What It's Like to Build a Startup in Gaza
wired.com
wired.com
I know some Gazans like elsewhere in the Arab world, but I have never asked them what internet connectivity is like in the Strip. Things are so bad with infrastructure stability, I could not believe they had functioning internet during routine bombardment and military operations, especially enough for startups.
Very interesting article, but I have one pet peeve. The word is halas, it is routinely translated khalas or 5alas (from خلاص). I have studied Arabic now approaching ten years, and I have never seen this mistake before.
What is funny is that, when mocking expats and foreigners trying to integrate culturally and linguistically in Arab cities (I was a target of this of course), this is like always the first word (then maashi, ok, then in shaa allah, God willing) every expat who spends time in the MENA region sprinkles into their speech. Almost always is it used in the incorrect context, with moronically extreme overuse.
The journalist could have easily Googled this: halas tells you nothing on Google, while the first result for me for khalas is Yahoo Answers, where someone asks how to use that word.
As the Wikipedia page mentions some IE languages also have this sound, but in this case it is generally transliterated as "ch", not "kh", e.g. Loch Ness, which adds to the confusion.
Because educated people like them, who want to live a normal life and build a career are the ones who can make a change. Its sad that so many people have to suffer because of a smaller number of religious fanatics that launch rockets from hospitals, dig tunnels into Israel, and are even against peace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Palestinian_militancy_camp...
These people are the kind people who can change that. I really hope these guys succeed in their projects!
The whole population of Gaza does not have to suffer. That is a conscious decision made by Israel's political and military leaders.
You can change that. Educated people like you are the way to solve this conflict. Don't wait for the people of Gaza to "change first".
How would you handle neighbors from a densely populated village throwing rockets into your backyard?
If we judge from history, what they need now is some sort of civil war.
A civil war is the absolute worst thing that can happen now as that will only bring unimaginable misery and horror to those who are already suffering on all sides of this conflict. Those who stand to profit the most, both politically and economically, will stand clear while shouting the loudest as usual while the most vulnerable and least inclined to commit violence will get caught in the fire.
On the other hand, is there any other realistic scenario where Hamas is replaced by a peaceful party? Or even Hamas being transformed into a peaceful party ? I'd love to hear a realistic one.
Yes: the casualties mount until unconditional surrender becomes their best option.
No, that was not supposed to be a pleasant statement to read.
Most likely answer is a big mess, other militant groups and tribes(hamulut) fighting for control. kind like a civil war.And than who ever wins, you got a new terrorist organization. Hopefully we get one that is willing to work with Israel. But we might not.
But a civil war with the purpose of peace, by peaceful citizens ? Maybe that'll work.
https://www.google.com/search?q=israeli+borders+1948&source=...
When I went to university, I remember meeting a guy from Gaza at a house party. At first, it was a bit of shock, because all the sudden this very distant place, which had spawned countless debates in my government and international politics classes, stopped being quite so far and became very real. I imagine I asked all the typical questions for a foreigner, particularly one informed by US media outlets. However, like this article, the most interesting thing was talking about every day life. He and I traded stories from our high school days, going to parties, first concerts, dating. Reading this now, it things look things have gotten worse, but I will never forget that realization that all over the world, people are just people.
Good luck to these guys. Grinding in a startup isn't easy and I can't imagine doing it in a war zone helps.
Of course, any emanating signal strong enough may attract fire as well, so local communication may be limited to mesh networks similar to what's being used now during the Hong Kong protests.
I urge technologists who are concerned about this humanitarian crisis to look at a map of the area in question and research propaganda and global geopolitics in general.
The article states that Israeli initiated a blockade of Gaza when Hamas won the election and that building materials and people are unable to enter or leave Gaza as a result. This is an incorrect statement because Israel does not surround Gaza, rather its border to the West is with Egypt which also closed their border, the Rafah Junction. In fact, the current President of Egypt, Sisi really hates Hamas (Hamas is the Gaza branch of The Muslim Brotherhood). The Muslim Brotherhood and other forms of militant Islam are threats of stability to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and other Arab countries. Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia were very supportive of Israel attacking Gaza in the recent conflict. President Sisi worked very hard to close the illegal tunnels between Gaza and Egypt.
