Israel’s Evacuation Orders
An extraordinary look into warning civilians about impending attacks.
A truly chilling story from BBC News: “‘I’m calling from Israeli intelligence. We have the order to bomb. You have two hours’“
The call to Mahmoud Shaheen came at dawn.
It was Thursday 19 October at about 06:30, and Israel had been bombing Gaza for 12 days straight.
He’d been in his third-floor, three-bedroom flat in al-Zahra, a middle-class area in the north of the Gaza Strip. Until now, it had been largely untouched by air strikes.
He’d heard a rising clamour outside. People were screaming. “You need to escape,” somebody in the street shouted, “because they will bomb the towers”.
As he left his building and crossed the road, looking for a safe place, his phone lit up.
It was a call from a private number.
“I’m speaking with you from Israeli intelligence,” a man said down the line, according to Mahmoud.
That call would last more than an hour – and it would be the most terrifying call of his life.
The voice addressed Mahmoud by his full name and spoke in flawless Arabic.
“He told me he wanted to bomb three towers… and ordered me to evacuate the surrounding area.”
Mahmoud’s tower was not directly under threat – but he was suddenly responsible for evacuating hundreds of people. “I had the lives of people in my hands,” he says.
He gathered his thoughts and told the man, who identified himself as Abu Khaled, not to hang up the phone.
As a 40-year-old dentist, Mahmoud says he has no idea why he was chosen for this task. But that day, he did everything he could to keep his community safe.
Directed by the voices of strangers, who always seemed to know how to reach him even when his battery ran out, he pleaded for the bombing to stop and screamed until his throat hurt for people to run away.
He led a mass evacuation of his neighbours – and then watched his neighbourhood explode in front of his eyes.
During this conflict, the Israeli military has phoned Gazans sometimes to warn them ahead of air strikes – Mahmoud’s account gives an insight into one such phone call in an unprecedented level of detail.
The BBC contacted Mahmoud after multiple al-Zahra residents identified him as the man who received the warning call.
We cannot independently verify the contents of the call, which he recounted roughly three weeks after the event. The details, however, match those on a community Facebook group from the day as well as satellite images before and after the bombing.
We know that day many hundreds of people were left homeless as the Israeli army bombed at least 25 residential blocks housing hundreds of apartments, destroying an entire neighbourhood. These people were forced to flee with what few belongings they could take, and were eventually dispersed across Gaza.
The IDF says it strikes military targets and these actions are subject to the “relevant provisions of international law”.
Mahmoud could not believe it when the man began speaking, he recalls.
People around him warned that the call may be fake. Since the war had begun, messages had been circulating in the community Facebook group warning of hoax calls and offering tips on identifying real Israeli evacuation orders.
Mahmoud asked the voice on the phone to fire a warning shot to prove this was real. If those still sleeping did not hear the screams from the streets then they would hear the shot, he thought.
A warning shot seemingly from nowhere, but perhaps from a drone, hit one of the apartment blocks under threat, he says.
“I asked him to ‘shoot another warning shot before you bomb’,” Mahmoud says. One more rang out.
Now that Mahmoud knew it was real he tried to stall, asking the man to be patient. “I told him: ‘Don’t betray us and bomb while people are still evacuating.'”
The man said he would give Mahmoud time – he said he did not want anyone to die, the dentist recalls.
Mahmoud responded that he didn’t want anyone to even be injured.
He kept the call going as he rushed around the neighbourhood, urging people to evacuate. One neighbour remembers the dentist “just shouting”, then others joined in.
“I didn’t want to know that there’s someone I could have saved and I didn’t,” Mahmoud says.
[…]
When the areas around the buildings were clear the man informed Mahmoud that the bombing would begin.
Mahmoud panicked – what if they bombed the wrong building by mistake? “Wait a bit,” the man told him, he says.
An Israeli aircraft circled overhead.
Mahmoud stared at the three towers that neighboured his own apartment block. Then one of them was bombed.
“This is the tower that we want, stay away,” the man on the phone said as the building fell, according to Mahmoud.
The two other blocks were then destroyed.
Images taken in al-Zahra that morning show rubble in the place of those three apartment blocks, while a video shows residents wandering around in shock and bewilderment as they view the immediate aftermath of the strikes. A post on the community Facebook group at 08:28 local time says three towers had been “wiped out completely”.
When the bombing stopped, Mahmoud remembers the voice telling him: “We’ve finished… you can go back.”
[…]
Later that day, Mahmoud had just finished his Isha, or night-time prayers, at his flat when he saw a missed call from a private number on his phone.
His heart sank. “Immediately I understood there would be an evacuation and bombing, but I didn’t know what the target would be. I thought it might be my home, it might be the home next to me,” he says.
His phone soon rang again. A different man was on the line.
The voice said they had realised Mahmoud was a “wise man” after the events of that morning, which is why they were calling him again.
The man introduced himself as Daoud.
