What Israel is doing in Palestine [I Want Justice For Palestine]

@Northwest Do you think Hamas will agree to disarm?

Someone is paying for this. Each of those missiles costs $45,000. Whoever is footing the bill is not going to stop as long as Hamas is willing to serve as their proxy army.

@LeopoldBloom [quote]Do you think Hamas will agree to disarm?[/quote]

What would be their incentive to disarm? Is there a deal on the table that would lift the 70+ year siege over Gaza? allow them to have an airport? Give them the freedom to travel? Give them a citizenship?

[quote]
Someone is paying for this. Each of those missiles costs $45,000. Whoever is footing the bill is not going to stop as long as Hamas is willing to serve as their proxy army.[/quote]

I don't know how much their missiles cost, and neither do you. They are financed by various groups. As long as they are kept in a jail, Hamas will always have an excuse to exist.

It's mind boggling that some people think that keeping 2 Million people in a 140 Sq Mile jail is a feasible long term solution.

@Northwest There is no "70+" year siege. In 2005, Israel forcibly removed every Jewish settler from Gaza and withdrew its military. The blockade was imposed two years later in response to tunnels and rockets. They had an independent country, and decided to continue their quest to obliterate Israel instead of creating a Mediterranean resort. Iran and other outside actors are paying for those missiles while the Hamas leadership lives in luxury in the UAE while the people starve.

If Hamas disarmed, they would have their country. No, not the entire area with zero Jews in it, but they would have Gaza. If Israel disarmed, they would be obliterated.

So what's your solution? Should Israel just lift the blockade and cross their fingers without any assurances that Hamas will cooperate? The Hamas Charter still calls for the death of every Jewish person in the world.

@LeopoldBloom [quote] There is no "70+" year siege. In 2005, Israel forcibly removed every Jewish settler from Gaza and withdrew its military. The blockade was imposed two years later in response to tunnels and rockets. They had an independent country, and decided to continue their quest to obliterate Israel instead of creating a Mediterranean resort. Iran and other outside actors are paying for those missiles while the Hamas leadership lives in luxury in the UAE while the people starve.

If Hamas disarmed, they would have their country. No, not the entire area with zero Jews in it, but they would have Gaza. If Israel disarmed, they would be obliterated.

So what's your solution? Should Israel just lift the blockade and cross their fingers without any assurances that Hamas will cooperate? The Hamas Charter still calls for the death of every Jewish person in the world.[/quote]

You're right. It's actually a 73 year siege. In 1948, Palestinians were kicked out of the areas South of Tel Aviv, and their homes confiscated by European Jews. They were also not allowed to go into Egypt, so they ended up in the Gaza strip, which at the time was part of Egypt, in refugee camps. In 1967, it was conquered by Israel. No change of status for the Palestinian refugees as far as economic opportunities or freedom to move.

They were then, as they are today, stateless people. They were then, as they are today, living in an open air jail.

If you think the blockade was started in 2007, I don't blame you. Seth Klarman, the US Hedge Fund Billionaire, started a number of media organizations, to carefully shape public opinion, in favor of Orthodoxism. This includes The Times of Israel and several other organizations that feed half-truths to the world media.

When I went into Gaza, for the first time, in the late 80s, it was surrounded by walls/barbed wires, there was only one way in and out, and heavy military presence controlled who went in and out.

Not great for publicity shots for the resorts Palestinians were supposed to build in Gaza, to rival the Cote d'Azure. It's the Mediterranean, right? The open sewer dams don't look good on tourist on promotional brochures. But, in 2021, Seth Klarman has people convinced that Gazans blew it by not building luxury resorts.

Here's one more thing Seth Klarman has the world convinced of: the Hamas leadership lives in luxury hotels, outside Gaza while the people suffer. It's how you turn a stay at a hotel, during Hanieyh's first trip to Qatar, bill footed by Qatar, into him living in luxury hotels. And this is how you turn a trip to Turkey to meet with Mahmoud Abbas, into "splitting their time between Qatar and Turkey".