The cause of the suffering in Gaza is that Hamas shoots missiles into Israel. Those missiles and other war goods and concrete for making tunnels into Israel were smuggled through underground tunnels between Egypt and Gaza. Thus, the key to the safety of Gazan civilians is the closing of those tunnels and the demilitarization of Gaza/Hamas. Since Hamas took over Gaza in 2006, they have been shooting missiles into Israel, yet neither the US or other members of the International Community had until recently worked with Egypt to close those tunnels.
We all feel terrible that innocent civilians in Gaza are being killed (just as innocent civilians in Germany and Japan were killed in WW II). Ultimately, the people who elected Hamas (just as those Germans who decided to follow Hitler) are ultimately responsible for the deaths of their fellow civilians.
What you fail to mention is that Egypt eliminated over 1,300 illegal tunnels along their border without killing a single civilian. Israel on the other hand, murdered over 1,500 civilians in the process of dismantling the illegal tunnels on their border. This was no accident, it was calculated murder on the part of the Israeli government.
You might be interested in the words of British Colonel Kemp, who was in charge of all British forces in Afghanistan:
"Kemp pointed out that, during the operation, there was approximately one civilian casualty for ever terrorist killed by the IDF, whereas the average in the world is four civilians for every combatant, and that, when taking into consideration Hamas’s use of human shields, this shows how careful the IDF is.
“No army in the world acts with as much discretion and great care as the IDF in order to minimize damage. The US and the UK are careful, but not as much as Israel,” he told the committee." http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Former-British-co...
It needs to be said (and I'm Israeli) that technically, Egypt had a revolution which led to democratic elections, which put the Muslim Brotherhood in power, which led to a military coup, which gave us General Sisi.
"Initiated by a Hamas attack on Israel"
Perhaps I'd take the comment a bit more seriously if you actually knew how to spell the name of the political party you're accusing and didn't create this account 1 hour ago just to reply to an article about Startups in Gaza that 'Hammas' triggered the latest events.
Again, the situation is far more complex. There is no evidence that Hamas leadership was aware of, much less called for the kidnapping. It appears it was a lone cell. It's tragic, no less, but not grounds to trigger a war against an organisation who wasn't aware or responsible, especially not if it leaves over a thousand civilians dead and entire neighborhoods destroyed as collateral damage. Similarly, when a Palestinian boy was brutally beaten, kidnapped and burned alive days after by people unaffiliated with the IDF, there were obviously no grounds for anyone to start a war against the IDF, especially not if it'd leave over a thousand civilians dead.
The aftermath of the kidnapping was important. On the phonecall that one of the kids made to report their kidnapping shots are heard, and that same day the bloody car is found in which the boys died. The Israeli government at that time knew the boys weren't alive, yet staged a campaign to round up members of a political party that they had no evidence to tie to the kidnapping. The kidnapping was used as a carte blanche under the pretense of a rescue operation, while it was obvious from the start there was sadly no rescuing to do. About 400 people were arrested, several houses were demolished and 10 Palestinians were killed in these raids.
Imagine if Hamas went into Israel and arrested 400 people of the Likud party, killing 10 and demolishing homes, after being accused of killing innocent children without any evidence tying them to these crimes. (of course, ignoring the ironic fact that it's well-documented that the IDF did kill roughly 500 Palestinian children this year, like the kids playing football on the beach this summer)
From there it escalated. Now let's look at the backdrop to this event. Hamas and Fatah sought to form a unity government, which was supported by virtually all of the planet including indeed the US, the UN and the EU, China, India, Russia etc. Israel was the only party who opposed it and immediately after announced building of 1500 houses in West Bank settlements, which may I remind you, are illegally occupied territory under international law, a fact that is again quite universally recognized by just about everyone except Israel. Again, imagine two political parties choosing to come together with the support of the entire world, one country opposing who promptly increases settlements in illegally occupied territories of the land governed by these two parties forming a unity government.
