If they don't destroy Hamas now, then a war will happen again in another 10 years. At which point 10s of thousands of palestinians will needlessly die, again. The only resolution to all of this, will happen when Hamas is completely disarmed and out of power.
You can criticize how Israel goes about achieving that goal. But that goal is the only one that gets to a real, permanent peace.
1) As long as Israel treats Palestinians the way they current do, there will always be another Hamas. That or completely remove Palestinians from the area, which seems to be the current goal. So no, completely destroying hamas is not the only way to get to a real permanent peace.
2) How Israel is going about things is the exact issue at hand. You can't just hand wave it away.
3) Let's say for the sake of argument destroying Hamas IS the only way to achieve long lasting peace, how much death and destruction does it justify? 10% of the population? 20%? 50%?. So again just because it's an armed conflict, doesn't mean anything goes.
Eh, Trump's peace deal isn't great for Palestinians. But it gives them peace and a path to more peace in the future, and paths where considering options for resistance other than terrorism may flourish.
> Let's say for the sake of argument destroying Hamas IS the only way to achieve long lasting peace, how much death and destruction does it justify? 10% of the population?
Yikes. Based on precedent, I don't think countries have typically put an upper bound on this figure. I think a better question might be what's the upper bound on civilian deaths that should not be required to be exceeded if Hamas has to be routed out by force.
Black South Africans weren't de facto surrendering in a militarised conflict.
The ANC resorted to small-scale terrorism [1]. (It didn't work.) If the ANC had launched an October 7th scale attack, not only would it have derailed the international pressure that ended Apartheid, but in the likely ensuing civil war, yes, one side would have probably been forced to unconditionally surrender.
The practical options on the table are war and peace. If you're losing this badly, you take peace. Then you litigate over war crimes, et cetera. Gaza has no seat at the table because there is currently nobody to take the seat, that's what peace gives them. (I'd be shocked if Gazans, in a plebescite, rejected this deal. The only people who win by continuing this are Hamas and Likud.)
Let’s stick to the facts instead of coming up with conclusions out of thin air.
And your understanding is wrong: the ANC gained freedom for South Africans because of its decision to resort to violence. Mandela and the ANC did not make this decision lightly, but it was a decision of last resort. The same applies to other African independence movements.
> Gaza has no seat at the table because there is currently nobody to take the seat, that's what peace gives them.
They have no seat at the table because: a) they saw what a “seat” resulted in (Oslo and then limbo) and b) the response to their democratically gained “seat” was a coup by Fatah backed by the US and Israel.
This is a genuinely ambiguous question--I respect your position. What we can agree to is there were no large-scale terrorist attacks leading up to the negotations that ended Apartheid. (The Boipatong massacre almost did, and that was forty something casualties.)
> the response to their democratically gained “seat” was a coup by Fatah backed by the US and Israel
This is entirely accurate. It's also a fact that Hamas proceeded to never hold an election again. (Which isn't grounds for ignoring them. October 7th is.)
Hamas can't credibly represent Gaza. It continues to call for the destruction of Israel. It's shown a complete lack of concern for its own civilians. And it has no evidence of a popular mandate.
Gazans need a seat at the table. They can only get that through peace.
“Paths other than terrorism” doesn’t mean non violence. It October 7th had been limited to military bases, the hostages IDF soldiers, this would be a very different conflict.
Oh, they'd absolutely be at war. But I don't think they'd have the freedom to collectively punish as they do now. There would also be a credible argument for Hamas remaining in power, possibly armed, after the peace.
The same thing happened when Hamas attacked an IDF post and captured a soldier, Gilad Shalit. There were multiple invasions by Israel, including "Cast Lead" which was described by the UN Fact Finding Mission as "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability."
There are occasional attempts at shooting rockets from west bank. Rocket workshop was found two week ago in Ramallah [1]. The only reason that we don't see 20,000 rockets from west bank like from gaza, it's presence of Israeli army and security services there.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024%E2%80%932025_Palestinia...
Sure. Destroying Hamas doesn't require starving children. Let food in. Keep targeting Hamas.
The only way forward is negotiation.