Mahmoud was unnerved by the level of detail the man had about his life – by the familiar way the man addressed him and referred to his son’s name.
According to Mahmoud’s account, this man then made some attempt to explain what was happening in Gaza.
“He started telling me: ‘Did you see how they [Hamas] slaughtered those children with knives?’…
“I told him that according to our Islamic religion, this is forbidden,” Mahmoud recalls.
He urged the voice against “mass punishment”, but Mahmoud knew it was hopeless.
Mahmoud says the man told him more buildings would be destroyed that night, and the dentist would need to order his neighbours to evacuate once again.
At first, he was told the targets were two buildings next to the three that had been destroyed that morning, as well as a second block of towers.
“He said to me, ‘We want you to inform people to evacuate the area,’ and I said, ‘You need to give me time.'”
He got to work. “We evacuated all the people and even evacuated a third block because it was so close to the second one,” Mahmoud says.
At this point al-Zahra was largely in darkness. Residents say electricity had gone and they were using phones and torches for light as they filled the streets. Some had time to grab pre-packed bags as they left their homes, with items like spare clothing, water, phones and first aid kits. Others did not.
“It was absolute horror,” one resident, Abdullah al-Khatib, says. “We didn’t know where to go. We literally just ran out, taking nothing.”
“Can’t see clearly. Just evacuate,” another says by WhatsApp message, recalling the events of that night. “I just focus on being safe with family.”
Mahmoud continued trying to buy as much time as he could, talking to the man who called himself Daoud until everyone was clear of the area and had been able to get into their cars if they wanted to drive away.
Three buildings were destroyed. As Mahmoud watched the destruction, the man on the phone said three more buildings would be bombed and then the residents would be allowed to return.
But a change of orders came suddenly.
They would bomb the full row of apartment blocks on the eastern side of the street, Mahmoud recalls being told.
This was more than 20 tower blocks, and hundreds of homes.
“There were people we hadn’t evacuated yet because there was no warning about those buildings. I told him, ‘At least give us until morning, in night time, where will the people go?’
“The answer was, ‘The orders have been received, and we will bomb all towers within two hours.'”
Mahmoud screamed at people to clear the area, running from block to block.
Residents describe chaotic scenes of adults shouting and children weeping. Some parents and children lost one another in the melee.
Despite the panic, Mahmoud stayed on the phone the whole time, trying his best to delay the bombing.
The voice on the other end of the phone continued, without emotion.
“He even told me, ‘Take your time. I won’t bomb unless you give me permission.’
“I said ‘No, it’s not my permission. I don’t want you to bomb anything. If you want me to evacuate, I will evacuate for the safety of the people, but if you want to bomb, don’t tell me you need my permission.
“‘It’s not Mahmoud Shaheen who will bomb al-Zahra.'”
[…]
Mahmoud asked the man on the phone where he should take his neighbours.
“He said, ‘Either take them east or west’. I said, ‘To take them east will be hard, because to the east of al-Zahra is Al Mughraqa – an already unsafe area. People were already scared to go there.’
“He told me, ‘Take them west to Palestine Street’. I suggested the University of Palestine and he said yes.”
Mahmoud led the crowd, which included not just residents of the tower blocks, but also other displaced people who had sought shelter in al-Zahra after fleeing their own homes elsewhere in northern Gaza.
Other residents have confirmed that they went to the university, and a video posted on the Facebook group shows people walking and driving in that direction, as the person behind the camera prays.
Mahmoud says people waited at the university in fear, listening to the drumming of explosions outside. Frightened dogs in the street tried to find a spot to lie down between women and children.
At one point, Mahmoud says the voice on the phone asked him how much battery he had left. He had 15%. They told him to hang up to preserve it and that they would call back again.
Frequent calls followed.
“They would ring to tell me, ‘Now we will bomb another building,’ ‘Now we will bomb another one.’ They said, ‘We will keep calling until we finish,'” Mahmoud says.
At one point a neighbour’s phone rang, with the voice asking for Mahmoud Shaheen.
Mahmoud had been keeping his distance from his wife and five children all day – both because he was busy evacuating people and because he feared that his contact with Israeli intelligence made him a target.
At the university, he checked they were OK, and then left them again.
The residents of al-Zahra endured a sleepless night. The crowd looked to Mahmoud for updates and answers.
“[They were] saying ‘Hey doctor, did they call you so we can go back? Did they tell you where they will hit?'”
Dawn broke. A post on the community Facebook group at 08:53 local time said: “The bombing is still going on up to this moment.”
[…]
Israel is known to have warned Gazans by calling them, texting them and dropping leaflets before bombing. But in some cases, civilians say they have not been warned ahead of time.
The IDF told the BBC that as part of its “mission to dismantle the Hamas terrorist organisation [it] has been targeting military targets across the Gaza Strip”. Strikes on military targets were subject, it said, to “relevant provisions of international law, including the taking of feasible precautions to mitigate civilian casualties”.