This is the context in which such tragic events happen. People don't kidnap others as an extracurricular activity, and so it's doubly myopic to say it were kidnappings happening purely in isolation that triggered this. If I occupy part of your house, control your doorsteps, your electricity, your water, your fridge, oppose your political self-determination and announce to occupy extra parts of your house, and you hit me, and I start a war with you, it's myopic to simply say 'you hitting me triggered this war'. It's simply more complex than that and it does nobody good to take all these shortcuts.
Obviously these settlements as a reaction to a political decision of two parties, and the subsequent raids, arrests, demolishing and killings of one of those parties, with the consequence of thousands of civilians dead, is the way of provocation and escalation, not diplomacy.
Again, it's all much more complex.
But seriously - I have so much to say about what you wrote, but I don't think HN meant for this kind of discussion.
So, back to on topic stuff: is RAILS really dead?
But it is also a political party that participated and won in elections. Whether elections were free or completely closed isn't relevant to basic terminology. Dictatorships have political parties, too. I'm assuming you also wouldn't have called Hezbollah a political party, or the NSDAP, or the CCP? Just because they do shitty things doesn't mean we can't use basic terminology to describe them.
I really respect you withholding comment on anything else for the sake of keeping things on topic. Kudos. I'll make sure to do the same.
The commenter spelled correctly in the GP of the comment where it was wrongly spelled. But you probably knew that...
I tried to not read the rest, so I would be tempted to discuss your claims.
(If Hamas organize quite independent cells, it is hard to not claim responsibility when those cells do what they usually do. Hamas really have a long history of making heroes out of people targeting civilians. You might also note that the ones that did a revenge murder will end up in jail. Then we might comment on the hypocrisy of first shooting (at civilians!) from civilian areas -- then blaming the other side when return fire kills civilians...)
I grew up in Israel during the 2nd intifada and watched the west bank empty itself of the majority of the moderate populace with anyone that could move elsewhere doing so. We are watching the same thing happen more slowly now with the Israeli public. First the moderate Israeli became a minority due to the 2nd intifada and then the more liberal have begun a mass exodus both due to the general environment of hate and ridiculous cost of living and work standards (of all OECD countries they work more hours per year than most [3]). The next 15 years is going to be a very interesting time for Israeli politics.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Israel%E2%80%93Gaza_confl... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_kidnapping_and_murder_of_... 3: http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS
http://news.yahoo.com/hamas-leader--don-t-compare-us-to-isil...
About the examples:
- That airplane might have been different, if Russia didn't have nuclear weapons. Now the Russian economy will only be crushed, instead. (That France might get an exception through when they'd lose a lot of money is another thing. Which you probably know.)
- North Korea is being punished as much as is possible, since that seems to be the only way to get anywhere with evil juntas.
-------
On the subject...
So, you claim the rocket artillery and terror against Israel civilians would stop if the Israelis stopped trying to stop it? (How!? The last peace gestures from Israel were seen as weakness and resulted in many more attacks.)
Or do you think that it is OK to shoot artillery at Je... Israeli civilians... for a few decades?
Absolutely not, it's wrong and ought to be immediately stopped. It's a great question I'm glad you asked, because I fully understand that it's a genuine concern so we have to take it seriously and discuss it. We can't waive it away.
But let's be very clear here, these are the statistics for rocket attacks by Hamas. Please check the link, it's a very simple chart.
http://i.imgur.com/ntFYSsk.png
Israeli civilians died in the last 10 years from rocket attacks: 28 Palestinian children died in 1 month (July 2014): 329 Palestinian civilians who died in 1 month (July 2014): 1525
Just think about that for a second. Then look at Israeli traffic casualties per WEEK, it's five. Yes, five. Every week, more people die in traffic, than civilians died from Hamas rockets in all of 2014 including this summer's bloody conflict.
