how does Israel give evacuation warnings if Palestinian telcos are offline?
Hell, even the IRA did a better job of issuing warnings about their bombs in The Troubles...
> Residents in Gaza reported that Israeli planes rained red leaflets on neighborhoods Saturday, urging residents to evacuate. Those with cell phones also received the message digitally, according to social media reports.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/21/idf-prepares-for-gr...
- No electricity to charge your cellphone.
- Leaflets from previous strikes flying around in this small area for many days.
- A lot of injured people, hard to move.
- sometime you need to you have to sleep too, how do you check for new flying leaflets outside all the time?
In a war we should just assume that everything is false and true at the same time. Involved people have choosen a side, but others are to assume that everyone involved is lying.
And it links to a piece describing the conflict that began October 7th.
https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-ga...
Thank you.
I'm not accusing you of being perverse or anything, but what is your motivation and your reasoning?
Total BS propaganda from the Israelis
"Okay, they did, but it doesn't matter."
Got it.
There are a lot of historic things that are its fault, but at this point the Hamas left it no choice whatsoever. It won't accept anything less than the destruction of Israel. It still holds kidnapped children and elderly civilians. It's still firing missiles into Israel as of today...
The Palestinian people got squeezed in the middle because of that and it's terrible. What more can Israel do if the Hamas is willing to sacrifice its own civilians and literally places its headquarters under a hospital (which Israel didn't bomb).
Both sides have elements that seem to want to drive this conflict ever forward. You end this conflict without a way to control the extremist elements on both sides, and given that Hamas has - successfully, which they shouldn't have been able to do in the first place - attacked Israel and now Israel will respond with even more violence the only thing that will happen is that both sides' fanatics will gain a larger fraction of the population to support them. The opposite is what should be happening and Israel arguably has the strongest position in this conflict and also by far the most to lose.
NO!
None of that crap. Israel isn't great as a democracy and its current government is the absolute worst possible... It's still not in the "both" camp by a mile.
It is held to a higher standard than the Hamas (as it should) and it is far "cleaner" in its bombing campaign than any recent western country (sure, mostly the USA). This is despite continued Hamas missiles against civilians and their holding of kidnapped children as young as 3 years of age!
> Both sides have elements that seem to want to drive this conflict ever forward.
No. The Hamas attacked. Up to that point Israel was increasing the number of Gazans allowed into Israel for work etc. Moving to relax hostilities. The Hamas has no interest in any movement towards civility or peace. There's literally no choice.
The only way to finish this is to get every single Hamas operative. Otherwise this will happen again. Hopefully this will end up as good for the Palestinians and as part of a road for the moderates among them to rise. That's why Biden has spent a lot of time in Israel talking about the day after the war. That's very important and can be a good thing overall for both sides.
Palestinian blood is just as red as Israeli blood.
I have Palestinian friends and people in Gaza. I feel terrible for them.
But there's really no choice here. This is the point you're ignoring. Hamas is a cancer on the Palestinian people. It must be removed. It would be painful and probably result in many casualties on both sides. But it has proven that it will not rest until Israel is destroyed.
No. Two wrongs don't make a right. Killing civilians while aiming at the Hamas is never "right". But letting the Hamas keep going is far worse than the alternative, it will embolden it further and it will kill far more.
You are seeing a cause, I'm seeing a symptom.
> Killing civilians while aiming at the Hamas is never "right".
Not only is it not right: it strengthens Hamas and will result in more anti-Israel sentiment in the rest of the world. "Look at what you made me do" doesn't work on that level.
> But letting the Hamas keep going is far worse than the alternative, it will embolden it further and it will kill far more.
Yes, agreed, Hamas should not be allowed to keep going. But for that to happen Israel too will need to make concessions and as long as both sides only think in terms of violence this will simply not stop. The idea that you can get rid of a terrorist organization by killing its members has been refuted many times over. Terrorist organizations disband because their cause has been invalidated and because the individual members lay down their arms. I can't recall a single terrorist organization that was forcibly erased and I'm sure you'll correct me if I am wrong about that. But all of the ones that come to mind over the last 40 years that stopped being active did so because they lost support, not because they were 'wiped out'. You kill a terrorist: another one steps into its place and the cycle will continue. And if you're lucky that's just one.
