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I think the bit that this misses is that the root of all the problems we've seen over the last few decades is that Israel keeps doing their settlement thing. In

by arp242 2y ago

I think the bit that this misses is that the root of all the problems we've seen over the last few decades is that Israel keeps doing their settlement thing. In spite of decades of pretty much the entire rest of the world – including the US – saying they should not be doing that. I don't approve of Hezbollah or Hamas; but if you strip away the violence and Islamic extremism and all of that then the uncomfortable reality is ... they're not wrong in their core objections. Israel has consistently maintained that no, actually, the core problem is that Hezbollah and Hamas exist, and once we get rid of these people all the problems will be gone. It's certainly true that these organisations have become part of the problem, but they're not at the root of it. "We will keep our bad faith settlement policy, and if you behave like a good boy to our satisfaction long enough then maybe perhaps we will consider granting you rights" doesn't really work. All these gun-toting "don't tread on me" 2nd amendment absolutionists people full-on supporting Israel wouldn't accept that either. Israel must resolve the settlement issue first, and THEN we can dismantle the violent extremist groups (which will take time and won't happen overnight – there will be a "Real Hamas" splinter group just as there was a "Real IRA"). This is the only way peace can happen. This is why I think you can't really compare it to operations against ISIL or Taliban, whom have a far less legitimate complaints. This is also why "IDF is the most moral army in the world" that I have seen some people say, and what you're kind of echoing here, is completely besides the point. I don't know if it's true and I don't really care. This conflict would be non-existent on the scale that it exists today if not for the settlement policy, which is 100% in Israel's control.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> if you strip away the violence and Islamic extremism and all of that then the uncomfortable reality is ... they're not wrong in their core objections Sure. Wars' aims usually aren't irrational. Both sides seem to be somewhat flippant about collateral damage. But Hamas and, to a lesser degree, to my knowledge, Hezbollah stand out for explicitly and proudly targeting Israeli civilians. > why I think you can't really compare it to operations against ISIL or Taliban, whom have a far less legitimate complaints They're all couched in the language of expelling foreign imperialists. > conflict would be non-existent on the scale that it exists today if not for the settlement policy Plenty of Iran's regional allies oppose Israel's right to exist. The formation of Israel is a can of worms. Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran's positions would be strengthened--I think--if they tempered their demands to e.g. Israel returning to its original borders.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- dttze 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Hamas or Hezb target civilians more than the IDF Never claimed as much. The point is Hamas and Hezbollah explicitly target civilians. (The October 7th raid had a modest CCR of 2:1 inasmuch as there were 766 civilian and 273 security casualties [1]. Break down some of the raiding parties, however, and the CCR is much higher. Comparable to some of Israel's worst raids, or Russia's war in Chechnya.) > IDF has killed orders of magnitude more civilians than either This is how multiplying a big scalar by a smaller ratio works. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80...
    - dttze 2y ago
      You’re assuming every death on the 7th was by Hamas or other Gaza factions, which is false. And these abstractions are useless and only serve to obfuscate the horrors of war.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > You’re assuming every death on the 7th was by Hamas or other Gaza factions We are rounding civilian casualties to integers. This is a necessarily inexact science. > these abstractions are useless and only serve to obfuscate the horrors of war I could not agree with you more.
        CapricornNoble 2y ago
        > We are rounding civilian casualties to integers. This is a necessarily inexact science. I think what he's suggesting is that of the Israeli casualties on October 7th, we have no accurate breakdown for how many were caused by IDF implementing the "Hannibal procedure". It's possible the answer is "A LOT". https://archive.is/4mtXW https://archive.is/4mtXW https://archive.is/romMZ https://archive.is/romMZ (Haaretz articles) One case in which it is known that civilians were hit, a case that received wide coverage, took place in the house of Pessi Cohen at Kibbutz Be'eri. 14 hostages were held in the house as the IDF attacked it, with 13 of them killed.
bhouston 2y ago
In the end we need a two-state solution with Israel and the Palestinians have self-determination and security. The faults of those involved are many, but the solution is known - it is a two-state solution, an end to armed attacks on Israeli civilians/homes and an end to the settlements. Thomas Friedman has great takes on this regularly in his NYTimes column: https://www.nytimes.com/column/thomas-l-friedman https://www.nytimes.com/column/thomas-l-friedman
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > In the end we need a two-state solution with Israel and the Palestinians have self-determination and security The problem is the history of extracting a region from this miasma has involved (a) invasion and unconditional surrender to an outside power or (b) subjugation and thus the erasure of the divide. We decided after WWII the latter is unacceptable. That leaves the former. The proper parties to do it would be the Middle Eastern military powers. But they, being monarchies and dictatorships, lack the legitimacy and stability to engage in such projects.
- tptacek 2y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly.
- xfax 2y ago
  A two-state solution is a fever dream if the occupier is uninterested in it. We’ve seen that repeatedly for the past 75+ years in actions and literal words. So the question is, if you were the subjugated population, what would you do?
  - tptacek 2y ago