“Hamas continues to attack Israel from across the entire Gaza Strip. Hamas has embedded itself in civilian infrastructure and operates across the entire Gaza Strip. The IDF is determined to end these attacks and as such we will strike Hamas wherever necessary.”
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 10,000 people have been killed by Israel since the war began – more than a third of them are children. Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes in Gaza followed Hamas gunmen rampaging into Israel on 7 October, killing 1,400 people, including many women and children, and taking hundreds of others hostage.
Thanks to Mahmoud’s efforts, it is believed that none of his neighbours died that day. But his account reveals the panic and anguish of a Palestinian community as they watched their homes and everything they love blow up around them.
This is all quite horrific, of course. Civilians in terror and shock at watching their homes and businesses ruthlessly destroyed. Mahmoud claims to have no idea why his neighborhood, which he claims does not harbor Hamas fighters, was targeted. My somewhat educated guess is that they’re targeting the tunnel network beneath the buildings, given that they’re clearly not trying to kill anyone—to include Hamas fighters—in them.
At the same time, I have never heard or read about anything like this level of effort to spare noncombatants. Given the vicissitudes of war from high-altitude bombers and long-range missiles, the United States military takes great pains to distinguish its targets to limit collateral damage. But not to anything like this level.
It’s possible that this is simply a function of the longstanding nature of the Israel-Palestine clash, which has allowed Israeli intelligence to gather extraordinarily detailed information. Regardless, this is not the tale of an IDF hell-bent on committing war crimes and ignoring the laws of war. Indeed, they may be carving out new best practices for compliance.
This was what I also suspected. It also complicates the “if you don’t want to be bombed, don’t intentionally harbor/hide Hamas” line of thinking that some folks have been using to justify civilian deaths.
Hell of a way to go about committing genocide.
I’m sure the people here who’ve been accusing Israel of “indiscriminate” bombing of civilians and genocide will, upon seeing the reality, walk those libels back.
A nice contrast with this is Jake Tapper’s short piece that quotes Hamas leadership and is, IMO, a pretty good and fair overview of the big-picture situation. And he’s not cherry-picking the quotes. Hamas is very open about its goals, methods, and intentions.
@mattbernius:
I have not seen hardly anyone say that. More the opposite, that it’s Hamas hiding among (and under) the civilian population, not the civilian population harboring Hamas.
Nominated for understatement of the year.
Calling some schmuck and giving him two hours, with no pre-existing organization or call chains in place, and telling him to get everybody out of several apartment buildings.
Extreme effort to limit civilian casualties? Yes.
Psychological warfare to instill a sense of fear and helplessness? Yes?
@Andy: I see. If one side uses the public transportation system to transport arms, is it okay for the other to indiscriminately bomb the public transportation system? And, would this apply to both sides?
Hamas are barbarians and deserve anything that they get. And many Palestinians would kill a Jew (not just an Israeli, but specifically any Jew) because they are engulfed in bigotry and hate and if such people get caught up in a bombing campaign I find it hard to have any symptathy.
What I object to is this constant refrain of “Hamas is so bad everything Israel does is justified”, and “Because we are in this situation, we must set aside all discussions of Israeli leadership’s destroying all roads to a solution, it’s continuation of killing Palestinians in order to take their land, and it’s success in killing and marginalizing those Israeli leaders who were actually working towards a solution. Now is not the time to discuss these things.”
I don’t have any solutions. But there is a world of difference between not supporting either side in a war for land, and picking sides. We shouldn’t be picking sides.
Meanwhile, Israeli spokesman Ofir Gendelman is tweeting out behind-the-scenes footage from movies to support a claim that Palestinians are using crisis actors and faking their injuries and deaths, calling it Pallywood.
https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod/status/1722637281058603230
Basically, Alex Jones type shit, but coming from the Israeli government.
Just a reminder to not trust that you are getting the whole picture and that much of what you read is lies (or lies about lies).
@MarkedMan:
We shouldn’t pick sides between a flawed democracy and a terrorist thug state? We shouldn’t pick sides between a society whose laws protect the equal status of women, and does not criminalize homosexuality or transgenderism, and is the only nation in the ME that actually allows Arabs to vote meaningfully, and again, a thug state that openly calls for racist genocide and would happily burn a trans person alive just for shits and giggles?
Since when did the United States stop preferring democratic nations with enshrined rights, to terror states with zero rights?
@Andy:
It’s probably a sign that I’m spending too much time on social media–and some attention/confirmation bias–but it is something I’ve seen coming up in a number of places (including some posts here).
Regarding the legalities of this conflict, one (or several) non-indiscriminate attacks do not mean that there weren’t many other indiscriminate attacks.
According to pretty much every UN humanitarian agency:
And depending on what exactly was targeted (which we don’t know), the attacks may still have been disproportionate.
