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These terrorists, yield? Already faulty logic. Their proclaimed goals and historic record show that will never happen and their budget for violence knows no l

These terrorists, yield? Already faulty logic. Their proclaimed goals and historic record show that will never happen and their budget for violence knows no limit. It's as tough as desalinating water, but removing the civilians from the terrorists must happen. Otherwise the result will either be genocide of the 'salt water', or of the 'plants' the salt in that water is bent on destroying. What is an acceptable plan for reaching the result of the civilians on both sides being safe? This is a political question, but it is one all must consider; at least as it informs our own votes where we reside.

YZF 1y ago
I'll give you my honest opinion here and a criticism of Israeli government all at once. Israel should have moved the Palestinians civilians into Israel proper, e.g. the Negev. It should have created refugee camps for them there and provided them with all the support/aid while it went after Hamas. They'd be able to filter the people going in, make them surrender their weapons etc. No tunnels, no weapons caches, etc. It's a very tough one to swallow for Israelis. I'm also not positive it would have worked. But I think it would be worth a try. I think in the beginning of the war there was some thought of Egypt playing that role but it was pretty clear that wasn't going to happen. The problem is throughout the war Israel had no appetite/desire to own the problem of Gazan civilians. Israel intentionally left that part to Hamas and the UN and at no time during this conflict has controlled any piece of land with Palestinian civilians.
- trustinmenowpls 1y ago
  If they had done this they would be accused of ethnic cleansing as well as genocide. the negev isn't an altogether welcoming place, any death natural or otherwise that happened there would be blamed on the jews as proof and it would be an even bigger PR disaster. Egypt and the sinai would have a similar problem. Even Trump's recent suggestion of temporary resettlement to a populated area has been met with calls of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Most of the supposed supporters of the palestinian people don't care so much about their fate so much as they hate Jews and love the easy cudgel they make for attacking jews. Putting that aside, no one, not Hamas, not the Israeli public, not Netanyahu, and certainly not the IDF, not any neighboring countries, not the wider world believed the war would drag on this long. Everyone thought it would be over fairly soon. Hamas probably didn't think there would be a war because israel itself was on the brink of a civil war, the Israeli public with their strong belief in their military might thought the war would be over before the new year and the IDF and politicians (BN included) likely had a similar belief, that A) Hamas didn't have an apatite for a long war, and B) the IDF would be able to quickly return the hostages. Everyone else also believed in the might of a stronger more organized force against a much weaker force that supposedly also had to care for their own people. Instead Hamas showed they had no concern for their own people, and they had significantly deeper fortifications than the israeli security establishment knew about. So here we are almost two years later, and no end in sight.
  - scotty79 1y ago
    Still it would be better for civilians even if not any better from PR standpoint. Also with some of the civilians filtered out Israel might have easier time acting boldly against Hamas in Gaza.
  - Zacharias030 1y ago
    This war was always going to go exactly as long as Israel wanted to prolong it and nothing else stands in the way of this stopping.
- leyth 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - YZF 1y ago
    1. I'm not talking about the West Bank. 2. There's plenty of Hamas in the West Bank. Some of the violence was the IDF proactively going after Hamas and PIJ in the west bank. Reference to this "1000" number? Can you provide a breakdown between combatants and civilians?
  - trustinmenowpls 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 1y ago
      You've been using multiple accounts to post comments in the same threads and upvote yourself. That's abusive, so we've banned the accounts.
- protocolture 1y ago
  >I'll give you my honest opinion here and a criticism of Israeli government all at once. Israel should have moved the Palestinians civilians into Israel proper, e.g. the Negev. It should have created refugee camps for them there and provided them with all the support/aid while it went after Hamas. They'd be able to filter the people going in, make them surrender their weapons etc. No tunnels, no weapons caches, etc. It should have simply returned the refugees to their land. But then they wouldnt be stateless individuals, they would have (minimal, as second class subjects) rights, and present a greater challenge to settlement like those in the west bank. Ultimately this is a settlement project, and distracting from that, and the right of those refugees in gaza to return to their land, is the ultimate point of the conflict.
