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I think an honest answer would be to end occupation and oppression of the Palestinians by Israel. Any occupying force has an interest to silence and stop indige

I think an honest answer would be to end occupation and oppression of the Palestinians by Israel. Any occupying force has an interest to silence and stop indigenous people from claiming their land rights. For example, Gaza had been described as an open air prison for almost 2 decades because its borders, imports, sea usage, had all been controlled by Israel. This is not what we call “sovereign rule”. The West Bank has been checkered with military checkpoints and illegal settlements, contravening international agreements. When people are driven to desperation, and their lives are made miserable because the occupying forces want to remove them, they do not have many options. I think it is quite adequate to compare Gaza to the situation in for example, the Warsaw Ghetto in WW2, when an uprising was quashed by occupying German forces. This Gaza is a heavily urban area with vast majority of civilians, it cannot be compared to two armies fighting on a battlefield.

liorsbg 3y ago
In Gaza, all they would have to do is put their weapons down. Blockade and restrictions would lift, and Gaza could be prosperous. In the West Bank, I agree that the settlements are abhorrent and need to be removed.
- nonviol 3y ago
  This is what happened when Gazans tried nonviolent protest: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2020-03-06/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/42-knees-in-one-day-israeli-snipers-open-up-about-shooting-gaza-protesters/0000017f-f2da-d497-a1ff-f2dab2520000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2020-03-06/ty-article-ma... https://archive.ph/vDhPP https://archive.ph/vDhPP I'm not implying that October 7 was justified.
  - oytis 3y ago
    Seeing what happened on 7th of October one can understand why IDF is nervous about people getting close (500m is the official buffer zone as I understand) to the fence. Not implying that competition in number of knees shot is justified.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > Seeing what happened on 7th of October one can understand why IDF is nervous about people getting close (500m is the official buffer zone as I understand) to the fence. The Israel-declared buffer zone is 100m or total exclusion, and 300m where only farmers may enter and only by foot. In practice the murder risk area (during normal times, not during publicized invasions, where the murder risk area is more universal) is 1000-1500m. This is, of course, inside Gaza; nothing prohibits Israel from backing its border installations off a safe distance from the border and having a murder zone in Israel instead, which would at least be superficially consistent with its pretense not to occupy or exert any control within Gaza between its periodic invasions.
      - oytis 3y ago
        > nothing prohibits Israel from backing its border installations off a safe distance from the border I don't get how it can work. So they make the exclusion zone outside of the fence, not inside. Then they would need to make another fence around this exclusion zone. Then peaceful protesters destroy the old fence, and we are back to square 0.
        dragonwriter 3y ago
        > Then peaceful protesters destroy the old fence, and we are back to square 0. Shooting people who cross a border without permission, while also not optimal in the case of peaceful protestors, is quite different than shooting peaceful protestors on the foreign side of your border in a territory you assert is not occupied and which further claim you have disenaged from and are not exerting control over. Israel limiting its arbitrary murder zone to Israel proper would, while still arguably acting immorally, be at least acting consistently with its claim to have disengaged from and ended its occupation of Gaza. Baby steps.
        oytis 3y ago
        The common idea of how borders work relies on the fact that borders are mutually recognized, and authorities on both side of the border collaborate to keep the border secure. This way you can maintain the exclusion zone in no man's land. Border between Gaza Strip and Israel on the other hand is not even officially delineated AFAIK, it just de facto exists where the barrier is. So if you make a new barrier 500 meters away, and let the old one be slowly destroyed - as Hamas is not interested in maintaining it - it doesn't change anything, except the de facto border is now 500 away from the old place.