@Michael Reynolds:
We are picking sides between, on the one hand, a flawed democracy + a brutal apartheid regime (in the occupied West Bank), and, on the other, a terrorist thug statelet.
In this context, you cannot (honestly, at least) separate Israel from its illegal settlements.
Of course, the West Bank settlements are not military installations. They do not help to keep Israel safe in any way, shape, or form, and are also clear, indisputable violations of international law.
And we are being forced into this choice because Israel refuses to get rid of its illegal settlements (which it should do according to international law) and even has built up Hamas in order to make a viable two-state solution that much harder to achieve.
And by supporting Israel (despite its clear and ongoing violations of international law), we are weakening support for the international order in other, much more important (IMO) areas.
I think this is a much completer narrative than “Gay people can walk the street in Tel Aviv.”
@MarkedMan:
We do not get a do-over, there is history, we are known around the world as having chosen a side. What that means is that, with Israel known as a U.S. ally, there is American credibility as a reliable ally involved.
ETA: Also, Israel is a useful ally, shares intelligence for example. Fat chance of Hamas providing anyone other than Iran and/or Russia, U.S. adversaries, with useful intelligence.
@charontwo:
Easy:
* Support Israel against Hamas (but within the confines of the Law of Armed Conflict and International Humanitarian Law).
* Push for a viable two-state solution in accordance with international law (which means meaningful Palestinian self-rule and removing the West Bank settlements).
@MarkedMan:
Obviously so.
That is what the Allies did to the French railway system in 1943/44.
The bombings in France killed around 60,000 French civilians.
And they were, by that point, defined as occupied allies.
@MarkedMan:
I don’t know who you are talking about, but I have never said that everything Israel does is justified.
Let me be clear about my view:
I think it is necessary to, as much as possible, destroy Hamas. To me, it’s clear that the cycle that’s gone on since they took over Gaza cannot continue, a cycle where Hamas attacks Israel, Israel retaliates, lots of civilians are killed, there is a ceasefire (primarily from international pressure), Hamas rearms, attacks Israel again, repeating the cycle.
While I think most of the people who want a cease-fire want that out of genuine humanitarian concern for civilians, the problem with this view is it just resets the cycle and ensures a future conflict in which more civilians die. It’s condemning, in my view, future Palestinian civilians to death when Hamas breaks the next ceasefire and Israel retaliates. As JohnSF notes – quoted below – it’s going to ensure a greater degree of violence in the future, make the “open air prison” worse, etc. This is especially the case as long as Hamas has hostages.
So I think the most important thing is to break that cycle, and that means destroying Hamas which will hopefully allow Palestinian leadership that actually cares about Palestinians. That outcome is not guaranteed, of course, but allowing Hamas to remain the government of Gaza can no longer be tolerated. Supporting my view are these points:
– Hamas is a major obstacle to anyone who wants any kind of enduring peace. Peace cannot be achieved as long as Hamas has its boot on Gaza.
– The living conditions in Gaza will never improve with Hamas in power there. Not only does Hamas not care about civilians, but their rule ensures that Israel and Egypt will continue to tighten the blockade, and Hamas will continue to abscond resources meant to help civilians in order to rearm for the next attack.
I’ll quote JohnSF’s excellent comment in another thread:
That is what good counterinsurgency/counterterrorism looks like. Either that, or it’s all manufactured propaganda and didn’t happen at all as described.
There’s a much heavier weight on the first, in my mind, though.
@drj:
You mean current American policy? We have always pushed for a two state solution, and you may have noticed that Israel is now accepting the American proposal to institute temporary pauses in limited areas to allow evacuation of civilians. Which BTW we got only because we signaled strong support from the start. Our backing allows us to talk to Israel and allows them to take a breath before deciding on October 8th to just glass Gaza. We did just what we should have done: told our friend we’d hold his coat, and then suggested maybe he should avoid throwing chairs that might hit random bar patrons.
@MarkedMan:
A little historical context. When the Germans started bombing British cities, the British army used heavy artillery to try to at least be seen interdicting the Germans. For a variety of reasons, the shells did not explode in proximity of the enemy plane, but landed amongst civilians killing tens of thousands of British people.
Yet, we see the Israelis are using every capability to reduced the number of non-combatant injuries. And acting far in excess of any other government at war.
As recently as 2021, the US killed 10 civilians with a targeted drone strike, including 7 children.
Joe Biden and Gen. Mark Milley defended the killings that were subsequently found to have no military justification. It did divert the public from the Afghan withdrawal debacle, overseen by Joe Biden, Gen. Mark Milley, ….
@JKB:
Is that the same Mark Milley who resisted your cult leader’s effort to overthrow the government of the United States?
@Michael Reynolds:
How many Trans folks has Hamas killed since October 7th? More or less than 10,000?
As a queer person, I’d like you to fuck right off with using me and people under my larger umbrella as an excuse for actively killing brown folks right now, and maintaining a blockade for the past 20 years that has left 750,000 in a large reservation/open-air-prison/refugee-camp.
