Squaring the Circle on the Israel-Gaza War
Outsiders seem to want the impossible.
The White House has issued a “Joint Statement on Israel” with several key allies that says, well, not much:
Today, President Joseph R. Biden, Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada, President Emmanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of the United Kingdom spoke regarding the ongoing conflict between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas. The leaders reiterated their support for Israel and its right to defend itself against terrorism and called for adherence to international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians. They welcomed the release of two hostages and called for the immediate release of all remaining hostages. They committed to close coordination to support their nationals in the region, in particular those wishing to leave Gaza.
The leaders welcomed the announcement of the first humanitarian convoys to reach Palestinians in need in Gaza and committed to continue coordinating with partners in the region to ensure sustained and safe access to food, water, medical care, and other assistance required to meet humanitarian needs. The leaders committed to continue close diplomatic coordination, including with key partners in the region, to prevent the conflict from spreading, preserve stability in the Middle East, and work toward a political solution and durable peace.
To be sure, I agree with all of that. But so what?
How is it that Israel exercises “its right to defend itself against terrorism” while “adher[ing] to international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians”? What, specifically, is the Israeli government being asked to do that it isn’t already doing?
And, rather obviously, we want hostages released. Taking hostages is, after all, a black letter war crime. But, beyond wishing, what is it that we’re prepared to do about it? (There does actually be some progress being made; what’s being offered to advance the cause, I haven’t a clue.)
Israel’s cutting off water, electricity, and denying humanitarian assistance to Gaza were all quite probably war crimes. That they’ve backed off somewhat is all to the good. But the international rights community is essentially calling for full-scale resumption of supplies to Gaza. How is that supposed to happen in the midst of a war? Especially a war is which the fighters are, in violation of the laws of war, not wearing distinguishing uniforms and intentionally hiding amongst the civilian population?
We see some of this playing out in the press accounts. See, for example, AP‘s latest roundup (“Israel ramps up strikes on Gaza as US advises delaying ground offensive to allow talks on captives“):
Israel ramped up its airstrikes Monday in Gaza, where the death toll is rising rapidly, and the United States advised Israel to delay an expected ground invasion to allow more time to negotiate the release of hostages taken by Hamas militants.
Trying to preserve the lives of hostages, many of them foreign nationals and all of them noncombatants, is a goal we should all share. But they were taken precisely to serve as human shields, complicating Isreal’s legitimate retaliation. How long is Israel expected to wait for negotiations? And what is it that’s being offered in trade?
Israel has allowed two small aid convoys but no fuel to enter the besieged coastal enclave, where there has been a power blackout for nearly two weeks. Hospitals say they are scrounging for generator fuel in order to keep operating life-saving medical equipment and incubators for premature babies.
This is all horrific, of course. But war is horrific. How is it that Israel and/or the international community/aid workers/somebody is going to get fuel to the hospitals while denying it to the Hamas fighters using it to further their killing of Israelis?
Heavy airstrikes demolished buildings across Gaza, including in areas where Palestinians have been told to seek refuge, killing hundreds and sending new waves of wounded into already packed hospitals, according to Palestinian officials and witnesses. After a strike in Gaza City, a woman with blood on her face wept as she clasped the hand of a dead relative. At least three bodies were sprawled on the street, one lying in a gray stream of water.
This, however, is much more troubling: problematic as forcing people to flee their homes may be, it’s likely the least bad option available under the circumstances. But the designation of safe zones should surely come with a commitment to not bombing those areas.
The Israeli military released footage showing what it said were attacks on Hamas infrastructure. Flashes of yellow light were followed by an explosion that sent gray smoke and debris shooting upward as multi-story buildings collapsed or toppled over.
Israel said it had struck 320 militant targets throughout Gaza over the last 24 hours in preparation for “a maneuver,” an apparent reference to a ground operation. The military says it does not target civilians, and that Palestinian militants have fired over 7,000 rockets at Israel since the start of the war.
The proportionality of the damage to civilian infrastructure and the military value of the targets being hit is impossible to assess from my vantage point. It’s not fully obvious that Israeli planners much care. And those 7000 rockets may well have something to do with that.
Israel carried out limited ground forays into Gaza, and on Sunday, Hamas said it had destroyed an Israeli tank and two armored bulldozers inside the territory it has ruled since 2007. The Israeli military said a soldier was killed and three others were wounded by an anti-tank missile during a raid inside Gaza.
The military said the raid was part of efforts to rescue hostages abducted in the Oct. 7 attack. Hamas hopes to trade the captives for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
On Saturday, 20 trucks entered Gaza in the first aid shipment into the territory since Israel imposed a complete siege at the start of the war. Israel allowed a second convoy of 15 trucks into Gaza on Sunday. Both entered from Egypt through the Rafah crossing, the only way into Gaza not controlled by Israel.
An airstrike hit a residential building some 200 meters (yards) from the U.N. headquarters in Rafah on Monday, killing and wounding several people, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene, underscoring the perils of humanitarian operations.
COGAT, the Israeli defense body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs, said the aid was allowed in at the request of the United States, and included water, food and medical supplies. It said Israel inspected everything before it entered Gaza.
In a Sunday phone call, Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden “affirmed that there will now be continued flow of this critical assistance into Gaza,” the White House said in a statement.
Relief workers said far more aid was needed to address the spiraling humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where half the territory’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes. The U.N. humanitarian agency said the 20 trucks that entered Saturday amounted to 4% of an average day’s imports before the war.
The World Health Organization said seven hospitals in northern Gaza have been forced to shut down due to damage from strikes, lack of power and supplies, or Israeli evacuation orders.