    Not kill 1200 people, including 815 civilians, and take an addition 251 hostage. But I think it's really important to be clear about who "we" is here. Last I checked, a majority of Gazans are not old enough ever to have voted in an election (the last one was held almost 20 years ago). If you mean "Hamas", and you stipulate that Hamas is in any way operating in the best interests of living Gazans in the present, it's easy to give a clear answer to that question. If you mean Gazan civilians, the true victims of Hamas, it's much more complicated.
tptacek 2y ago
So --- and I think this is take that pisses off both sides of this conflict --- I really don't think moral struggles or the definition of "terrorism" is at all illuminating in this conflict. Both sides deploy the term to discredit the other; in neither case does it matter. Two important things to understand about Hezbollah are that is the dominant military power in Lebanon, and that is directly supplied, enabled, and controlled by the IRGC QF. Hezbollah is in a plausible sense a military occupier of the state of Lebanon; as an illustration of that fact, look at its full mobilization in support of the Syria/Iran axis during the Syrian Civil War (a Hezbollah conflict that went largely unreported in the west, but caused integer multiples more civilian casualties than anything we've seen reported in the last 12 months). This is an open conflict between two military peers. Over the last year, Hezbollah has fired on average dozens of rockets every day, at a cadence sufficient to evacuate much of Northern Israel to hotel rooms and temporary housing. My point isn't that you should respect Hezbollah less for doing so, or that it is therefore a terrorist organization. Rather: Hezbollah is a world-tier military force (by many accounts the most effective in the Syrian wars) that has opened a front on a neighboring country. These are two warring armies. "Deserve", as William Munny would say, has nothing to do with it. If it helps, Israel has been coasting on arguments that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization for years, and I'm no more interested in those arguments.
- arp242 2y ago
  > I really don't think moral struggles or the definition of "terrorism" is at all illuminating in this conflict Yes, I fully agree. To be blunt, it's boring semantic wank. No one is here is an angel. Everyone has serious legitimate grievances and no one is smelling of roses. This should be obvious to anyone who isn't a hyper-partisan. But that doesn't mean we can't say all of this could have been avoided if Israel hadn't continued their settlement policy with no hint or perspective or any compromise. Remember the constitutional changes and protests over them? That was mostly over the the far-right wanting to expand the settlement policy even further. Even before Oct 7 several government ministers seemed to support the outright ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and Gaza. Fun people. This is not just "fanning the flames", it's the root of the conflict. That was really my main point; I don't think you can just talk about number of civilian casualties without also recognizing that Israel's policies are the fuel on which the entire thing burns. That is: at its core it's a conflict of Israel's choosing. Without it you might have the small terror group or lone nutjob, but nothing like we see today. It doesn't help that Israel gets a huge amount of military support, to the point where it can just do anything without significant cost in lives or material. Look at the casualty ratios – "military peers" is rather a stretch IMHO.
xg15 2y ago
My understanding, after having learned more about this topic in the last year, is that this runs much deeper in the Israeli political establishment than Israel's image in the west would suggest. E.g., I found it notable that Likud's founding charter explicitly rejects a two-state solution, fully endorses the settlement policy and calls for an Israel "from the river to the sea" - in 1977! [1] (More recent updates to the charter are more ambiguous though) That, btw, is itself already the "moderate" position in contrast to Likud's predecessor parties - which were platforming on extending Israel into the (back then occupied) Sinai [2] or taking over all of Jordan [3] (due to it having been the other half of Mandatory Palestine). Every country has its fringe groups with extremist views, except in this case, the groups became the dominant government party. A recent tweet [4] from Netanyahu in response to Macron also makes it clear that the "we conquered it fair and square, so it's ours now" mindset is still alive and well today. None of that excuses the atrocities done by Palestinian groups - but it definitely calls into question who is the escalating side in this conflict. It also makes the west's one-sided support for Israel appear increasingly jarring and at odds with it's own values. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likud#Ideological_positions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likud#Ideological_positions [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_Greater_Israel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_Greater_Israel [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionist_Zionism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionist_Zionism [4] https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/1846242196531339413 https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/1846242196531339413
- tptacek 2y ago
  I think it's uncontroversial that Likud opposes a 2-state solution, for what it's worth. I think you're going to find a lot of people taking Israel's side in the existential question of whether it should defend itself as a sovereign, and/or respond to mass-casualty attacks from paramilitary militias in territories it occupies, but far fewer people endorsing Israel's leadership. "I support Israel's right to exist but Netanyahu belongs at the Hague" is a pretty common position. The issue is: it doesn't get you anywhere in the Israel/Hezbollah conflict. I believe Israel has awful, possibly criminal leadership. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't respond to full-scale military attacks from neighboring near-peer militaries. I think tallying up the morals of each side of this conflict is really unproductive, but in the spirit of just digging into the details here, I feel like it's worth pointing out that the details on Hezbollah's side of the scale are grim. Not in its conflict with Israel, but with the broader region, where it has killed civilians with great gusto.
xfax 2y ago
It’s refreshing to hear from someone else what I’ve been thinking and saying for a while now. This perspective is conspicuously missing from all narrative you hear and read in the media, as well as the administration. The gaslighting is hard to ignore.
raincom 2y ago