  - YZF 1y ago
    The return of the so called 1948 refugees to Israel is never going to happen. Other wars from the same era had a lot more refugees and nobody returned anywhere. Just like the Jewish refugees from Arab countries or Europe are not returning there either. It the Palestinians are stuck in 1948 over the war they and the Arabs started and lost they're never going to get anywhere. They had a chance when Israel was established to be equal citizens and they decided not to take it. It might be tough, it might not be "just", but that clock is never turning back. The sad thing is how Palestinians and Arabs treat those people. Everywhere else in the world refugees were taken in. But other than Jordan all Arab countries have decided to just keep those people as refugees for eternity. Including the Palestinians, and Gazans, who treat the refugees like second class people.
    - Zacharias030 1y ago
      All your arguments and justifications sound so hollow in the face of starving palestinians in Gaza being shot while lining up for humanitarian aid. The thing being stuck in the past seem to be your arguments. But this is happening right now and the majority underage population starving to death right now is on Israel‘s watch.
      - YZF 1y ago
- xdennis 1y ago
  > Israel should have moved the Palestinians civilians into Israel proper, e.g. the Negev. This is so silly. Israel is a tiny country. There are countless huge Muslim countries, none of which want to help Gazans. How many German refugees did the Allies take in WW2?
  - DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
    First of all, most of the Palestinian families in Gaza come from Israel. They lived in what is now southern Israel until 1948, when they were driven out in an extremely brutal Israeli military operation (Operation Barak). Secondly, comparing the Palestinians to Nazi Germany is absurd and grotesque. The Palestinians are an oppressed people who were driven out of their homeland by an invading force in 1947-48, and who have lived in squalid refugee camps ever since. Since 1967, they have lived under direct military occupation by the very people who originally expelled them from their homeland, and are subjected to a racist regime in which their land is slowly taken away, piece by piece. The Palestinians have no country, no passport, no sovereignty, no rights. Comparing them to the citizens of an industrialized power that tried to conquer Europe is insane.
    - bsaul 1y ago
      In 1947, arabs refused the UN partition plan and decided to wage war against jews ( which accepted that plan) to remove them from the map. They were 100% certain to be able to do so, and nobody bet a penny on the jews winning at 1 vs 10. They never stopped trying to do so since that dat, with the latest example being 2 years ago, on october 7. Now you can try to blame it on the jews on X, but HN is an educated forum. Those kinds of arguments won't fly here.
      - DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
        "In 1675, the native tribes of New England refused to accept a partition of the land, and decided to wage war against Christians (who accepted the plan) to remove them from the map. They were 100% certain to be able to do so, and nobody bet a penny on the Christians winning at 1 vs. 10. They never stopped trying to do so since that date. Now you can try to blame it on the Christians on X, but HN is an educated forum. Those kinds of arguments won't fly here." I'm sure you can find ten reasons why my above little story is wrong. They're the exact same reasons your little story is wrong. To name a few: 1. The Zionists / Europeans were trying to colonize Arab / Native American land. They were the aggressors in a very fundamental sense. Asking for the native population to "partition" the land amounts to demanding that they cede part of their homeland to you. 2. The conflict has nothing to do with Judaism or antisemitism. By framing it in that way, you're trying to draw a connection to the Holocaust and the history of persecution of Jews in Europe. But in this situation, the Zionists just happened to be Jewish, but that was totally irrelevant for the Arab population of Palestine. What the native population cared about was that an outside group - it didn't matter who - was trying to come in and take over the land. 3. And contrary to your framing, the Zionists were the group that held the upper hand, for a whole number of reasons that apply across the colonial world. In Palestine, they weren't some little oppressed minority. They had more resources, better education, were better organized, and had the backing of the imperial rulers of Palestine, the British. 4. The Arabs were the underdogs in the 1948 war. This runs completely counter to Israeli national mythology, but the fact is that the Israelis had a larger, better trained and better equipped army. They had military training from the British. They had funding from a significant foreign base of donors. They were able to purchase large amounts of weaponry from Czechoslovakia. The Palestinians themselves never stood a chance against the Zionists / Israelis. The Arab states only intervened after the Zionists had begun carrying out mass expulsions and other atrocities against the Palestinian civilian population. From the point of view of the Arab world, they were attempting to save their brothers from vicious foreign colonizers. You present it as if "the Jews," by which you actually mean the Zionists in Palestine, were in a fight for survival. But that's like saying that a guy who walks into a bar and starts punching people wildly is in a fight for his own survival. It might be true, but he got himself into that situation.