  - liorsbg 3y ago
    The hypothetical I'm referring to doesn't require protests. 1. Gaza declares "we're done trying to kill you guys" and means it. 2. A few quite months go by 3. Embargo and restriction start slowly lifting 4. More quiet months, life in Gaza improves 5. Repeat steps 3-4 for a few years. 6. Gaza is free, independent and thriving.
    - oytis 3y ago
      No, no, no, that would mean "legitimizing the occupation", no party in Gaza would be able to declare this policy and stay in power.
0xDEF 3y ago
The internationally recognized State of Palestine is made up of two disjoint territories: Gaza and the West Bank. Israel gave peace a chance and left Gaza in 2005. The Palestinians immediately turned Gaza into a forward base and started attacking Israel. Israel only started the "blockade" (inspecting imports into Gaza) in 2007.
rehitman 3y ago
This statement is very uninformed. Isreal left Gaza very logn time ago. They had an election and Hamas came to power, and they never hold an election after. There is no land dispute between Isreal and Gaza (Unlike Westbank where there are serious disputes). The main problem is that Hamas and its supporter Iran consistentnly in word and in practice declared that want to wipe out and destroy Isreal. It is not about some land disupte. They want the whole Isreal gone. Now, the question is would it be wise to let this group of people with clear intention to completely destroy Israel have open borders? They make missles even without open borders. If you want to be really honest here. The issue is that Hamas need to agree that Israel has the right to exist. Period. As far as they don't, I see this war very well justified similar to the War with Japanese Empire or Nazi Germany.
- biorach 3y ago
  > Hamas need to agree that Israel has the right to exist. Agreed And maybe Israel needs to agree that Palestine has the right to exist
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    The Hamas charter literally says that Israel will exist: >It advocated for a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, describing this as a "formula of national consensus". 1967 borders means two state.
    - vacuity 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - p_j_w 3y ago
        Should they act completely peacefully while Israel maintains settlements and themselves don't honor the agreed upon 1967 borders? Why is it wrong for one side to behave violently but not the other?
        3y ago
EvgeniyZh 3y ago
Gaza has border with Egypt not controlled by Israel. In fact, ~150k people left Gaza in 2022, and numbers from 2023 are of similar scale [1]. I wouldn't call it a prison [1] https://twitter.com/Aizenberg55/status/1665745935589076992 https://twitter.com/Aizenberg55/status/1665745935589076992
- wolverine876 3y ago
  I'm sure you're aware of the indefinite blockade? And what Hamas did before that? etc. Let's not have another debate that brings out the facts piecemeal; it's polarizing, for one thing, and it's also misleading to bring them out in isolation. Many following the issue know them by now.
  - ashirusnw 3y ago
    I'm not aware. What are you talking about?
- monocasa 3y ago
  The Rafah crossing is effectively controlled by Israel as well. Egypt gets ~$1.5B/yr in defense aid from the US ever since the six day war in exchange for playing nice with Israel. That has been interpreted by Egypt to mean including Israel in decisions regrading the Rafah crossing and enforcing the Israeli blockade there.
nahumfarchi 3y ago
As a Jew, I have quite a few qualms with the comparison to Warsaw. I'm not denying the suffering in Gaza in any way, but it's far fetched to put this on the same grounds as Warsaw, in which an estimated 300-400k Jews were murdered, and which was just one of an industrial system of mass murder. I agree that the settlements are an obstacle to peace, no argument there. But there are solid reasons why the border between Israel and Gaza has been closed (putting aside the fact that we're not obligated to open our borders, especially when the other side isn't exactly friendly). Note that they also have a border with Egypt, how come that's pretty much closed as well? (I'll give you a hint - Gaza is ruled by what is basically a fanatic death cult, and Eygpt wants nothing to do with it). Your proposed solution is "end occupation and oppression". I'll ignore the one-sided phrasing and just say we've tried that with the Oslo accords, the disengagement from Gaza, and numerous negotiations, all leading to this point in time. So again, what would you do?