Even if Israel gets rid of settlements in the West Bank, even If Israel goes back to pre-1967 borders, the Israel-Palestine conflict will not end. That's because Palestinians want a one-state solution, along with the return of Palestinian refugees, both the first gen and their descendants--and that's the real solution from the Palestinian side. Israel is never going to accept the real Palestinian solution.
- tptacek 2y ago
  It would be more fair to note that both Hamas and the current governing coalition in Israel very clearly want a one-state solution. In fact, if you could roll Israel back to 1967 borders, the Palestinians would be in an enormously better position than they are today; politics, and, in particular, the logistics of dismantling what are in effect whole Israeli suburbs illegally situated in the West Bank, are what keep us from getting that done.† It's difficult to really get a firm grasp on what "Palestinians" demand, because (1) the Palestinian Authority is deeply corrupt, generally not trusted by Palestinians, and actively sabotaged by the Netanyahu coalition, and (2) Hamas took power in 2006 and then for almost 20 years refused any self-determination for Gazan Palestinians, all the while being tacitly endorsed and financially abetted by the Netanyahu governing coalition. If your claim is that Hamas is not interested in a realistic brokered solution of the Israel/Palestinian crisis, you're right. Hamas is a death cult propped up by the IRGC QF, truly one of the most despicable organizations on the planet. But I would strongly object to Hamas' worldview being imputed to Palestinians more generally; Palestinians are Hamas' primary victims. † There are other logistical problems that would need to get hammered out in a "'67 borders" agreement, like what the corridor between Gaza and the West Bank would look like. To hear skeptical Israeli policy commentators talk about it, you'd also put the structure of Palestinian security forces on that list, but I think the last year has counterfeited that concern: you literally can't do worse than the status quo.
  - raincom 2y ago
    Supporters of Palestinians, especially activists and students on campuses, in the West are not interested in the two-state solution. This position aligns with Arabs, who don't want a Jewish state in the Middle East. Hamas says it directly; others are not so direct, but one can infer their position through their actions. One can say 'give voice and agency to those who want to make peace with the two-state solution'; then, make peace with these groups. I am not so confident on this adventure. Even the late Prof. Edward Said, who every postcolonial and postmodernist professor and student adore and worship, wanted a bi-national Israeli-Palestinian state, a variety of the one-state solution. Look at some version of a bi/tri-nationalism in the neighboring Lebanon: Hezbollah dictates the Lebanese govt.
raxxorraxor 2y ago
This had nothing to do with the westbank and yes, Israel has a problem with extremism and illegal settlements. But that isn't the topic here. Hezbollah has started its war against Israel and the pager attack was an efficient way to retaliate and cripple Hezbollah command. There is no justification for Hezbollah to attack Israel with missiles. I don't really understand why their attack on Hezbollah logistics is even in question. Israel has to use all their capabilities to respond to these attacks.
edanm 2y ago
> I don't approve of Hezbollah or Hamas; but if you strip away the violence and Islamic extremism and all of that then the uncomfortable reality is ... they're not wrong in their core objections. Israel has consistently maintained that no, actually, the core problem is that Hezbollah and Hamas exist, and once we get rid of these people all the problems will be gone. Let me offer you a counter-perspective on this. Israel and the PA actually worked to achieve peace - beginning with the Oslo accords that officially recognized the PA as the representative of the Palestinian people, and in which they officially recognized Israel on the '67 borders. There followed a more than a decade of attempts at reaching an agreement for a two-state solution, which would have ended Israel's settlements and given the Palestinians what they ostensibly want. Except this isn't the core objective of Hamas and Hezbollah. Their core objective has always been to eliminate Israel entirely. Which is why Hamas helped stop the very peace agreements which could've led to a two-state solution, by starting a wave of terror attacks. It's unclear to what extent the PA itself was involved, but Hamas was absolutely involved, and their stated goal was to not achieve peace, but rather scuttle any peace so that the fight could be a fight to the death of Israel, instead. (And of course, Israeli extremists were working on the Israeli side to stop the peace process, with much fewer attacks and far less success, except for the one terrible blow they did manage to dish out - assassinating the Prime Minister that would've most likely been able to get a peace deal done!) That is the sense in which many Israelis feel like - yeah, if Israel destroys the group that is actively seeking to disrupt peace and working towards Israel's destruction - we can actually negotiate with the reasonable people that are left. (I don't think this is correct or Netanyahu's full motivations, but it's not completely wrong, either.) > Israel must resolve the settlement issue first, and THEN we can dismantle the violent extremist groups (which will take time and won't happen overnight – there will be a "Real Hamas" splinter group just as there was a "Real IRA"). This is the only way peace can happen. Israelis believe that without those settlements, a far more massive attack would happen. And they are probably right! Israel remvoed the settlements from Gaza, removed all military presence from Gaza, and the Gazans elected Hamas, which took over the Gaza strip (killing all PA members), then spent 15 years shooting rockets at Israel continuously, and spent billions of dollars of aid that was supposed to help Palestinians on, instead, building up towards the October 7th attack. You're effectively saying to Israelis "if you want peace, just try to repeat this, except on a far more massive scale in the West Bank", and to trust that somehow, this won't turn out exactly the same as in Gaza. Israelis have good reason to mistrust this idea! (For the record, I do think there are good counterarguments against this, and I am very much against the settlements, as are many Israelis. But the concerns I outline are real, legitimate concerns, and they have to be addressed or at least, understood.)