But let's roll the clock back a bit. Hamas flourished through Gazan misery, but it was born out of a misguided Mossad attempt to emasculate the PLO (as the intifada was underway), and that got out of control pretty quick. Kind of like our idiotic efforts to arm bin Laden, so he can fight the Soviets.

There is no military option to end Hamas. The only solution is a political/humanitarian one. It starts by recognizing that the people of Gaza are humans, not an inconvenience. Sadly, the previous US administration, led by Kushner, who has zero experience in diplomacy or being a human being, presented a plan that made Hamas stronger, and re-enforced its message that the world sees Palestinians as disposable.

The Netanyahu temper tantrum achieved absolutely nothing in terms of improving security for Israelis, and removing Hamas as a terrorist threat. Most Israeli political parties agree on this.

New Hope party leader Gideon Sa’ar called the ceasefire “embarrassing,” and lamented that even “with the best intelligence and air force in the world, Netanyahu managed to get from Hamas a ‘ceasefire with no conditions.’”

The IDF succeeded in its tasks, but these were pointless tasks, as they did not resolve anything, and Netanyahu was aware of it.

The Israeli Defense minister, who was in charge of executing military action is called today for a diplomatic solution, and heavily criticizing Netanyahu.

My feelings toward Hamas are no different from my feelings toward the Orthodox Settlers, mostly Americans. The rest of the Palestinians and Israelis, deserve to live in peace, in two states, not in camps.

@Northwest You left out the events preceding Israel's creation. Jews have lived in the area since antiquity. In the late 1800s, when the area was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, European Jews began relocating there and buying property; the Sheik Jarrah neighborhood is one example. In 1948, those Jews were ethnically cleansed by Jordan (and yes, some Palestinians were ethnically cleansed by Israel. The ones who remained are Israeli citizens). The original plan was to turn the area over to Palestinian rule, with Jews as a recognized minority; the Palestinian leadership of the time rejected this. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, was an ally of Hitler. If the Palestinians had accepted the original UN partition, Israel would be much smaller than it is today.

In the ensuing years, around 850,000 Mizrahi Jews were expelled from their homes in the Arab world, and relocated in Israel, which is why 70% of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi. Less than one-half of 1% of Israeli Jews are of American origin.

I agree that this last conflict was not a win for Israel; it wasn't a win for Hamas either except in public relations where now many Western liberals view the situation as evil Zionist colonists oppressing poor indigenous brown people. Meanwhile, the treatment of Palestinian refugees by the surrounding Arab countries is not well known. And all of the Americans crying over how we're "funding genocide" are blissfully unaware of how their taxes are used to pay for the actual Saudi genocide in Yemen. Of course, that's unimportant as no Jews are involved.

And yes, Kushner was an idiot who along with his even stupider father-in-law exacerbated the problem.

@LeopoldBloom [quote]You left out the events preceding Israel's creation.[/quote]

How's that relevant to my comment?

[quote] Jews have lived in the area since antiquity. [/quote]

Yes, supposedly since Abraham left what is today Iraq and migrated. Other groups have also lived in the area since pre-antiquity. The earliest Homo Sapiens remains found on Mount Carmel, Israel, are 1850,000 years old. When Abraham arrived, people were already there. This has no relevance to my comment either, but I am not sure what you meant by your comment.

[quote] In the late 1800s, when the area was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, European Jews began relocating there and buying property; the Sheik Jarrah neighborhood is one example. In 1948, those Jews were ethnically cleansed by Jordan (and yes, some Palestinians were ethnically cleansed by Israel. The ones who remained are Israeli citizens).[/quote]

OK, but again I am not sure what this has to do with my comment. My comments were about Gaza, not East Jerusalem. Ottomans instituted a policy of not allowing Jews to settle in Palestine. Their motivation was not religious, but rather military/political, because they believed Eastern European Jews to be loyal to the Tzar. The Jews who migrated, bought land through third parties, mainly Christian tax collectors, from Lebanon and Syrian, who worked for the Ottomans, and managed to fleece Palestinians out of their property through taxes and fees that forced the Palestinians into servitude.

In 1948, the Jewish owners of the 3 houses in question, fled to West Jerusalem. At the same time, nearly 30,000 Palestinians were expelled by Israel from West Jerusalem and their properties taken by European Jews. Native Jews had homes already.