The lack of fuel has also crippled water and sanitation systems. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians sheltering in U.N.-run schools and tent camps are running low on food and are drinking dirty water.
Israel repeated its calls for people to leave northern Gaza, including by dropping leaflets from the air. It estimated 700,000 have already fled. But hundreds of thousands remain. That would raise the risk of mass civilian casualties in any ground offensive.
Again, the “continued flow” of aid will not only surely be inadequate it will almost certainly be stolen by Hamas, both to support the war effort and increase the misery of the civilian population, which will naturally be blamed on Israel.
But, given the tiny area in which the war is being fought, everyone is in danger. This includes journalists, more of whom have already been killed in a few days than in the entirely of the Russia-Ukraine war. And, yes, aid workers, UN observers, and others.
I don’t really know what more Israel can do to encourage civilians to leave. And, yet, most of these people clearly have nowhere to go. Certainly, neighboring countries don’t want more refugees.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel “can’t go back to the status quo” in which Hamas controls Gaza and is able to threaten it, but that Israel has “absolutely no intent” to govern Gaza itself.
“Something needs to be found that ensures that Hamas can’t do this again, but that also doesn’t revert to Israeli governance of Gaza,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “It’s something that needs to be worked even as Israel is dealing with the current threat.”
Like Blinken, I have no idea at all as to how to square that circle. Indeed, it strikes me as definitionally impossible. A Gaza that’s populated by Palestinians will naturally resent Israel’s existence and some version of an anti-Israeli extremist group is bound to emerge from the ashes of the conflict.
Good analysis.
Israel should allow food and water and diesel since diesel fuel is hard to ignite in Molotov cocktails. Medicine as well. It’s stupid and self-harming to have weeks of pictures of hungry kids. Not that any Israeli concession will stop the one-sided attacks on Israel.
Other than that? Calls for a ceasefire are objectively pro-Hamas, just as calls for a ceasefire in Ukraine are objectively pro-Russian. The Israelis have delayed the ground attack for more than two weeks now as all the bien pensants demanded, though my suspicion is that part of the delay was waiting for US naval assets to move into place.
Hamas pushed a boulder off a cliff, setting off a chain of events which were predictable and inevitable. We out here in comment world are doubly impotent. We’re always largely impotent when writing about FP having only our votes to wield, but in this case it’s made worse by the fact that no one has any idea how to solve any part of this. So we moan and decry as the scorpions in a bottle strike at each other.
The big issue I see is almost everyone supports Israel’s right to self defense, and in particular to respond to the attacks earlier this month, but then whatever Israel does is deemed a war crime, beyond the pale, illegal, etc.
Which is it?
The enemy is hidden amid non-combatants, and makes use of civilian infrastructure. If Israel can attack them in self defense, then lots of civilians will be hurt and killed. There’s no way around it, and the responsibility falls squarely on Hamas.
Now, if people means Israel should be able to retaliate and attack in self defense, if only things were different, then should say that.
@Michael Reynolds:
If Israel:
1) lets in food and water, and diesel;
2) stops its indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets; and
3) shows some willingness to come up with and agree to a reasonable political settlement;
I will certainly be less critical of its approach in Gaza. Even if – due to Hamas’s tactics – there will be a significant number of civilian casualties.
But it should be noted that even step 1 required significant pressure from Biden.
It’s hard to not be critical of a country that needs a superpower to exert significant pressure before it is willing to somewhat tone down the warcriming, though.
@Kathy:
This is what the principle of proportionality is about:
For instance, you can’t blow up an apartment building to kill one enemy combatant. But perhaps you can if that apartment building houses an enemy headquarters or is used to store a meaningful amount of military supplies.
There have been (at least) several strikes where it seems highly unlikely that Israeli planners adhered to this principle. This, of course, is a pattern.
One set of commenters says that Israel should make sure to minimize civilian casualties and protect the people of Gaza as much as possible as Israel invades and wipes out Hamas.
Another set of commenters says that Israel should invade and wipe out Hamas while making sure to minimize civilian casualties and protect the people of Gaza as much as possible.
To the first group, the second group is made up of irresponsible, hateful warmongers eager to see genocide enacted on helpless people.
To the second group, the first group is made up of idiots, squishes, anti-Semites, academics and Nazis eager to see Israel wiped off the map.
And so both sides pour vitriol on each other, achieving no goal with the possible exception of making themselves feel slightly less impotent in the face of horror while making someone who disagrees with them feel worse.
No one commenting here has any power to make any change in this situation, and nobody’s comments are going to have any effect at all, except to make us like each other less.
How is that helping anyone?
It’s not supposed to happen. This is boilerplate diplomatic two-step, trying to preserve the reputations of Israel’s allies, placate Israel’s enemies, and prevent regional escalation.
It brings to mind a quote from the 1936 Katharine Hepburn star vehicle Mary, Queen of Scots, wherein Queen Elizabeth says to an envoy from an enemy of Queen Mary, “Tell him I will oppose him publicly — but support him privately.”
The sum total of President Biden’s, Sec. Blinken’s, and Sec. Austin’s moves indicate they don’t want to constrain Israel’s response: their interest is protecting US troops in the Middle East, deterring Iran/Hezbollah and others from getting involved, and not allowing Netanyahu’s (demonstrated lack of) judgment to further harm America’s poor image in the mideast. The same is likely true for the other signatories to this statement.
So what do you get publicly? A two-step. Military aid and lip service to Israel. Humanitarian aid and lip service to Palestinians. And the warning effect of increased US military presence, attempting to deter Lebanon, Syria, Iran etc.