- qwertthrowway 3y ago
  1, this is a human issue above all. One does not have to be Jewish or non-Jewish to recognize the extreme human toll being exacted on Gaza. When I see bombs collapse buildings of innocent residents, hospitals invaded with entire ICU units dying, mass starvation due to a blockade, and a death toll with over 40% being children; I think all of this warrants comparisons with industrial mass murder. Just because it is being termed “self-defense” or a “war” does not make it any less blameworthy. Let’s look at the real human loss here: it’s mostly innocent people in an urban area being killed, where a large percentage of the population is children. 2, the terming of hamas as a “fanatic death cult” appears quite an extreme label. Hamas is more comparable to a political party with political, social, and military wings. In fact, it’s quite clear that Hamas’s brands itself as part of the resistance against occupation; and the motives for recent attacks lie in the Israeli aggression committed against Palestinians in the West Bank this summer and seeking to release Palestinian prisoners, many who were children, women, and held without formal charges. Even comparing how many hostages who have been released talked about how they were treated by Hamas, with the way Palestinian prisoners were treated by Israeli captors, shows that Hamas is not merely a “fanatic death cult”, given they treated prisoners with a degree of humanity they didn’t need to. It’s also unclear that removing Hamas will fix the situation; after all, before Hamas, the PLO was labeled terrorists and dealt with brutally. In a resistance situation, the occupying force will typically seek to discredit and derail any process that threatens its control. 3, a desire to end occupation must be one that can be accepted by the occupied people. None of the peace process deals appeared to be honest efforts from the Israeli camp because the ultimate end goal of the occupying force has been to take control of “greater Israel” without the people who are living there. I would propose a way to move forward for Israel would be a one-state solution: to recognize Palestinians as equal people with human rights, give them citizenship in a democratic rule, and allow them to return to their land. All of this without any military occupations. Because it is clear that a two-state solution has been dead for quite a while, given the occupying force has no intentions to end its theft of land in the West Bank.
prmph 3y ago
> For example, Gaza had been described as an open air prison for almost 2 decades because its borders, imports, sea usage, had all been controlled by Israel. Those restrictions are in place for a reason, which Hamas has confirmed on October 7th. And, what suffering does this cause exactly? Gaza had an HDI larger than that of many countries not at war, and had areas described as "wealthy". Any close reading of this conflicts shows that it is an ideological conflict. Hamas and their supporters in Gaza actually prefer that Gaza becomes a hellhole, to rally allies to their side. Do you really think they want a peaceful and prosperous Gaza? No, they want to blow up the conflict, to energize it, to force a reckoning, with the ultimate goal of reclaiming land from the river to the sea, per their own charter. Under such circumstances, what should Israel do? Pack up their bags and leave?
- __blockcipher__ 3y ago
  I don't really feel like clearing up all the half-truths or outright lies here, but I wanted to just call out one: > with the ultimate goal of reclaiming land from the river to the sea, per their own charter. The "from the river to the sea" is the language in the Likud charter, the party ruling Israel and dropping thousands of 2-ton bombs on Gaza right now. The popular chant "from the river to the sea palestine will be free" is a direct response to that. I'm unaware of Hamas' charter using the "from the river to the sea" language, although I'm open for correction here because I have not read the entire charter.
  - prmph 3y ago
    Are you claiming ignorance of the fact that the Hamas charter originally called for the liquidation of Israel? This is common knowledge. Granted, they have revised it recently to tone down the genocidal language, but I don't think anybody should be deceived about what their intentions are. As the history of the slogan "from the river to the sea", please read on it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea, it has little to do with Likud.
    - avtar 3y ago

