International org says the Gaza health numbers are probably an underestimation as the number of people under rubble is probably in the thousands.
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International org says the Gaza health numbers are probably an underestimation as the number of people under rubble is probably in the thousands.
65k wounded. Thousands of children with amputated limbs.
I didn’t find the article particularly convincing. If the Israelis control Gaza and kill or apprehend the entire Hamas leadership and most fighters, and in the process destroy the entire underground tunnel system, then proceed to implement a technocratic government in Gaza (all the while continuing to maintain the security perimeter), then all of this will be viewed as a massive win for them. At that point they would simply resume their negotiations with the Saudis to normalize relations, and any outstanding Hamas officials floating around Qatar, Turkey, Beirut would get picked off by the Mossad.
The Israeli goal since the 10.7 attacks has been to remove Hamas and demilitarize Gaza. If by their own objective they are already well on their way to achieving this, then this is a huge win for them. The Saudis will fall in line with the outcome because they have broader equities and interests to consider.
Do you believe that Israel is sincere when they state their goals?
The Palestinians will end up back in Gaza I suspect as there’s nowhere else for them to go and many will want to stay at home. Post Hamas Gaza will probably end up a UN controlled enclave with a new technocratic government that is free of militant groups.
I do when they say they want to remove Hamas from Gaza, as that is a very rational and predictable reaction to the 10.7 attacks that any country would’ve pursued. The alternative would be that they didn’t take any action against Hamas and simply did a hostage swap, which was obviously pure fantasy that drove the Hamas’ fatal miscalculation in the first place.
Ever heard of Nakba?
I'm not disputing that they want to remove Hamas, but do you seriously believe that to be the end goal? If Israel politicians are heavily leaning on zionism, which they are, their end goal is to destroy the very idea of Palestine existing.
What are they returning to though? Northern Gaza is a ruined wasteland, and the South will likely follow suit. The Israelis made sure to make the strip inhospitable for years to come, hence why they bombed key infrastructure and institutions. How could Gazans feasibly move back?
It's clear the goal here is to cleanse them over the Rafah border and Israel moves in with a blank slate to colonise Gaza.
It will need to be rebuilt. I’m sure the international community could contribute significantly in this regard, especially the US, EU, and wealthy Middle East states. None of these countries would support the Israelis staying there as settlers.
They are returning to their homes and improved life ( if you playing naive and acting dumb )
Have you seen the images? It would be years for it to be rebuilt into a remotely habitable state. What are the Palestinians supposed to do until then? Put their lives on hold while over a million of them rot away in huge camps as they wait for their old communities and livelihoods to be restarted?
And considering the US is already supporting settler expansionism in the West Bank and EJ everyday (evident with them exercising their veto whenever the topic of condemnation comes up in the UNSC) then I very much doubt they'd start reeling the Israelis in here. They'd regress to form, simply blame Hamas and claim its in Israel's security interest to create a 'buffer' community which will no doubt develop into a fully fledged settlement. Its not without precedence.
None of these countries support the Israelis staying in the West Bank as settlers either (or the Golan Heights for that matter) and yet here we are, a state not functioning as an international pariah but sponsored by the world's only superpower, who enable them to do exactly that.
I agree with the article that the Israelis are far more likely to push them out and deal with the consequences (and 'ask for forgiveness' ) later, as opposed to asking for permission.
I feel like you've also kind of missed the point of the article, when you mention that the Israelis are likely to achieve their war aims. Yes in the short term, there is no doubt that they will absolutely crush Hamas militarily and leave them no longer running the strip. But just like the failure of Israel's policy of 'managing' the security situation in Gaza was not measured in failure in the immediate term but the medium term (through the most deadly day in its history), so too will the failure of this attack be measured.
I don’t think it would take long at all given that Gaza is a tiny place and there would still be some infrastructure left in place. There are plenty of options on how to go about rebuilding. For instance, the Israelis could negotiate it as part of their normalization deal with MBS, where he throws some money at rebuilding parts of Gaza (thereby casting himself favorably both domestically in Saudi, as well as regionally). Alternatively, the UN could set up a fund to finance rebuilding projects with many international donors chipping in. There would be plenty of political will to get it done given everything that’s happened.
None of this answers the question as to what happens to the million odd Gazans in the interim. Where are they supposed to go while regional powers 'negotiate' their fate?
They would obviously stay in Gaza in temporary accommodation while construction goes on. This would be the far less difficult thing to resolve than wrangling a consortium of willing partners to actually do the rebuilding itself.
So casually taking a piss, i am actually in awe.
700 000 Palestinians were displaced by Israel during 1948 Nakba, never to return home. Not taking everything Israel says with a grain of salt makes one either very naive or to some extent malevolent.