Are Biden et al going to stop Israel from launching a ground attack against Gaza. No. (This has already started, btw.) Can they force Egypt and others to take millions of Palestinian refugees? No. But what else are Israel’s allies supposed to say, besides carefully-crafted diplomatic paens? They obviously can’t say, “Respond however you want. War sucks but oh well. Kill as many Palestinians as necessary, we don’t care. And tough luck, hostages.”
@drj:
Why do you describe Israel’s attacks as ‘indiscriminate?’ Current estimates of deaths in Gaza are 5,000. Israel has dropped more than 5,000 bombs. If the death toll is one person per bomb it’s absurd to describe the strikes as indiscriminate. Israel is quite capable, relying solely on conventional weapons, of killing ten, twenty, fifty times as many. Clearly the Israelis are being quite careful.
Such as? Seriously, WTF are you talking about? Why don’t you lay out your peace plan? Or show us someone else’s real-world settlement? Where exactly does one begin to reach a deal with an opposition which publicly states that its goal is genocide?
So far 1) the claim that Israel was exaggerating Hamas brutality have been proven false. 2) The claim that Israel bombed the hospital have been shown to be false. 3) The assertion that Israel was herding Gazans south in order to massacre them, also false. You’re very quick to assume Israeli guilt, despite the evidence.
If you hear there’s been a shooting in your town and the image that forms in your mind is automatically of a Black gunman, that’s racism. If you assume every report of Israeli ‘war crimes’ is true, that’s anti-semitism. Fascinating to watch progressives, who can spot a micro-aggression from miles away, suddenly go blind when blatant anti-semitism rears its head.
@Michael Reynolds:
The reason a ceasefire in Ukraine would be pro-Russian is that it would leave Russia in control of the large swaths of Ukraine that it invaded and occupied, which it had not controlled prior to the invasion.
@Jon:
And a ceasefire in Gaza would protect Hamas who for shits and giggles wired a parent and child together before dousing them with gasoline and setting them afire.
@Michael Reynolds: My point was that the situations are fundamentally different so comparing them does not clarify anything. There are reasons both for and against a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas; one of the ‘against’ ones you just stated, albeit histrionically. Those reasons can stand or fall on their merit without need for referring to a very different situation.
@Jon:
Seriously? You’re telling me what anaology I can use?
The analogy is exactly on point since the issue is the net effect of a cease-fire. In both cases a ceasefire would objectively profit the bad guys. Right? Or is Hamas not a bad guy? The point is that calling for a ceasefire always sounds like a good thing, but often it is not. As in the two cases of Ukraine and Gaza.
@Michael Reynolds: You sound like you need a hug 🙂
@Michael Reynolds:
I rather doubt Israel has delayed charging into dense heavily Hamas prepped urban warfare to satisfy delicate sensibilities anywhere. Leaving aside empty posturing about nuking Gaza (ignoring coastal wind patterns and the immediate kilos fallout), the Israelis following their known intelligence failures (and perhaps double agent penetration) should be quite wisely taking time to develop insights, rather than charging in like a Young Adult novel hero.
In meantime collapsing buildings on to inflict damage they can show their own people action. What’s not to like? The opinions on their actions are pre-set. Pro and Anti. They play their media game very well so very likely to be able to maintain their Pro.
@Michael Reynolds:
I included a helpful link. I guess you didn’t read it:
And as to this:
There is a whole body of international law about how to deal with occupied territory, which includes a prohibition on (de facto) annexations. There are a whole bunch of UN resolutions that Israel has blatantly ignored over the years.
But instead we got an illegal blockade of Gaza and a whole lot of illegal settlements on the West Bank, as well as a bunch of rhetoric from successive Israeli governments about “Eretz Israel” and “Judea and Samaria.”
So perhaps Israel could start by adhering to international law like a normal country and take it from there. If Israel does that and the Palestinians still don’t want to play ball, we would be in a rather different situation, now wouldn’t we?
There are a couple of things that cannot be reasonably disputed:
1) the blockade of Gaza is illegal
2) the settlements on the West Bank are illegal
3) Israel instituted an apartheid regime on the West Bank
4) Israel has made extensive use of collective punishment
5) Israel has a well-documented history of using disproportionate force
6) Some of Israel’s actions in the current war, such as (but not limited to) the demand that all civilians evacuate Northern Gaza within 24 hours, are war crimes
So yes, they are absolutely not getting the benefit of the doubt.
Now, I don’t doubt that you are going to object to this regardless. But previously you wrote this:
So forgive me if I think that you have nothing worthwhile to say about international law or the law of armed conflict.
In fact, based on your statements, you’re no better than Hamas.
I really hope the calling of criticism of Israel anti-semitism ends some day. It’s a nation, not a religion, and the silly label of “self hating Jews” must be applied to all the Jewish Israelis who criticise their own government’s actions. Indeed to all Jews everywhere who do so and there are a lot of those too. It’s BS.
I see no way to square the circle tactically, but strategically Israel seems compelled to occupation in order to police HAMAs out of Gaza, and stay to keep them out. IWO: Annex Gaza. I suspect it might be a good move for Israel to state that plainly and let people start getting used to the idea and it places a goal on the actions necessary, which will be ugly. The ugliness can be more easily rationalized with a goal in mind.
Two twitter threads from journalists viewing IDF presentations of recording made by Hamas attackers: David Patrikarakos and Jotam Confino
Some people are, of course, denouncing these as “Israeli fakes”.
But they track with what forensic investigators reported, reports from journalists early at the scene, and from what I heard about intelligence shared by Israel with UK military.
