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Israel, Hamas reach ceasefire deal to end 15 months of war in Gaza

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Re: Israel, Hamas reach ceasefire deal to end 15 months of war in Gaza

#611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all. The current conflict isn't some thousand year old feud. It was very much caused by the deliberate provocation and importation of European settlers via Zionism. It's easy to wave our hands and say "it's so complicated!" or "they've been doing this for thousands of years!" but it's not complicated, much like apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were not complicated. Colonialis…

The plurality of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi (aka, Jews who never left the Middle East), at 45% of the population [1]. This isn't about Europeans, or even "race": Mizrahi Jews and their Palestinian neighbors are racially indistinguishable. Ashkenazi Jews — that is, Jews who lived in Europe during the Diaspora — make up less than a third of Israeli Jews. [2] Although if you're dead-set on racial essentialism and blood-an…

> Although if you're dead-set on racial essentialism and blood-and-soil nationalism

You're reading things OP didn't even write; and addressing a historical assertion with present-day facts.

OP posits that European settlers coming in during the Ottoman era (establishing Hebrew-only areas & businesses, only to later demand a Jewish State, in opposition to the local majority [0]) is what kickstarted the current conflict. It isn't a 1000 year old feud.

Mizrahis, save for Yemenis, migrated en masse after the conflict was irreversibly set in motion by Imperial Britain & various Arab states.

[0] https://www.pbs.org/video/1913-seeds-conflict-establishing-r...

Re: Israel, Hamas reach ceasefire deal to end 15 months of war in Gaza

#612
post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Haaretz: Netanyahu Hoped Hamas Would Reject the Cease-fire Offer. When It Didn't, He Turned to Sabotage https://archive.ph/8Mcbz Haaretz: Report: Hamas Accepts Gaza Cease-fire Deal; Israeli Officials Reject Prospect of War Ending https://archive.ph/3gw1o It's also important to recognize that before they accepted the deal, Hamas was being presented as the last hold out, the implacable one. The New York Times reported…

These stories predate the deal terms I'm talking about. They refer to a different set of terms (and a dispute about whether Qatar screwed up the negotiations or Israel did). I should have stated this more clearly upthread: the terms Hamas rejected, and were offered repeatedly afterwards, were the May 27 terms.

This isn't about whether Israel negotiated in better faith than Hamas did; that's not my point at all.

Re: Israel, Hamas reach ceasefire deal to end 15 months of war in Gaza

#613
post #2

Are either Israelis or Gazans more secure than when this war began? What has either side achieved?

There is an argument to be made that Iran and Hezbollah have been degraded, which makes the entire region safer. I'm not going to claim this, as I'm no expert, but there is a an argument to be made. For the Gazans, the next months and years will be more determinative. Will they get the support and aid they need to rebuild and keep terrorist organizations from running their country? (They should have their own country…

Gaza has been its own country / Palestinian State since 2006 and they have been recipients of foreign aid for many years, which is how they fund these attacks.

Re: Israel, Hamas reach ceasefire deal to end 15 months of war in Gaza

#614
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aid to Germany after World War II under the Marshall Plan totaled $14 billion ($60 billion in today’s value), averaging $272 per capita across participating nations over four years. In contrast, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have received $1,330 per capita since 1993, or $161 annually, more than twice the per-capita annual aid under the Marshall Plan

That's a laughable comparison. Israel has been systematically undermining the economic and political independence of the West Bank and Gaza during that timeframe. Gaza had been under siege since 2006. The Marshall Plan in contrast was a concerted effort to rebuild and integrate Germany into the European economy.

To be fair Germany would have recovered economically on its own with or without the Marshall plan (ECSC was much more impactful than the Marshall plan..)

Most Arab states generally don’t do that well economically even without any foreign power undermining their independence. Unless they have massive amounts of oil but often even then (Iraq/Iran)

Re: Israel, Hamas reach ceasefire deal to end 15 months of war in Gaza

#615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is different from Hamas right to exist compared to the IDF or Likud? Hamas certainly has less blood on their hands!

I know you are being downvoted (not by me). This is a good question, if all the context and history is removed, and we are only looking at who killed more. I am trying to respond in good faith, but it looks like Hamas is accepted across the world as a terrorist organization for specifically targeting civilians. And as much as I loathe the loss of civilian life at the hands of IDF, this is not a conventional war, and…

> Hamas could've surrendered against a superior enemy and and returned hostages, to protect its own citizens.

And then Israel would keep occupying more and more land, control their water, electricity, treat Palestinian people like sub-humans, occasionally shoot some children in the head, take palestinian hostages/prisoners without legal right (occasionally tortue and rape them).

What do you do then? Protest peacefully?

Re: Israel, Hamas reach ceasefire deal to end 15 months of war in Gaza

#616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the difference between terrorists and freedom fighters is temporal. Yesterday they were called terrorists by the mainstream, tomorrow when they win they will be hailed as heroes and freedom fighters. the zionists were also called terrorists by the UK in the beginning, especially when they bombed king david hotel

> the difference between terrorists and freedom fighters is temporal No, it isn’t. Very few revolutions ( i.e power inversions) have succeeded by indiscriminately killing the dominant side’s civilians. That frequency, moreover, goes down over time.

