Israel - Hamas peace process

[Cartierfor3]

I think I misread your post. You have a lot of double negatives. I was reading it as "neither Israel or Hamas wanted this", which is why I asked if you meant Palestine instead.

No, I don't think Israel wanted to have a bunch of their people butchered. You're suggesting the Israeli people are so bloodthirsty they wanted to have this go down like that?

[Pete]

I long for a day when we have energy independence and can wash our hands of this stuff. Just completely ignore countries driven by religion.

[Spracne]

I long for a day when we have energy independence and can wash our hands of this stuff. Just completely ignore countries driven by religion.

Aren't we already a net exporter of oil and the largest oil producer in the world?

[passranch]

I long for a day when we have energy independence and can wash our hands of this stuff. Just completely ignore countries driven by religion.

Aren't we already a net exporter of oil and the largest oil producer in the world?

And almost completely politically driven by religion.

[Dugout DickStone]

Have you guys ever seen Israel celebrate a sitting American president this much?

[sonofdaxjones]

Another great piece I find little to disagree with from FT op-ed page.....

   Opinion Israel-Hamas war
Biden, Netanyahu and America’s choice
The temptation is to offer Israel’s leader unconditional support but it would be wiser to try to break the cycle of violence

EDWARD LUCE

There is no contradiction between reviling terrorism and tackling its roots. Both the following statements are true: Hamas has plumbed new depths of bestial cruelty; Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel has starved non-violent Palestinian alternatives. Joe Biden movingly expressed his anger at the first on Tuesday. He has not publicly acknowledged the second. The world must hope — but cannot assume — that he also made it clear to Netanyahu that he will strongly oppose the collective punishment of Palestinians.

The danger to America in Israel’s response is acute. Besides the risk of a Middle East conflagration, the US will be blamed around the world for any excesses by the Israel Defense Forces. For years, Washington has turned a blind eye to Netanyahu’s serial breaking of the Oslo accords. New settlements in the occupied territories, expansion of old ones and the undercutting of the Palestinian Authority have humiliated moderate Palestinians and exposed Washington as a one-sided broker.

The last time America took a stab at two-state negotiations was in Barack Obama’s presidency. This was a halfhearted effort up to half a generation ago. When Netanyahu called Obama’s bluff he folded. Donald Trump played cheerleader to Netanyahu’s increasingly open contempt for the two-state process. Biden has acted as though the Palestinian problem no longer exists. Given his other geopolitical challenges, Biden’s wishful thinking may have been understandable. It has now come back to bite him. America can no longer afford to turn a blind eye.

Two things have changed since Obama’s failed attempt to revive peace talks. First, Netanyahu has alienated the large majority of Jewish Americans. The days when Israel could rely on automatic Jewish-American support have gone. For this, the Israeli prime minister is almost single-handedly responsible. In 2015 he broke all protocol when he opposed Obama’s signature Iran nuclear deal in a speech to Congress. Since most Jewish Americans are Democratic, and since the US right has increasingly flirted with antisemitic tropes, this was a reckless gamble. Supporting Netanyahu’s Israel became a Republican thing.

Second, Israel has the most hard-right government in the democratic world. Netanyahu has borrowed antisemitic imagery about George Soros from the likes of Trump and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. His logic is that Jews can only be safe in Israel, which gives him a warped affinity for nativist groups across the west. To most non-Israeli Jews, and roughly half of Israel, Netanyahu’s ideological bedfellows are repugnant. Yet he is the most moderate member of the government he leads.

Netanyahu’s alliance with the Trumpian wing of US politics gives Biden more space than his predecessors to play the role of honest broker. Every pore in Biden’s body will resist doing that. For almost all of his political career, backing Israel has made bipartisan commonsense. Exactly half a century ago — just nine months after Biden became a US senator — Egypt invaded Israel in the Yom Kippur war. Like today, Israel was caught napping. Unlike today, Israel was the underdog. The safest space for an ambitious Democrat in the following years was to support Israel in all seasons. That is now a contentious position — and a particularly dangerous one for Biden.

Last weekend’s massacres were designed to provoke retaliatory Israeli atrocities in the Gaza Strip, which would validate Hamas’s Manichean worldview and its claim to be the chief legitimate voice of the Palestinian people. It would further undercut Fatah’s control of the occupied West Bank and fan extremism in Israel. Each of these knock-on effects would harm America’s standing and further undermine Israel’s security. The emotional temptation is to offer Netanyahu’s government unconditional support. It is hard to hear stories of slaughtered infants and not succumb to blind vengefulness. The rational position is to reject the playbook that Hamas wants.

