Egypt.
Luckily for Netanyahu and for his far right allies, the Palestinian leadership has been completely incapable of making any concessions towards the existence of an Israeli state in any form whatsoever since 1947.
As more information comes out, I’m less sure about this. The morality of this depends on how much these tiny bombs create collateral damage.
If the people who faced serious injury were overwhelmingly Hezbollah members, I retract what I said before about a terror attack, and definitely think this is a great way to go about targeting enemies.
My initial impression was that many of the thousands of injured people were bystanders and not the pagers’ owners. Do we know whether that’s accurate?
More disturbingly, even outside of the Netanyahu government there appears to be no significant Israeli support for any meaningful peace initiative in the sense of genuinely recognizing Palestinian rights, sovereignty and equality.
What pro-Israel war hawks mean by “peace” is basically “an indefinitely prolonged process of occupation and annexation in which Palestinians may at some future date attain some kind of increased control over some reduced part of the currently occupied territories, depending on conditions that we have the unilateral right to determine and modify, and in the meantime Palestinians don’t commit any violent acts or any other form of organized resistance.”
And then the hawks complain that Palestinians persistently refuse to support such a vision for “peace”. Yeah, no shit.
What pro-Palestine “doves” mean by “peace” is basically “Israel should allow themselves to be struck by whatever attacks the Palestinians can devise, and attackingback is evil and wrong because those nasty Jews are settler colonialists with no right to be there at all. Israel needs to unilaterally cease all hostilities and obviously then the Palestinians will suddenly reveal that all the talk about removing all the Jews between the river and the sea was just talk because they were frustrated by their oppression, clearly they don’t really mean it.”
And then the ‘doves’ complain that Israelis persistently refuse to trust that the people who keep saying ‘we want to kill you all’ and then trying to do so are actually going to love them if only Israelis put down their guns. Yeah, no shit.