@Andy:
“To me, it’s clear that the cycle that’s gone on since they took over Gaza cannot continue, a cycle where Hamas attacks Israel, Israel retaliates, lots of civilians are killed, there is a ceasefire (primarily from international pressure), Hamas rearms, attacks Israel again, repeating the cycle.”
I think it is important to understand what these periods of “ceasefire” look like, something I myself am trying to better get a grasp of. I listened to a podcast recently where the guest is a Jerusalem based writer/journalist who has been writing on the conflict for some time. I forget the phrase he used (I believe it was ‘The Quiet’ to describe the times of apparent calm) but he paints a picture of anything other than calm and peace for Palestinians. His is just one perspective but it seems a worthwhile one to consider.
Here is a link to the Podcast: Factually w/ Adam Conover – Episode entitled “What’s Happening in Israel and Why? With Nathan Thrall”
https://headgum.com/factually-with-adam-conover
@Kazzy:
I have not heard of that podcast and am unfamiliar with Nathan Thrall. I’ll check it out, thanks for the tip.
“And that Israels intelligence/surveillance is insufficient to detect impending attacks reliably.”
Not sure I agree with this. I think the problem was at the higher level of leadership. They had decided to prioritize the settlements and part of that decision involved believing that Hamas would not attack again. They ignored reports from their intel services that there was increased activity in Gaza. I also suspect there was a fair amount of hubris involved. They didnt pick up anything from Iran. They were so confident that they stopped monitoring radio transmissions in Gaza. If Israel had treated Hamas like it was a terrorist organization waiting to attack when they had an opportunity this attack never occurs at anywhere close to the scale it did.
Steve
@Michael Reynolds:
Here’s where the fundamental disagreement lies, with the caveat that a couple of decades ago I would be 100% in agreement with you. But today Israel is no long a flawed democracy. A couple of decades ago I looked at Israel as a democracy that had found itself with control of two hostile territories and for a whole variety of ethical and geopolitical we should help them to get to a stable solution in every way we could. But that’s no longer the case. The people who are running Israel today are pushing their borders to encompass all of historical Judea and Samaria. They are tackling the West Bank first and are just working out how to dispose of the population of non-Israelis currently residing there. And yes, Israel recognizes gay rights, but it has 4-5M people under it’s control that it discriminates against, mistreats, jails and steals property from continuously. Those people have no rights, zero, and the Israeli goverment, through the army, police, courts and settlers treats them as horribly as one would expect given their ultimate aim. How much credit should a democracy get for not discriminating against this or that 1% when it discriminates with extreme prejudice against nearly half its population?
The US has done Israel great harm for pretending nothing has changed as the extremists came to power and gained complete control over land policy. If there had been repercussions for the settlements and for the policy of pulling down the PA and building up Hamas early on maybe sanity could have prevailed. But administration after administration found it useful to pretend that the two state solution was still viable without a real change in Israeli goals and behavior. We are now past the point of no return. We shouldn’t keep playing pretend about how Israel is still a “flawed democracy”.
@JohnSF: Well, during WWII we firebombed entire cities too. That has subsequently been declared a war crime by the Geneva conventions in 1949, when the world was repelled by the carnage of an all out war. If you are arguing that those shouldn’t apply to Israel, I’d point out that they signed on in 1951.
Look, I’m not debating whether Hamas is justified. They are barbarians and deserve no mercy. I’m not even saying much about how Israel is waging this war. I’m just pointing out that the war is ultimately about taking land, on both sides, and killing those that stand in the way. That’s why I’m saying we shouldn’t take sides. Israel is no longer merely defending itself and asking for our help in that. Israel is demanding that we provide it cover as it steals land and creates an apartheid regime.
@Andy: I don’t love the host… he kinda tries to play it like he’s straddling the middle when he clearly has a perspective and then treats that perspective like it is more objective reality than it actually is and can be heavy handed about it. He (Conover) definitely skews liberal so everyone’s take on that may vary and his guests tend to comport with his broader world view. So I only listen to the podcast every so often BUT his guests are undoubtedly deeply informed on the topics so regardless of whether you agree or disagree, you’re going to get a thoughtful and well-informed opinion from them. So, again, his is just one perspective and should be held in conversation but it seems like ANY ceasefire over there is hardly peaceful for either side. Which I think is why many see this as not something new — not a refreshing of a cycle — but rather one long muddled battle that has flares up but which never actually stops.
@Michael Reynolds: “Since when did the United States stop preferring democratic nations with enshrined rights, to terror states with zero rights?”
I don’t know. 1953, when we helped overthrow Iran’s democratically elected government and installed the Shah?
1973 when we helped killed Allende and install Pinochet’s torture regime?
The 1980s when we backed Salvadoran death squads?
@Michael Reynolds: “You mean current American policy? We have always pushed for a two state solution,”
Actually, we used to always push for a two state solution. Trump ended that policy.