In 1956, the Jordanian government put some Palestinian families in the 3 houses in question.

In 1967, Israel conquered East Jerusalem. In 1980 Israel annexed East Jerusalem, and the courts decided that these houses are owned by Jews, but the occupants cannot be evicted. These properties are now "owned" by American Orthodox settlers, and evicting tenants is part of their grander plan of emptying Palestine out of its Arab population. It's not really about the 3 houses.

[quote] The original plan was to turn the area over to Palestinian rule, with Jews as a recognized minority;[/quote]

Whose plan? It certainly was the Palestinian plan, or the Jewish plan. Are you talking about England? France?

[quote] the Palestinian leadership of the time rejected this.[/quote]

Both parties rejected it. Ever heard of the bombing of the King David Hotel? The guy who did it later became Israel's Prime Minster.

[quote] The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, was an ally of Hitler. [/quote]

That's propaganda. Al-Husaini wanted Hitler to invade and he would support him, and the prize would be expelling the Jews who arrived post mid 19th century. To Hitler, they were all the same, so Huseinin's plan went nowhere, and there was no Huseini/Hitler alliance.

[quote]If the Palestinians had accepted the original UN partition, Israel would be much smaller than it is today.[/quote]

If that's the case, then why did Israel invade the West Bank, Sinai and the Golan Heights? That was 20 years after Israel gained its independence. This was the plan all along and saying that it was one party's fault for rejecting the partition plan, is not accurate.

[quote]In the ensuing years, around 850,000 Mizrahi Jews were expelled from their homes in the Arab world, and relocated in Israel, which is why 70% of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi. Less than one-half of 1% of Israeli Jews are of American origin.[/quote]

Again, I have to ask, this has nothing to do with Gaza and my comments. Those 800K+ were Sephardi & Mizrahi immigrated to Israel AFTER 1948. The Jews who created Israel came from Europe. Initially most of the Jews came from Yemen, Libya and Iraq. 200K came from Iran, but decades later. The rest from other countries, most from North Africa.

And it's more like 50% of Israeli Jews are Sephardic or Mizrahi. 1% only are American. This is a joke, right? You do realize that the settlers of the West Bank are not counted, right? That's where most of American Jews live.

Perhaps you may not also be familiar with this, but every single person of Jewish extraction (one whose mother is Jewish), can get on a plane, land in Israel and claim instant citizenship. I did not try to claim citizenship, but I could have, when someone who was born in Gaza was condemned to live in a 140Sq Miles open air prisoner, next to 2 million people.

Gaza is what I commented about, and did not want to go back to Adam and Eve.

[quote]I agree that this last conflict was not a win for Israel; it wasn't a win for Hamas either except in public relations where now many Western liberals view the situation as evil Zionist colonists oppressing poor indigenous brown people. Meanwhile, the treatment of Palestinian refugees by the surrounding Arab countries is not well known. And all of the Americans crying over how we're "funding genocide" are blissfully unaware of how their taxes are used to pay for the actual Saudi genocide in Yemen. Of course, that's unimportant as no Jews are involved.[/quote]

I really do not give a fuck about Arab countries. Pointing to what happens to Palestinians in the Arab countries, is the ultimate in What aboutism. The people of Gaza and the West Bank are under Israeli military occupation, and as such, according to the Geneva Convention, Israel is RESPONSIBLE for what happens to them. End of story.

As an aside, we're not funding the Saudi genocide in Yemen. We're getting paid by the Saudi for the weapons they're using to commit genocide in Yemen. To say that liberals don't care is pure propaganda, and plain whataboutism.

The Palestinians initial uprising, demanded that Israel's military pull out of the Al Aqsa Mosque. 11 days, thousands of dead and injured civilians later, and as a condition of the cease fire, Israel's military pulled out of the Al Aqsa mosque. This was what Hamas used as justification to fire its initial salvo.

Netanyahu did not achieve any political/military goals: the head of Al Qassam military is still alive, and the same goes for most of the commanders. Hamas is still in possession of its missiles. Netanyahu should have known that the only way to put an end to it, is a ground war, something the military was not willing to do. The Defense minister, Gantz, said today that the only solution is a diplomatic one, and he's not a western sissy liberal.