Nonsense.
There were two major Palestinian terrorist organizations. The PLO was the older and back in the day the more violent of the two.
It was able to get over its aggression and come to a peace settlement with Israel who also put everything behind it.
The Hamas blew up busses, cafes etc. Killed MANY civilians in suicide bombings and destroyed that peace. They were always an evil fanatical organization that doesn't care about their own peoples well being in favor of an extremist insane goal.
> > Killing civilians while aiming at the Hamas is never "right". > > Not only is it not right: it strengthens Hamas and will result in more anti-Israel sentiment in the rest of the world. "Look at what you made me do" doesn't work on that level.
On that I agree. I think Israel should better communicate how it is trying to avoid civilian casualties in this process. But yes, this is just terrible.
> But for that to happen Israel too will need to make concessions and as long as both sides only think in terms of violence this will simply not stop.
100%. That's why I'm thankful for Biden. He was blamed for being too much "pro Israel" by idiots who don't understand his savvy. He was really hated in Israel who mostly loved Trump up until 3 weeks ago. This flipped overnight. Now he has deep control over the government and can use it both for humane aid and to guide the exit plan after. He understands the nuances deeply and is navigating them very well.
It's still a pretty hard task. Eliminating the Hamas is hard. Eliminating the idea of the Hamas is impossible. Making it unpopular is a difficult but probably attainable goal.
That's why to me it is a symptom.
As for the rest, we are mostly in agreement, I think the latter bit is the key but for that Israel would have to back off of certain policies and they would have to be able to accept that some fragment of Hamas / and or terrorist factions funded by other countries around it will cause some degree of damage. There is some analogy with 'force protection' here, if you focus too much on protecting your own side at the expense of your status with respect to human rights on the side of your opponent you more or less automatically breed terrorists.
Leaving hundreds of thousands of youths with the image of an enemy next door has to result in a terrorist organization. More so if you occasionally kill a bunch of them and/or remove their kinsfolk from land that they've lived on their whole lives.
A symptom would be a fight for freedom. The Hamas is a symptom of religious extremism first and foremost. The PLOs terrorist period is indeed a symptom of Israels bad policies.
And some people are saying "That's a big fat nope."
Honestly, I don't know if it is or if it isn't. But what can Israel do here?
Israel said the area they will target which puts its soldiers at risk. In the interest of avoiding civilian casualties. Israel already withdrew settlements from Gaza so the chances of this coming back is pretty slim.
It's a pretty terrible situation for the Palestinian people and it's 100% the fault of Hamas. Unfortunately, if Israel won't destroy the Hamas now this will happen again and it will be worse.
Yes, that's what I've been reading. Various nations do not want to welcome "temporary refugees" because they feel they've seen this before and it will not be temporary. There will be no going back if that option is accepted.
I have no idea what "should" be done. I'm still trying to understand the situation.
There are deep and bitter roots. All parties to the conflict have grievances and there are no obvious solutions to seemingly anyone, especially not some sort of win-win talking points solutions.
When the Oslo accord was signed and peace broke out, they started blowing up busses with suicide bombers (and coffee shops and many other things). They essentially destroyed the chance for peace, enabled the rise of Benjamin Netanyahu and moved Israel to the right. Netanyahu actually supported them and helped them financially due to a misconception that they will prevent the formation of a Palestinian state due to their extremism (yes, he really is THAT stupid).
Unfortunately, despite their leaders sitting on buckets of cash in Qatar etc. They made a very deliberate choice of burning down Israel.
They are the main reason we don't have a Palestinian state. They would literally pay with the blood of their own people due to a crazy religious interpretation. It's not about hate, it's not about revenge. They are a cancer on their own people. They are killing them and Israelis. They will burn everything down.
Unfortunately, like any cancer they're embedded deep and rooting that out is painful and almost impossible.
People don't understand this, they think that peace or ceasefire are always the best options. But there are these very rare occasions where evil must be eliminated for the sake of everyone involved.
So perhaps it will get resolved.
