The people negotiating for Hamas don’t give a f*** about the people of Gaza or what’s left of their homes. The Hamas guys calling the shots aren’t even in Gaza and never have been, they’ve been sitting comfortably in Qatar the whole time. All they care about it staying in power. The Gazans are just pawns to them.
QFT. There are cases where “bothsidesism” is actually a completely valid perspective.
That link goes nowhere, and those points are weird conspiracy theory ideas.
Well, I think the people of Israel care- at least a little-, but we know Netanyahu is a crook supported by religious extremists.
And Hamas is making money off the gaza misery, so they have no reason to sign on to any of the cease fire deals brokered by the USA or the UN.
So, yeah. assholes on both sides.
You are correct. I tested it after posting and it worked then. Too bad, it was an interesting article.
There are anti-government, as well as pro-hostages protesters in Israel- they are visible- but Netanyahu does not care about them at all, since they are no threat to his grip on power (to their shame and discredit, but those are the facts). And the “people of Israel” don’t care about Palestinian citizens either (and even if a few do, again, they are not in power)
The rumours are that the Minister for Defence will be sacked and replaced with Saar
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-rattled-by-talk-that-netanyahu-may-replace-defence-minister-2024-09-16/
So it seems hard to deny that the war is being run and exploited by fascists. Not clear that there is currently enough organised opposition in Israel to remove the government from power.
So, here we are: Netanyahu has used Gaza to become firmly entrenched; Hamas has not been defeated; Northern Gaza is being cleared of its’ civilian population; Israeli occupation is imminent; Colonization is at hand.
Wasn’t that Hamas’s plan? Attack a superior force and draw other sympathetic powers into the conflict when it went as predicted.
Hamas’s plan was blood and death, and they presumed Israel would respond with more blood and death, and they were right. Netanyahu has been the absolute greatest recruiter for the Hamas of the 2030s anyone could ever imagine.
then Hamas should do great in the next election if that ever happens.
Very likely - as he’s done for years, Netanyahu continues to aid the long term prospects for Hamas.
So Palestinians would knowingly vote in a group who can’t win because they love what has become of their homeland. Something initiated by Hamas.
Got it
Keep in mind that the Gazans only got to vote ONCE - the election they voted in Hamas, who promptly prevented any more elections from being held through all sorts of means, including outright assassination of any potential competition. With the result being that when this present war broke out literally more than half the Gazans had never voted because they hadn’t been born until after that one and only election.
I’m not so sure about that. I don’t like Netanyahu much, but Gaza doesn’t seem to happy with Hamas at the moment.
I hope that’s the case.
Yeah, well at this point what do the Gazans have left to lose?
If Israel develops the Gazan economy for the benefit of Gaza and the Palestinian population, then progress can be made. There is plenty of opportunity to use local economic skills, and low cost labor, for Gazans to rebuild their country.
If, instead, Israel uses Israeli contractors to develop northern Gaza as a colonial extension of the Israeli economy they will draw partisan attacks and nothing will change.
I speculate that Israel will create a seaside development (‘settlement’) inside of Gaza with a secure access road across the border. It will be interesting to see how the Israeli propaganda ministry covers this process.
It’s a familiar pattern. In the US the replacement of the native population of northern Oklahoma with whites is touted as the opening of the Great American Frontier. It’s a major part of our foundation myth.
This. Many pro-Israel hawks wag their fingers at Palestinians for (some of them) continuing to support violent militant groups like Hamas although the militants’ aggression and terrorism don’t result in equality, freedom and security for Palestinians.
But what the hawks are ignoring is the fact that not supporting violent militants also doesn’t result in equality, freedom and security for Palestinians. For decades, Israel has aggressively resisted acknowledging Palestinian rights and sovereignty, no matter what the majority of Palestinians do or don’t do. The Palestinians’ only realistic choice has been between ongoing dispossession, exile and discrimination when they don’t engage in mass violence against Israelis, and far more rapid dispossession, wholesale destruction and slaughter when they do engage in mass violence against Israelis.
Of course most of us would rightly think that the former alternative is at least preferable to the latter, so nonviolence is the wiser choice, despite the ongoing injustice in Israel’s denial of Palestinian rights. But people who go on getting smacked in the face with that injustice day after day and decade after decade are not always going to make the most rational decisions.
Imagine you’re a Palestinian who after decades of dispossession and exile still can’t go home to the house your grandparents own that Israelis have now appropriated, and still can’t get any citizenship rights in Israel, and still can’t get from Israel any compensation for your dispossession or any establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state where you would have rights, and still can’t get from Israel any justice against the recently arrived Israeli settlers who shot your teenaged son for allegedly trespassing on settlement land when he was going to the well that the local Palestinians have been using for generations.
If you continue to refrain from anti-Israeli terrorist violence, you’re going to continue not getting any of those things.
But if you do give in to the temptation of anti-Israeli terrorist violence, you’re still going to continue not getting any of those things, but maybe at least you can get revenge against the settlers who shot your son.
Does that make anti-Israeli terrorist violence right or moral? Hell no. But does it seriously undermine the rational disincentives to engage in anti-Israeli terrorist violence? Yes, I’m afraid it does.
How does that work without outside supplies of guns and ammo? do you throw rocks from the rubble of your house?
? What does that have to do with what I was saying? I was following up on Crane’s remarks about why “nothing will change” if Israel just goes on ignoring Palestinian rights and absorbing more of their land.
Or are you trying to say that it won’t matter if Israel goes on ignoring Palestinian rights and taking over Palestinian land and thus perpetuating Palestinian enmity and resentment, as long as Palestinians can be limited in any violent expression of that resentment to using rocks instead of guns?
If so, that kind of reinforces my point about Israel (and pro-Israel hawks) hypocritically demanding that Palestinians must be nonviolent, even though it won’t get them any closer to obtaining their rights than violence will.
Was there a decade with no Palestinian acts of terrorism vs Israel?