And ongoing reports such as this on BBC News:
‘Hamas said they wouldn’t shoot, then murdered my daughter’
Now at The Atlantic, report by Graeme Wood.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/why-israeli-officials-screened-footage-hamas-attack/675735/
There is no way the Israelis will, or should, let those who planned and carried out these deeds survive.
@drj: Instead of doubling down on the data that some are already ignoring/discounting, let’s reverse the question: What’s the plan for utterly destroying Hamas (from what I recall, the stated goal of the offensive)?
(Now, I happen to have one. The last time I suggested the type of solution I would use, it was struck from the conversation here without even going to moderation–and deservedly so. On another occasion, my solution was greeted with “What kind of crazy fuck are you?” from US armed forces officer who was advocating that we might need to intervene militarily in Iran.)
@dazedandconfused: In what meaningful way is Gaza not already de facto “annexed?”
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
You know what, I think that would be massively helpful for me if the Israeli government came out with something like that. That would at least give me something to judge their intentions. Cause right now I suspect they are going to “solve” the problem by annexing the north half of Gaza, if not the whole thing. I suspect the Egyptians are worried about that too which is one of the reasons they aren’t letting people out through Rafa.
@Michael Reynolds:
It would also be very helpful, Mr. Cheney, if you would make clear your position on how to positively solve this mess. I know that we can’t effect what’s going on over there, but you have made it seem like your position is that everyone in Gaza has to die, and it’s their fault they have to die. I would love to be proven wrong.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Tactically? I have no clue.
Strategically? Two options: 1) genocide; 2) a somewhat lesser level of violence plus offering the Palestinians something more than permanent oppression
@drj:
“The blockade of Gaza is illegal”
Arguable. And neglects that it is Egypt that is imposing a de facto blockade on the southern border of Gaza.
There is a lot to dislike about Israeli policies re the West Bank.
But It seems improbable that if Israel evacuated the West Bank tomorrow that would change the situation in Gaza.
Once again: Israel offered a deal in 2000 that would have turned over 92% of the West Bank to Palestinian control. The response was a flat rejection, and instead of a sensible counter-offer, the “Second Intifada”, which effectively destroyed the political position of the Labor Party and the Israeli Peace Movement.
Before that, from 1948 to 1968, before Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in the Six Day War, Israel was subjected to ongoing attacks by the Fedayeen, Fatah, and the PFLP. While the Mizrahi Jews were being pogromed and expelled across the Middle East and North Africa.
Rather unsurprisingly, this has led to many Israelis being sceptical that any offer will lead to peace, and unwilling to risk their security to do so.
As I have mentioned previously, the kibbutzim that Hamas attacked were among the last remaining strongholds of the socialist peace movement in Israel. If Hamas had wanted a better way to end any prospect of negotiation until after their extirpation, they could hardly have chosen a better way to do it.
I doubt they actually thought about it though: it’s just a coincidence of historical geography that the north-west Negev kibbutzim have always been a Labor movement base, and are right next to Gaza.
@Michael Reynolds:
Oh, bullshit, Micheal.
No one believes every accusation, and you’re clearly setting the bar far below that, and will trot out antisemitism to justify the actual terrible behavior of the Israeli government.
With the amount of misinformation out there, people resort to quick shorthands — is Israel deliberately creating a humanitarian disaster? Yes.
It’s a bad situation because Israel has fostered a bad situation for decades, and then repositioned a lot of the military towards the West Bank right before the attack. And Netanyahu was bolstering Hamas to keep Gaza and West Bank divided to avoid calls for a two state solution.
Your own incompetence and malevolence does not give you a justification to attack a civilian population.
It’s not a justification for cutting off water. It’s not a justification for cutting off food. It’s not a justification for cutting off fuel. It’s not a justification for destroying the infrastructure (which they’ve been doing for decades).
There’s no simple solution for gently unwinding hundreds of years of hate that has been enforced with law and military force for the past 75 years. The Israeli blockade of Gaza has created a generation of radicalized people that they have to demonize and devalue.
You want a simple solution? Here’s a radical idea: Treat the Palestinians as being equal to Jewish Israelis. Give the Palestinians the vote in Israel. They are a third of the population, with no say in the government that ultimately controls them.
Faced with the end of Israel as a Jewish State, I think the Jewish Israelis will be way more motivated to find a two state solution that will actually give a bit of stability and sideline the radicals.
It’s no less fanciful than winning hearts and minds through bombing campaigns, starvation, thirst and ethnic cleansing.
ETA: I guess Michael has pushed me into antizionism. I am no longer willing to accept arguments that have the implicit assumption that an Israeli life matters more than a Palestinian life.
@JohnSF:
Ok, I keep seeing this argument over and over again as if it absolves Israel. Ok so 20 years ago the Palestinians were told to eat a shit sandwich and said no, abetted by an asshole names Arafat. Great, so for THE REST OF TIME they must absolutely be punished for that.
Ok, if that’s the starting point, then Israel should simply ethnically cleanse it and take it. I mean, 20 years ago the Palestinians said no, so it’s Israel’s now?
We all know that in that 20 years the settlements have only expanded and the Israelis have done nothing to make the situation better. Netanyahu explicitly made the situation worse in Gaza to destabilize the West Bank. Like @drj: said, it’s come down to this:
It seems to me that the “peacenik” faction here is arguing for #2 while the Michael Cheney faction is arguing for #1.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Gaza was vacated by the IDF, and the Israeli settlements in the southern part of the Strip aandoned, in 2005.
After which Hamas won the elections (though not a majority: 42.9% of the vote) held in 2006 and purged Fatah from the Strip “with extreme prejudice”.