YZF 1y ago

I'll give you my honest opinion here and a criticism of Israeli government all at once. Israel should have moved the Palestinians civilians into Israel proper, e.g. the Negev. It should have created refugee camps for them there and provided them with all the support/aid while it went after Hamas. They'd be able to filter the people going in, make them surrender their weapons etc. No tunnels, no weapons caches, etc. It's a very tough one to swallow for Israelis. I'm also not positive it would have worked. But I think it would be worth a try. I think in the beginning of the war there was some thought of Egypt playing that role but it was pretty clear that wasn't going to happen. The problem is throughout the war Israel had no appetite/desire to own the problem of Gazan civilians. Israel intentionally left that part to Hamas and the UN and at no time during this conflict has controlled any piece of land with Palestinian civilians.

trustinmenowpls 1y ago
If they had done this they would be accused of ethnic cleansing as well as genocide. the negev isn't an altogether welcoming place, any death natural or otherwise that happened there would be blamed on the jews as proof and it would be an even bigger PR disaster. Egypt and the sinai would have a similar problem. Even Trump's recent suggestion of temporary resettlement to a populated area has been met with calls of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Most of the supposed supporters of the palestinian people don't care so much about their fate so much as they hate Jews and love the easy cudgel they make for attacking jews. Putting that aside, no one, not Hamas, not the Israeli public, not Netanyahu, and certainly not the IDF, not any neighboring countries, not the wider world believed the war would drag on this long. Everyone thought it would be over fairly soon. Hamas probably didn't think there would be a war because israel itself was on the brink of a civil war, the Israeli public with their strong belief in their military might thought the war would be over before the new year and the IDF and politicians (BN included) likely had a similar belief, that A) Hamas didn't have an apatite for a long war, and B) the IDF would be able to quickly return the hostages. Everyone else also believed in the might of a stronger more organized force against a much weaker force that supposedly also had to care for their own people. Instead Hamas showed they had no concern for their own people, and they had significantly deeper fortifications than the israeli security establishment knew about. So here we are almost two years later, and no end in sight.
- scotty79 1y ago
  Still it would be better for civilians even if not any better from PR standpoint. Also with some of the civilians filtered out Israel might have easier time acting boldly against Hamas in Gaza.
- Zacharias030 1y ago
  This war was always going to go exactly as long as Israel wanted to prolong it and nothing else stands in the way of this stopping.
leyth 1y ago
[flagged]
- YZF 1y ago
  1. I'm not talking about the West Bank. 2. There's plenty of Hamas in the West Bank. Some of the violence was the IDF proactively going after Hamas and PIJ in the west bank. Reference to this "1000" number? Can you provide a breakdown between combatants and civilians?
- trustinmenowpls 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 1y ago
    You've been using multiple accounts to post comments in the same threads and upvote yourself. That's abusive, so we've banned the accounts.
protocolture 1y ago
>I'll give you my honest opinion here and a criticism of Israeli government all at once. Israel should have moved the Palestinians civilians into Israel proper, e.g. the Negev. It should have created refugee camps for them there and provided them with all the support/aid while it went after Hamas. They'd be able to filter the people going in, make them surrender their weapons etc. No tunnels, no weapons caches, etc. It should have simply returned the refugees to their land. But then they wouldnt be stateless individuals, they would have (minimal, as second class subjects) rights, and present a greater challenge to settlement like those in the west bank. Ultimately this is a settlement project, and distracting from that, and the right of those refugees in gaza to return to their land, is the ultimate point of the conflict.
- YZF 1y ago
  The return of the so called 1948 refugees to Israel is never going to happen. Other wars from the same era had a lot more refugees and nobody returned anywhere. Just like the Jewish refugees from Arab countries or Europe are not returning there either. It the Palestinians are stuck in 1948 over the war they and the Arabs started and lost they're never going to get anywhere. They had a chance when Israel was established to be equal citizens and they decided not to take it. It might be tough, it might not be "just", but that clock is never turning back. The sad thing is how Palestinians and Arabs treat those people. Everywhere else in the world refugees were taken in. But other than Jordan all Arab countries have decided to just keep those people as refugees for eternity. Including the Palestinians, and Gazans, who treat the refugees like second class people.