A more recent example would be Al Qaeda and ISIS. Both are similar ideologies that despite the ideas behind them still existing, the players have been killed or apprehended, their material capability removed and their geographic footprint eliminated, each of which have collectively resulted in these groups being marginalized into irrelevance. Hamas would be a significantly easier effort given they only exist in any meaningful way on a tiny strip of land that is geographically cut off by the IDF. Therefore if you extrapolate the amount of progress in terms of land gains the Israelis have already made in Gaza in just six weeks, I think we know how all of this is going to end.
Wrong.
Close enough given one is a metastasized version of the other.
Oh, ok thought you were comparing their ideologies to Hamas and not to each other.
There were stories about having to operate on children without any any anesthesia, it's a truly awful situation. It's not just the western world it's also the Arab neighbours who have done feck all and also guilty to an extent, although the main blame is with the US.
I've been seeing an increase in the same type of replies to similar tweets in the last 10 days.
It does seem Musk has done what that war criminal told him after their meeting.
I picked them because they are ideologies that have been successfully removed as threats in recent years because their ability to cause harm has been degraded to where they are no longer meaningful players. Hamas are far less decentralized than the other two and can therefore be removed with far less resources and in far less time than (for example) Al-Qaeda; and we're seeing it happen in slow motion every day. Therefore, the "you can't eliminate an ideal" narrative, is probably not a very convincing argument in this case because an ideal without infrastructure, land, or people to implement it, is largely useless.
Hamas can be removed, but new Hamas will spring up immediately afterwards because Hamas is not source of trouble, but rather a symptom of Israel's maniacal mistreatment of Palestinians.
If what the Israelis are floating about the establishment of a technocratic government in Gaza (non-religious & non-militant) is true, then it would be very difficult for Hamas to somehow return because the Israelis would still maintain the security perimeter as the new government would be established (probably also with considerable UN coordination inside Gaza). That's a very different situation than the one from 16 years ago where the Israelis left Gaza and Hamas were allowed to simply walk in and rule Gaza as they wished.
HALF OF PALESTINIANS STARVING… UN.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67670679
If it’s not first hand genocide, it’s indirect.
Either way, they know exactly what they’re doing and most of the worlds politicians are complicit and I hope they‘re never allowed to forget it.
I give up “trying to see both sides” (I actually gave up a while ago to be honest) .… feck useless American politicians, feck ours too but most of all… feck Israel Govt/Army.
(and yes, feck Hamas).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67670679
If it’s not first hand genocide, it’s indirect.
Either way, they know exactly what they’re doing and most of the worlds politicians are complicit and I hope they‘re never allowed to forget it.
I give up “trying to see both sides” (I actually gave up a while ago to be honest) .… feck useless American politicians, feck ours too but most of all… feck Israel Govt/Army.
(and yes, feck Hamas).
I see that prospect as a replica of how Russia literally bought peace in Chechnya after they flattened that entire region to the ground in the 2000s. All they needed to do is to bribe the right people to keep things quiet during and after the rebuild.
My years of watching geopolitics say that a number of powerful players (US, UK, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc.) will basically dish money to "buy" (or rather bribe) that peace in Gaza just like the Russians did with Chechnya, where Putin basically got the Kadyrovs in his pocket. It is a very cynical view and I don't deny the cynical nature, but it is what it is because it has been done before and it will happen again. There was a time I thought that Chechen resistance would survive after everything that happened there during the last Chechen war, but all remaining sentiment of resistance simply died out and Chechen civilians came back while Russia already bought out the key players (Kadyrovs).
Truth be told: no one among other serious Middle Eastern governments genuinely offer any support for Hamas and other future Hamas wannabes outside of saying whatever PR crap they will sell for internal consumption.
I'm sorry, but your views are in my opinion too one-sided and way too pro-Israel for us to keep discussing after this post.
First of, you are taking what Israel says as if it was more relevant than what Hamas says, why? Israel is at best at the same level as Hamas in terms of whether they should be trusted or not, although Hamas lied less in all this mess than Israel, which speaks volumes about Israel.
Second, you seem unable to comprehend that for average Palestinian, who is suffering for decades, ever since he was born actually, what Fatah and PA are doing in the West Bank is ridiculous, because they are essentially as powerful as a lamb would be in wolf's den. No weapons, no way to defend themselves, no way to stop settlers from evicting them, nothing.
We can judge Hamas and whether their terrorist attacks were the right choice or not (obviously were not), but honestly, and I'm absolutely sure that majority feels the same, if I was Palestinian who has seen numerous members of my family die, I'd hate anyone who'd ask me to not be violent towards my opressor. Therefore, Hamas as in -armed resistance to Israel- will exist as long as last Palestinians exist. It will be named differently, but PA on the West Bank has fared even worse than Hamas and Palestinians get subhuman treatment from Israelis there, even thought they chose to be non-violent, while their territories slowly diminished. Israel could have evicted people for next century in West Bank until it is all settled and there are no Palestinians and world wouldn't bat an eyelid. With Gaza it is different, Israel has had to commit genocide and rest of the world sees it and will remember it, regardless of what politics do.
