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“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant said. “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
Highlight:
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant said. “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
Isreal now sees Hamas as an existential threat. The only way to end the bloodshed would be Hamas offering an unconditional surrender.
And then what happens? Will Palestinians be guaranteed their basic rights? If Palestinians are not given the chance to be full citizens and have self-determination, this will only repeat in another 2-3 years.
I do not think you understand how bad this is going to get for Palestinians in Gaza. Hamas has just perpetrated the worst terrorist attack in Isreals history.
From everything I am reading these are not just retaliatory strikes. Isreal is preparing for a full offensive on Gaza involving tanks, artillery and infantry. This could very well end with Gaza looking like Grozny, Mariupol, or Bakhmut.
I hope that doesn’t happen, but if Hamas cared at all about the Palestinian people they would do everything in their power to avoid that. Unfortunately they only care about power and I think this is going to get very ugly in the next phase of the war.
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but if Israel cared at all about the Palestinian people they would do everything in their power to avoid that.
Everything goes both ways exactly the same.
Israel is out for revenge and as I have written elsewhere: When they enter Gaza, they want to get attacked. Because after an attack they will retaliate and every dead civilian, while retaliating against Hamas, will be considered collateral damage.
Hamas made the whole Gaza Invasion an easy sell for a lot of people. And no, I don’t think that it is ok to kill civilians.
My illusory wish for the Middle East would be something like a joint state of Palestinians AND Israelis - so that they can all access their holy sites. Forcing both sides to work together.
Hmmm, so if you were Hamas, for example, and you decide to deescalate in hopes of eventually reaching an agreement over a joint state, what would you do?
Also the same question but if you were Israel, what would you do (let’s say today) to deescalate and seek a joint state solution?
At the moment there probably isn’t any will on either side to cooperate. Reasonable people with a will to compromise have to get involved…
Hamas publicly admitting that they fucked up by killing the civilians, releasing the hostages and calling for negotiations would be a first step in my opinion. Netanyahu would probably not know what to do in that situation.
If Israel were to make a first step: Netanyahu would only have to say that it cannot continue like this.
I mean look at France and Germany for example. Being archenemies for centuries caused immeasurable death and destruction in Europe and the whole world. Only after the Second World War those people realized that it cannot continue like this… and both countries murdered the shit out of each other before becoming something like friends.
Only if both parties are willing to break the cycle of violence, this will end.
Sounds pretty balanced. I agree that Netanyahu would probably not know what to do readily since it would be very unexpected.
I’m was also watching the latest TL;DR video on YouTube about this and it seems that the reports say civilians are the ones who carried out the kidnapping of lots of civilian hostages while Hamas focused on military targets. I don’t know to what extent this is confirmable (since the source is Hamas itself).
If you are Hamas you cannot do anything now, they are bloodlusted and will not stop until you are dead and your culture is wiped off the earth.
Okay, but for the sake of this example, imagine you are Hamas and have changed your mind, what would be step 1?
Step 1 is to accept your demise. The West will no longer tolerate your version of your beliefs because they are incompatible with the rest of the world’s status quo; a certain version of Islam that hypocritically hates the West but enjoys all the products they produce (including cultural like Hollywood action films), but also wants to destroy it and have something akin to what the Taliban have.
Women deserve bodily autonomy and the right to exist as a man or love another woman. Hamas version of Islam hates that way more than regular Islam or even the Catholics and Jews do.
That is not something Hamas would ever consider though so we are just in the realms of fantasy at this point.