@Kazzy:
I don’t have time to listen to the whole thing right now; I do wish they would provide transcripts for podcasts, I have a massive preference for reading over listening (or watching a video, for that matter).
But on quick jump through Thrall seemed mainly to be referring to the West Bank.
The West Bank and Gaza are related issues, but in also in some ways very distinct.
They have been separated areas since 1948.
Even before the Israeli occupations began in 1967, Gaza was under Egyptian control, but was formally annexed as Egyptian territory, Egypt, nor was its population granted Egyptian citizenship or rights of residence, and movement between the Strip and Egypt proper was tightly controlled.
The West Bank, on the other hand, was annexed by Jordan in 1949 ( which was when Transjordan changed its name to Jordan) and its inhabitants were granted full citizenship.
The Arab League proclaimed the PLO “the legitimate representatives” in 1974; Jordan formally renounced its claim to the West Bank in 1988 and terminated the citizenship rights of West Bank Palestinians.
Incidentally this is the basis of the Israeli claim that they are entitled to make settlements etc: that the areas are not within the legal category of “occupied territories” as there is no legal sovereign state that claims them. It’s legal casuistry of course: Israel was settling the West Bank while the Jordanian claim was still operative, and the international legal consensus in that the UN Partition Resolution of 1947 grounds Palestinian rights, even if currently non-sovereign, in the absence of other state claims.
That argument aside, the problem is that even if Israel were to evacuate the West Bank on the basis of a deal with the Palestinian Authority, it would have little real effect on the situation in Gaza. Not only now, but even prior to October 7.
Hamas would have still been in control, and the Strip’s social, political and economic issues unchanged.
In fact, it’s highly unlikely that the Fatah PA could or would reach an agreement which Hamas rejected. And it needs to be recalled that Hamas continues to regard Israel as illegitimate, and that the 1967 borders might be acceptable only as a “truce” and that the goal continues to be the elimination of “the Zionist entity”.
The basic problem is that Hamas, while it retains political and military power, will refuse to be excluded from exercising influence over negotiations.
The Fatah PA will be unlikely to risk compromises in that situation.
And the Israelis, especially since October 7, will not countenance Hamas as party to a deal.
At present Hamas is widely condemned; but it’s highly likely that those who are currently asserting “Hamas is not the responsibility of the people of Gaza” will quite soon revert back to “Hamas are the legitimate representatives of a section of the Palestinian people, and must be party to a resolution.”
While Netanyahu, and Likud, and other Israeli parties, may have cynically played Hamas off against Abbas and Fatah, they did not found Hamas, did not dictate its ideology or methodology, did not vote it to a majority of seats in the 2006 elections, or install it in power in Gaza.
The 2006 votes for Hamas may have been a protest vote: if so, a remarkably stupid one.
@MarkedMan:
Any provision against “firebombing cities” would not apply to the attacks mounted in France, which were not area firebombing at all.
Thus the attacks would still be have been lawful had been in force 1939-45, and c. 60,000French civilians would still have died.
In fact 1949 would refer not the Geneva Convention but the Nuremberg Charter, the basis for the Nuremberg Trials.
The argument of the Allies being that their actions were not wanton, and were based on military necessity.
The Geneva Convention was modified in Protocol 1, agreed 1977. To which the US is not a signatory, and therefore not bound by. Nor are Israel, Iran, India, Pakistan, or Turkiye signatories. And Protocol 1 is a bit ambiguous as to what it does or does not permit.
At least according to the International Court of Justice.
@JohnSF: I stand corrected re: Nuremberg vs. Geneva. My mistake. I guess the bottom line is that while there is a duty to protect civilians this duty is effectively left up to the agressor. Hamas is on par with the Assad regime in Syria, the Russians in Chechnya, or the Hutus in Rwanda. But Assad still reigns in Syria, the Russians in Chechnya and the Hutus were never really brought to justice. There is no meaningful justice system to enforce this, with a very few exceptions.
But of course if the criteria for abiding by these treaties is whether the other guy did worse, then we may as well have never gone through the charade of negotiating them in the first place…
@MarkedMan:
Not in this particular instance; Israel evacuated its settlements in Gaza in 2005.
If this war were based on settlements in the West Bank, I would agree.
It is not.
It’s notable that immediately after October 7 Hamas referred to attacks against the *occupiers” and “settlers” in a context that justified attacks on Israelis in “Israel proper”, which Hamas has never accepted as legitimate.
To Israelis this recalls the period from 1948 to 1967, before Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza, and during which period the Palestinian fedayeen and Fatah mounted repeated attacks on Israel, and the PLO was founded in 1964.
This is a fundamental cleavage in Israeli opinion, beside the settlement issue: whether the Palestinians as a whole are actually, fundamentally, prepared to make peace at all, and should Israel risk it’s security by trusting any such deal?
My opinion, for what it’s worth, is they should give it a try.