It had been under Israeli occupation since the Six Day War of 1967.
Between 1948 to 1967 it had been occupied by Egypt; up till 1959 as (the very nominal) “All-Palestine Government” . From 1959 to 1967 directly under an Egyptian military governor.
But Egypt never annexed it, refused its inhabitants any claim to Egyptian citizenship, and strictly controlled movement in or out.
Peculiarly enough, this “blockade” never attracted much attention or opprobrium.
In the 1979 Egypt-Israel Treaty, Egypt reaffirmed that it made no claim to Gaza.
For several reasons.
After the Hamas takeover Egypt tightened the blockade of the southern border.
For which it has been repeatedly condemned… oh, wait, what?
@JohnSF:
Just to be extra clear, I understand that Egypt is complicit in this suffering. As I’ve said here before, I’m terrified that the Egyptians are just shy of machine gunning people at Rafa. They don’t want the Palestinians either. My guess is they’d be more than fine with genocide if it meant the problem went away.
@Michael Reynolds:
Who cares? You’re in favor of extreme violence, and disproportionate force, so you should be fine with that.
If we were to look at the years-of-life lost between Israel and Palestine over the past 25 years (let’s go back to Arafat not accepting the shit sandwich as a random starting point), we would find that Palestinians have come out much worse both in raw numbers and per-capita. The blockade is a humanitarian disaster.
——
Fun Fact: Collectively, players have spent over 80 years in the character creation screens of the video game Baldur’s Gate 3. The developers have effectively killed someone, just stretching that single death over countless people.
@JohnSF:
Thanks.
@Beth: I think they don’t because they know that they can’t in the dark night of their souls. “Utterly destroy Hamas” is the same rhetoric as “global war on terror” or “tough on crime” or “war on drugs.” You might as well try to nail a molded Jello salad to a wall.
@Beth:
I’ve said repeatedly, in my opinion Israel would do better to evacuate the West Bank as they did Gaza. I have little regard for Likud, and still less for the kahanite expulsionist settlers.
The problem is, the reactions to events of the Palestinians have, at every turn, served to wreck the political position of the Israeli Labor Party, Peace Movement etc, and to empower the Israeli hardliners.
A situation amplified by the ultra-proportional basis of Knesset elections, and the political sociology of Israeli demographics.
Mizrahi descendants are now around 40%+ of the population of Israel, and their family memories of the expulsions are bitter. They have a very different historical experience to the Ashkenazim and western Sephardim.
That’s the politics of Israel, which are going to take a lot to modify.
Maybe, just perhaps, for once, the Palestinians might have tried making an offer?
But the problem is, Fatah’s dominance in the West Bank is rickety, and Hamas is dug into Gaza like a tick.
Perhaps he did, given that Netanyahu is a foll whose first thoughts are always the short term political advantages of Bibi, Likud, and Israel (from a rather arbitrary value of “Israel”), and very much in that order.
But Hamas has been actively trying to undermine Fatah on it’s own account.
And has never shown any indication whatsoever of being prepared to govern Gaza as anything other than a base for jihadi warfare.
A lot of people tend to assume that, on both sides, there is an underlying constituency for peace that can be invoked.
Perhaps there is; but unfortunately a blocking number on both sides desire peace, but only on their terms.
The Israeli “blocking vote” might accept peace, but only with absolute guarantees of security that appear unavailable.
The Palestinian “blocking vote” still seems to desire a reversal of 1948, with anything less than that merely a temporary truce. “From the River to the Sea” is still the chant of Hamas demonstrations.
@drj: Question wasn’t to you; the question is to the fan boiz of Israel’s tactics. I already know that you don’t have an answer.
@Beth:
Yes, that’s absolutely consistent with GOD’S JUDGEMENT on nations and people who oppose his chosen people. I don’t understand why no one on your side can see this. /s
Therefore, whatever Israel hard liners do is fair game to eternity. Got it!
@Gustopher:
The Israeli and Egyptian blockade of Gaza.
And how were the Israelis supposed to respond to regular Hamas/Islamic Jihad rocket barrages?
Open borders?
It’s plain enough Netanyahu and Likud have used the Hamas domination of Gaza as an excuse to avoid dealing honestly with the Palestinian Authority, and to deny any opening to a dialogue with Abbas.
But to presume that Israel could terminate the Hamas entrenched position in Gaza is crediting them a power they simply do not possess. And Hamas has been pushing Fatah in the West Bank for reasons entirely of its own.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Or the destruction of the Nazi regime in Germany?
Such things can be achievable, with sufficient effort; the cost tends to be rather high, though.
I suspect that right now the Israelis are no more minded to tolerate a Hamas regime in Gaza than the British in WW2 were inclined to put up with a Nazi ruled Germany.
This will be my one and only post on this subject:
If Hamas doesn’t go into Israel and flat out murder 1400+ people, there would be no reason for Israel to retaliate.
As it stands, too many “Pro-Palestinian” supporters are unable or unwilling to criticize the actions by Hamas on 10/7. And way too many American’s are flying the Hamas flag during their protests.
To me, there is NO two sides to this issue. I stand with Israel completely. If they want to wipe out Gaza and the West Bank, I’ll support it. I’ve been following this shit since the Munich Olympics, and I’m tired of innocent Israelis being killed, then Israel being told how they can or cannot respond to the murder of their civilians. Hamas’ main goal – as they repeat often and loudly – is the complete eradication of the Jewish state. Nothing else will do. Period. Full stop. That’s too often left out of the narratives being pushed.
If Hamas and Hezbollah would stop fighting, there would be peace.