Biden’s immediate priority will be to secure the release of American hostages. He has sent an aircraft carrier group to the region. But his overriding goal must be to break the cycle of escalating violence. Last Saturday’s killing was horrific, yet should come as no surprise. Gaza, as others have remarked, is the world’s largest open-air prison. Netanyahu has deprived Palestinians of hope for the future and peaceful outlets to express their frustrations. John F Kennedy, Biden’s original hero, said: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” Israelis and Palestinians are on the brink of writing an even darker chapter in their history. Biden has the means to hijack that script. It is the most pro-Israeli thing he could do.

[email protected]

I'd love to know how the previous administration wasn't an "honest broker".  Please, that's just such an easy road to feed simple minds.

The simple fact remains, this administration was facilitating a terrorist state at lengths not seen in decades.

A large chunk of State is an extension of the DOD.  Then they bring an Iranian appeaser who they then had to put on ice because by numerous accounts he was the "victim" of a long running Iranian influence campaign for nearly a decade and may have given the Iranians classified information. 

Then the soft landing for the historic Biden.  The historic Biden who used to get up in the Senate and demand, pounding his fist on the lectern that money to support Israel was the best money the United States ever spent.

[CNS]

I think I misread your post. You have a lot of double negatives. I was reading it as "neither Israel or Hamas wanted this", which is why I asked if you meant Palestine instead.

No, I don't think Israel wanted to have a bunch of their people butchered. You're suggesting the Israeli people are so bloodthirsty they wanted to have this go down like that?

I’m not talking about the people in general. I am talking about those in power. I am sure Isreal would be happy to slowly and completely squeeze Palestine into a corner of the world so small and controlled that they effectively didn’t exist. I suspect many in power are also happy that something happened which give them a good reason to expedite that process.

[Cire]

https://twitter.com/ike_saul/status/1711780282725011520?s=46&t=qihx_M5rao00w7e29gt7Rw

This nails it


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[wetwillie]

CNS probably thinks 911 was an inside job too, smdh.

[Pete]

I long for a day when we have energy independence and can wash our hands of this stuff. Just completely ignore countries driven by religion.

Aren't we already a net exporter of oil and the largest oil producer in the world?

I mean not having an economy dependent on global oil prices.

[Pete]

I long for a day when we have energy independence and can wash our hands of this stuff. Just completely ignore countries driven by religion.

Aren't we already a net exporter of oil and the largest oil producer in the world?

And almost completely politically driven by religion.

We at the least have no state sanctioned religion. It’s certainly lost on the Republicans, but it’s still a big deal that we are free from that particular horror.

[Spracne]

I long for a day when we have energy independence and can wash our hands of this stuff. Just completely ignore countries driven by religion.

Aren't we already a net exporter of oil and the largest oil producer in the world?

And almost completely politically driven by religion.

We at the least have no state sanctioned religion. It’s certainly lost on the Republicans, but it’s still a big deal that we are free from that particular horror.

[CNS]

CNS probably thinks 911 was an inside job too, smdh.

No, but it’s undeniable that those in power took advantage to further certain causes after 911 happened.

[sonofdaxjones]

Yes, a "state sanctioned religion" is core edict within the platform 

[wetwillie]

CNS probably thinks 911 was an inside job too, smdh.

No, but it’s undeniable that those in power took advantage to further certain causes after 911 happened.

Actually I think some evidence is mounting that Egyptian intelligence shared with Israel  detailed proof that Hamas was training for this event several days in advance.

[steve dave]

https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1712264804025659509


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[Dugout DickStone]

he said some other uh....interesting things in that speech.  some aftershave drinking midget has told him to make the pivot to hamas/iran and here he goes

[CNS]

CNS probably thinks 911 was an inside job too, smdh.

No, but it’s undeniable that those in power took advantage to further certain causes after 911 happened.

Actually I think some evidence is mounting that Egyptian intelligence shared with Israel  detailed proof that Hamas was training for this event several days in advance.

I don’t know if I am misreading you or vice versa, but I am not implying that this was anything other than a terrorist attack by Hamas.

