I’m suggesting that those defending their homes and what little national sovereignty they have won’t necessarily be the same ones that attacked Israel. Palestinians are as justified in defending their homes as anybody else in the world.
Under current circumstances - no, they are not. This is a war. Hamas terrorists are in power and Hamas are going to be removed.
You might as well say that the Allies invading Germany should have checked everyone shooting at them individually to determine if they were Nazi sympathizers or just ordinary Germans bravely defending their homes against Allied aggression. It’s absurd.
I would like a little more specificity about what people mean when they say “destroy Hamas”. Obviously, kill all the leadership and anyone who tries to shoot back at the IDF. So now Israel controls half the country and the civilian population is crowded into the other half. What’s the next step? Do they just assume all the militants will have stayed in the north to fight and are now dead, so victory has been achieved?
Are we trying to kill only active Hamas fighters, or civilian supporters of Hamas who haven’t killed anyone that we know of, or women and children who support Hamas but clearly aren’t a threat, or anyone who can’t prove that they actively opposed Hamas? I assume not the latter two groups, but where should the line be drawn?
Anyone who shoots at Israelis will be shot back at. Any civilians in a building where people are shooting at Israelis may become collateral damage. Some civilians will no doubt be killed by accident when they surprise soldiers clearing homes. People who refuse orders to stop moving towards soldiers or whomrun for them without warning will likely be shot for fear of bomb vests and such.
Urban fighting is awful. You need fast reaction times and instant responses to threats, and that puts civilians even more at risk. Simetimes airstrikes will be called if a building can’t be cleared, and any civilians inside will be at risk.
That’s the way it’s going to go until all of Gaza is pacified - or what’s left of it.
Yes, all of that is perfectly obvious. But what about the people who do obey all the IDF’s orders, and manage to live through the war? Are they just going to assume that everyone who isn’t actively fighting them now will never do so in the future and declare victory? I find that a bit hard to believe.
The sad fact is that hundreds of thousands of children will probably die in the process of attempting to eradicate Hamas.
That will almost certainly happen, all that remains is for “history” to decide who gets blamed for being responsible for the catastrophe.
Less, because Ukraine is not being invaded by Russia due to Ukrainians crossing the border and massacaring a thousand Russian civilians, nor are Ukrainians striking civilian targets in Russia at range.
Hamas will not be fully destroyed until something else replaces it and fills the power vacuum. That’s why Israel will need to ensure that as it is doing the necessary work of destroying Hamas it is also doing the equally necesary work of hashing out a deal with either the Palestinian Authority or a new Gazan group.
No, I imagine Israel will have to occupy and run Gaza again, set up checkpoints, etc. for some time until they can find new partners to work with, if they can. Nothing is going to be easy from here on out, for anyone. That’s on Hamas.
If I had to be the judge, I’d first blame the grown, gun toting men hiding behind the children. Then, second place blame goes to to those who fired the weaponry.
Hamas and Israel have previously fought three major conflicts (2008, 2014, 2021) – as well as innumerable minor skirmishes – and every single one has ended with the Palestinians reaping death and destruction while making no significant positive change in their bleak lives. While it is difficult to know with accuracy what percentage of Palestinians support Hamas today, I note they are still in charge in Gaza. They are still stupidly attacking a vastly more powerful force. And the result of the current war will be as bad or worse than earlier conflicts.
How many such experiences do you think it should take to change Palestinian attitudes towards Hamas? Imo, all this demonstrates that the Palestinians don’t understand/care that Hamas’ policies are ruinous for them. Rather, they seem only interested in opposing Israel in any way that causes pain and suffering, regardless of the consequences for themselves. This seems to me akin to many Republican voters in the U.S. who prefer an ideologically pure politician with no chance of winning a general election to one who can win and will actually help to improve quality of lives through compromise.
After nearly 80 years, the latter assumption seems close to a proven hypothesis.
Your comments do not take into account the possibility that a majority of Palestinians (as distinct from Hamas, Iran, etc.) will not accept anything less than their maximalist demands. Assuming this is the case, even if Hamas is somehow removed from the leadership loop, how do you propose to get the Palestinians to accept leadership which will renounce violence and abide Israel’s existence?
I’m inclined to believe any such attempts are folly.
I’m not going to say you’re wrong.
But if tens of hundreds of thousands die of hunger, disease, or dehydration it won’t be as clear cut. It’s a tragedy all around caused by forces those kids can’t control.
Yes. It’s terrible, to say the least.
This isn’t a strategy of winning the hearts and minds though. This is meeting the bare minimum of Israel’s obligations under the laws and customs of war on land. Israel is obliged to provide care for civilians in the territory it occupies. I am truly getting worried about the direction things are taking; denying food, water, electricity and medical supplies to the entirety of the Gaza Strip while bombarding it for a week is questionable at the very best. Telling over a million people they have 24 hours to leave their homes and flee to the southern half of Gaza - which is itself still under both bombardment and being deprived of basic humanitarian necessities - isn’t even questionable. It is both flatly impossible to carry out and is going to lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.