I mean, this is obviously untrue since there is no other country they can go to. Gaza shares a border with only israel and egypt and neither is letting anyone leave (a fucked up situation for the innocents caught in the middle)
Like sure people can leave, hamas could leave with them, but then they wont have their big guns and hamas loses the terrain advantage.
Similarly hard to move hostages without being discovered.
Israel denies attacking anyone on the way. There was plenty of reporting showing people moving along the main arteries that were recommended and those look clear with no debris or any other evidence of attack. I'm aware of a single incident where it was claimed Israel attacked someone evacuating and this is still contested.
Israel has never said it will not attack in the south of the Gaza strip. It just said the bulk of its operation will be in the north. It explicitly said it would go after military targets in the south as well.
Excuse me if I'm not going to take that as a source.
Israel only provided some fraction of water and electricity to Gaza and is under no obligation to keep providing that in a state of war. Do you have other examples of countries at war when one side provides the other with water and electricity?
Look- you're right that Israel has asked people to leave everything behind and move. War sucks. I can't say I don't sympathize with those people, I do. You seem to have some emotional connection to this situation and I certainly do. I don't have any solutions unfortunately. Israelis have been pushed to the corner right now.
> Al Jazeera is a Qatari state-owned Arabic-language news television network"
You don't have to. Amnesty has written about water in Israel-Palestinian as well, here is a report:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occu...
> Israel only provided some fraction of water and electricity to Gaza and is under no obligation to keep providing that in a state of war.
Israel is actually the one who forced Egypt to not deliver aid for 2 weeks and is limiting it now to just 15 to 20 trucks a day:
"Israel imposed a total two-week blockade on the Palestinian territory, [...], on October 7." Then starting on October 20th or so "Israel has only agreed to allow the delivery of drinking water, food, medicine and other medical supplies. Israeli security forces are checking the contents of the trucks in a transit zone [in Egypt]."
https://www.dw.com/en/gaza-how-much-humanitarian-aid-is-gett...
Both the UN and WHO say that the aid is not enough:
"There are families that are unreachable and are probably starving to death," said Abeer Etefa, senior communications officer for the WFP in Egypt.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/gaza-aid-world-food-prog...
HRW considers it a war crime and outright says it:
"Israel has also engaged in the collective punishment of Gaza’s population through cutting off food, water, electricity, and fuel. This is a war crime, as is willfully blocking humanitarian relief from reaching civilians in need."
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/27/how-does-international-h...
If Egypt allowed, and the UN drove aid trucks in, Israel would not bomb the UN. So aid isn't getting in because Egypt doesn't let it in.
How much water do you think the Hamas has stockpiled in their tunnels for the scenario where they have to continue fighting from there for months? Just asking. How much gas that could be used for desalination? Food? How about asking them to share a little bit with their citizens?
Also please tell me why can't the foreign nationals on the Gazan side leave Gaza into Egypt? Is Israel also preventing them from leaving?
All that said, the civilian population of Gaza should have access to water and should generally be protected as much as possible under the circumstances. I do not support withholding water from them.
Israeli explicitly ordered a total blockage of Gaza:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/9/israel-announces-to...
> If Egypt allowed, and the UN drove aid trucks in, Israel would not bomb the UN. So aid isn't getting in because Egypt doesn't let it in.
Are You sure? Israel repeated bombed the Rafah crossing this month as a warning to keep this blockage in place:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/10/alarm-as-israel-ag...
Israel only relented when Biden said to let aid in - that is reported in this article:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/israel-to-allow-egypt-to-...
> Also please tell me why can't the foreign nationals on the Gazan side leave Gaza into Egypt? Is Israel also preventing them from leaving?
No, that is Egypt I believe. With regards to mass outflows, Egypt is worried that Israel will push the Palestinians in Gaza out and they will never return. That is problematic for Egypt for other reasons, such as Hamas's relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood. For a few foreign nationals, I am not sure the reasoning.
The Rafah crossing looked pretty intact in the videos showing the aid convoys going through. We've also seen lots of videos of people waiting on the other side to exit.
Indeed Israel did announce a blockage and/or siege of Gaza. That said they can only blockade areas they control which does not include Egypt. I think they are extremely unlikely to attack aid convoys directly though they may take indirect action against them (such as attacking the roads). Most likely this is done by mutual agreement of the involved parties but this is me speculating.