But they certainly won’t try it with Hamas as a counter-party.
If there had ever been any remote possibility of that, it ended on October 7 2023.
Incidentally: “apartheid” is conventionally taken to refer to racially based separation.
As Palestinians and about half of Israelis are “racially” pretty much indistinguishable, it seems a rather misleading term .
American (or African, or European colonial) experiences of racial cleavages do not map very well onto the situation in Israel and Palestine.
@MarkedMan:
I’m a bit uncertain to how much input the US had into negotiations re, Protocol 1.
What I do know, is that it was very unhappy with the outcome, refused to sign up to it, and thus is not bound by it.
Along with several other states, including Israel.
A one state solution is the answer. The nominal GDP per capita of Israel is much higher than its neighbors, even petroleum oligopolies like Saudi Arabia. Bahrain is the only exception. Give up the absolutist irredentist ideology and join the state that is developing an economy and lets people vote on a regular basis.
@JohnSF:
Still, they did so in 1993 with the Oslo Accords. Hamas and other extremist groups weren’t on board.
But perhaps Israel’s far-right (including Likud) would be as much as an obstacle to an agreement as Hamas. After all, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated for signing these Oslo Accords and supporting the idea that any land should be shared with the Palestinians.
Let’s not pretend that the current situation is only the result of Palestinian unreasonableness.
Such a deal would be a serious blow to Hamas’ legitimacy and support. The PA would become a credible alternative to overnight and it would be considerably harder for Hamas to continue to rule Gaza.
ETA:
Desmond Tutu was AFAIK the first one to apply this term to the occupied territories. I think he knew what he was talking about.
@Slugger:
Palestinians in the occupied territories are not eligible for Israeli citizenship. Deliberately so.
Open-air prison (Gaza) and permanent second-class status (West Bank) is all that’s available.
I don’t have a solution and I don’t see anyone else proposing one, therefor I am left with only feeling the injustices of this conflict for both sides, knowing that it will only end when everybody decides they want a future more positive than the present.
I’m not holding my breath.
@drj: Obviously, this situation should be changed. Rejection of the Hamas position is the first step in my view. I favor a secular state with economic participation and democratic governance for all. It’s a long way to go, but there are no alternatives.
@Slugger:
But Israel wants to be a Jewish state…
There are around 9.5m Israelis, of which around 7m are Jews. Adding 4m Palestinians (in the currently occupied territories ) to the mix and Israel wouldn’t be so Jewish anymore. And that doesn’t even take into account birth rates and Palestinian refugees in surrounding countries.
That means that the one-state solution is out.
But Israel also doesn’t want to give up its West Bank settlements (in fact, keeps expanding them), which means that a viable and realistic two-state solution is out, too.
Considering that Israel neither wants a one-state nor a two-state solution, where does that leave the Palestinians?
I get that you want them to reject the Hamas position (which a majority probably already does), but, as I said before, Israel’s alternatives currently are open-air prison (Gaza) and permanent second-class status (West Bank).
So, reject in favor of what?
@Kazzy:
I listened to the first half of the episode while running errands this evening. Then they started to get into Thrall’s recent book, which I knew nothing about.
I thought the host was fine. I don’t really mind if hosts have a strong POV one way or another as long as they don’t constantly monologue, can ask good questions, and facilitate a conversation.
Thrall had what I think is a very good point at the beginning, which is that it’s not in Israel’s power to destroy Hamas, but it is within their power to destroy Hamas as the government in Gaza. I think that’s a really useful and smart distinction and one I agree with.
From there, he doesn’t talk much about Gaza but gives a brief history of the conflict that – at least IMO – is very much from the Palestinian POV. WRT the current conflict, my biggest criticism was that he lumped Gaza with the Palestinian enclaves on the West Bank and Jerusalem as all part of Israel “conquering” Palestinian lands when I think they are very different.
Anyway, I plan to check out some of his other podcasts in the future if the guests look interesting, so thanks for mentioning him.
@Slugger:
The problem is neither side wants that and has never wanted that.
@OzarkHillbilly:
As far as solving the big problem of creating a peace accepted by all sides, I don’t see a solution to that either, especially as long as Palestinians remain politically divided. It’s hard to know what Palestinians would accept when there is a complete lack of legitimate leadership that can represent their interests. That’s one reason I think Hamas’s control of Gaza needs to end.
After Israel withdrew from Gaza, Gaza was on its way to having a healthy tourist industry. In 2010, they had a water park, but shortly after it opened, the islamist Hamas “fighters” burned it down, banned alcohol and the mingling of men and women.
The only open-air prison in Gaza is the one run by Hamas.
@JKB: You will find statistically no one who approves of Hamas, or thinks that Hamas is better than Israel.
Hamas is a terrorist, theocratic thug state, while Israel is an apartheid state. Israel is less worse.
That doesn’t mean killing a lot of Palestinian civilians is good. Or that years of blockade is good. Or that the current, more vicious blockade is good. Or that bombing hospitals is good.