Just consider that for a moment. This is not a question of merely 'defense'. It's a question of, is it okay to kill hundreds of innocent children, to prevent an annual death toll from happening that barely rivals weekly traffic casualties, when I'm not willing to stop building illegal settlements and not willing to lift illegal blockades or occupations of another land that could achieve the same goals.
Now let me be clear, every single one of those 28 Israeli deaths the past 10 years was one too many. Every single one is a tragedy I wish hadn't happened. But in my opinion it in no way can excuse such disproportionate and grotesque murdering of innocent children on such a scale.
Especially not when Israel has not exhausted all of its options yet. Under international law no country has the right to defend itself against a force that is resisting a decades long illegal occupation (now de facto annexation) of its land. This 'right to defend itself' simply does not exist. Feel free to look up the legal standard that supports it, it's not there. Israel has a right to defend itself, and it can do so by withdrawing from occupied territories, lifting an illegal blockade and engaging in genuine peace talks in support of the right to self determination of the people of Palestine. But it has continuously disrupted such talks, which isn't my opinion, it's the opinion of the entire planet, indeed including the US this last time around, hell including president of Israel Peres stating Netanyahu deliberatedly destroyed the peace deal that had already been negotiated.
Again, if someone illegally occupies part of your house, controls your doors and windows (exit/entry by land, air and water), controls your fridge (the infamous 'Palestinian diet', controls your electricity and water and energy, and announces it will build more settlements, and walks away from peace treaties or sabotages them, this country has NO right to defend itself by international law. Once it reasonably exhausts its diplomatic options (namely the lifting of illegal blockades and occupations and negotations) it has the right to use force as a final measure. You may disagree with the law, but these are the basics facts of international law. These are not controversial facts.
it is not a "human shield" if you shoot anyway.
It's just a dead body.
https://twitter.com/Tolstoved/status/493177973810294784
"Hamas imposed a curfew: anyone walking out in the street was shot.
That way people had to stay in their homes, even if they were about to get bombed.
Hamas held the whole Gazan population as a human shield." — K., graduate student
Another interesting thing to note is that according to the CIA World Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...) Gaza's age structure is:
0-14 years: 43.2% (male 402,848/female 381,155)
15-24 years: 20.6% (male 191,710/female 182,405)
25-54 years: 30.1% (male 280,551/female 266,756)More of your "facts". :-(
The Israelis talked a lot and made videos about "knocks on roofs", calling civilians and about not shooting where there were civilians.
If that is wrong, you need better references than your last ones...
But assume you are right -- maybe, possibly the Israeli side lowered themselves to the Hamas level in some cases.
Come on, tell me you don't have different standards. :-)
Never mind, bad fact errors in two comments.
Enough.
Please don't destroy HN. :-(
http://gazadeaths.com/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/the-un-says-...
My point was you do not even have to trust the UN's estimate that nearly 75% were civilians. You can use logical deduction to come to a number of more than %50 when you consider the number of women and children killed in comparison to the total, any total you find.
Also, note the sex distribution: 671 dead men, 218 women.
And among older people, not of front line age, the sex distribution was much more even.
The media are planned more than the weapons in those conflicts. Note that the Israeli side have an interest in few Palestinian civilian dead, Hamas has the opposite interest...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28666562
Anyway, bye.
The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank attributed the
abductions to the Qawasameh clan which is notorious for
acting against Hamas's policies and any attempts to reach
an entente with Israel.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/qawasmeh-clan-hebron-hamas-leadership-mahmoud-abbas.htmlAGAIN: See my link. Hamas already admitted their cell were responsible.
It was big news in international media. I got the link from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29323163 (I noted this, since it wasn't mentioned much at all in my local Swedish media.)
Now, bye.