I mean, the IRA succeeded and that wasn't but 20-30 years ago? They are largely no longer seen as terrorists.

Hell, Israel is a good source of terrorist groups becoming legitimate. Prime Minister Menachim Begin went from leading a terror outfit to elected Prime Minister

Re: Israel, Hamas reach ceasefire deal to end 15 months of war in Gaza

#617
post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haaretz: Netanyahu Hoped Hamas Would Reject the Cease-fire Offer. When It Didn't, He Turned to Sabotage https://archive.ph/8Mcbz Haaretz: Report: Hamas Accepts Gaza Cease-fire Deal; Israeli Officials Reject Prospect of War Ending https://archive.ph/3gw1o It's also important to recognize that before they accepted the deal, Hamas was being presented as the last hold out, the implacable one. The New York Times reported…

These stories predate the deal terms I'm talking about . They refer to a different set of terms (and a dispute about whether Qatar screwed up the negotiations or Israel did). I should have stated this more clearly upthread: the terms Hamas rejected, and were offered repeatedly afterwards, were the May 27 terms. This isn't about whether Israel negotiated in better faith than Hamas did; that's not my point at all.

The deal terms of the May 27th deal were part of the sabotage those multiple Haaretz articles discuss. Israel did not want a ceasefire.

Re: Israel, Hamas reach ceasefire deal to end 15 months of war in Gaza

#618
post #2

Are either Israelis or Gazans more secure than when this war began? What has either side achieved?

Can you concretely suggest what each side should have done at some point in time, to avoid being where we are now? I feel like you're making a rhetorical statement that's hard to map to specific actions.

The Europeans should have stayed in Europe.

Re: Israel, Hamas reach ceasefire deal to end 15 months of war in Gaza

#619
post #602

Hamas was offered a ceasefire under exactly the same terms in May, and refused it. Since then: * Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Hamas political wing, was killed in Tehran * Yahyah Sinwar, the leader of the Al-Qassam Brigades, was killed in Gaza * Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanese Hezbollah, was killed in Beirut * Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah's successor, was killed a week later * Large swathes of Hezbollah'…

Actually all these deaths are just transitory feel goods for the Israeli side. By killing more civilians than ever before, Hamas is able to recruit the same (maybe more) fighters back. They will have different leaders with different names, but these fighters who have had innocent family killed and now want revenge will be blowing themselves up at some point in the next decade or 2 and Israel is equally or less safe a…

This completely misapprehends the conflict. Hamas wasn't simply a terrorist organization; it was a organized, well-armed military adversary, supported by other large irregular armed forces in the region as well as by Iran, with extensive infrastructure and supply chains, and a command and control structure with decades of experience and training. Netanyahu bears significant responsibility for allowing them to develop those capabilities! He positioned them against the PA to derail the two-state outcome.

Whatever else Hamas is now, whatever improvised explosives they blow up in Tel Aviv or Haifa or Jerusalem, they are as a military force with a complex and carefully designed order of battle done, utterly broken. WSJ reports Al-Qassam isn't even communicating with the Hamas political branch. Of course they're going to recruit terrorists. There's no such thing as stopping that kind of activity.

Re: Israel, Hamas reach ceasefire deal to end 15 months of war in Gaza

#620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire Only Nixon could go to China [1]. To the degree the Israel-Palestine war could have helped America, it already has. Hezbollah has given way to a power-sharing government in Lebanon. Syria, miraculously, is a wild card-…

> To the degree the Israel-Palestine war could have helped America, it already has Idk, what we had to watch Israel do and fund with our own money may not have been worth all those achievements. Only time will tell... We made a lot of advancements in Iraq and Afghanistan too, and that was nowhere near as careless about human suffering as this latest flare up. And we lost all that progress extremely rapidly due to the…

> what we had to watch Israel do and fund with our own money may not have been worth all those achievements

Transactionally, I don't think so.

Strategically, we rendered irrelevant hundreds of billions of dollars of Iranian foreign spending worthless for $20bn [1]. We also communicated that we stand by our allies. I don't think that's worth tens of thousands of civilian deaths, but it is an important factor.

(Morally, I don't think an all-out war was necessary to decapitate Hamas--surgical strikes on the leaders, over time, should have been possible without reducing the enclave to rubble. That said, I don't know.)

> We made a lot of advancements in Iraq and Afghanistan too

And then we left. Massive difference between supporting a force and building one.

> Israel (and us, since we are tied together) might face the same unforced error

Possibly. Iran and Saudi Arabia (and to a lesser degree Qatar) have been the regional mischief makers, and they all seem somewhat spent. (Israel didn't create as much disruptive mischief, ironically.) I'm honestly not convinced the Palestinian people want war any more than the Lebanese or, frankly, Iranians.

[1] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/20...

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