And the immediate human cost of all that not good has exceeded the cost of the October 7th attack, with a far greater long term harm from destroying the infrastructure (they bombed another hospital today) and there is no sign that any of this will lead to a more stable, freer status quo.
WaPo has a nice write up about the humanitarian pauses:
It’s not much. It’s not going to make getting humanitarian aid into Gaza very easy. Not bombing both highways at the same time during the “pause” is nice, though.
(Expelling the vetted and screened Palestinian guest workers from Israel proper and into a war zone seems … not good. And then there’s the water issues. And food. And fuel.)
@JKB:
Hamas runs the inside of the prison, while the State of Israel runs the guard towers. You cannot separate the two. These are the occupied territories.
@drj:
The ’93 accords were limited in scope, and so just about tolerable to the radicals; Hamas soon demonstrated its capacity to intervene in the process by beginning the suicide bombings campaign.
Hamas level of support at the time is difficult to be certain about as it refused to participate in the 1996 Palestinian election, but polling around that time indicates levels of support of around 15 to 20%. ( The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research is a very useful resource, incidentally)
Overall support for “rejectionist” parties at that time appears to have been around 25%
And Fatah support declined both because it was in control, and tainted by corruption and ineffectiveness, because Israel continued to maintain the settlements, and precisely because it had made a deal with Israel.
Undoubtedly; it is (largely) their power in Israeli politics that has sustained the settlement movement for over half a century.
And the folly of the Republican/Likud alignment that has emerged.
The aftermath of the current crisis may be the last decent chance to break this.
Netanyahu is finished; and Secretary Blinken has made clear the US will not support an Israeli occupation of Gaza:
The implication is clear: a non-Israeli, non-Hamas, governance and security regime in Gaza.
Whether PLA or external, or a mix, the price is clear: no credible actor will take up the role unless Israel commits to a peace process, including the West Bank.
This is the only route to a outcome that is tolerable to both sides; it will need a massive diplomatic input from the US. And curbing the pernicious input of the Republican “Greater Israel” idiots.
(Apartheid: )
That’s my point.
He was extrapolating, understandably enough, from his experience in South Africa and applying it to very different situation in Israel/Palestine.
The same applies to US observers who naturally tend to alight on their historical comparisons of racial injustice.
A better comparison might be to the non-racial religio/ethnic separatism and legal disabilities encountered in examples from European history:
Ireland, the Jewish Pale in Russian Poland/Belarus/Ukraine, Transylvania, former Yugoslavia, the alternately Moorish and Christian dominated areas of Spain, Sicily and the Balkans, the German settlements of Prussia etc etc etc.
Something like it has been a depressingly common feature in European “borderlands” for a long, long time.
@Gustopher:
And those guard towers will remain, even IF there was an agreed “two state peace” and no Israeli occupation whatsoever.
There is zero chance of free movement between the Gaza Strip and Israel in the foreseeable future.
A Palestinian state will effectively consist of two separate parts, with restricted transit between them.
There is no way around that.
@JohnSF: The guard towers on the Mediterranean would be gone, at the very least, ending the blockade that has been leaving Gaza impoverished for the past few decades.
@JohnSF:
It’s sparkling segregation and oppression, since it doesn’t come from the Apartheid region of South Africa.
@Gustopher:
It’s segregation and oppression surely enough.
However, it is not based on race.
Not everything is.
Firstly, there is no clear “racial” difference between Palestinians and a lot of Israeli Jews, let alone Israeli Arabs.
Secondly, Israel Arabs, whether Muslim, Christian or Druze, have full civil rights.
Which no “Blacks”, “Coloureds” or “Asians” had in apartheid South Africa.
The comparison is misleading both regarding its basis and its practice.
@Gustopher:
Well, we’ve seen what happens when the “guard towers” are left empty. And prior to that, are all the other Hamas cross-border attacks. The reason there are walls and guard towers is because – quite obviously – of the very real clear and present threat posed by Hamas. It began after Hamas got control of Gaza.
So, I do not understand these complaints about the supposed “open air prison.” What is your alternative? Open borders? How do you propose to prevent Hamas attacks on Israel after tearing down the “prison” walls?
@Andy: In “Escape from New York”, does the government that blew up the bridges and put up barriers to partition off New York City, letting it fall into chaos ruled by ruthless gangs of thugs… does this government have any responsibility for the conditions inside of New York City?
Because … that’s an oversimplified view of Gaza. Except Gaza has people who are not convicted criminals and their immediate offspring.
Israel controls all borders, and prevents a lot of goods from getting in, enabling a black market and thugocracy which they have shown no particular interest in combatting except for bombing runs for the past few decades, until it inevitably spilled over and now there are consequences.
I get that basing foreign policy on John Carpenter movies is fraught with danger. For instance, New York City didn’t spill over in the movie, Airforce One crashed there.