This hypocrisy is just ridiculous.
Also, Israel's response resulted in more than 2000 dead. Proportional indeed.
@cyphunk claimed that Hamas did not start the recent conflict and accused Wired for 'narrow interpretation'. According to the FACTS, the recent round of violence in the Gaza strip was triggered by Hamas.
I don't understand.
It is my opinion that all of the parties were complicit in the escalation. It is also my opinion that Israel alone is guilty of heinous war crimes. But I had another point with my comment: The content of the article did not require placing any blame what-so-ever. At best the author placed blame as a means to give Wired's American readership the moral relief they were looking for, something that appears to be a prerequisite for any article or discussion on the PA/IL conflict within the US.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Israel%E2%80%93Gaza_confl... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_kidnapping_and_murder_of_...
You might want to review this exchange and think again about who is contributing to the thread in a reasonable way that respects differing views.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_diplomacy_(Israel)
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-s...
If you mean hanging your political opponents from bridges and executing them in the public square, then yeah, Hamas is "democratically empowered".
And the Hamas charter states its goal is the destruction of the state of Israel, not merely reclaiming land.
Remember Israel kicked Palestineans out of their homes during the 1948 war, simply appopriated their property and didn't allow them to return by passing an absentee landlord law.
That was um - 8 years ago. In the immediate aftermath their actions drew sanctions from the US, EU, UN and Russia, on the entire Palestinian Authority, and they wound up splitting from the unified government and taking over Gaza. That led to the sanctions being lifted against the PA and imposed on Gaza alone. Then they had a civil war with Fatah over control of Gaza (which to be fair was just as much if not more Fatah's initiative) and wound up killing and expelling the rival Fatah government members from Gaza entirely. After this, a blockade was imposed on Gaza by both Israel and Egypt, as Hamas secured its iron grip on Gaza and routinely affirmed its ideological goal to "liberate" Palestine from the Zionists - a completely impractical diplomatic position that harmed the Gaza population enormously for the next decade.
Not that Hamas was too concerned about that. They were getting funding from Islamic states and went to work securing the Gaza strip and consolidating its power. To its credit, Gaza is tribal (the clans are called Hamullas) and it plunged into anarchy in the aftermath of Israeli withdrawal and resettlement of all Israelis from the Gaza strip. You can appreciate the situation preceding these elections by reading some news articles from the time:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/17/international/middleeast/1...
It is in this environment that Hamas, an organization committed to an ideology that it placed above the lives of Israelis and indeed Gazans - came to prominence. Since that election there have been no fair and free elections. I don't think the mark of a democracy is that they have one election and the majority party drive out the rest of the government and maintain an iron grip for the next couple decades. They are closer to the Kim regime in North Korea. Hamas's governancd has been terrible for the Gazans by perpetuating their blockade, and Hamas itself has become almost completely internationally isolated. In this latest war, an unprecedented number of nations including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and UAE have joined the chorus calling for their disarmament.
So I would take issue with the idea that Hamas is somehow a legitimate and good government for the people of Gaza. Before this war, most of them wanted to get rid of Hamas! Having said that, operations like this cause people to support Hamas who they now would elect over Fatah leaders if elections were held today. This itself is sad because as has been shown over and over Hamas perpetuates the suffering of Palestinians. Not just because of international sanctions and nearbcomplete isolation, and not just because of expanding Sunni Sharia which hurts less Islamically religious Palestinians including Christians, etc. but at the root because they put their ideology ahead of human lives. Any ideology in power - whether nazism, communism, or in this case a fanatical belief that "All Palestine is a waqf to Islam until the end of the world" which is in their charter - leads to mass death. After all technically speaking Hitler may have been democratically elected. So we should guard against this.
