These terrorists, yield? Already faulty logic. Their proclaimed goals and historic record show that will never happen and their budget for violence knows no limit.
It's as tough as desalinating water, but removing the civilians from the terrorists must happen. Otherwise the result will either be genocide of the 'salt water', or of the 'plants' the salt in that water is bent on destroying.
What is an acceptable plan for reaching the result of the civilians on both sides being safe? This is a political question, but it is one all must consider; at least as it informs our own votes where we reside.
I'll give you my honest opinion here and a criticism of Israeli government all at once. Israel should have moved the Palestinians civilians into Israel proper, e.g. the Negev. It should have created refugee camps for them there and provided them with all the support/aid while it went after Hamas. They'd be able to filter the people going in, make them surrender their weapons etc. No tunnels, no weapons caches, etc.
It's a very tough one to swallow for Israelis. I'm also not positive it would have worked. But I think it would be worth a try.
I think in the beginning of the war there was some thought of Egypt playing that role but it was pretty clear that wasn't going to happen.
The problem is throughout the war Israel had no appetite/desire to own the problem of Gazan civilians. Israel intentionally left that part to Hamas and the UN and at no time during this conflict has controlled any piece of land with Palestinian civilians.
>I'll give you my honest opinion here and a criticism of Israeli government all at once. Israel should have moved the Palestinians civilians into Israel proper, e.g. the Negev. It should have created refugee camps for them there and provided them with all the support/aid while it went after Hamas. They'd be able to filter the people going in, make them surrender their weapons etc. No tunnels, no weapons caches, etc.
It should have simply returned the refugees to their land. But then they wouldnt be stateless individuals, they would have (minimal, as second class subjects) rights, and present a greater challenge to settlement like those in the west bank. Ultimately this is a settlement project, and distracting from that, and the right of those refugees in gaza to return to their land, is the ultimate point of the conflict.
The return of the so called 1948 refugees to Israel is never going to happen. Other wars from the same era had a lot more refugees and nobody returned anywhere.
Just like the Jewish refugees from Arab countries or Europe are not returning there either.
It the Palestinians are stuck in 1948 over the war they and the Arabs started and lost they're never going to get anywhere. They had a chance when Israel was established to be equal citizens and they decided not to take it. It might be tough, it might not be "just", but that clock is never turning back.
The sad thing is how Palestinians and Arabs treat those people. Everywhere else in the world refugees were taken in. But other than Jordan all Arab countries have decided to just keep those people as refugees for eternity. Including the Palestinians, and Gazans, who treat the refugees like second class people.
All your arguments and justifications sound so hollow in the face of starving palestinians in Gaza being shot while lining up for humanitarian aid.
The thing being stuck in the past seem to be your arguments.
But this is happening right now and the majority underage population starving to death right now is on Israel‘s watch.
"Malnutrition has been rising rapidly in the first half of July and has reached the Famine
threshold in Gaza City. Over 20,000 children have been admitted for treatment for acute
malnutrition between April and mid-July, with more than 3,000 severely malnourished.11
Hospitals have reported a rapid increase in hunger-related deaths of children under five
years of age, with at least 16 reported deaths since 17 July"
This is not good but it's a far cry from the entire population starving to death. I'm not even gonna go into the Hamas runs the hospitals (which is true) angle here, let's just accept this at face value.
"Reductions in international aid funding to fight severe malnutrition in children under 5 could lead to 369,000 additional deaths each year, a consortium of experts in nutrition and food systems has warned."
...
"shrinking budgets could cut off treatment for 2.3 million severely malnourished young children worldwide. Nearly half of the projected additional deaths stem from the loss of support from the United States, which has axed thousands of grants worth tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid since President Donald Trump took office."
Famine in Sudan and Yemen, nobody cares. Who is taking to the streets and posting daily to Hacker News about the 369,000 people who are really starving to death due to actions of the United States (in this example)? No. The interesting story is how Israel has to provide for the polity that attacked it and murdered, raped, and took hostage its citizens and keeps fighting and not surrendering. It's the 16 children that Hamas reports died from starvation that are more deserving of people's anger than the 369,000 preventable deaths. It's the 20,000 cases of malnutrition Hamas reports and not the 2.3 million.
Israel should do better but the attacks on Israel are not about that. This is why I'm arguing here. The point is not that Israel doesn't have responsibilities - it does. The point is that Israel is being singled out. The western countries that are pressuring Israel now have never met the bar they try to hold Israel to or even cared about meeting it in their own actions. Not to even mention the non-western players like Russia or China where the bar is set significantly lower.
Israel is, as it should be, accelerating aid delivery to Gaza given the objectively worsening conditions. The difference in Gaza vs other people starving all over the world is that it is at war with Israel and the populated areas are controlled by Hamas.
An interesting by the way is that Egypt has refused to allow aid trucks through Rafah once Israel took the Gazan side of the border, now they've changed their minds:
Throughout the war Egypt was partly responsible for not allowing aid into Gaza.