I honestly don’t know.
With regard to the blockade it only ended once Biden told Netanyahu he had to stop it. We can keep talking about this but all articles say the same thing.
Apparently there is now Israeli checks of all goods on trucks entering via Egypt. It may be a new development but they are now there on the Egyptian side of the border.
- Why does Palestines are restricted from using their own water?
- Why does Israely military rules apply on Palestine?
- How does Palestinian citizens are responsible for the failure of Israely government of precise and targeted attack?
- Why does Israely government including the prime minister dehumanising the Palestinian citizens reminding of exact strategy of Hitlar?
- Why does Israely government not interested in getting their citizens back and take that opportunity for a war ?
Being pushed to the corner and that is a licence to do that horrible things is a dangerous argument, similar argument is used by Hamas. Similar argument was raised by Hitler and he convinced significant part of German population that Jews are evil, and they need to be eliminated for the safety of Germany.
Such arguments bring humanity back to stone age.
- It is true that some Palestinians in the west bank are treated very badly including taking over their water wells. There's a long story or a short story there. We have a right wing government in Israel that supports right wing settlers in the west bank and is trying to kill any hope of peace with Palestinians.
- Israel occupied the west bank from Jordan in 1967. The status of that land was never settled and therefore it is still considered (by Israel and the world) to be an occupied territory and is under military rule. So that's why this area is under military rule. This is international law btw. In the various peace agreements nobody wants this piece of and back. Israel did not annex it. And there's been no agreement with anyone (e.g. Palestinians) about it.
- I think we're talking Gaza again. Are you asking why are Palestinians in Gaza responsible for Israel's failure to protect its citizens from them? I'm not sure how to address this seriously.
- This isn't an excuse but everyone in Israel is in shock/PTSD at the moment. It's a small place and everyone is personally impacted. Calling Hamas sub-human isn't right. They're very human in the worst possible way. Somehow I don't think the analogy between the Jewish people in Europe and Hamas really holds though. I don't recall the Jewish people going around with RPGs and assault rifles and butchering Europeans.
- Hamas is never going to return those hostages and the price would be unacceptable. Israel also has to be concerned about the next round of attacks and hostages. Some of Hamas's leadership today are people that were exchanged for a single Israeli hostage, Gilad Shalit, who was exchanged for 1000 Palestinians, many of which were in jail for killing Israelis. There is no scenario here unfortunately where Israel can get security and the return of the hostages. If there was there wouldn't be a war right now.
And yeah, these recent events aren't exactly a win for humanity.
Or is starving everyone to death so that there won't be any vengeance is the strategy?
When two neighbours, who genuinely believe that their neighbour will kill them if they get a chance, peace is hard and time consuming task, especially when they have wounds that will take decades to heal.
The least human thing to do there is to stop causing more wounds, as UN secretary general said, Oct 7 wasn't happened from the vaccuum.
What the UN secretary general said isn't helping because it's excusing the Oct 7 attack which is inexcusable. Nothing ever happens in a vacuum. Israel's blockage of Gaza hasn't happened in a vacuum either. Should we trace back the conflict all the way to prehistoric times?
I don't think Israel is going to starve all Gazans to death. It's also not going to kill every single Hamas member. But yes, it will leave another layer of residue on top of this endless conflict.
If Israel stopped now the Hamas would celebrate it's victory, hold on to the hostages forever, or kill them and hold on to their bodies, and Hezbollah would be emboldened to do a repeat performance of this from the North (what exactly is the reason for Lebanese Shea or for Iran to fight Israel btw? Did Israel also steal their lands?). At least that's what this looks like to an Israeli.
I'm just watching this from the sidelines like everyone, how exactly do we stop causing more wounds?
By focusing on that which can be influenced which is usually limited to your own side. Go back to the Oslo accords, enable a UN peacekeeping mission (with teeth) and abandon any territory settled. That should be a good start. Not that I even dream of the hardliners on either side thinking that is acceptable.