If Israel stops fighting, there would be no Israel.
Its not a hard equation for me.
@Beth:
@Gustopher:
Calling the 2000 offer to the Palestinians as “a shit sandwich” seems rather extreme.
The Israeli offer was Palestinian rule over 92% of the West Bank, all of Gaza, some compensating territory from Israel, and control of East Jerusalem Old City.
At the very least, it was a reasonable basis for continuing negotiation, or for an an interim settlement with reservations over some parts of the West Bank final settlement.
Instead, the response was absolute insistence on a “right of return” to Israel, followed by flat rejection, no counter-offer, and the Second Intifada.
With zero consideration for the political realities within Israel.
This, I repeat, DESTROYED the Labor Party and the mass Peace Movement, and led to the post-2001 dominance of Likud in Israeli politics.
There may be some hope for a opposition revival now Netanyahu’s political standing is wrecked.
But it seems plain the opposition under Gantz and Lapid are equally determined that Hamas be eliminated as a military threat before any steps towards a longer term settlement can be considered.
@JohnSF:
Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami (who was present at the negotiations):
As to this:
Negotiations continued at the subsequent Taba Summit.
But between Camp David and Taba, Likud leader Sharon, protected by hundreds of Israeli riot police, decided to visit the Temple Mount and shit blew up.
In fact, the Palestinians did compromise on the right of return. They insisted – at most – on several hundred thousand people to be admitted gradually (possibly considerably less), not the entire four million.
@JohnSF:
It might also bear mentioning the UN partition of what had been the British Mandate in Palestine in 1948 into two states. I’m unclear on many of the the details*, which is why I don’t bring it up.
I do know it was a vote taken by the General Assembly, meaning all UN countries in 1948. This resulted in an invasion by neighboring Arab countries, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and what is now Jordan. And this is what ended with many Palestinians leaving what became Israel.
*Especially about what went on before the UN vote.
@EddieInCA:
At the time of writing, upvoted six times…
At least six people rooting for genocide.
@drj:
None of those six cheering on, rooting for Hamas, an organization that has genocide as its explicit stated goal.
ETA: I do not support the particular sentence you cherry-picked, only pretty much the rest of it.
@charontwo:
Still rooting for genocide though!
@JohnSF: Apple/orange much?
@EddieInCA: If they want to wipe out Gaza and the West Bank, I’ll support it.
Does that include the 450,000 settlers? Especially since when it comes to terrorism in the West Bank it is often “settlers rights” groups committing the terrorism. Or do they get a pass, like they usually do from the police or the IDF?
@drj:
No. Read the ETA.
@EddieInCA:
Which, of course, begs the question of why Israeli kept electing a prime minister who said this of Hamas in 2019, as quoted by Haaretz:
When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. This is too often left out of the equation. Too many of the pro-Israel contingent is unwilling to acknowledge Israel’s own boneheaded complicity in sponsoring the very antisemitic, eradicate-Israel terrorists they decry.
I believe Hamas is an anathema. Israel’s own longest-serving prime minister apparently did not. I thus don’t see why Americans should be compelled to so starkly choose sides between Hamas and a Hamas-bolstering, anti-democratic Israeli government that has helped make the world less safe for Americans by ignoring US advice and working against US diplomacy. They were publicly working in concert with each other, so I choose neither.
One must truly feel heartbroken for the butchered anti-Netanyanhu Israeli socialists failed on 10/7 by Bibi and the IDF, after two decades of disastrous rightwingery from the Israeli electorate. Israel must try to destroy Hamas, but bad news: the call is still coming from inside the Knesset. Lashing outward is not going to fix Israel’s problems.
@drj: Say what you will, Eddie and 6 people upvoting genocide are intellectually honest anyway.
@charontwo: I guess it’s only 5 intellectually honest then.
@Just nutha ignint crackere:
I am disappointed, I thought you better than that. Guess not.
There is more shit in this thread than a pig farm waste lagoon, and a lot of people splashing it around.
ETA: I am curious though, why your screen handle is suddenly spelled differently.
@Beth:
No, not for the rest of time.
But if you look at the general history of the region since 1948, and note what happened at the partition in 1948 itself, there is a general tendency for Israel to try to make peace, while the Palestinian groups and Arab states refuse.
It took the Yom Kippur War in 1973 to convince the neighboring states there was no means of defeating Israel militarily, even if Syria, Egypt, etc. were bigger and had more men under arms. this led to the Egypt-Israel peace treaty in 1979, for which Sadat was murdered. And a latter peace treaty with Jordan.
The Palestinian Authority came through a treaty with Israel in 1993, I think, which gave Palestinians control of the West Bank and Gaza. And Rabin was murdered for that. Later see what JohnSF wrote about further negotiations.
Until around the last term of someone who was not Bibi, which I think was Ehud Barak in the early 2000s, there was willingness in Israel to negotiate some kind of peace. Since Bibi’s latest very long run, there has not.
@drj: @charontwo: @SenyorDave:
Hiroshima
Nagasaki
What’s different here?
I’m with Eddie. There is only one side that openly advocates erasing a people from the planet. It’s not Israel.
@wr:.. How is that helping anyone?..
It puts the lie to the trolls who post here claiming that OTB is an echo chamber.
It’s depressing to me how many comments seem to boil down to “pick a side”, even though they both objectively suck. Note I’m talking about Hamas as one side (not Palestinians) and Likud + partners as the other (not Israel). If we could stick the current leadership of both sides into a locked room and let them kill each other off maybe Palestine and Israel would have a chance.