Gazans are in a terrible condition. They are in this condition partly due to their ongoing war on Israel. Israel is still responsible but it can't be held solely responsible. The UN sabotaging the efforts to provide aid via the GHF. Hamas attacking aid centers and aid convoys while trying to maximize and use their own civilians suffering. All those have a fair bit of responsibility. Israel has a right to defend itself by defeating Hamas. Hamas is using their own people's suffering as a tactic to survive this war.
Gazans were also shot by Hamas while lining up for aid.
"While Hamas promotes a campaign of so-called “starving Gaza,” its terrorists are feasting underground."
I would much prefer that the war ends in Gaza. But the war is not ending with Hamas in power. All those people attacking Israel should offer some alternative course of action that ensures that Hamas can not retake Gaza, re-arm itself, and keep attacking Israel. Israel can not "separate" the civilians from Hamas because Hamas won't allow that. What is really happening is that the international and media attacks on Israel are fueling Hamas' determination to hold on and prolonging the war.
>Who is taking to the streets and posting daily to Hacker News about the 369,000 people
Whataboutism
>Israel is being singled out.
Finally
>Israel is, as it should be, accelerating aid delivery to Gaza given the objectively worsening conditions.
International pressure has forced Israel to alleviate conditions somewhat. The only pressure being responded to is that of recognising a Palestinian state. And thats only threatening as it would conclude or at best pause the project of genocide.
>Israel is still responsible but it can't be held solely responsible.
Israel could immediately return Rafah, leave Gaza, remove settlers from the west bank, repatriate the refugees, return them to their land and investigate (civilly) the population for Hamas.
Much like how Russia could simply turn around and leave Ukraine today.
>What is really happening is that the international and media attacks on Israel are fueling Hamas' determination to hold on and prolonging the war.
"If only people would stop complaining about our ongoing genocide, we could hurry up and complete the genocide"
Taking in those refugees, or having them leave and go anywhere is deeply unpopular everywhere. Because those refugees, have a right to return. They have land to go to, it might currently be illegally occupied, but their claim is valid.
Letting Israel force those refugees into another country just guarantees the completion of their racist genocidal settlement project.
Its weird to imply that refusing to help force them from their land is somehow inhumane, when the inhumanity is being driven by the force that drove them off their land and will shoot them if they try and return.
"The clock is never turning back". I really don't care which state controls the land, the people have a right to return. Really the 2 state solution is a distraction from Israels obligations to these people.
When the Nazis were driven out? I hope you mean when the USSR fell, because Poland was under their control for about 45 years. The Red Army entered Poland in 1944.
How many Jewish refugees did the allies take in WW2? This was literally a talking point used by antisemites to demonize Jews (the refugees nobody wanted) in the 1930s. And now the same talking points are being used in the same way by Jewish supremacists (most of whom are Christian by the way) to demonize Palestinians in 2025.
First of all, most of the Palestinian families in Gaza come from Israel. They lived in what is now southern Israel until 1948, when they were driven out in an extremely brutal Israeli military operation (Operation Barak).
Secondly, comparing the Palestinians to Nazi Germany is absurd and grotesque. The Palestinians are an oppressed people who were driven out of their homeland by an invading force in 1947-48, and who have lived in squalid refugee camps ever since. Since 1967, they have lived under direct military occupation by the very people who originally expelled them from their homeland, and are subjected to a racist regime in which their land is slowly taken away, piece by piece. The Palestinians have no country, no passport, no sovereignty, no rights.
Comparing them to the citizens of an industrialized power that tried to conquer Europe is insane.
In 1947, arabs refused the UN partition plan and decided to wage war against jews ( which accepted that plan) to remove them from the map. They were 100% certain to be able to do so, and nobody bet a penny on the jews winning at 1 vs 10.
They never stopped trying to do so since that dat, with the latest example being 2 years ago, on october 7.
Now you can try to blame it on the jews on X, but HN is an educated forum. Those kinds of arguments won't fly here.
"In 1675, the native tribes of New England refused to accept a partition of the land, and decided to wage war against Christians (who accepted the plan) to remove them from the map. They were 100% certain to be able to do so, and nobody bet a penny on the Christians winning at 1 vs. 10. They never stopped trying to do so since that date. Now you can try to blame it on the Christians on X, but HN is an educated forum. Those kinds of arguments won't fly here."
I'm sure you can find ten reasons why my above little story is wrong. They're the exact same reasons your little story is wrong. To name a few:
1. The Zionists / Europeans were trying to colonize Arab / Native American land. They were the aggressors in a very fundamental sense. Asking for the native population to "partition" the land amounts to demanding that they cede part of their homeland to you.
2. The conflict has nothing to do with Judaism or antisemitism. By framing it in that way, you're trying to draw a connection to the Holocaust and the history of persecution of Jews in Europe. But in this situation, the Zionists just happened to be Jewish, but that was totally irrelevant for the Arab population of Palestine. What the native population cared about was that an outside group - it didn't matter who - was trying to come in and take over the land.