I don't look at it terms of trust, but rather at the reality of what has happened and who has the actual power to do something about it. In this case, the Israelis have all the power and Hamas have virtually none. By this metric alone, it would be next to impossible to see a plausible scenario where Hamas come out of this intact. And this is even more so the case when you consider the US and much of the rest of western governments are behind the Israelis.
Therefore right now, no nation opposing the Israelis has the power to stop them, and until that changes, they will continue incrementally taking over Gaza until Hamas have nowhere left to hide, at which point it will be hard to make the argument Hamas are still a meaningful player in Gaza.
An interesting read.
Its not really an apt comparison. ISIS for one an international ideological faction whose goals are the establishment of a caliphate. Hamas on the other hand were setup as a resistance organisation on the back of decades of Israeli oppression and futility of the secular factions that preceded it. Furthermore, ISIS were defeated largely thanks to the locals who had successfully taken back the territories they had lost. You'd also recall for example how the Iraqi security forces opted not to simply level Mosul to the ground, but instead liberated the city street by street, door by door, and were hence unsurprisingly welcomed as liberators. Contrast that to Israel's approach where they've gone in with a heavy hand, completely disinterested in minimising civilian casualties, and in turn had created a new generation of Palestinians who've lost everything, have nothing left but grief and hatred to grip on to, and will likely gravitate towards the clutches of Hamas - and if not Hamas, it'll be another organisation that would fill the vacuum.
That's the point ultimately. Israel are destined to fail if their objective is to 'crush Hamas' via sheer attrition. The Palestinians who've lost their homes, families, livelihoods and dignity wouldn't forgive the atrocities and will almost certainly seek vengeance, essentially dooming the cycle to repeat. I suspect the Israelis are aware of this, and are happy to perpetuate this cycle of violence so it gives them the justification they need to permanently 'relocate' those Palestinians under the guise of guaranteeing security for their own civilians.
Meanwhile Israel keeps beefing with the UN. Lapid is a former Prime Minister of Israel so hardly a low-ranking official.
The objectives of the respective groups don't matter. What is central is the other two have been successfully dismantled and Hamas, who are significantly weaker in that they are not decentralized and are geographically surrounded, are not going to be able to withstand what the Israelis are throwing at them. There will be a military occupation of Gaza in the short term, so there won't be any space for random Palestinians to form resistance movements in the absence of Hamas.
I think a more relevant example to support your case might be the Sri Lankan government's decisive defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009. I don't know much about the dynamics of that conflict, except that it seems by the end that the Tigers found themselves pinned in the far north of the island with their backs to the sea facing the ruthless army of an oppressive ethnocracy completely untroubled by the prospect of mass civilian deaths (I'm not sure a reliable death toll has ever been totted up).
I can't really think of another example where a government has so decisively defeated a nationalist insurgency embedded in the local population, and I'd be interested to understand why there doesn't seem to have been any significant revival of militant Tamil separatism since 2009.
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Not posted is tweet #3 where the former Israeli PM basically calls the UN Secretary General an anti-semite.
From wiki:
Article 99 empowers the secretary-general to "bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security". It is rarely invoked. Some of the times it has been invoked include:
1960: Invoked by Dag Hammarskjöld in regards to the Congo Crisis, leading to 20,000 UN peacekeepers being deployed there.
1971: Invoked by U Thant in regards to the Bangladesh Liberation War and its potential spread to the entire Indian subcontinent.
1979: Invoked by Kurt Waldheim in regards to the Iran hostage crisis following the Iranian Revolution.
1989: Invoked by Javier Pérez de Cuéllar in regards to the War of Liberation (1989–1990) in Lebanon, resulting in a UN fact-finding mission.
2023: Invoked by António Guterres during the Israel–Hamas war, warning of a "humanitarian catastrophe" in Gaza and calling for a ceasefire.
Article 99 empowers the secretary-general to "bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security". It is rarely invoked. Some of the times it has been invoked include:
1960: Invoked by Dag Hammarskjöld in regards to the Congo Crisis, leading to 20,000 UN peacekeepers being deployed there.
1971: Invoked by U Thant in regards to the Bangladesh Liberation War and its potential spread to the entire Indian subcontinent.
1979: Invoked by Kurt Waldheim in regards to the Iran hostage crisis following the Iranian Revolution.
1989: Invoked by Javier Pérez de Cuéllar in regards to the War of Liberation (1989–1990) in Lebanon, resulting in a UN fact-finding mission.
2023: Invoked by António Guterres during the Israel–Hamas war, warning of a "humanitarian catastrophe" in Gaza and calling for a ceasefire.