Having said that, I think Revisionist Zionism is the ideology that empowers the radicals on the Palestinian side, whether religious or not. Not all Zionism but Revisionist zionism, which traces its roots to Jabotinsky but ultimately found expression in such groups as Lehi and Irgun. Menachem Begin was despised by the main leaders of Israel such as Ben Gurion and the entire Labor party. It is interesting to note that at that time Israel was within the "1967 lines" and got even more threats from various Arab countries, that said they shouldn't have a state at all. Besides launching actul military attacks against Israel, many Arab countries also expelled Jews (a sort of Jewish Nakba, the main difference being that Jews had a state that welcomed them, a state which the Arab League nations wanted to destroy without regard to how many people lived in it).
Not many people talk about this but the expelled Jews were able to find a home in Israel and swell its population. In fact most Jews in Israel came to Israel as refugees - whether from the Holocaust in Europe or the expulsion from Arab countries BEFORE 1967. Some went to Israel, others went to the US, China and Western countries. They were able to get asylum and their children have become citizens!
Meanwhile millions of Palestinian refugees do not get the same treatment, even and especially from the Arab League countries that are supposedly championing their "cause" to begin with!
Their actual treatment by these countries is appalling. Did you know that over half of the people considered "Palestinian" live OUTSIDE Israel, te West Bank and Gaza? For GENERATIONS they have lived as refugees with NO citizenship. Think about that - you live in a segregated "refugee camp" and barred (in countries such as Lebanon) from owning property or holding many jobs (doctor, lawyer etc.) Your children born in the land - no matter how many generations - do not get citizenship and spend their lives in the same situation.
This is ACTUAL apartheid and it has been artificially perpetuated by many Arab League countries, while claiming it is for their own good. It's not a joke, the Jordanian govt has consistently said this as a talking point as recently as in the last decade. They refuse to give asylum specifically to Palestinians - even the ones fleeing the civil war in Syria. They simply drive them back over the border (whatever the UN conventions about that may be.
There is an element of realpolitik here that most Western "free Gaza" protestors miss. Arab countries HAVE tried to take in Palestinians but experienced their own problems with the PLO. This idea that Palestinians should have their own state has played out in more theaters than Israel. The Jordanian government had a civil war with the PLO after it annexed the West Bank and it does not want to go back to that dark time again. Kuwait expelled Palestinians because the PLO sided with Saddam in the Gulf war. Lebanon's Hezbollah formed out of a Shiite minority funded by Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran as much against the influx of Sunni Palestinians (the PLO was based IN Lebanon at the time) as the Israeli army's activities in Lebanon. And just as recently as last year, Assad committed genuine war crimes against his Palestinian population living in refugee camps, such as cutting off food and starving tens of thousand of Palestinians in a camp that used to be the largest one in Syria with hundreds of thousands.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/three-years-of-civil-war-in-syr...
So instead of the neatly packaged narrative of "Israel vs Palestinians" look at it as people, governments and ideas. How many millions of people and their generations of children living in Arab countries have to suffer because of the excuse that the policy supports building a Palestinian state in Palestine? Imagine if Jews were told by European nations that they had to live in 21st century ghettos for as many generations as it took until Israel was established. Not even the USSR - a militantly atheistic country - treated them this badly. Palestinian nationalism wasnt even a dominant movement until the PLO, and like all movements to forma state and get power, the PLO had its share of corruption. But millions of Palestinians have to pay the price, not at Israel's hands but other countries as well. Actualy, arguably speaking the Palestinians who live in Israel proper have the same quality of life as in Western countries such as Canada where they have real opportunities (the singer Nasri for example, whose song is currently topping the charts, is of Palestinian descent). And if they get their own state, there are legitimate reasons to worry it won't be very tolerant of Jews, Christians and will most likely be a Sunni Sharia state.
So I guess there is a point to my whole essay that I wound up writing here. Look at people, look at governments and international coalitions and talk about ways those those governments can work together to benefit the people at large, economy, real infrastructure, and protections for minorities. There are no easy solutions but if international programs are put in place, with a realistic roadmap and accountability, and governments each do their part, we can solve these problems brick by brick. Expecting Israel to do it all alone is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Look at the new geopolitical alliances in the Arab and Persian world because of ideological jihadist threats like ISIS, look at te unprecedented will to disarm Hamas, and start there. Let's start helping people.