Hamas is a death cult who, if the situation was reversed, would absolutely be committing a very active genocide against the Jews. But make no mistake, Netanyahu and his cohorts have been deliberately leading Israel into an apartheid situation *at best*, and slow motion genocide at worst. Hamas killing, raping and beheading civilians, then hiding behind their own civilians and shouting “war crimes!” should be treated as the joke it is. Once this settles after thousands of dead though, we shouldn’t keep giving Likud and the settlers a pass either. Both sides are guilty of war crimes by the modern definition*. Historically Palestinian leadership has been terrible and given the middle finger to peace attempts, but if you think Netanyahu wants a 2 state solution you’re smoking some good shit.
Anyone who says they are in favor of “wiping out” the West Bank is saying they are fine with genocide because those people don’t have anywhere to go. Wiping them out means killing them in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. That’s insane, even as I also agree with the same people stating that if Palestinians stopped fighting there would be peace, while if Israel stopped fighting there would be no Israel. There are no good, happy, or just solutions here. I think it was Stonekettle who commented last week that the founding of Israel after WWII was a moral necessity AND a practical folly.
Long term solutions? Beats me. Better minds than ours have been flailing and failing to work that out for 70 years now. The only thing I can see is somehow convincing backers of the Palestinians to stop arming them (efforts like the now on-hold normalization with Saudi Arabia were working on that, and I think stopping that process was Hamas’ primary goal in all this), while Israel’s allies have to make it clear the settlers are persona non grata and need to be stopped every bit as much as Hamas and Hezbollah do–peace will not be possible while any of those groups are functional and controlling their societies. Much MUCH easier said than done on both sides. Then you wall the 2 sides apart for a generation or two and hope the kids figure out how to live with each other.
More likely I’m afraid is going to be a horrible loop of the last 20 years: Palestinians living in hopeless poverty with no future, their leaders blaming Israel for all their problems while they steal aid and other actors provide weapons, periodically erupting in massive violence where Israelis are brutalized on camera and Palestinians are killed in job lots in response. “Mowing the grass” in Netanyahu’s memorable obfuscating metaphor. Going on and on until the regional politics drastically change or someone obtains and uses a nuke.
* I may be cynical, but the modern definition of war crimes is a luxury of the powerful and *safe.* Any society than thinks it’s under an existential threat–which includes both Israelis and Palestinians, is going to do whatever necessary to survive. Like Ukraine being just fine with cluster munitions provided to them after we spent a year condemning Russia for committing war crimes using those banned munitions. You’ve got Palestinians claiming that all settlers are effectively militia, while an Israeli “moderate” angrily declares that Palestinians had the chance to elect someone besides Hamas so have to suffer the consequences (uh, Israel had the chance to elect someone other than Netanyahu a few times there, so that’s a pretty bad argument). Israel dropping bombs in Gaza is collective punishment and a war crime. Attacks on kibbutz by Hamas are also collectively punishing all Jews and a war crime. Cutting off aid is a war crime, as is hiding behind your own civilians. In the end, war crimes are prosecuted by the winners, medals are handed out by the winners, and history is written by the same. All the hand-wringing about it by non-participants claiming one side has the moral high ground over the other at this point is just pointless nonsense.
@EddieInCA: so, if we take you at your word, you are ok with killing 1.1M people because 1400 were killed.
My mistake, you’re adding the West Bank too, so about 4M.
A Palestinian life is worth less than about a quarter of a thousandth of an Israeli citizen’s* life?
I do not believe that you actually believe that.
——
*: I struggle with concise terminology for the people, because basically each and every Palestinian was born on soil ultimately controlled by the Israeli government. Meanwhile not all citizens of Israel are Jewish and there are 31-derful flavors of Jew, so “Jewish Israeli” feel right either.
@Gustopher:
I’m not Eddie but I agree with him. You wouldn’t have to kill everyone. Just enough to get Hamas and Hezbollah to stop. US killed 150;000 in Japan with two bombs. Ended the war. How would this be different?
@JohnSF:
Egypt has a right to control its borders.
Israel either has borders at the edge of Gaza, in which case it has no right to blockade independent Gaza’s ports, or it has borders at the sea, in which case it is restricting the travel of goods and peoples within its borders. Borders at the sea most closely matches what has been happening.
If New Hampshire were launching rocket attacks into the rest of the US, or Wales (or maybe plain Hampshire… I assume it must exist) into the rest of the UK, would you accept a similar partition and economic blockade?
Because those Palestinians in Gaza… they’re basically Israelis. Born on Israeli soil, under conditions determined by the state of Israel — vast majority born to other people under the control of the state of Israel. They aren’t people without a state, or unpeople or some lesser form of people, they’re just residents of Israel, shoved into a reservation and stripped of human rights but not humanity.
At some point over the past 75 years, this has gone from a refugee crisis to a civil war, and we should be backing away from getting involved in that unless there is actual large scale genocide.
A viable two-state solution was the way to protect Israel as a Jewish state. They never reached for it, and the only way to get there now is a lot more bloodshed than I am willing to support.
I do support the real Jewish homeland: the lower east side of Manhattan, with Williamsburg and Crown Heights in Brooklyn for those who want a more Hasidic life. I support them in other parts of the US, provided they open bagel shops.
@drj:
I was thinking of Taba as the termination of the exchanges that began in 2000.
And got very little further, it seems.
On Ben-Ami’s remark “and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.” I’d reply, it seems to me 92% of a loaf would have been better than none.
Which is what the West Bank Palestinians ended up with.
The Palestinian view of “land for peace” still seems to be at minimum the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem
The likelihood of Israel ever conceding this now is minimal.