UN peacekeeping is bullshit. What country is going to trust the UN to guarantee it's security. There is UN peacekeeping in Lebanon where attacks against Israel are and were coming from, they do zilch. The history of UN peacekeepers in the region is that at any hint of violence they move away.
On the Israeli side nobody will trust the Palestinians over anything. There's also a minority that believes the entire land belongs to Israel and screw the Palestinians. On the Palestinian side (IMO) there's a majority that is unwilling to take any settlement other than all the Jews should leave the middle east. There's fractures and nobody that represents all of them that can agree and/or enforce any agreement. So here we are.
Not really. The territory abandoned was systematically kept down to the point where any kind of improvement was destroyed again. And much more is being destroyed right now. What do you think all these bombings will do short of just creating the next 20 years of personnel supply for Hamas?
> Abandoned the territory settled?
No, it wasn't just abandoned. The houses that were there were gone and the houses that were built were demolished. So the land was barren. That's not giving the other party a chance, that's the kind of scorched earth tactics that make things worse.
> Imagine if Hamas controlled both Gaza and the West Bank? Israel would be destroyed.
Yes, Hamas is a problem, we are in agreement on that. But so is the Israeli government, the problem is to get them both to back down from their violence-begets-more-violence cycle. And it looks like things are going to get a lot worse rather than better. So you can expect many more Israeli lives to be lost as well as many more Palestinian lives.
> UN peacekeeping is bullshit. What country is going to trust the UN to guarantee it's security. There is UN peacekeeping in Lebanon where attacks against Israel are and were coming from, they do zilch. The history of UN peacekeepers in the region is that at any hint of violence they move away.
I have had family members in Unifil deployments and that's not what I hear. Both sides criticize the UN peacekeepers as being on the side of their enemy, that's usually a good sign.
> On the Israeli side nobody will trust the Palestinians over anything.
Makes you wonder why there isn't a solution possible. But: with the dubious ways in which Hamas was financed there may be enough blame to go around for everybody.
> There's also a minority that believes the entire land belongs to Israel and screw the Palestinians.
Unfortunately that minority has a disproportionate effect on Israeli politics. It should be obvious that this is one of the root causes of this ongoing conflict.
> On the Palestinian side (IMO) there's a majority that is unwilling to take any settlement other than all the Jews should leave the middle east. There's fractures and nobody that represents all of them that can agree and/or enforce any agreement. So here we are.
I'm missing the proxy war that the Arab world has been fighting against Israel using the Palestinians in just as much a cynical way as the right wing in Israel has been using them to keep the conflict alive as much as possible.
And yes, the settlements were razed. The land was not barren. The Palestinians had their destiny in their own hands.
When parties are in principle willing peace is hard enough but when hardliners on both sides use each and every opportunity to deepen the conflict peace is as good as impossible.
I'm not really sure what you're asking for here. The IDF isn't there yet, so they don't know numbers killed. The Palestinians do, however Israel and the US don't believe their numbers.
...so... what is it that you expect to receive?
Yes, Gaza MoH publishes the stats: https://t.me/s/MOHMediaGaza (see the numbers in the map)
Which clearly demonstrates that the focus is on the northern parts of Gaza.
That requires amazing precision and dedication, bombs are designed for mass killing. Yet even the inflated numbers show less than 1 casualty per bombing. Those numbers don't separate the number of actual combatants that were killed (as opposed to civilians).
I'm not for bombing in general, I think it's a terrible weapon. But the ground invasion will probably kill a lot more civilians as it's harder to fight in narrow streets. Stray bullets and shelling kill a lot of innocent bystanders.
Overall, Israel doesn't have a choice here. The Hamas is still holding civilian hostages. It is still firing missiles on civilian Israeli cities. It is the reason this is happening.
I'm sorry for the Palestinian people but they will probably be better off without the Hamas.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/why-is-israel-atta...
This is just unsourced lie.
There are thousands of victims in the south. 9/11 was a mild attack by your judgement.
You're giving numbers from Telegram which isn't exactly a reliable source either.
I'm not a fan of the bombings. Every alternative seems worse though. It seems that far more people will die on a widespread ground invasion. A ceasefire is a ridiculous option, there are kidnapped hostages (children and elderly) still held by the Hamas. The Hamas is still firing rockets at civilians on a daily basis.