I guess the main thing I wanted to stress is that singling out Israel perpetuates the problems of Palestinians all around the world. It's perverse how the BDS movement and others expect Israel to magically fix all the problems. Egypt participates in the blockade, and the sanctions against Hamas were done by many other countries besides Israel. At the end of the day one should see how policies of governments affect regular Palestinians, and mot just focus on Israel's governent alone. It's pretty clear that Hamas has been terrible for Gazans, and it's sad that they don't really care. When they lost a lot of their outside funding they agreed to a unity government so they could continue to get paid by the PA. They hardly ever have seriously cosidered working with the rest of the world besides Israel on a roadmap where they disarm in exchange for raising the blockade and $50B in investment to develop Gaza's natural gas and tourism industries. It's not like the other countries werent offering such terms. Hamas is just super focused on retaking ALL the land including Israel, an unrealistic goal but hey, they sterted as a "militant resistant movement" and they had to compete for mindshare as the "authentic" Islamic movement that wouldn't sell out. This doesnt serve the people they "govern" very well.
Just this summer that all came to a head: http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/20887
The Arab world except Qatar pretty much gave up on Hamas - Shiite regimes like Assad have been attacked by them and Sunni regimes like Saudis realized that sunni militants are a bigger threat than Israel. They put the Islamic Brotherhood on a terror list along with ISIS and they were the ones who helped back the military coup in Egypt. Egypt participates in the blockade of Gaza as well.
In short the region should solve the problem not Israel alone. All those BDS movements that single out Israel keep perpetuating the insanity imho.
Those jews from the Arab world and their children compose the majority of the Israeli population now. And as a fun fact, among all the property stolen from those Jews now living in Israel are land areas larger than Israel...
We might go into how all other land losses from the 2nd world war time period are forgotten, except this one. And that it is kept alive by the refusal to integrate the refugee Palestinians by the Arab countries. The Palestinians got their lives destroyed, to keep the hate living. Arguably the Palestinians' allies did worse to them than anything the Israelis ever did to the Palestinians.
The point is, you write simplified propaganda. Please keep that off my HN. :-(
That's not to say what Hamas is doing is right, but keep in mind what they've been through.
This closing of the borders created a minor depression in Israel. Not something you do for fun.
The point is, if you start murdering civilians in an organized fashion it is a bit strange to claim victim status from a much milder response. E.g. when Hamas fired (at civilians!) from civilian areas -- and then complain about the return fire killing civilians!
Please, no simplified propaganda on HN.
>Please, no simplified propaganda on HN.
line. Are you sure that you're a real person?
Democracy means rule by the people through discussion. If the will of the people is to execute those imposing an occupation, then a democracy will facilitate that.
The American colonists assertion of their sovereignty is the textbook example. The British attempted to take over their land through violent force and the colonists responded through violent force.
Please, no simplified propaganda on HN.
There are many parties who are interested in re-igniting the conflict, for example those who sell weaponry. Clearly neither Israelis nor Gazans (talking about general population, like 99.9% of the people) are enjoying the moment.
(I personally wrote many loc in a shelter, to a soundtrack of sirens and explosions — islamists' rockets aren't even targeted at something specific, they just continuously bomb more populated areas in Israel, major cities.)
Seems to me all of Gaza is a reservation, as are the bantustans in the West Bank...
I really don't mean to incite any political conversation here. I enjoy it, but I don't think HN is the right platform for any meaningful discussion, unless it's targeted to be. But this thread is about startups in harsh conditions.
I came across an article a while ago about some Palestinian kids inventing a device to convert plastic waste to petrol. I think it's amazing that amidst a world of hell, they are still trying to apply their minds: http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/12/occupation-cant-stifle-innova...