One, lots of ideas have been destroyed by violence across history. When a nation with an oral tradition of history is exterminated, their ideas quite literally die with them.
Two, it's not a given that Palestinians will be terrorists. Eliminating Hamas gives room for other, better ideas around resistance to rise.
What might those be? What other types of resistance hasn't already been tried and failed there?
Literally everything other than terrorism!
You can fight a resistance without killing kids at a concert. Remember the videos of Ukraine treating its POWs well? Imagine if Hamas had restricted its targets to military assets, released all non-active duty hostages, and then released videos of them being served tea and hummus while Israeli planes pounded above. How different would the narrative be?
When Gilad Shalit was taken hostage Operation Summer Rains followed. That was one soldier. You really think if Hamas took hundreds of soldiers hostage, they wouldn't go bomb Gaza?
Well they could accept that Israel is always going to exist and that the Palestinians should instead have an actual government that is focused on helping the palestinian people as opposed to launching failed attacks that will only cause 10s of thousands of palestinians to die.
If you want a good template, look at Egypt and Jordan. Countries that were previously at war with Israel and made peace and eventually became thriving allies of Israel.
The Egypt/Jordan model, where you accept whatever the current borders are, has worked out quite well for them in comparison to the groups that won't accept this.
Once that happens, well you can look at some of the stuff that was in the Trump plan, where the surrounding Arab states would help setup a coalition government and would invest significant amounts of money into rebuilding Gaza.
Nor would it stop us from boycotting Israel and calling out their genocide.
Yeah thats basically how thing will end up. Because if they dont get rid of Hamas now, they will end up in another war and end up killing 10s of thousands of more Palestinians later. Thats just what would happen.
I mean, people are saying Israel is doing a genocide now right? If thats the case, why wouldn't they just do a genicide again if another October 7th happened? Obviously thats what they would do.
> Nor would it stop us
You don't have to stop doing anything. Just realize that they have a modern military that they are going to continue to use to kill their enemy until that enemy has surrendered or been destroyed. Thats the only way this ends.
The only question is how many people have to die and how much of gaza has to be flattened in order to achieve that outcome. Boycotts aren't going to stop anything. Nor will condemnation. The only thing that would come close is serious military action, but well would you look at that, every major of enemy of Israel is now destroyed, from Syria to Hezbollah to Iran. Military action seems rather unlikely now, given how successful Israel was in obliterating every enemy it has in the area.
So, the people of palestine are left with choice. Accept peace, or watch as Israel keeps killing people until Hamas is gone for good.
> rotting in the Hague jail.
Even if this fantasy land future did come to past, trials don't bring back the dead. If Israel has to kill another 50 thousand people to get rid of Hamas (because a peace deal with rejected), well those 50k genocide victims are still dead. The world's not turning on a dime here. Nobody is coming to save palestine. Boycotts don't stop bombs.
I agree with the last part of this sentiment: boycotts and weapons-sale bans won't stop Israel.
But they will decrease its wealth and power in the long term. That should be something Tel Aviv seeks to avoid. Eliminating Hamas should not require inducing a famine.
If I may ask something about a similar event, how do you think the Rússia vs Ukraine war will end?
Thats much different from a conflict over a tiny area, where one side can quite literally bomb every single building in a matter of weeks.
As for how Ukraine vs Russia ends, well probably there will be a continued grinding down of both sides, continued increasing costs, while the borders don't change at all. And then when Russia wants to stop throwing money and lives into a metaphorical pit, there will be some sort of ceasefire/peace deal where Russia gets to keep all the land it took but the fighting stops. Ukraine isn't going to kick out Russia back to its original borders, and Russia isn't going to have some sudden breakthrough where it takes over Kiev. Its sad that Russia will get to keep its gains, but in war there are few good endings and most bad compromises.
But fortunately, Russia simply doesn't have the capability to flatten its enemy on a timeline measured in weeks, and is just stuck in a slog thats going nowhere.
If things had gone differently at the start of the war with Russia's blizkrieg having succeeded well we'd be having a different conversation now about much worse compromises that would have to be made, but fortunately that didn't end up happening.