[Sandstone Outcropping]

xpost WW3 thread

[sonofdaxjones]

We've entered the babies killed in incubators, Viagra fueled rape squads phase of this thing, starting from our President on down.

EU leaders calling for blockades and applauding the cutting off of everything for Gaza.

[Cire]

People ask me all the time if I am "pro-Israel" because I am a Jew who has lived in Israel, and my answer is that being "pro-Israel" or being "pro-Palestine" or being a "Zionist" does not properly capture the nuance of thought most people do or should have about this issue. It certainly doesn't capture mine.

I have a lot to say. I’ve spent the last 72 hours writing, texting, and talking to Israelis, Jews, Muslims, and Palestinians. Much of my reaction is going to piss off people on "both sides," but I am exhausted and hurting and I do not think there is any way to discuss this situation without being radically honest about my views. So I'm going to try to say what I believe to be true the best I can.

Let me start with this: It could have been me.

That's a hard thought to shake when watching the videos out of Israel — the concert goers fleeing across an empty expanse, the hostages being paraded through the streets, the people shot in the head at bus stops or in their cars. I went to those parties in the desert, I rubbed shoulders with Israelis and Arabs and Jews and Muslims, I could have easily accepted an invitation to some concert near Sderot and gone without a care, only to be indiscriminately slaughtered. Or, perhaps worse, taken hostage and tortured.

I don’t believe Hamas is killing Israelis to liberate themselves, nor do I believe they are doing it to make peace. They're doing this because they represent the devil on the shoulder of every oppressed Palestinian who has lost someone in this conflict. They're doing it because they want vengeance. They are evening the score, and acting on the worst of our human impulses, to respond to blood with blood — an inclination that is easy to give in to after what their people have endured. It should not be hard to understand their logic — it is only hard to accept that humans are capable of being driven to this. Not defending Hamas is a very low bar to clear. Please clear it.

It’s not possible to recap the entire 5,000 year history of people fighting over this strip of land in one newsletter. There are plenty of easily accessible places you can learn about it if you want to (and, by the way, many of you should — far too many people speak on this issue with an obscene amount of ignorance, loads of arrogance, and a narrow historical lens focused on the last few decades). But I'll briefly highlight a few things that are important to me.

In my opinion, the Jewish people have a legitimate historical claim to the land of Israel. Jews had already been expelled and returned and expelled again a half dozen times before the rise of the Muslim and Arab rule of the Ottoman Empire. Of course it’s messy because we Jews and Arabs and Muslims are all cousins and descendents of the same Canaanites. But Arabs won the land centuries ago the same way Israel and Jews won it in the 20th century: Through conflict and war. The British defeated the Ottoman Empire and then came the Balfour Declaration, which amounted to the British granting the area to the Jewish people, a promise they’d later try to renege on — all before the wars that have defined the region since 1948.

That historical moment in the late 1940s was unique. After World War II, with many Arab and Muslim states already in existence, and after six million Jews were slaughtered, the global community felt it was important to grant the Jewish people a homeland. In a more logical or just world that homeland would have been in Europe as a kind of reparation for what the Nazis and others before them had done to the Jews, or perhaps in the Americas — like Alaska — or somewhere else. But the Jews wanted Israel, the British had taken to the Zionist movement, the British had conquered the Ottoman Empire which handed them control of the land, and America and Europe didn’t want the Jews. As a result, we got Israel.

The Arab states had already rejected a partitioned Israel repeatedly before World War II and rejected it again after the Holocaust and the end of the war. They did not want to give up even a little bit of their land to a bunch of Jewish interlopers who were granted it all of a sudden by British interlopers who had arrived a hundred years prior. Who could blame them? It had been centuries since Jews lived there in large numbers, and now they wanted to return in waves as secularized Europeans. Many of us would probably react the same way. So, just as humans have done forever, they fought. The many existing Arab states turned against the burgeoning new Jewish state. One side won and one side lost. This is the brutal and broken and violent world we live in, but it is what created the global world order we have now.

Are Israelis and British people "colonizers" because of this 20th century history? Sure. But that view flattens thousands of years of history and conflict, and the context of World War I and World War II. I don’t view Israelis and Brits as colonizers any more than the Assyrians or the Babylonians or the Romans or the Mongols or the Egyptians or the Ottomans who all battled over the same strip of land from as early as 800 years before Jesus’s time until now. The Jews who founded Israel just happened to have won the last big battle for it.