What would you do in this situation if you were the Israeli government?
They murdered and kidnapped children. They are fanatics who won't take anything less than the entire country you live in. They hide behind civilians and literally placed their headquarters under a hospital.
Every option sucks and it's going to get MUCH worse.
Your math is off:
9/11 = 2996 dead civilians israel attack = ~1000 dead civilians
So it's about 1/3 of 9/11 as far as dead people go. Extrapolating to the whole population would just make Gaza numbers even more horrible than the ones in Israel, because of the lower total population in Gaza.
Anyway, my point was that attacks in the south are not mild. They have more victims than the initial attack on Israel itself.
Stop blocking humanitarian aid, ceasefire and prisoner swap/release, as always. Then some political solution involving UN peacekeaping mission, or something. It's been done in many places already. It kinda needs trustworthy figures on both sides and a lot of effort at reconciliation on both sides.
Destroying Gaza, severely damaging the west bank economy by heavy restrictions associated with a prolonged war, making people there even more frustrated with PA than they already are, just doesn't seem like it will lead to anything good for regular Israelis.
The math isn't mine, it's about the size of the attack scaled to the population size. It's 1,300+ dead and it's adjusted to the size of the population. Since the country is small everyone in Israel knows someone who was there. That's the scale of the attack.
> Anyway, my point was that attacks in the south are not mild. They have more victims than the initial attack on Israel itself.
No. You're counting combatants, victims of Hamas and equivocating bombing with cold blood murder. All are false. You're also trusting Hamas, an organization who had a representative on the BBC claiming that they didn't kill any civilians...
* Hamas doesn't mention how many of the dead are actual operatives or were around such operatives. I'm sure that if they do those calculations Israel will come out on top. Israel is subject to intentional law, right now there's a Hauge court investigator in Israel verifying that records are kept and tracking facts. Every bombing must have actionable intel associated with it for proof in court if it is deemed a crime.
* Murder in person is a completely different situation from bombing. There's no comparison. A stray bullet might hit a civilian but the vast majority of the 1,300 dead on October 7th were civilians. This is an organization that sent suicide bombers into busses and restaurants. That is explicit and intentional targeting of civilians which is a crime against humanity. Israel is actually liable in court if it could be proven that it threw a bomb where it shouldn't go.
They literally mutilated bodies, there's a video of a Hamas terrorist just chopping off a guys head with a shovel. They are insane...
> Anyway, my point was that attacks in the south are not mild. They have more victims than the initial attack on Israel itself.
Again. Israel would be 100% liable and would lose US support if it was indeed bombing invalid targets. We can't see the docs but I'm sure the US is reviewing everything as they want to keep their relations in the region.
As proof look at the Hospital bombing. Israel was able to show multiple different evidence that it was not it. It was able to show that over 400 misfires of missiles happened in Gaza. A lot of these "bombings" might be due to such misfires of missiles intended to land in Israel. After all, the Islamic Jihad placed the missiles right next to a Hospital then blamed Israel...
> Stop blocking humanitarian aid,
Israel allowed humanitarian aid and has done so a few days back. I suggest keeping up.
> ceasefire and prisoner swap/release, as always.
No.
A few years ago there was one kidnapped soldier. The Hamas demanded 1,000 prisoners a lot of which had blood on their hands. Israel relented and released them with a promise that they will not attack.
The vast majority of them took part of October 7th attacks. They learned. They kidnapped hundreds of people. They used ceasefire times to dig deeper tunnels and get more weapons.
These people negotiate only for the purpose of coming back with stronger forces. They have no intention whatsoever for peace or co-existance. Their charter explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel. They don't care about peaceful co-existence or the lives of their own people. All negotiation is just a ploy with these people.
> Then some political solution involving UN peacekeaping mission, or something.
Sure. After the Hamas is completely destroyed. It is an organization that cannot exist. It destroyed the Oslo accord and has done tremendous damage to the Palestinian people as well as Israel.
> It kinda needs trustworthy figures on both sides and a lot of effort at reconciliation on both sides.
