How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized

> So what would you do if you're Israel? Suck it up? Leave the hostages to rot in Gaza?

What they're doing doesn't seem to be working, so maybe something else.

This is just armchair military philosophizing, but after the October attack, go ahead and do some big disproportionate response stuff for 30-90 days, then a ceasefire and prisoner exchange (this happened). But if the ceasefire doesn't work out, you can't go back to disproportionate response on the October attack; that doesn't look reasonable. Cat and mouse strikes on leadership until the hostages are released (edit: but not while leaders are gathered for peace negotiations!). You can still do proportionate response for any tit-for-tat kind of attacks in the occupied zone.

A war of occupation is a PR thing. You need to convince outside observers you're occupation is reasonable --- two years of disproportionate response doesn't do that. You also want to convince the occupied people not to support armed resistance; disproportionate response can work for that, but IMHO not over a long period of time; in the short term, it can get people to demand a stop to fighting, but after two years, again IMHO it just breeds more desire to fight.

You also need some sort of plan for after the hostilities end. How do you set the conditions so this is less likely to happen in the future. Really, the best way to have peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine as two states is for Israel and Palestine to both be prosperous; Israel needs to help make that happen, because it's in Israel's interests --- even if maybe it doesn't feel like it; a prosperous Palestine will be incentivized to be peaceful because prosperity is tenuous; a destitute Palestine has no need to be peaceful, because it has nothing to lose.

There's a lot of talk about ending Hamas; maybe that would do it, but if Hamas disbands today, you need something to replace the government services they provide. What's the plan for that? What would the interim system look like between now and that; can you enforce the interim system now as a way to push Hamas out?

Alternately, big problems require big solutions. Forcibly return Gaza to Egyptian control, as it was before the Six Day War, and encourage Egypt to deal with Hamas through diplomacy and response to future attacks from within Gaza as if they were from Egypt.

Perhaps return the West Bank to Jordan ... maybe do the return of the West Bank first as a show of 'if y'all give us the hostages, we'll end the occupation' Returning the West Bank is hard, because you've got to figure out what to do with the settlers, which is probably a lot of tricky negotiations over which settlements can be kept with a land swap and which have to be abandoned, so it probably can't be done super fast.

The first question that should be asked is this: if there is indeed so much suffering in Gaza, why is no one pressuring Hamas to end the war by accepting Donald Trump’s peace plan? The war could have been over by now if Hamas had surrendered, yet this point is rarely mentioned. Why is that?

Instead, many—including major Western media outlets—repeat Hamas’ narrative: that Israel is responsible for the killing (while Hamas has been accused of using human shields [0]) and that Israel prevents the UN from distributing aid (even though the UN is said to be heavily infiltrated by Hamas [1], and the GHF was established to restrict Hamas’ access to food supplies and prevent profiteering through resale [2]).

Furthermore, if starvation in Gaza is a pressing reality, why does the UN refuse to distribute food directly [4]? In fact, the claim that there is a famine going on just doesn't match the numbers [5], and UN-linked IPC finds no mortality data to prove famine is present, despite their very intention of proving so [6], and media was found to misrepresent the situation on the ground [7]

Finally, little attention is given to Egypt’s role in maintaining the blockade of Gaza, which also contributes to "famine". Egypt does not allow Gazans—who are described by some as facing genocide—to cross its border to escape [3]. It often seems as though those who argue that starvation is being deliberately inflicted prefer to keep the situation unchanged, only to place the blame on Israel.

0: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/11/01/hamas-officials-admi...

1: https://govextra.gov.il/unrwa/unrwa/

2: https://www.aipac.org/resources/gaza-aid

3: https://theconversation.com/why-egypt-refuses-to-open-its-bo...

4: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/07/24/un-refuses-to-cooper...

5: https://x.com/Aizenberg55/status/1966495888051761582

6: https://www.timesofisrael.com/key-food-security-org-finds-no...

7: https://honestreporting.com/famine-standard-was-lowered-for-...

Trump is also "buddy-buddy" with a lot of the Gulf States, in fact, he probably likes them more because they have more money to give him. If Israel does something they don't like, such as bomb Qatar, Trump can swing against Israel.

How so?

There are troops there, The troops are not present with the consent of the local governing powers, the area has not been annexed (has not been integrated into normal civil law of the country with the troops)*.

That is a textbook definition of what an occupation is.

* except for East Jerusalem, which would normally be considered annexed, but the UNSC has decided (with the binding force of international law) that it is de jure occupied. However Palestinians in east Juruselum can apply for citizenship and get voting rights.

> ripped fetuses out of pregnant women

This is insane brutality. A cursory search, I don't want to do more than that, tells me it's a misattribution of an older Mexican cartel murder.