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.
What choice did they realistically have?
Victim blaming as it is. The choice was not to murder people.
The choices were: 1. die slowly while no one is looking 2. make it quicker and put it on full display, hoping that something might happen
What would you choose? The West bank shows that peace isn’t and was never an option.
As I said in an earlier comment:
"Hamas is not Palestinians. Hamas steals aid meant for Palestinians. They embed themselves in civilian areas. They take investments that other groups make to improve Palestinian lives, and dismantle them to use for weaponry. They stockpile food, medicine, and water and don’t share it with civilians when Israel cuts off those crucial resources.
The leaders of Hamas are rich fucks living cushy lives in the UAE and could not care less about Palestinians. This isn’t some freedom fighter group that’s out of options. It’s terrorists who purposely co-opt language from peaceful protestors to make them sound like extremists."
Don’t confuse Palestinians with Hamas, they deserve so much better than that.
Hamas isn’t the Palestinian people, their leaders are wealthy and living abroad. Stop muddying the waters and acting as if Hamas is an oppressed group, they’re not, they’re terrorists. They are NOT representative of the Palestinian people.
Is there a reason why we make this distinction for Gaza? Not every country gives its people the ability to elect its leadership, and my understanding is that the ruling party in Gaza is Hamas.
Why is this conflict not portrayed as state on state violence when it’s two state actors?
It’s the Palestinians in Gaza paying the price regardless. Right or wrong they haven’t ousted Hamas and thus, right or wrong, Israel sees them as one and the same as proven by their indiscriminate bombings.
I didn’t state Hamas represents all Palestinians.
Likewise I didn’t state Hamas is oppressed, a terror organization can’t by definition be “oppressed” in the sense that we should pity them.
What I did state was that driving someone into a corner like Israel has been doing with Palestinians for decades leads to attacks. And it’s not like 100% of Hamas members are non-Palestinians.
Hamas is not Palestinians. Hamas steals aid meant for Palestinians. They embed themselves in civilian areas. They take investments that other groups make to improve Palestinian lives, and dismantle them to use for weaponry. They stockpile food, medicine, and water and don’t share it with civilians when Israel cuts off those crucial resources.
The leaders of Hamas are rich fucks living cushy lives in the UAE and could not care less about Palestinians. This isn’t some freedom fighter group that’s out of options. It’s terrorists who purposely co-opt language from peaceful protestors to make them sound like extremists.
I agree in general, but let’s not pretend they have 0 support from Palestinians, or that there are no Palestinians active in Hamas. Israel sees them as one and the same as evidenced by their indiscriminate bombings. Just as Hamas sees all Israelis as violent settlers and directly responsible for massacres like Deir Yassin and the Nakba in general. Neither which is true, of course. All military, paramilitary and terrorist organizations work hard to dehumanize and generalize their opposition to ruthless brutes when that in reality is only a small part of the actual people involved and impacted by the conflict. For every ruthless murderer killed on either side hundreds or thousands of innocent die.
To me it’s immaterial that some Palestinians support and are part of them. You would need a significant level of support for it to be significant. Israel tries to paint everyone the same to justify their acts, but it’s absolutely incorrect.
What I mean in general though is Hamas is a terrorist organization, not a liberation front. They aren’t freedom fighters with their backs against the wall and out of options. They’re just craven butchers.
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 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.
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:
The 2017 Hamas charter presented the Palestinian state being based on the 1967 borders. The text says “Hamas considers the establishment of a Palestinian state, sovereign and complete, on the basis of the June 4, 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital and the provision for all the refugees to return to their homeland.” This is in contrast to Hamas’ 1988 charter, which previously called for a Palestinian state on all of Mandatory Palestine. Nevertheless, even in the 2017 charter, Hamas did not recognize Israel.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-state_solution
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 solution: Change the material conditions of the people in Gaza with an influx of Capital. But alas, there’s a reason the Tulsa Race Massacre happened.
What choice did they realistically have? Be strangled out slowly by Israel while watching settlers pushing borders slowly but surely?
there just isn’t a solution in sight.
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.
There aren’t any non-violent solutions that would make any impact, Israel has made sure of that. Protests in Israel and Palestine are suppressed and ignored by the increasingly far right Israeli state. Protests in the west are dismissed as anti-semitism and both parties continue to send aid. Boycott divestment and sanctions have been made illegal. Every vote in the u.n. or attempt to try the Israeli government on human rights abuses is vetoed by the u.s.
If you want to see what happens when they give up on violence look at the west bank. Fatah has long ceded military control to Israel and have they been rewarded with any degree of autonomy or rights for Palestinians? No just continual encroachment and violence from settlers and the IDF.
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.
Hamas is not in any way representative of Palestinians. They steal aid meant for Palestinians, dismantle humanitarian projects meant to help Palestinians, and hoard food and water and medicine from Palestinians.
This isn’t about “Palestinians giving up”. This is about a terrorist group leeching off of an already oppressed people to commit wanton violence, and then hide behind the civilians to defend themselves.
The solution is to eliminate Hamas, including its leaders who are rich and live it up in the UAE, and liberate both Palestinians and Israelis from their tyranny – and then have the UN provide civil government for Palestine and stop Israel from constantly bombing Palestine.
The people targeting innocent people at a music festival are not fighting for Palestinian freedom. Their cause, as this article shows, is violence and destruction. Don’t confuse them with actual Palestinians.
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.
So your solution is for the palestinians to just give up?
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.
Constant guerrilla attacks are what drove the US out of afghanistan and iraq and vietnam.
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.
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.
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.
They could have abandoned their goal and seek coexistence. But using your logic ask yourself what choice does israel have as a response to an enemy like hamas?
Not bombing the shit out of innocent civilians and not committing war crimes is a great start for coexistence. To late for that now though… the only course from here is either a complete cease fire and the releasing of Palestine back to the plaistinians or complete brutal genocide of an entire group of people. It seems the governments of the world are attempting to choose the later…
This has been developing for longer than recent history. I sort of agree that israel should have continued one of the last 2-3 wars until the fundamentalist extremists surrendered or were killed. Instead of giving land back and attempting to serk peace. I think it was a mistake to try 5-6 times. after 2 or 3 it’s clear the enemy doesn’t want anything less than a war of extermination so they should give them that.
What is happening in the West Bank right now where there is no Hamas? Are you purposely ignoring that israel is giving paramilitary terrorists weapons to shoot innocent Palestinians AND protects those Israeli terrorists with their army?
ISRAEL is the party that does not want peace. They have openly stated they want to ethnically cleanse Palestine. Their government has stated wanting to nuke Gaza.
I am sure that they have all sorts of people and some of them were always this way but I suspect they were radicalized with the terrorist attacks. I mean at a personal level if someone kills your family you’d probably don’t care about nuances or context. It just happens that they have more means to carry out their “vengeance”.
The same as Hamas, not kill civilians indiscriminately. But both sides are horrible and I’m not the least bit interested in a breakdown of who’s the worst. They both suck, and have for more than half a century.
That’s why I say this is a shit storm loooong in the making.
So you implied that hamas didn’t have a choice but now you say they did have a choice? Which one is it?