You need to understand that it is an evil organization that executes LGBT people. Considers wife beating to be normal marriage. Educates its children that murdering Jews will get them to heaven.
Benjamin Netanyahu is a lying a*hole. But they are at a different level of corrupt, murderous, fanatic lunatics. There can never be anything as long as they exist. They need to stand trial for crimes against humanity and spend the rest of their lives in prison. Don't use nonsense like "both sides". Then some political solution involving UN peacekeaping mission, or something. It's been done in many places already. It kinda needs trustworthy figures on both sides and a lot of effort at reconciliation on both sides.
> Destroying Gaza
Gaza isn't destroyed. Some neighborhoods. Sure. Specifically the "rich" areas where the Hamas honchos live off the money they stole from the poor Gaza residence.
Unfortunately, some destruction is inevitable in war. This is a war. There are kidnapped people and an organization intent on destroying Israel. The goal of the war isn't to destroy Gaza. It's to destroy the Hamas.
> severely damaging the west bank economy by heavy restrictions associated with a prolonged war
The war is damaging to Israel too. It wants it over quickly. Obviously the Hamas will never surrender so it will take a while. That's the only option as explained above.
> making people there even more frustrated with PA than they already are
The PA has nothing to do with Gaza right now.
> just doesn't seem like it will lead to anything good for regular Israelis.
In the short term: bringing back the kidnapped children is something good. Bringing down the Hamas is something good. Stopping missiles that are fired daily (even today) on Israeli cities is something good.
In the long run ending the Hamas might finally open a path to a Palestinian state. That would be a great thing for everyone involved (Israelis too). The Hamas is the main reason the Oslo accord fell apart. I'm not sure how this would work but I'm hopeful in that regard.
As for Al-Ahli bombing, I don't trust IDF on that one. Too much mis-direction early on. Like showing video from AJ arabic (which I managed to still capture in FullHD via youtube livestream, and scroll back to various times prior to the event and see wider context, geolocate, identify camera direction, etc., so when IDF showed their map with rocket paths + AJ video, I knew they're not serious, and "proof" is just propaganda in this instance) NYT a few days later came to the same conclusion as to IDF claims about AJ video. So that's just inconclusive, can be either way to me as who did it, atm.
As for my argument around Gaza destruction, that's refering to the final state (not the current one). If Hamas destruction is the goal, Israel will have to plow through the entire strip for that to happen. North is pretty much destroyed already, and IDF didn't really enter the city, yet in any meaningful ways. IDF will also likely want to destroy the tunnels, which is likely to cause massive destruction to the city, unless they'll use some method that will preserve the city.
> As for Al-Ahli bombing, I don't trust IDF on that one.
The IDF provided multiple different sources one of which were obtained by al-jazeera. It included recorded calls, missile and bombing information. Pictures from the ground that showed the impact. This was then reviewed by both foreign press (not just NYT, also CNN and other sources) and by the USAs defense department. All concluded that Israel told the truth.
Israeli bombs are accurate. Israel would have no motivation to bomb a hospital and doesn't bomb a hospital where it KNOWS the Hamas is headquartered.
The fact that you explicitly still choose not to believe the facts shows that you made that deep choice. I suggest you re-evaluate that.
Yes. Israeli settlements are terrible. Israel did do a lot of bad things in the past too. But there are no settlements in Gaza. In this particular point in time Israel isn't perfect, but you shouldn't let past biases dictate the current situation.
> As for my argument around Gaza destruction, that's refering to the final state (not the current one).
So besides judging Israel in general, you also judge it for crimes it will commit in the future?
Are you reading what you're saying???
Not a single word included anything against how terrible the Hamas really is. How it places its own people in danger, how it treats its own civilians in times of "peace". Nothing?
Israel did and probably will do bad things. Blaming it for stuff it didn't do damages the cause of protecting the Palestinian people. Facts matter, it's a fact that the Hamas is a racist, murderous organization. The IDF has its faults, but it is ultimately accountable for its actions and usually does provide well documented information that complies with international law.
This smells odd to me.
But a quick search found https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/hamas-preventing-gaza-r...
Reuters doesn't mention it but it did mention that the Hamas explicitly told residents to stay home: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-tells-gaza-r...