As for the concession on the right of return, the point was the Palestinians continued to insist on it as a principle.
As Ben-Ami has also said re. the Taba talks:
It would seem that Ben-Ami represents the extreme limit of what Israel might concede.
And that limit is still beyond what Palestinians have been prepared to accept.
@drj:
Indeed.
The only thing more idiotic then Sharon’s visit, and Barak permitting it, was the Palestinian reaction to it.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Perhaps.
Perhaps not.
The similarity is in the view that the enemy in question is too dangerous, and evil, to be permitted to survive in power.
And the preparedness to inflict massive casualties on enemy civilian populations, innocent or otherwise, to achieve that end.
@DK:
I’ve no doubt Netanyahu and other Likudniks viewed the ascendancy of Hamas in Gaza as ironically convenient.
But even an Israeli leadership that desired a deal with the Fatah PA under Abbas would have little hope of changing the situation in Gaza.
How could they, given Fatah had been destroyed in Gaza by Hamas?
Intensify the blockade and block money transfers?
Transfer the money to someone else: but there is, effectively, no-one else.
Refuse to talk to Hamas about prisoner exchanges or cease-fires?
What realistic option was present, except what is now unfolding: invasion and eradication?
In the circumstances “sponsorship” hardly seems accurate.
Likud’s stupid refusal to effectively retain and opening for talks with Abbas is another matter. As also their pandering to settler extremists, supporter of annexation, and kahanite advocates of mass expulsions.
@Gustopher:
States in wartime have a right of blockade.
Israel is hardly likely to permit free import of materiel into a territory that is de facto in a state of war with them.
In fact they would have to be insane to do so.
….the real Jewish homeland: the lower east side of Manhattan, with Williamsburg and Crown Heights in Brooklyn for those who want a more Hasidic life.
I suspect they might disagree with you on that point.
A lesson from European history seems to be that one country can occupy another for a very long time and not alter the subjective nationality of the occupied population, from either side’s point of view.
Israel only occupied all of Gaza for the relatively short period of 27 years, from 1967 to 1994, and evacuated it entirely in 2005.
The population of Gaza was “not shoved into a reservation” during the Israeli occupation period post-1967. They are a combination of descendants of a population (as of 1948) roughly 1/3 prior inhabitants, and 2/3 refugees from Israel during the 1948 War.
At the time the refugees moved there, they area was under the (very nominal) All-Palestine Government; in fact it was occupied by Egypt, and the A-PG was under Egyptian control.
Incidentally, Jordan never recognised the All-Palestine government, and simply annexed the West Bank to Jordan.
Amusing; but also a matter of perspective, perhaps?
Almost all American Jews are of European origin, and Ashkenazi at that.
I suspect there are relatively few Mizrahi in Manhattan.
That group are far closer in cultural terms to Arabs and other Middle Easterners than to Russo-Polish Hasidim; the initial Mizrahi incomers to Israel spoke Arabic, or Persian.
@JohnSF:
Ha. A bunch of students release a statement saying, “Israel is responsible for this tremendous loss of life” and they are roundly accused of condoning terror and hating Jews.
The literal prime minister of Israel argues for bolstering and funding Hamas, and it’s not sponsoring terror? Nice try but no.
What would be said of a politician in the UK or US — or a group of students — who said “We need to bolster and fund Hamas”?
What was to be done instead? There’s plenty of options besides the path Netanyahu took. He could have tried to eradicate Hamas. He could have not been so busy with illegal settlement building and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank as to leave the Israelis bordering Gaza defenseless. And, again, there’s no shortage of Palestinians who despise Hamas. They should have been bolstered and funded. The notion Netanyahu had no choice but to help Hamas sideline secular and moderate Palestinians is bunk. He did it for the same reason he helped incite Rabin’s assassination: Netanyahu is just as venal and evil as Hamas, just with a sophisticated veneer — and birds of a feather flock together.
And just as Americans must own the consequences of our failure to repudiate Trumpism, it’s long past time for Israelis to take responsibility for their choice to elevate this two-bit Putin to near-dictator status.
@DK:
As I’ve said, it’s plain Netanyahu in particular, and Likud generally, made use of Hamas both to undermine the Fatah PA and to justify stonewalling on any negotiations.
Similarly, the settlements policy was both unlawful and foolish, and the final blame for the security failures that led to the Hamas attack and massacres lies with Netanyahu, regardless of any additional culpability of military or intelligence negligence.
I agree with all this, and would also say that the US, and especially many Republicans, have failed to see the danger posed by Netanyahu’s political manoeuvrings.
Albeit those moves are precisely because he is NOT a president-type figure, but forming coalitions for his own benefit in an extremely multiplex and fissured parliamentary system.
However, all that said, I don’t believe Israel had many good options regarding Hamas once they won the 2006 election in Gaza.
Given the disconnection between Palestinian politics in Gaza and the West Bank.
I’m not sure how much Likud tactical connivance may have helped them along before that point.
But once Hamas were in the driving seat, and had crushed Fatah in the Strip, eradicating Hamas would have been a major task, with a lot of downsides, as we are likely about to discover.
And cutting off funding is easier said than done.
I’d note it was not just Netanyahu and Likud who cynically liked dealing with Hamas.
A lot of others, with decent intentions, genuinely thought that the responsibilities of actually governing Gaza would meliorate Hamas.
Not something I ever thought likely, but not, then, entirely implausible to other reasonable people either.
The whole situation is one to which easy answers and resolutions are, unfortunately, seldom available.
But the sooner we see the back of Netanyahu, and his self-serving alliances with the likes of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, the better.