by arp242 2y ago

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> if you strip away the violence and Islamic extremism and all of that then the uncomfortable reality is ... they're not wrong in their core objections Sure. Wars' aims usually aren't irrational. Both sides seem to be somewhat flippant about collateral damage. But Hamas and, to a lesser degree, to my knowledge, Hezbollah stand out for explicitly and proudly targeting Israeli civilians. > why I think you can't really compare it to operations against ISIL or Taliban, whom have a far less legitimate complaints They're all couched in the language of expelling foreign imperialists. > conflict would be non-existent on the scale that it exists today if not for the settlement policy Plenty of Iran's regional allies oppose Israel's right to exist. The formation of Israel is a can of worms. Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran's positions would be strengthened--I think--if they tempered their demands to e.g. Israel returning to its original borders.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dttze 2y ago
[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Hamas or Hezb target civilians more than the IDF Never claimed as much. The point is Hamas and Hezbollah explicitly target civilians. (The October 7th raid had a modest CCR of 2:1 inasmuch as there were 766 civilian and 273 security casualties [1]. Break down some of the raiding parties, however, and the CCR is much higher. Comparable to some of Israel's worst raids, or Russia's war in Chechnya.) > IDF has killed orders of magnitude more civilians than either This is how multiplying a big scalar by a smaller ratio works. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80...
  - dttze 2y ago
    You’re assuming every death on the 7th was by Hamas or other Gaza factions, which is false. And these abstractions are useless and only serve to obfuscate the horrors of war.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > You’re assuming every death on the 7th was by Hamas or other Gaza factions We are rounding civilian casualties to integers. This is a necessarily inexact science. > these abstractions are useless and only serve to obfuscate the horrors of war I could not agree with you more.
      - CapricornNoble 2y ago
        > We are rounding civilian casualties to integers. This is a necessarily inexact science. I think what he's suggesting is that of the Israeli casualties on October 7th, we have no accurate breakdown for how many were caused by IDF implementing the "Hannibal procedure". It's possible the answer is "A LOT". https://archive.is/4mtXW https://archive.is/4mtXW https://archive.is/romMZ https://archive.is/romMZ (Haaretz articles) One case in which it is known that civilians were hit, a case that received wide coverage, took place in the house of Pessi Cohen at Kibbutz Be'eri. 14 hostages were held in the house as the IDF attacked it, with 13 of them killed.

