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Comment by invalidname | Hacker News Reader

Israel is a democracy. It also probably has nuclear weapons and doesn't need US support. However, without US support things would get much uglier.

Unfortunately, your type of thinking led to this. US involvement forced Israel to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza in 2005 and take a hands off stance as Hamas kept building up its base and digging tunnels. Had Israel stopped it back then we wouldn't have had Oct 7th and Palestinians might have taken the Israeli offer for statehood. People often confuse appeasement and peace, they are opposites.

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The problem with this conflict is that it's much more complicated than any simple explanation. There was a time when Netanyahu supported Hamas as a way to divide Palestine, perhaps he should not have done that? And don't even start with the expansion of settlements on West Bank.

Pretty true. But I generally describe it as religious a*holes are crazy.

Israel is actually mostly secular. The deep settlements are very religious in contrast to the rest. Hamas is just a religious suicide cult.

In all fairness, if you are willing to distinguish "most" of Israel and the settlements, you should do the same for "most" Palestinians and Hamas (who seized power after winning the first election).

I very specifically separated Hamas and didn't say Palestinians. I would argue that the biggest victim of Hamas are the Palestinian people.

>US involvement forced Israel to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza in 2005

Ah yes, history started in 2005. Let's talk post-2005 then. This was when Netanyahu, an elected leader of Israel, openly bragged about aiding and building up Hamas, a terrorist organization, in order to weaken the PLO's power. That is of course, until the chickens came home to roost. It would take a certain amount of delusion to claim that this was not the issue, but unoccupying a land unlawfully occupied was the problem.

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