liorsbg 3y ago

In Gaza, all they would have to do is put their weapons down. Blockade and restrictions would lift, and Gaza could be prosperous. In the West Bank, I agree that the settlements are abhorrent and need to be removed.

nonviol 3y ago
This is what happened when Gazans tried nonviolent protest: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2020-03-06/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/42-knees-in-one-day-israeli-snipers-open-up-about-shooting-gaza-protesters/0000017f-f2da-d497-a1ff-f2dab2520000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2020-03-06/ty-article-ma... https://archive.ph/vDhPP https://archive.ph/vDhPP I'm not implying that October 7 was justified.
- oytis 3y ago
  Seeing what happened on 7th of October one can understand why IDF is nervous about people getting close (500m is the official buffer zone as I understand) to the fence. Not implying that competition in number of knees shot is justified.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Seeing what happened on 7th of October one can understand why IDF is nervous about people getting close (500m is the official buffer zone as I understand) to the fence. The Israel-declared buffer zone is 100m or total exclusion, and 300m where only farmers may enter and only by foot. In practice the murder risk area (during normal times, not during publicized invasions, where the murder risk area is more universal) is 1000-1500m. This is, of course, inside Gaza; nothing prohibits Israel from backing its border installations off a safe distance from the border and having a murder zone in Israel instead, which would at least be superficially consistent with its pretense not to occupy or exert any control within Gaza between its periodic invasions.
    - oytis 3y ago
      > nothing prohibits Israel from backing its border installations off a safe distance from the border I don't get how it can work. So they make the exclusion zone outside of the fence, not inside. Then they would need to make another fence around this exclusion zone. Then peaceful protesters destroy the old fence, and we are back to square 0.
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        > Then peaceful protesters destroy the old fence, and we are back to square 0. Shooting people who cross a border without permission, while also not optimal in the case of peaceful protestors, is quite different than shooting peaceful protestors on the foreign side of your border in a territory you assert is not occupied and which further claim you have disenaged from and are not exerting control over. Israel limiting its arbitrary murder zone to Israel proper would, while still arguably acting immorally, be at least acting consistently with its claim to have disengaged from and ended its occupation of Gaza. Baby steps.
        oytis 3y ago
        The common idea of how borders work relies on the fact that borders are mutually recognized, and authorities on both side of the border collaborate to keep the border secure. This way you can maintain the exclusion zone in no man's land. Border between Gaza Strip and Israel on the other hand is not even officially delineated AFAIK, it just de facto exists where the barrier is. So if you make a new barrier 500 meters away, and let the old one be slowly destroyed - as Hamas is not interested in maintaining it - it doesn't change anything, except the de facto border is now 500 away from the old place.
- liorsbg 3y ago
  The hypothetical I'm referring to doesn't require protests. 1. Gaza declares "we're done trying to kill you guys" and means it. 2. A few quite months go by 3. Embargo and restriction start slowly lifting 4. More quiet months, life in Gaza improves 5. Repeat steps 3-4 for a few years. 6. Gaza is free, independent and thriving.
  - oytis 3y ago
    No, no, no, that would mean "legitimizing the occupation", no party in Gaza would be able to declare this policy and stay in power.

0xDEF 3y ago

The internationally recognized State of Palestine is made up of two disjoint territories: Gaza and the West Bank. Israel gave peace a chance and left Gaza in 2005. The Palestinians immediately turned Gaza into a forward base and started attacking Israel. Israel only started the "blockade" (inspecting imports into Gaza) in 2007.

rehitman 3y ago

This statement is very uninformed. Isreal left Gaza very logn time ago. They had an election and Hamas came to power, and they never hold an election after. There is no land dispute between Isreal and Gaza (Unlike Westbank where there are serious disputes). The main problem is that Hamas and its supporter Iran consistentnly in word and in practice declared that want to wipe out and destroy Isreal. It is not about some land disupte. They want the whole Isreal gone. Now, the question is would it be wise to let this group of people with clear intention to completely destroy Israel have open borders? They make missles even without open borders. If you want to be really honest here. The issue is that Hamas need to agree that Israel has the right to exist. Period. As far as they don't, I see this war very well justified similar to the War with Japanese Empire or Nazi Germany.

biorach 3y ago
> Hamas need to agree that Israel has the right to exist. Agreed And maybe Israel needs to agree that Palestine has the right to exist
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  The Hamas charter literally says that Israel will exist: >It advocated for a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, describing this as a "formula of national consensus". 1967 borders means two state.
  - vacuity 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - p_j_w 3y ago
      Should they act completely peacefully while Israel maintains settlements and themselves don't honor the agreed upon 1967 borders? Why is it wrong for one side to behave violently but not the other?
      - 3y ago

EvgeniyZh 3y ago

Gaza has border with Egypt not controlled by Israel. In fact, ~150k people left Gaza in 2022, and numbers from 2023 are of similar scale [1]. I wouldn't call it a prison [1] https://twitter.com/Aizenberg55/status/1665745935589076992 https://twitter.com/Aizenberg55/status/1665745935589076992

wolverine876 3y ago
I'm sure you're aware of the indefinite blockade? And what Hamas did before that? etc. Let's not have another debate that brings out the facts piecemeal; it's polarizing, for one thing, and it's also misleading to bring them out in isolation. Many following the issue know them by now.
- ashirusnw 3y ago
  I'm not aware. What are you talking about?
monocasa 3y ago
The Rafah crossing is effectively controlled by Israel as well. Egypt gets ~$1.5B/yr in defense aid from the US ever since the six day war in exchange for playing nice with Israel. That has been interpreted by Egypt to mean including Israel in decisions regrading the Rafah crossing and enforcing the Israeli blockade there.