You can’t speak about this issue in a vacuum. You can't pretend that it wasn't just 60 years ago when Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab states who wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. Despite the balance of power shifting this century, that threat is still a reality. And you can't talk about that without remembering the only reason the Jews were in Israel in the first place was that they'd spent the previous centuries fleeing a bunch of Europeans who also wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. And then Hitler showed up.

American partisans have a narrow view of this history, and an Americentric lens that is infuriating to witness. As Lee Fang perfectly put it, "Hamas would absolutely execute the ACAB lefties cheering on horrific violence against Israelis if they lived in Gaza & U.S. right-wingers blindly cheering on Israeli subjugation of Palestinians would rebel twice as violently if Americans were subjected to similar occupation."

And yet, many Americans only view modern Israel as the "powerful" one in this dynamic. Which is true — they obviously are. It isn't a fair fight and it hasn't been for decades because Israel's government is rich and resourceful, has the backing of the United States and most of Europe, and has an incredibly powerful military. At the same time, Israeli leadership has made technological and military advancements that have further tipped those scales — all while the Israeli government has helped create a resource-thin open air prison of two million Arabs in Gaza.

Conversely, Palestinians are devoid of any real unified leadership, and the Arab world is now divided on the issue of Palestine. Israel is unwilling to give the people in Gaza and the West Bank more than an inch of freedom to live. These are largely the refugees and descendents of the refugees of the 1948 and 1967 wars that Israel won. And you can't keep two million people in the condition that those in the Gaza strip live in and not expect events like this.

I'm sorry to say that while the blood on the ground is fresh. The Israelis who were killed in this attack largely have nothing to do with those conditions other than being born at a time when Israel and Jews have the upper hand in this conflict. Some of the victims weren’t even Israeli — they were just tourists. This is why we describe them as “innocent” and why Hamas has only reaffirmed that they are a brutal terror organization with this attack — an organization that I hope is quickly toppled, for the sake of both the Palestinian people and the Israelis. But as someone with a deep love for Israel, with friends in danger and people I know still missing, it breaks my heart to say it but I'm saying it again because it remains perhaps the most salient point of context in a tangled mess full of centuries of context:

You cannot keep two million people living in the conditions people in Gaza are living in and expect peace.

You can't. And you shouldn’t. Their environment is antithetical to the human condition. Violent rebellion is guaranteed. Guaranteed. As sure as the sun rising.

And the cycle of violence seems locked in to self-perpetuate, because both sides see a score to settle:

1) Israel has already responded with a vengeance, and they will continue to. Their desire for violence is not unlike Hamas’s — it’s just as much about blood for blood as any legitimate security measure. Israel will “have every right to respond with force." Toppling Hamas — a group, by the way, Israel erred in supporting — will now be the objective, and civilian death will be seen as necessary collateral damage. But Israel will also do a bunch of things they don't have a right to. They will flatten apartment buildings and kill civilians and children and many in the global community will probably cheer them on while they do it. They have already stopped the flow of water, electricity, and food to two million people, and killed dozens of civilians in their retaliatory bombings. We should never accept this, never lose sight that this horror is being inflicted on human beings. As the group B’Tselem said, “There is no justification for such crimes, whether they are committed as part of a struggle for freedom from oppression or cited as part of a war against terror.” I mourn for the innocents of Palestine just as I do for the innocents in Israel. As of late, many, many more have died on their side than Israel's. And many more Palestinians are likely to die in this spate of violence, too.

Unfortunately, most people in the West only pay attention to this story when Hamas or a Palestinian in Gaza or the West Bank commits an act of violence. Palestinian citizens die regularly at the hands of the Israeli military and their plight goes largely unnoticed until they respond with violence of their own. Israel had already killed an estimated 250 Palestinians, including 47 children, this year alone. And that is just in the West Bank.

2) Every single time Israel kills someone in the name of self-defense they create a handful of new radicalized extremists who will feel justified in wanting to take an Israeli life in retribution sometime in the future. Half of Gaza’s two million people are under the age of 19 — they know little besides Hamas rule (since 2006), Israeli occupation, blockades, and rockets falling from the sky. The suffering of these innocent children born into this reality is incomprehensible to me. They will suffer more now because of Hamas’s actions and Israel’s response, all through no fault of their own.