bhouston 2y ago

In the end we need a two-state solution with Israel and the Palestinians have self-determination and security. The faults of those involved are many, but the solution is known - it is a two-state solution, an end to armed attacks on Israeli civilians/homes and an end to the settlements. Thomas Friedman has great takes on this regularly in his NYTimes column: https://www.nytimes.com/column/thomas-l-friedman https://www.nytimes.com/column/thomas-l-friedman

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> In the end we need a two-state solution with Israel and the Palestinians have self-determination and security The problem is the history of extracting a region from this miasma has involved (a) invasion and unconditional surrender to an outside power or (b) subjugation and thus the erasure of the divide. We decided after WWII the latter is unacceptable. That leaves the former. The proper parties to do it would be the Middle Eastern military powers. But they, being monarchies and dictatorships, lack the legitimacy and stability to engage in such projects.
tptacek 2y ago
I agree wholeheartedly.
xfax 2y ago
A two-state solution is a fever dream if the occupier is uninterested in it. We’ve seen that repeatedly for the past 75+ years in actions and literal words. So the question is, if you were the subjugated population, what would you do?
- tptacek 2y ago
  Not kill 1200 people, including 815 civilians, and take an addition 251 hostage. But I think it's really important to be clear about who "we" is here. Last I checked, a majority of Gazans are not old enough ever to have voted in an election (the last one was held almost 20 years ago). If you mean "Hamas", and you stipulate that Hamas is in any way operating in the best interests of living Gazans in the present, it's easy to give a clear answer to that question. If you mean Gazan civilians, the true victims of Hamas, it's much more complicated.

tptacek 2y ago

So --- and I think this is take that pisses off both sides of this conflict --- I really don't think moral struggles or the definition of "terrorism" is at all illuminating in this conflict. Both sides deploy the term to discredit the other; in neither case does it matter. Two important things to understand about Hezbollah are that is the dominant military power in Lebanon, and that is directly supplied, enabled, and controlled by the IRGC QF. Hezbollah is in a plausible sense a military occupier of the state of Lebanon; as an illustration of that fact, look at its full mobilization in support of the Syria/Iran axis during the Syrian Civil War (a Hezbollah conflict that went largely unreported in the west, but caused integer multiples more civilian casualties than anything we've seen reported in the last 12 months). This is an open conflict between two military peers. Over the last year, Hezbollah has fired on average dozens of rockets every day, at a cadence sufficient to evacuate much of Northern Israel to hotel rooms and temporary housing. My point isn't that you should respect Hezbollah less for doing so, or that it is therefore a terrorist organization. Rather: Hezbollah is a world-tier military force (by many accounts the most effective in the Syrian wars) that has opened a front on a neighboring country. These are two warring armies. "Deserve", as William Munny would say, has nothing to do with it. If it helps, Israel has been coasting on arguments that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization for years, and I'm no more interested in those arguments.