nahumfarchi 3y ago

As a Jew, I have quite a few qualms with the comparison to Warsaw. I'm not denying the suffering in Gaza in any way, but it's far fetched to put this on the same grounds as Warsaw, in which an estimated 300-400k Jews were murdered, and which was just one of an industrial system of mass murder. I agree that the settlements are an obstacle to peace, no argument there. But there are solid reasons why the border between Israel and Gaza has been closed (putting aside the fact that we're not obligated to open our borders, especially when the other side isn't exactly friendly). Note that they also have a border with Egypt, how come that's pretty much closed as well? (I'll give you a hint - Gaza is ruled by what is basically a fanatic death cult, and Eygpt wants nothing to do with it). Your proposed solution is "end occupation and oppression". I'll ignore the one-sided phrasing and just say we've tried that with the Oslo accords, the disengagement from Gaza, and numerous negotiations, all leading to this point in time. So again, what would you do?

qwertthrowway 3y ago
1, this is a human issue above all. One does not have to be Jewish or non-Jewish to recognize the extreme human toll being exacted on Gaza. When I see bombs collapse buildings of innocent residents, hospitals invaded with entire ICU units dying, mass starvation due to a blockade, and a death toll with over 40% being children; I think all of this warrants comparisons with industrial mass murder. Just because it is being termed “self-defense” or a “war” does not make it any less blameworthy. Let’s look at the real human loss here: it’s mostly innocent people in an urban area being killed, where a large percentage of the population is children. 2, the terming of hamas as a “fanatic death cult” appears quite an extreme label. Hamas is more comparable to a political party with political, social, and military wings. In fact, it’s quite clear that Hamas’s brands itself as part of the resistance against occupation; and the motives for recent attacks lie in the Israeli aggression committed against Palestinians in the West Bank this summer and seeking to release Palestinian prisoners, many who were children, women, and held without formal charges. Even comparing how many hostages who have been released talked about how they were treated by Hamas, with the way Palestinian prisoners were treated by Israeli captors, shows that Hamas is not merely a “fanatic death cult”, given they treated prisoners with a degree of humanity they didn’t need to. It’s also unclear that removing Hamas will fix the situation; after all, before Hamas, the PLO was labeled terrorists and dealt with brutally. In a resistance situation, the occupying force will typically seek to discredit and derail any process that threatens its control. 3, a desire to end occupation must be one that can be accepted by the occupied people. None of the peace process deals appeared to be honest efforts from the Israeli camp because the ultimate end goal of the occupying force has been to take control of “greater Israel” without the people who are living there. I would propose a way to move forward for Israel would be a one-state solution: to recognize Palestinians as equal people with human rights, give them citizenship in a democratic rule, and allow them to return to their land. All of this without any military occupations. Because it is clear that a two-state solution has been dead for quite a while, given the occupying force has no intentions to end its theft of land in the West Bank.

prmph 3y ago

> For example, Gaza had been described as an open air prison for almost 2 decades because its borders, imports, sea usage, had all been controlled by Israel. Those restrictions are in place for a reason, which Hamas has confirmed on October 7th. And, what suffering does this cause exactly? Gaza had an HDI larger than that of many countries not at war, and had areas described as "wealthy". Any close reading of this conflicts shows that it is an ideological conflict. Hamas and their supporters in Gaza actually prefer that Gaza becomes a hellhole, to rally allies to their side. Do you really think they want a peaceful and prosperous Gaza? No, they want to blow up the conflict, to energize it, to force a reckoning, with the ultimate goal of reclaiming land from the river to the sea, per their own charter. Under such circumstances, what should Israel do? Pack up their bags and leave?

__blockcipher__ 3y ago
I don't really feel like clearing up all the half-truths or outright lies here, but I wanted to just call out one: > with the ultimate goal of reclaiming land from the river to the sea, per their own charter. The "from the river to the sea" is the language in the Likud charter, the party ruling Israel and dropping thousands of 2-ton bombs on Gaza right now. The popular chant "from the river to the sea palestine will be free" is a direct response to that. I'm unaware of Hamas' charter using the "from the river to the sea" language, although I'm open for correction here because I have not read the entire charter.
- prmph 3y ago
  Are you claiming ignorance of the fact that the Hamas charter originally called for the liquidation of Israel? This is common knowledge. Granted, they have revised it recently to tone down the genocidal language, but I don't think anybody should be deceived about what their intentions are. As the history of the slogan "from the river to the sea", please read on it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea, it has little to do with Likud.
  - avtar 3y ago