Among the things I find incredibly troubling are the comment from the link @DSeid provided
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared, “We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” None of these speakers made any effort to distinguish between Hamas militants and the 2 million Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The “human animals” comment is telling.
And this as reported by the AP, particularly the part I’ve bolded:
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, also said it would not evacuate its schools, where hundreds of thousands have taken shelter. But it relocated its headquarters to southern Gaza, according to spokesperson Juliette Touma.
Pressed by reporters on whether the army would protect hospitals, U.N. shelters and other civilian locations, Hagari, the Israeli military spokesperson, warned that “it’s a war zone.”
He added: “If Hamas prevents residents from evacuating, the responsibility lies with them.”
Trying to pass the burden of responsibility to Hamas for ‘preventing residents from evacuating’ is an absurdity when such an evacuation is both impossible in the first place and isn’t evacuating them to anywhere remotely safe even if it were.
To be clear, Israel has every right, and the obligation to its citizens, to remove Hamas from power. It doesn’t have the right to do that by any means it wants though, and the more viciously it acts in the short term, the more it’s ensuring that the situation is going to remain awful far into the future. Just a few days ago, the both of us were arguing against ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip in GD and that Israel as a civilized country wouldn’t do such a thing. Those same few days ago I couldn’t have imagined Israel telling half the Gaza Strip they have 24 hours to flee to the other half of the Gaza Strip.
I quoted the same spokesperson, Hagari, confirming that he does understand that the evacuation of Gaza City will take longer than 24 hours.
Israel is saying these things because it does want as many people to evacuate as possible. The fewer civilians are in Gaza (the city) the easier taking it from Hamas will be.
This does not mean that the second the 24 hours are up that Israel will consider anyone remaining in Gaza fair game, that they will flatten the city, etc.
How much accurate information are they getting?
If they’re only able to learn what Hamas approves, then of course they’re not going to understand what’s going on.
And note that Hamas has carefully not held another election.
The State of Israel has elections, and they vote in “hard right” parties. Parties who claim that all of Palestine belongs to Israel, as Likud does; parties that look down on peace and secularism. Is this the fault of the people killed & kidnapped in the Negev a week ago? Not exactly, no. I don’t know how they voted.
The median age in Gaza is something like eighteen; Hamas hasn’t held a popular election since 2006. Is what’s being done to Gaza the fault of the Gazan people? How?
I’m sorry if it seems like I’m victim-blaming. I don’t think a bunch of hippies at a rave are the problem. But my Christian upbringing is getting to me. I can hear Yeshua and the prophets saying “I told you so! You shut your ears to the pain of your neighbors!”
And the sad thing is, even now, I don’t yet believe that Netanyahu, Lieberman, and co. want to destroy Hamas. They are fascists who want their pretext for their own atrocities.
Well-argued.
Yes. Good point.
The fault for Hamas’s actions lies with Hamas. Certainly not with those they killed and kidnapped. Just like the fault for unjust Israeli policies lies with the leaders who executed those policies.
It seems like you’re victim blaming because you kind of are.
If it makes you feel better, every opinion piece in every Israeli paper I’ve read since the war started is adamant on one thing: Netanyahu must go. Many are rebuking him for not resigning already (although I think no actual politicians will move against him during the war). He’s done.
Apologies if I’m just missing it, but was it in this thread? Either way though, why make such a statement, and flood northern Gaza with leaflets announcing residents have 24 hours to evacuate if they understand the impossibility of such a task? It is still causing panic, is going to lead to preventable deaths, and leaves them with nowhere safe to actually flee to, just the southern half of the Gaza Strip, which is still under bombardment, the Egyptian-Gazan crossing is closed due to Israeli bombing of the crossing, and no basic human necessities are allowed in.
Ok, ignoring this declaration of 24 hours to flee for a moment, what are your thoughts on Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declaring, “We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” with no effort to distinguish between Hamas militants and the civilians in Gaza? And your thoughts on Hagari’s statement when ‘Pressed by reporters on whether the army would protect hospitals, U.N. shelters and other civilian locations, Hagari, the Israeli military spokesperson, warned that “it’s a war zone.”’ Not even a statement that Israel will respect the non-combatant status of said locations as long as Hamas does (which they of course certainly won’t) but simply dismiss any very valid concerns about them by saying “it’s a war zone.”
Of course it doesn’t; that would be a flagrant war crime. That doesn’t mitigate that making said announcement is a logistical impossibility, is going to cause a humanitarian catastrophe, and to whatever extent it is actually carried out doesn’t make those that evacuate in any way safe. They are still being bombarded, denied food, water, electricity, and medical supplies, and now have the added bonus of the question of where in the hell they are supposed to even be sheltered.
Seriously, when you and I were arguing against the absurdity of Israel conducting an ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip the other day, did you imagine telling half of the population of the Gaza Strip they had 24 hours to flee to the other half was in the realms of actions Israel would actually undertake? I certainly didn’t, and yet here we are. I don’t see Israel conducting an ethnic cleansing, but what I am seeing both in their current actions and the trajectory things are headed on is a level of cavalier disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians far greater than I imagined they would demonstrate.