arp242 2y ago
> I really don't think moral struggles or the definition of "terrorism" is at all illuminating in this conflict Yes, I fully agree. To be blunt, it's boring semantic wank. No one is here is an angel. Everyone has serious legitimate grievances and no one is smelling of roses. This should be obvious to anyone who isn't a hyper-partisan. But that doesn't mean we can't say all of this could have been avoided if Israel hadn't continued their settlement policy with no hint or perspective or any compromise. Remember the constitutional changes and protests over them? That was mostly over the the far-right wanting to expand the settlement policy even further. Even before Oct 7 several government ministers seemed to support the outright ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and Gaza. Fun people. This is not just "fanning the flames", it's the root of the conflict. That was really my main point; I don't think you can just talk about number of civilian casualties without also recognizing that Israel's policies are the fuel on which the entire thing burns. That is: at its core it's a conflict of Israel's choosing. Without it you might have the small terror group or lone nutjob, but nothing like we see today. It doesn't help that Israel gets a huge amount of military support, to the point where it can just do anything without significant cost in lives or material. Look at the casualty ratios – "military peers" is rather a stretch IMHO.

xg15 2y ago

My understanding, after having learned more about this topic in the last year, is that this runs much deeper in the Israeli political establishment than Israel's image in the west would suggest. E.g., I found it notable that Likud's founding charter explicitly rejects a two-state solution, fully endorses the settlement policy and calls for an Israel "from the river to the sea" - in 1977! [1] (More recent updates to the charter are more ambiguous though) That, btw, is itself already the "moderate" position in contrast to Likud's predecessor parties - which were platforming on extending Israel into the (back then occupied) Sinai [2] or taking over all of Jordan [3] (due to it having been the other half of Mandatory Palestine). Every country has its fringe groups with extremist views, except in this case, the groups became the dominant government party. A recent tweet [4] from Netanyahu in response to Macron also makes it clear that the "we conquered it fair and square, so it's ours now" mindset is still alive and well today. None of that excuses the atrocities done by Palestinian groups - but it definitely calls into question who is the escalating side in this conflict. It also makes the west's one-sided support for Israel appear increasingly jarring and at odds with it's own values. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likud#Ideological_positions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likud#Ideological_positions [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_Greater_Israel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_Greater_Israel [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionist_Zionism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionist_Zionism [4] https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/1846242196531339413 https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/1846242196531339413

tptacek 2y ago
I think it's uncontroversial that Likud opposes a 2-state solution, for what it's worth. I think you're going to find a lot of people taking Israel's side in the existential question of whether it should defend itself as a sovereign, and/or respond to mass-casualty attacks from paramilitary militias in territories it occupies, but far fewer people endorsing Israel's leadership. "I support Israel's right to exist but Netanyahu belongs at the Hague" is a pretty common position. The issue is: it doesn't get you anywhere in the Israel/Hezbollah conflict. I believe Israel has awful, possibly criminal leadership. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't respond to full-scale military attacks from neighboring near-peer militaries. I think tallying up the morals of each side of this conflict is really unproductive, but in the spirit of just digging into the details here, I feel like it's worth pointing out that the details on Hezbollah's side of the scale are grim. Not in its conflict with Israel, but with the broader region, where it has killed civilians with great gusto.

xfax 2y ago

It’s refreshing to hear from someone else what I’ve been thinking and saying for a while now. This perspective is conspicuously missing from all narrative you hear and read in the media, as well as the administration. The gaslighting is hard to ignore.

raincom 2y ago

Even if Israel gets rid of settlements in the West Bank, even If Israel goes back to pre-1967 borders, the Israel-Palestine conflict will not end. That's because Palestinians want a one-state solution, along with the return of Palestinian refugees, both the first gen and their descendants--and that's the real solution from the Palestinian side. Israel is never going to accept the real Palestinian solution.

