Hamas is not the underprivileged good guy here. It’s the plight of the Palestinian people, that gives power to Hamas, that is the thing that needs to be addressed.
So saying looking at the situation that enables Hamas to get political power is a reasonable thing for a politician to say. That’s literally the game they play every day. Trying to remove the power from an antagonistic belligerent is a good thing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Charter
For what it’s worth Hamas is a political organization, and they respond to political realities, in 2017 they attempted to amend their charter to give them the ability to negotiate.
The 2017 charter accepted for the first time the idea of a Palestinian state within the borders that existed before 1967 and rejects recognition of Israel which it terms as the “Zionist enemy”.[2]
Again, not apologizing for them, not condoning them… but there are political organization that exists in political reality is, and examining the realities that enable them to draw power from a population, is a reasonable thing to do, and in fact the job of a global politician - like the UN Secretary general.
That’s exactly the kind of thinking that the Israeli government had a month ago, that by negotiating with them, they could find mutual self interest. 10/7 has disabused them of that delusion.
When someone says their goal is genocide, you should probably take them at their word.
I take issue with the implication that moving the Palestinians into reservations, and embargoing them from all trade, economic development, and movement is ‘finding mutual self interest’, but sure, fine, lets go with it, I preserve the issue for appeal, but not worth arguing here.
So Israel has been punished for treating The Gaza strip with dignity and mutual self interest… What should the new strategy be?
If the goal is to minimize ongoing future violence, what do you do now?
So Israel has been punished for treating The Gaza strip with dignity and mutual self interest… What should the new strategy be?
I have no idea. I don’t see a path from where we are to peace. But I am realistic about the fact that Hamas isn’t just some club of would-be liberal democrats just yearning for freedom. That’s just not realistic. They don’t want a two-state solution. They don’t want a “Jews still being alive” solution. And increasingly, it doesn’t seem like most Israelis want a two state solution either.
I don’t have a solution for you.
I don’t think anybody here is saying Hamas is a good guy. I haven’t seen a single comment in this thread defending Hamas.
A lot of people however, are rationally, and correctly, pointing out that organizations like Hamas are a symptom of an oppressed people. Like an apartheid state, or slave state, we can look at history for examples of people striking out over and over again. It’s not a justification, it is however an observation based on history. Slave rebellions are bloody affairs, and the innocent are killed, but the solution to slave rebellions is not harder slavery.
The two-state solution is no longer viable. It is impossible to break apart Palestine from Israel. Especially looking at how fractured the West Bank is, all of the Israeli exclaves, and all of the Palestinian reservations or intermixed - one might say even deliberately to prevent a two-state solution from being viable.
I can’t speak for the next 10 to 20 years, but the long-term viable solution in 30 years is going to be a single country encompassing both current Israel and current Palestine, in a secular, non-ethnocentric, non-religious democratic organization. Where people are equal regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or language.
And it’s going to be a very bloody time to get to that stage, but it’s the only stable steady state.
A lot of people however, are rationally, and correctly, pointing out that organizations like Hamas are a symptom of an oppressed people. Like an apartheid state, or slave state, we can look at history for examples of people striking out over and over again.
You can see it that way, but you also have to take Hamas’s stated goal into consideration. Their stated goal is not to liberate their people, it’s to be the new oppressor, and a far worse one than that.
Let’s put it another way. There are around two million Arab Israelis. They’re in the Israeli parliament, they serve in its courts, in the military, etc. Would they be liberated if Hamas achieved its goal? They would probably be viewed as collaborators and executed.
This myth that Hamas are just freedom fighters, like Nelson Mandela or Gandhi, really needs to be dispelled. It has no basis in reality.
There’s this weird urge in the minds of people to try to find a hero story. There’s no hero story. And if groups like Hamas weren’t wreaking havoc in the area for the past 50+ years, realistically, a Palestinian state would probably exist.
I can’t speak for the next 10 to 20 years, but the long-term viable solution in 30 years is going to be a single country encompassing both current Israel and current Palestine, in a secular, non-ethnocentric, non-religious democratic organization. Where people are equal regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or language.
Except no one in the region wants that. Certainly not Hamas.
you keep falling into this Pro Israeli or Pro Hamas dichotomy, those arnt the only options. We can be anti-apartheid and anti-hamas at the same time, but recognize the systemic nature of the violence that arises because of the oppression.
The Israeli Arabs are a good example of what a integrated Palestine Israel might look like to start with, just expand that to the entire population. Of course there are some outstanding issues to hammer out even with our model Israeli Arab integration wikipedia which ultimately means the government needs to change from being a ethnostate government to a national citizenship based government secular of religion. But I’m not going to let perfection get in the way of good enough, if we could integrate everyone today even with the racism issues, thats a huge win.
you keep falling into this Pro Israeli or Pro Hamas dichotomy, those arnt the only options. We can be anti-apartheid and anti-hamas at the same time, but recognize the systemic nature of the violence that arises because of the oppression.
But see, you’re falling into the exact dichotomy you said you wanted to avoid. It’s far too simplistic to just frame it as “oppressor” and “oppressed.” By labeling one group as the oppressed and another group as the oppressor, you’re taking a side.
It’s easy to fall into that narrative, because Israel has most of the power. Life in Israel is far better than life in Gaza. In response to 10/7, Israel pushed Gaza into a humanitarian crisis by cutting off power, medicine, food, and even drinking water into Gaza (though Biden managed to get them to turn the water back on).
So it’s easy to look at them and say, “oh, one group is oppressed and the other is an oppressor.” But it’s also naive. Hamas’s stated goal is genocide. It’s not really an “oppressor and oppressed” situation when the allegedly oppressed are explicitly genocidal.
The Israeli Arabs are a good example of what a integrated Palestine Israel might look like to start with, just expand that to the entire population. Of course there are some outstanding issues to hammer out even with our model Israeli Arab integration wikipedia which ultimately means the government needs to change from being a ethnostate government to a national citizenship based government secular of religion. But I’m not going to let perfection get in the way of good enough, if we could integrate everyone today even with the racism issues, thats a huge win.
But then you’re essentially playing the role of a colonial power, telling the locals how it’s going to be. That’s what George W. Bush tried to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. It didn’t work.
If you did a poll people of any ethnic and religious group between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and you asked them, “would you like to live in a secular state with both Israelis and Palestinian Arabs sharing the same land,” do you think you’d get a majority? I bet you’d get fewer than 20%.
Probably more Israelis would be open and willing to agree to that than Palestinian Arabs, but I doubt you’d see a majority from either camp. And a “one secular state” solution isn’t something any world leader is really talking about. It wasn’t part of the Oslo or Camp David accords, isn’t what anyone is proposing, etc.
You keep bringing up Hamas, I’m not defending Hamas.
Israel is engaged in systemic Apartheid against ethnic arabs in their territory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_apartheid https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/19/israeli-apartheid-threshold-crossed https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1114702
The Apartheid is the root cause of the violence, which doesn’t excuse the violence, but its clearly the main catalyst.
Israel is acting as the Colonial power in this scenario.
Two State solutions are off the table given the Israel settlements integrated all throughout the westbank as of today. That only leaves one state solutions. Either Israel kills every single Arab in the country, or they have to learn to live with them in peace which means ending Apartheid.
