Let the problem fester for 70 years until Israel gets tired of their shit and “solves” the problem their own way. Which is how we got here.
See this is the kind of thing you only ever hear from the “stronger” party in the situation, when their “solution” is some kind of rampant injustice.
Like if the US lost patience with Israel’s current government, and got a coalition together, landed UN troops in the West Bank with the support of the whole rest of the world to deport all the settlers back inside the 1993 borders (summarily executing any of them that tried to resist the deportation, and just leaving them dead in the street), and hauled away Netanyahu and half his cabinet to the Hague to stand trial (alongside, yes, Hamas leadership who’s guilty of much more numerically minor atrocities), you would never accept that that’s justified because they’re “solving the problem.” Even though that’s a lot milder and more measured than what Israel is currently doing to “solve” – i.e. just carpet-bombing the country and causing a man-made catastrophe of famine destruction that’s killing innocent people on an industrial scale.
Any violence Hamas has done to innocent Israelis, the IDF has done to innocent Palestinians ten times over.
Is that before or after war was declared? I would expect peacetime and wartime numbers to be different, and separated.
But, hey, I’ve already acknowledged that it’s a shitty solution, and we’re a couple of intelligent people, so instead of “finding some people” for this solution, which is what we’ve been doing for the past 70 years, let’s just talk about what the solution should be. What’s really the solution here?
Peace talks? How many are we up to now? I’ve lost count.
Getting rid of Hamas? How do we do that? Why isn’t Palestine themselves capable of getting rid of Hamas? After all, they claim to be the owners of the Gaza Strip, so what the fuck are they doing about it? It’s been 70 years. How long do we have to wait?
What else? You’ve been talking about this “realistic path for peace”, right? What’s that path look like?
Honestly, in my mind, it has to start with the US stopping providing cover for Israel at the UN. I don’t think anyone would say that Hamas should be able to kill innocent people and anyone should let it slide – so when Israel kills innocent people or breaks international law in some other way, it shouldn’t just be let to slide either. Let the UN enact actual solutions, then – sanctions, military action, legal action against leaders who commit war crimes. Both sides are killing innocents, though not in equal numbers. One, that has to stop, and then two, we have to try to address the root causes that are leading to the killing, and come up with something that is livable.
Ben-Gurion actually touched on this exact point, as far as root causes:
"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.
“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”
See this is the kind of thing you only ever hear from the “stronger” party in the situation, when their “solution” is some kind of rampant injustice.
Unfortunately, in matters of war, the one with the stronger army wins.
you would never accept that that’s justified because they’re “solving the problem.”
Because that sort of “justice” is only half of the problem. The other half, the harder half, is nation-building, solving for the power vacuums they just created, and making sure the peace is maintained. This is the part that the US keeps screwing up, because elections are a thing and people don’t have the patience for problems that take a decade+ to solve.
Honestly, in my mind, it has to start with the US stopping providing cover for Israel at the UN. I don’t think anyone would say that Hamas should be able to kill innocent people and anyone should let it slide – so when Israel kills innocent people or breaks international law in some other way, it shouldn’t just be let to slide either. Let the UN enact actual solutions, then – sanctions, military action, legal action against leaders who commit war crimes. Both sides are killing innocents, though not in equal numbers. One, that has to stop,
I think the problem is that they’ve been doing this sort of thing for so long that it has fatigued the world in general. The fact that Israel declared war on Gaza is new, which is why there’s a lot of protests and attention, but all of the conflict before that has been same repetitive violence for decades. Palestine even had a chance with the Oslo Accords, but Hamas fucked that up soon after.
The UN is not exactly the bastion of justice, either, especially when the usual powers hold veto power (the US included/especially).
"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.
“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”
Which is precisely the kind of ancient hatred I’m against here. Israel is a county, and Palestinians need to accept that. The sooner they do that, the sooner the rest of the world would accept Palestine as a country. (One country, not this ridiculous two sets of landmasses. I’ll even accept two countries there.) Yeah, I know, they used to be bigger before the formation of Israel, but that identity doesn’t need to serve as their identity as a people. Hamas has does more harm for the public image of Palestine than anything else, even as a minority of the population. This is why even small elements of terrorism needs to be squashed, by the host country or by other countries as necessary, as soon as they form.