  - Zacharias030 1y ago
    All your arguments and justifications sound so hollow in the face of starving palestinians in Gaza being shot while lining up for humanitarian aid. The thing being stuck in the past seem to be your arguments. But this is happening right now and the majority underage population starving to death right now is on Israel‘s watch.
    - YZF 1y ago
xdennis 1y ago
> Israel should have moved the Palestinians civilians into Israel proper, e.g. the Negev. This is so silly. Israel is a tiny country. There are countless huge Muslim countries, none of which want to help Gazans. How many German refugees did the Allies take in WW2?
- DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
  First of all, most of the Palestinian families in Gaza come from Israel. They lived in what is now southern Israel until 1948, when they were driven out in an extremely brutal Israeli military operation (Operation Barak). Secondly, comparing the Palestinians to Nazi Germany is absurd and grotesque. The Palestinians are an oppressed people who were driven out of their homeland by an invading force in 1947-48, and who have lived in squalid refugee camps ever since. Since 1967, they have lived under direct military occupation by the very people who originally expelled them from their homeland, and are subjected to a racist regime in which their land is slowly taken away, piece by piece. The Palestinians have no country, no passport, no sovereignty, no rights. Comparing them to the citizens of an industrialized power that tried to conquer Europe is insane.
  - bsaul 1y ago
    In 1947, arabs refused the UN partition plan and decided to wage war against jews ( which accepted that plan) to remove them from the map. They were 100% certain to be able to do so, and nobody bet a penny on the jews winning at 1 vs 10. They never stopped trying to do so since that dat, with the latest example being 2 years ago, on october 7. Now you can try to blame it on the jews on X, but HN is an educated forum. Those kinds of arguments won't fly here.
    - DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
      "In 1675, the native tribes of New England refused to accept a partition of the land, and decided to wage war against Christians (who accepted the plan) to remove them from the map. They were 100% certain to be able to do so, and nobody bet a penny on the Christians winning at 1 vs. 10. They never stopped trying to do so since that date. Now you can try to blame it on the Christians on X, but HN is an educated forum. Those kinds of arguments won't fly here." I'm sure you can find ten reasons why my above little story is wrong. They're the exact same reasons your little story is wrong. To name a few: 1. The Zionists / Europeans were trying to colonize Arab / Native American land. They were the aggressors in a very fundamental sense. Asking for the native population to "partition" the land amounts to demanding that they cede part of their homeland to you. 2. The conflict has nothing to do with Judaism or antisemitism. By framing it in that way, you're trying to draw a connection to the Holocaust and the history of persecution of Jews in Europe. But in this situation, the Zionists just happened to be Jewish, but that was totally irrelevant for the Arab population of Palestine. What the native population cared about was that an outside group - it didn't matter who - was trying to come in and take over the land. 3. And contrary to your framing, the Zionists were the group that held the upper hand, for a whole number of reasons that apply across the colonial world. In Palestine, they weren't some little oppressed minority. They had more resources, better education, were better organized, and had the backing of the imperial rulers of Palestine, the British. 4. The Arabs were the underdogs in the 1948 war. This runs completely counter to Israeli national mythology, but the fact is that the Israelis had a larger, better trained and better equipped army. They had military training from the British. They had funding from a significant foreign base of donors. They were able to purchase large amounts of weaponry from Czechoslovakia. The Palestinians themselves never stood a chance against the Zionists / Israelis. The Arab states only intervened after the Zionists had begun carrying out mass expulsions and other atrocities against the Palestinian civilian population. From the point of view of the Arab world, they were attempting to save their brothers from vicious foreign colonizers. You present it as if "the Jews," by which you actually mean the Zionists in Palestine, were in a fight for survival. But that's like saying that a guy who walks into a bar and starts punching people wildly is in a fight for his own survival. It might be true, but he got himself into that situation.