3. And contrary to your framing, the Zionists were the group that held the upper hand, for a whole number of reasons that apply across the colonial world. In Palestine, they weren't some little oppressed minority. They had more resources, better education, were better organized, and had the backing of the imperial rulers of Palestine, the British.
4. The Arabs were the underdogs in the 1948 war. This runs completely counter to Israeli national mythology, but the fact is that the Israelis had a larger, better trained and better equipped army. They had military training from the British. They had funding from a significant foreign base of donors. They were able to purchase large amounts of weaponry from Czechoslovakia. The Palestinians themselves never stood a chance against the Zionists / Israelis. The Arab states only intervened after the Zionists had begun carrying out mass expulsions and other atrocities against the Palestinian civilian population. From the point of view of the Arab world, they were attempting to save their brothers from vicious foreign colonizers. You present it as if "the Jews," by which you actually mean the Zionists in Palestine, were in a fight for survival. But that's like saying that a guy who walks into a bar and starts punching people wildly is in a fight for his own survival. It might be true, but he got himself into that situation.
I don't think you know much about jewish history. Not even the very beginning, as in "where does this name come from".
All the rest follows. Really, you should start from the very beginning.
About israel, you're probably reading the pov of a fringe minority that only sounds plausible because people analyze the past in today's context. Israel was many times on the brinks of defeat in the multiple wars that followed. Only since the fall of the soviet union did it become clear they were here to stay and started to build unmatched military superiority.
I know a fair bit about Jewish history, given that I'm generally interested in history and am Jewish myself.
The "fringe minority" POV that I'm reading is the mainstream historiography on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the standard works by Israeli historian Benny Morris.
> Israel was many times on the brinks of defeat in the multiple wars that followed. Only since the fall of the soviet union did it become clear they were here to stay and started to build unmatched military superiority.
This is a completely false and indefensible take on the history. Israel showed massive military superiority over the Arab states in 1967, when it defeated them in a matter of days, and it has been backed by the world's top superpower since then. Israel has been the only nuclear power in the Middle East since the 1960s. Its closest brush with defeat was in 1973, but it still managed to turn that around (with massive American aid), and has never faced any serious military threat since. Israel walked all over Lebanon in the 1980s, and nearly every Israeli war since then has had the same character: they've almost all been wars against small militant groups, not even other states. The only exception was the recent war Israel initiated against Iran, but even there, all Iran could do was lob missiles from a distance while Israel pummeled Iran from the air almost unchecked.
As I said, a major part of Israeli mythology is the idea that Israel is the scrappy underdog that manages to pull off miracles. But that is really just mythology. The reality is quite different, and Israel has had a distinct military advantage in every conflict it has ever fought, going back to its founding.
the "new historians" movement isn't standard by any mean, and their work is tainted by ideology and ubris in every step.
It's easy now to say that israel had "distinct advantages". But in the context of the cold war, with a tenth of the soldier, fighting against 4 countries, completely surrounded, you'd have to be crazy to consider yourself having a clear advantage.
Jews that lived through the 1960s/70s period distinctly remember how every war had everybody wonder if israel would survive any longer.
If they had done this they would be accused of ethnic cleansing as well as genocide. the negev isn't an altogether welcoming place, any death natural or otherwise that happened there would be blamed on the jews as proof and it would be an even bigger PR disaster. Egypt and the sinai would have a similar problem. Even Trump's recent suggestion of temporary resettlement to a populated area has been met with calls of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Most of the supposed supporters of the palestinian people don't care so much about their fate so much as they hate Jews and love the easy cudgel they make for attacking jews.
Putting that aside, no one, not Hamas, not the Israeli public, not Netanyahu, and certainly not the IDF, not any neighboring countries, not the wider world believed the war would drag on this long. Everyone thought it would be over fairly soon. Hamas probably didn't think there would be a war because israel itself was on the brink of a civil war, the Israeli public with their strong belief in their military might thought the war would be over before the new year and the IDF and politicians (BN included) likely had a similar belief, that A) Hamas didn't have an apatite for a long war, and B) the IDF would be able to quickly return the hostages. Everyone else also believed in the might of a stronger more organized force against a much weaker force that supposedly also had to care for their own people.
Instead Hamas showed they had no concern for their own people, and they had significantly deeper fortifications than the israeli security establishment knew about. So here we are almost two years later, and no end in sight.
Still it would be better for civilians even if not any better from PR standpoint. Also with some of the civilians filtered out Israel might have easier time acting boldly against Hamas in Gaza.
It's as tough as desalinating water, but removing the civilians from the terrorists must happen. Otherwise the result will either be genocide of the 'salt water', or of the 'plants' the salt in that water is bent on destroying.
What is an acceptable plan for reaching the result of the civilians on both sides being safe? This is a political question, but it is one all must consider; at least as it informs our own votes where we reside.