More than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in the month since Hamas’ terrorist attacks inside southern Israel, the group’s health ministry in Gaza says.
But Hamas officials say the mounting death toll, believed to include thousands of children, has not caused the group to regret its actions in southern Israel, which Israeli officials said killed 1,400 people.
In fact, Hamas leaders say that their goal was to trigger this very response and that they’re still hoping for a bigger war. It’s all part of a strategy, they say, to derail talks over Israel normalizing relations with regional powers — namely, Saudi Arabia — and draw the world’s attention to the Palestinian cause.
Hamas, these officials say, is more interested in the destruction of Israel than what it sees as the temporary hardships faced by Palestinians under Israeli bombardment.
“What could change the equation was a great act, and without a doubt, it was known that the reaction to this great act would be big,” Khalil al-Hayya, a member of the group’s governing politburo, told The New York Times in an interview.
What choice did they realistically have? Be strangled out slowly by Israel while watching settlers pushing borders slowly but surely? No one has given a shit about Palestine since before ISIS / Syria, by my recollection.
That said it’s also, of course, completely inexcusable to kill and take hostage civilians no matter the underlying justifications they might have.
This is just a shit storm about 80 years in the making. And there just isn’t a solution in sight.
Settlers weren’t in Gaza
The choice was really simple. Not opposing a two state solution would have been a great start. All their actions have been to subvert peace or compromise using violence at every turn.
Now you can twist that however you like, but will you really deny that having an independent internationally-recognized Palestinin state is better than endless war, thousands of civilians dead, etc? Albeit perhaps less than they want or think they deserve? It would be a start.
Face it, their “all or nothing” approach is exactly responsible for the current state of affairs. They don’t deny that, they are proud of it. Read their own words.
Hamas or Israel? Hamas actually announced support for a two state solution back in like 2006, and also in 2017:
Israel, on the other hand, has never granted Palestinian statehood on terms they could possibly accept. Look at the Oslo Accords - all kinds of concessions for Palestine, this insane military framework going through the West Bank - but no statehood. Basically every time there’s a “peace process” they pose these decreasingly compelling terms.
One state solution is making more and more sense to me these days. It sounds like a radical solution given the polarization and history, but there’s a lot more opportunity for a workable solution that way that actually allows reparations.
that’s advocating for a single state (theirs) and Israel to cease to exist. how very reasonable of them
The concern is exactly the opposite. Israel has been procedurally annexing Palestinian land for decades - the concern, if anything, is that a one state solution would abrogate the rights of Palestinians, because that’s precisely what Israel has done with annexations repeatedly in the past. It’s in fact a requirement to abolish the religious/ethnic supremacism inherent in the Israeli state, in which political parties are even banned from even opposing a Jewish nationalist identity (the 2018 “nation-state” law), and start from scratch with a constitution that actually guarantees equal rights across ethnic groups, in order to achieve equal rights in the region, barring something like the bottom half of Israel being given up to allow a contiguous, fully independent state between Gaza and the West Bank.
The problem most of you aren’t dealing with is that Israel was founded fairly recently (75 years) on the ethnic cleansing/expulsion of the Palestinian population. These endless repeated claims about “Israel’s right to exist”, “Israel’s right to defense”, “Israel’s right to sovereignty” - many of them aren’t even true under international law in the first place, and they ignore the problem that the land they currently claim was unlawfully obtained, and that the people it was stolen who still live under Israeli rule have been oppressed, starved, murdered, poisoned, etc. for decades, under a dehumanizing system of apartheid. There is no just solution attainable in this conflict without concessions from Israel.
so you are saying the only solution is for Israel to not exist. sounds like you want peace as much as hamas does
Differentiate the state of Israel - a religious and ethnic supremacist state from its beginning, by definition - and the inhabitants of the state. Getting tired of that little rhetorical trick where disagreeing with a state actively committing a genocide is supposed to make you sound “antisemitic”.
Even if one believes that violence was the only option that the Palestinians had left, how can anyone justify their indiscriminate targeting of civilians instead of going after military and political targets? (I don’t mean you btw, I mean in general.)
Nobody ever won a revolution by killing their oppressor’s grandma and taking children hostage, so it’s clear that Hamas are less freedom fighters and moreso simple terrorists.
I agree
I don’t think it takes a military tactician to figure out that going after a concert was one of the dumbest moves Hamas could’ve made. They could have gone after any number of Israeli Military or government targets and still had understanding and maybe even support from some Western powers. By going after a bunch of innocent civilians, they made it so they will have far fewer allies, and made it so countries like the US can easily justify sending weapons to Israel.
Palestinians didn’t have a choice on who “leads” them either. Hamas hasn’t held a vote for 20 years.
There are non-violent solutions. They could come to terms with the fact they lost this conflict a long time ago, pacify themselves, and sue for a viable peace; that’s the best path out of this long conflict I can see. Constant attacks against an enemy they cannot defeat is what led to their current miserable situation.
So your solution is for the palestinians to just give up? Constant guerrilla attacks are what drove the US out of afghanistan and iraq and vietnam. So how is that not going to work for Hamas? Hamas has a network of tunnels below Gaza so that entire region will become a kill zone and Israel won’t be able to hold it. History doesn’t repeat itself but it sure does rhyme.
There was no Gaza occupation. The conflict happens because Hamas goal is to drive Jews to the sea, to completely destroy Israel. Which it shows again and again that it is willing to do with maximum cruelty.
My solution is for Palestinians to surrender and try to achieve their goals diplomatically rather than through violence, that is not the same as giving up on achieving their goals. It’s possible for them to negotiate for right of return, freedom of travel, national recognition, removal of the blockade, autonomy, peace, safety, freedom, economic prosperity, etc., Although it will be a bitter pill for the uncompromising to swallow, the only thing I think they will have to give up on is the annexed lands. Those were lost to them after they declared war multiple times and were defeated, they are unlikely to get them back. Further violence will not change this and would likely leave them with even less.
The US sent military into these places for political ends. When these engagements became expensive and unpopular, the politics shifted and the US withdrew. Israel has no where to withdraw to and their goals are not political, they are existential. Giving up for Israel means being genocided and driven into the sea. Israeli political distaste for this ongoing conflict will not end it.
That’s quite an imagination. At best they will take out some IDF soldiers but still lose this vastly asymmetrical conflict. It seems to me that Israel is just bombing the tunnels and causing them to collapse, because building them under civilians using them as human shields wasn’t the deterrent Hamas thought it was. Furthermore, I expect Israel to annex more lands if that’s what it takes to keep themselves safe.