tptacek 2y ago
It would be more fair to note that both Hamas and the current governing coalition in Israel very clearly want a one-state solution. In fact, if you could roll Israel back to 1967 borders, the Palestinians would be in an enormously better position than they are today; politics, and, in particular, the logistics of dismantling what are in effect whole Israeli suburbs illegally situated in the West Bank, are what keep us from getting that done.† It's difficult to really get a firm grasp on what "Palestinians" demand, because (1) the Palestinian Authority is deeply corrupt, generally not trusted by Palestinians, and actively sabotaged by the Netanyahu coalition, and (2) Hamas took power in 2006 and then for almost 20 years refused any self-determination for Gazan Palestinians, all the while being tacitly endorsed and financially abetted by the Netanyahu governing coalition. If your claim is that Hamas is not interested in a realistic brokered solution of the Israel/Palestinian crisis, you're right. Hamas is a death cult propped up by the IRGC QF, truly one of the most despicable organizations on the planet. But I would strongly object to Hamas' worldview being imputed to Palestinians more generally; Palestinians are Hamas' primary victims. † There are other logistical problems that would need to get hammered out in a "'67 borders" agreement, like what the corridor between Gaza and the West Bank would look like. To hear skeptical Israeli policy commentators talk about it, you'd also put the structure of Palestinian security forces on that list, but I think the last year has counterfeited that concern: you literally can't do worse than the status quo.
- raincom 2y ago
  Supporters of Palestinians, especially activists and students on campuses, in the West are not interested in the two-state solution. This position aligns with Arabs, who don't want a Jewish state in the Middle East. Hamas says it directly; others are not so direct, but one can infer their position through their actions. One can say 'give voice and agency to those who want to make peace with the two-state solution'; then, make peace with these groups. I am not so confident on this adventure. Even the late Prof. Edward Said, who every postcolonial and postmodernist professor and student adore and worship, wanted a bi-national Israeli-Palestinian state, a variety of the one-state solution. Look at some version of a bi/tri-nationalism in the neighboring Lebanon: Hezbollah dictates the Lebanese govt.

raxxorraxor 2y ago

This had nothing to do with the westbank and yes, Israel has a problem with extremism and illegal settlements. But that isn't the topic here. Hezbollah has started its war against Israel and the pager attack was an efficient way to retaliate and cripple Hezbollah command. There is no justification for Hezbollah to attack Israel with missiles. I don't really understand why their attack on Hezbollah logistics is even in question. Israel has to use all their capabilities to respond to these attacks.

edanm 2y ago

> I don't approve of Hezbollah or Hamas; but if you strip away the violence and Islamic extremism and all of that then the uncomfortable reality is ... they're not wrong in their core objections. Israel has consistently maintained that no, actually, the core problem is that Hezbollah and Hamas exist, and once we get rid of these people all the problems will be gone. Let me offer you a counter-perspective on this. Israel and the PA actually worked to achieve peace - beginning with the Oslo accords that officially recognized the PA as the representative of the Palestinian people, and in which they officially recognized Israel on the '67 borders. There followed a more than a decade of attempts at reaching an agreement for a two-state solution, which would have ended Israel's settlements and given the Palestinians what they ostensibly want. Except this isn't the core objective of Hamas and Hezbollah. Their core objective has always been to eliminate Israel entirely. Which is why Hamas helped stop the very peace agreements which could've led to a two-state solution, by starting a wave of terror attacks. It's unclear to what extent the PA itself was involved, but Hamas was absolutely involved, and their stated goal was to not achieve peace, but rather scuttle any peace so that the fight could be a fight to the death of Israel, instead. (And of course, Israeli extremists were working on the Israeli side to stop the peace process, with much fewer attacks and far less success, except for the one terrible blow they did manage to dish out - assassinating the Prime Minister that would've most likely been able to get a peace deal done!) That is the sense in which many Israelis feel like - yeah, if Israel destroys the group that is actively seeking to disrupt peace and working towards Israel's destruction - we can actually negotiate with the reasonable people that are left. (I don't think this is correct or Netanyahu's full motivations, but it's not completely wrong, either.) > Israel must resolve the settlement issue first, and THEN we can dismantle the violent extremist groups (which will take time and won't happen overnight – there will be a "Real Hamas" splinter group just as there was a "Real IRA"). This is the only way peace can happen. Israelis believe that without those settlements, a far more massive attack would happen. And they are probably right! Israel remvoed the settlements from Gaza, removed all military presence from Gaza, and the Gazans elected Hamas, which took over the Gaza strip (killing all PA members), then spent 15 years shooting rockets at Israel continuously, and spent billions of dollars of aid that was supposed to help Palestinians on, instead, building up towards the October 7th attack. You're effectively saying to Israelis "if you want peace, just try to repeat this, except on a far more massive scale in the West Bank", and to trust that somehow, this won't turn out exactly the same as in Gaza. Israelis have good reason to mistrust this idea! (For the record, I do think there are good counterarguments against this, and I am very much against the settlements, as are many Israelis. But the concerns I outline are real, legitimate concerns, and they have to be addressed or at least, understood.)