I mean, if we really want to point at the root cause here, it’s Jerusalem. Arabs had it, then they didn’t, then they did, crusade after crusade after crusade to take over Jerusalem from the Jews, then the Muslims, then the Jews again. Hell, I don’t even care if Israel or Palestine or the old-pre-1947 version of Palestine is owned by the Jews, Muslims, Palestinians, Christians, Jedis, Pastafarians, Satanists, or whoever. I just care that Israel is the latest to hold it, they’ve held it for decades, and they have a fairly stable government and culture.
If the religious over there are going to continue to believe that this holy place needs to be held by whatever culture doesn’t currently hold it, then there is absolutely no hope for them. Religion has a bad habit of clinging to ancient hatred for millennia, as long as it’s still written down, and as long as people still recite it. They will never heal because “our God is not theirs”.
See this is the kind of thing you only ever hear from the “stronger” party in the situation, when their “solution” is some kind of rampant injustice.
Like if the US lost patience with Israel’s current government, and got a coalition together, landed UN troops in the West Bank with the support of the whole rest of the world to deport all the settlers back inside the 1993 borders (summarily executing any of them that tried to resist the deportation, and just leaving them dead in the street), and hauled away Netanyahu and half his cabinet to the Hague to stand trial (alongside, yes, Hamas leadership who’s guilty of much more numerically minor atrocities), you would never accept that that’s justified because they’re “solving the problem.” Even though that’s a lot milder and more measured than what Israel is currently doing to “solve” – i.e. just carpet-bombing the country and causing a man-made catastrophe of famine destruction that’s killing innocent people on an industrial scale.
This is a really good question. Here’s a comparison showing injuries alongside deaths, here’s a comprehensive breakdown of deaths up until the beginning of the current “war,” and here’s a breakdown for the current conflict itself.
Honestly, in my mind, it has to start with the US stopping providing cover for Israel at the UN. I don’t think anyone would say that Hamas should be able to kill innocent people and anyone should let it slide – so when Israel kills innocent people or breaks international law in some other way, it shouldn’t just be let to slide either. Let the UN enact actual solutions, then – sanctions, military action, legal action against leaders who commit war crimes. Both sides are killing innocents, though not in equal numbers. One, that has to stop, and then two, we have to try to address the root causes that are leading to the killing, and come up with something that is livable.
Ben-Gurion actually touched on this exact point, as far as root causes:
"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.
“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”
Unfortunately, in matters of war, the one with the stronger army wins.
Because that sort of “justice” is only half of the problem. The other half, the harder half, is nation-building, solving for the power vacuums they just created, and making sure the peace is maintained. This is the part that the US keeps screwing up, because elections are a thing and people don’t have the patience for problems that take a decade+ to solve.
I think the problem is that they’ve been doing this sort of thing for so long that it has fatigued the world in general. The fact that Israel declared war on Gaza is new, which is why there’s a lot of protests and attention, but all of the conflict before that has been same repetitive violence for decades. Palestine even had a chance with the Oslo Accords, but Hamas fucked that up soon after.
The UN is not exactly the bastion of justice, either, especially when the usual powers hold veto power (the US included/especially).
Which is precisely the kind of ancient hatred I’m against here. Israel is a county, and Palestinians need to accept that. The sooner they do that, the sooner the rest of the world would accept Palestine as a country. (One country, not this ridiculous two sets of landmasses. I’ll even accept two countries there.) Yeah, I know, they used to be bigger before the formation of Israel, but that identity doesn’t need to serve as their identity as a people. Hamas has does more harm for the public image of Palestine than anything else, even as a minority of the population. This is why even small elements of terrorism needs to be squashed, by the host country or by other countries as necessary, as soon as they form.
I mean, if we really want to point at the root cause here, it’s Jerusalem. Arabs had it, then they didn’t, then they did, crusade after crusade after crusade to take over Jerusalem from the Jews, then the Muslims, then the Jews again. Hell, I don’t even care if Israel or Palestine or the old-pre-1947 version of Palestine is owned by the Jews, Muslims, Palestinians, Christians, Jedis, Pastafarians, Satanists, or whoever. I just care that Israel is the latest to hold it, they’ve held it for decades, and they have a fairly stable government and culture.
If the religious over there are going to continue to believe that this holy place needs to be held by whatever culture doesn’t currently hold it, then there is absolutely no hope for them. Religion has a bad habit of clinging to ancient hatred for millennia, as long as it’s still written down, and as long as people still recite it. They will never heal because “our God is not theirs”.