Thank goodness for small blessings and apparently Netanyahu has some sense… but I still don’t like the folks in charge of Israel right now, or a lot of what they’re doing.
See Wikipedia for the Samson Option
Yes, but cutting off ALL food, water, and fuel which pretty much guarantees civilian suffering and death is not considered appropriate. That’s what they siege of Leningrad is remembered with such disgust and horror. This “complete siege” business pretty much guarantees mass suffering and death that isn’t hitting Hamas, it’s hitting civilians.
Not all Palestinians are permanent refugees. I myself know of about a half dozen people people either directly Palestinian refugees under UNRWA’s definition or their descendants who are US citizens. Part of the reason that there are so many “permanent” Palestinian refugees is that so few countries are willing to accept them, or willing to let them immigrate in numbers significant to decrease the refugee numbers.
I don’t harbor any illusions that ALL of them would want to go elsewhere in the world, but part of the intractable problem here is that even the Palestinians who want to leave the conflict area aren’t allowed to do so. They’re largely trapped there.
I’ll warrant that hamas has plenty of food, water and drugs. We know they have plenty of fuel they aren’t sharing.
…certainly not enough to feed 2.5 million people. Certainly not enough to distribute through Gaza without getting bombed.
Hamas is only a small minority of the 2 million + people in Gaza. And they aren’t sharing. The only thing the blockade is doing is starving 2 million civilians of food and water.
So… to kill about 20,000 people who are well supplied and in tunnels the IDF is systematically depriving 2,000,000 people of the very necessities of life. There is nothing just or right about that. It’s vicious and cruel. It won’t stop Hamas, who clearly care nothing for human life.
Which suggests 1,980,000 people are letting 20,000 deprive them of food and water. Not to mention, one would presume those 20,000 have family among the 1,980,000 they are willing to let starve.
I am not sure about the math here.
This is true, if hamas is well supplied, why not let supplies through for the innocent? Perhaps the Israelis believe this will encourage them to leave Gaza, and put pressure on the Egyptians to let them out.
…it doesn’t suggest that at all.
And people won’t leave Gaza, because they know if they do they won’t be allowed to return.
“Encouraging civilians to leave Gaza” would be a thing called ethnic cleansing. If this is the goal of the siege, and one hopes that it certainly isn’t, then it needs to be ended now.
This seems to be related to the good old “madman theory”
We can also see that the threat of an overwhelming response did not stop the October massacre, so the madman strategy evidently does not apply to non-nuclear and especially this kind of asymmetric warfare.
The essence of deterrence is that the threats (e.g., of nuclear armageddon) are absolutely real, though, which is one way to understand why Gaza City has been destroyed,
Seems odd that with sophisticated underground facilities available, the Hamas commanders would be perched in a well known and targeted hospital waiting to receive Israeli missiles.
They’re not. They’re perched in sophisticated underground facilities directly beneath a well known and targeted hospital.
I don’t doubt such a thing exists because of it’s central location and access to resources. But it would have limited use in a conflict.
Evacuations have begun through IDF secured corridors. Of course, Hamas continues to discourage Gaza City residents from leaving and request that they remain in their homes:
…the tweet calls it an exodus. Which some might consider more accurate than “evacuation.”
And the Tweet doesn’t say anything about Hamas. I’m sure they might be discouraging some Gaza residents from leaving. But nowhere in Gaza is safe from IDF bombing. They are being forced from their homes into an unknown situation, potentially a more dangerous situation.
It’s stated here:
Would you rather they stayed?
The civilian population remaining in place supports the Hamas defense strategy. And it may be in the best interest of some.
…and considering what could happen if they left, urging them to remain home isn’t entirely a silly idea.
Stay at home and shelter, or take a risk on the open road, not knowing what will happen at the other end? Its a cruel choice.
On a totally different level, here’s my miscellaneous and personal thought for the day.
I accompanied my sister to a follow-up doctor’s appointment for some lesions in her liver. (Great news, they are benign and she can ignore them.) I went to her initial appointment, too. And what i remembered about the doctor is that he was relatively young, and seemed intelligent and very engaged.
This time, i noticed that his name is Mohammed, and he looks like an Arab. And we both look pretty Jewish. And it occurred to me to worry that there might be some political awkwardness. And in fact, in addition to that guy, we saw a resident (also probably an Arab) and a young man came in to “observe”. My sister asked if he was a fourth year medical student. No, it’s complicated. He’s from Jordan… Well, he’s Iranian, but lives in Jordan… My sister, who has better social skills than i do, looked at him and said, “i hope your relatives are okay”. He thanked her for her concern, and we went back to talking about medicine.
Anyway, war sucks even if you are really far away from it.
The PBS show Frontline produced an almost two hour overview of the history (since the 1990’s) between Israel and Palestine. It is long but a worthwhile watch I think. (Posted two weeks ago)
While I greatly sympathize with the tragedies Israelis suffered last month, the idea that we we can just trust the IDF to do the right thing and accurately report what’s happening without skepticism is not credible. Especially when they’re saying things like this (that there’s no humanitarian crisis in Gaza):
Combine this with the continued brutality and murder in the West Bank, and the decades of discriminatory policy, and it’s quite reasonable to be skeptical that this Israeli government can actually accomplish its goals in Gaza.
Until Netanyahu steps down, nothing is likely to be accomplished long term, IMO. And potentially even worse, Israel’s security may degrade (because humanitarian crises are likely to produce more terrorists) while civilians continue to suffer and die.
This isn’t to say Hamas shouldn’t be removed - they should. But I’m very skeptical that this Israeli government, which has shown no likelihood so far of a path to peace afterwards, can remove Hamas without creating more problems for Israel and the region in the process.