There is no way out of this pattern until one side exercises restraint or leaders on both sides find a new solution. Israelis will tell you that if Palestinians put their guns down then the war would end, but if Israel put their guns down they'd be wiped off the planet. I don't have a crystal ball and can’t tell you what is true. But what I am certain of is that every time Israel kills more innocents they engender more rage and hatred and recruit more Palestinians and Arabs to the cause against them. There is no disputing this.

So, why did this happen now?

I'm not sure how to answer that question except to say it was bound to happen eventually. It was a massive policy and intelligence failure and Netanyahu should pay the price politically — he is a failed leader. Iran probably helped organize the attack and the money freed up by the Biden administration's prisoner swap probably didn't help the situation, either. Israel's increasingly extremist government and settlers provoking Palestinians certainly didn't help. Nor has going to the Al-Aqsa mosque and desecrating it. Nor do blockades and bombings and indiscriminate subjugation of a whole people. Nor does refusing to talk to non-terrorist leaders in Palestine. Nor does illegally continuing to expand and steal what is left of Palestinian land, as many Jews and Israelis have been doing in the 21st century despite cries from the global community to stop. A violent response was predictable — in fact, plenty of people did predict it.

Israel is forever stuffing these people into tinier and tinier boxes with fewer and fewer resources. But if you want to blame Israeli leaders for continuing to expand and settle land that does not belong to them (as I do), then you should also spare some blame for Palestinian leaders for repeatedly not accepting a partitioned Israel during the 20th century that could have led to peace (as I do).

Please also remember this: Hamas is still an extremist group. The Palestinian people do not have a government or leaders who legitimately represent their interests, and it sure as hell isn't Hamas. Will some Palestinians cheer and clap at the dead, or spit on them as they are paraded through Gaza? Yes they will. And they have. Many will also mourn because they loathe Hamas and know this will only make things worse. This is no different than how some Americans cheer at the dead in every single war we've ever fought. It's no different than the Israelis who set up lawn chairs to watch their government bomb Palestine and cheer them on, too. This doesn't mean Palestinians or Israelis or Americans are evil — it means some of them are giving in to their violent impulses, and their zealous feelings of righteous vengeance.

Solutions, you ask? I can’t say I have any. If you came here for that, I’m sorry. The two-state solution looks dead to me. A three-state solution makes some sense but feels out of the view of all the people who matter and could make it happen. I wish a one-state solution felt realistic — a world of Israelis and Arabs and Muslims and Jews living side by side with equal rights, fully integrated and defused of their hate, is a version of Israel that I would adore. But it seems less and less realistic with every new act of violence.

Am I pro-Israel or pro-Palestine? I have no idea.

I'm pro-not-killing-civilians.

I'm pro-not-trapping-millions-of-people-in-open-air-prisons.

I'm pro-not-shooting-grandmas-in-the-back-of-the-head.

I'm pro-not-flattening-apartment-complexes.

I'm pro-not-raping-women-and-taking-hostages.

I'm pro-not-unjustly-imprisoning-people-without-due-process.

I'm pro-freedom and pro-peace and pro- all the things we never see in this conflict anymore.

[wetwillie]

Will be interesting to see if/when Egypt takes in refugees after Israel goes into Gaza with the full force of their attack.

[Woogy]

Will be interesting to see if/when Egypt takes in refugees after Israel goes into Gaza with the full force of their attack.

They absolutely won't directly.  I think the best hope here is for a third party (Jordan, Turkey(?)) backed by US/EU funding/logistics to set up and manage a buffer in Gaza at the crossing.

[wetwillie]

Israel has said publicly they will destroy any aid sent in by Egypt, so in the short term it's going to get really bad for Gazan's

[Woogy]

Israel's concern is war material aid and fighters crossing the border - both ways.  They are serious at the moment about ending Hamas as a functional org and don't want individuals slipping the area.

I think there's a possibility to establish a trans-loading operation: Aid gets delivered thru Egypt, offloaded literally at the border, inspected, picked up, and crossed into Gaza.  But the schedule to establish this is so far behind the curve, that.....I don't know.  That's the big question: we all know what's immediately coming, but its what comes next that is just a black hole right now.

Egypt is supremely suspicious of Israel wanting to push (previously), force (currently) as many Gaza Palestinians into the Sinai as possible.  I would think they would also be wary of creating further conditions at the border enabling a bum rush out of Gaza, overwhelming Egyptian security/AF.