How can the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip, involving groups like Hamas and the state of Israel, be approached to reduce violence and improve safety for all parties involved?
What strategies could be considered to address the challenges of urban and underground warfare, the protection of civilians, and the preservation of soldiers' lives, while seeking a path towards peace and stability in the region?
Like any other conflict, for a positive end result there has to be a meeting of the minds on both sides, committed to peace.
So this is going to seem very one sided, but if you look prior to Oct 7, you can't have peace where one side controls everything, has all the resources, and uses them to keep the other population "occupied". That is always going to breed resistance.
Very simply, for peace Israel should pull all the settlements out of the West Bank, pull back 50 miles from Gaza for a number of years, remove all checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza, invest in the development of both areas, rebuild the airport they destroyed, stop and sign definitive peace accords allowing free movement and Right of Return for Palestinians, pay reparations for the destruction of Gaza and the damage to the West Bank (plus many other things that I won't list here), and finally on top of that invest in Palestine's future.
The only good neighbour is a prosperous one.
Except that that's not quite true. Gaza could have continued maintenance of the existing water treatment plant (for example) that was working when Israel pulled out in 2005. Instead, they elected Hamas a year or two later and began firing rockets at Israel.
It's not as simple as you're making it out to be.
> Very simply, for peace Israel should pull all the settlements out of the West Bank, pull back 50 miles from Gaza for a number of years, remove all checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza, invest in the development of both areas, rebuild the airport they destroyed, stop and sign definitive peace accords allowing free movement and Right of Return for Palestinians, pay reparations for the destruction of Gaza and the damage to the West Bank (plus many other things that I won't list here), and finally on top of that invest in Palestine's future.
They pulled out completely, including removing every single settler, in 2005. Rebuilding is important, I agree, but if Gaza is going to run its own government, they need to, I don't know, not elect Hamas as perhaps a first-order approximation to "reasonable discourse."
Israel isn't going anywhere, no matter what hopes and dreams anyone has. That means they need someone to negotiate with, and Hamas ain't it.
In addition, the current government of Israel is garbage and I'm not sure has much interest in a two-state solution at all - but that is a separate (and important!) issue; there have been plenty of years and decades where Israel was committed to a two-state solution, and Gaza... wasn't.
Even if Israel did rebuild the airport, allow freedom of movement and right of return, and all that - what guarantees do you have that Hamas would not then just flood into Israel and partake in the destruction of every Jew? None.
And that, my friend, is the problem. It is complicated. It is not simple. You are not the first person to have suddenly found the 'secret' to this problem. To think you are, or to think that it is immensely simple, is honestly a bit arrogant, but more importantly, it's also incorrect.
The current situation is awful and absolutely terrible; but sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that only Israel is the aggressor, and that suddenly if they pulled out the problem wouldn't exist anymore, is naive at best, and misguided on avaerage.
You talk about those wars, I'll support you. I'll talk about this one
[1] https://www.leefang.com/p/inside-the-pro-israel-information
You writing about Palestine but not other conflicts says more about you than you want to admit. Hybris.
Though in this one, I live in the country oppressing (that being the US), and I'm part of the movement doing the oppressing (that being tech). So there's duty to speak up.
For one thing, Ukraine hadn’t spent the last few decades shooting dozens or hundreds of rocket into Russia every day.
Putin’s war was precipitated by exactly nothing.
Israel’s war was precipitated by the worst terror attack Israel has ever seen, along with hostages taken back to what is clearly an enemy state (from their perspective).
Sure, both are wars. But that’s roughly where the similarities end.
The funny thing is, the illegal occupation and oppression of Palestine and Palestinians is approaching a century, millions have been permanently displaced over generations, and Israel continues to illegally steal land that is internationally recognized as illegally occupied. The only "peace" deals that Israel has ever offered were ones that cemented and legalized their theft of the majority of Palestine's original land.
So, yeah, when you put it that way, the Palestinian cause against the Zionists in Israel is really close to being, if not the most, one of the most outrageous perpetual atrocities of our time.