@Northwest I brought up Israel's creation because you brought up a 73+ year occupation. So if we're going back that far, why not go back further?

The Sheik Jarrah residents cannot be evicted if they pay rent, which they have failed to do. So they're being evicted under the terms of the legal decision they themselves agreed to. This is separate from other Israeli actions where Palestinian homes are bulldozed and Jewish settlers are installed on Palestinian land. That needs to end, and I'd like to see the US make further military aid contingent on it. The automatic "law of return" for Jews should end, too, other than for legitimate refugees from anti-semitism. But some asshat in Brooklyn who wants to move there because some nonexistent deity promised the land to a mythical figure he claims as his ancestor, should have to wait in line with everyone else.

Israel invaded the West Bank, Sinai, and the Golan Heights in response to massed movement of Arab armies that were preparing to invade. This is a historical fact. As I'm sure you're aware, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt. My understanding of the initial reason for hanging on to the West Bank and Gaza was to use them as a bargaining chip. And here we are, 54 years later.

Gantz is correct, the solution will have to be diplomatic, but it can't just be between Israel, the PA, and Hamas. It will also have to involve Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and the various individuals and Islamist groups that are funding the conflict. It is a regional problem, not a local dispute between Israel and Palestine, and making believe it is will only prolong the conflict.

So what's your solution? Should Israel pull every settler out of the West Bank, lift the Gaza blockade, and hope for the best? If they agree to do that, should Hamas have to make any concessions? President Rivlin has proposed a federation of self-governing cantons, but before that happens, Hamas would have to disarm and agree to peaceful coexistence.

@LeopoldBloom [quote]I brought up Israel's creation because you brought up a 73+ year occupation. So if we're going back that far, why not go back further?[/quote]

I did not pull 73 years out of my ass. 2021 minus 1948 equals 73. The creation of Israel is what I was referring to.

The point I was making, is that the issue of the three houses in Sheikh Jarrah, is not a simple real estate dispute. The "owners" now are American settlers, and this is part of a bigger picture that involves expunging East Jerusalem from its Arab residents, one house at a time, using pseudo legalize, so it would all appear clean.

All the declassified materials from the 1967 war, point to an invasion that was well planned by Israel. Part of that planning was by those who wanted to fulfill what they think is a biblical prophecy. Part by those who thought they can use it as bargaining chip. The latter include Moshe Dayan, Defense Minister in 1967 and overall commander.

Arab countries refused to bargain.

Israel, and the West, were well aware that Nasser's rhetoric was simply rhetoric. His real goal was to make himself the Arab King. For what it's worth, Dayan never thought he could actually take Sinai, and the West Bank. He was under the impression that he could only push Arab troops back a bit, and then sue for peace.

Hamas is what occurs organically when people are denied their basic human rights for 73 years. Should South Africa be denied equality, because the people were left in a state, following decades of apartheid, where they were not going to be able to achieve the perfect state in a short order?

Never mind that. The West Bank should be emptied out of settlers. Settlers are in violation of international law. Plain and simple. Israel is no longer in danger. It has not been in danger for more than 50 years. Hamas should be left up to the Palestinians to deal with, but as we saw from the past couple of weeks, Hamas does not represent a real danger to Israel. Allowing the situation to continue to fester does.

As long as there is a master/slave situation, and there is no other way to describe it, there will never be peace.

@Northwest Israel will never pull the settlers out of the West Bank. They tried that with Gaza, and instead of peace, they ended up with Hamas. It's not possible to negotiate with people whose idea of compromise is killing you. The only way forward is unification, not creating an unviable Palestine in two parts separated by Israel. But that would require both sides to negotiate in good faith and for other countries to butt out. That would include Iran and Syria, not just the US.

The Sheik Jarrah residents agreed to pay rent. The fact that they were even able to participate in a court case shows how different Israel is from the countries that surround it. There is no legal mechanism whatsoever for Jews who were ethnically cleansed from the Arab world to request compensation for their own lost property.

Until Hamas and its benefactors give up their dream of a judenrein Middle East, there will never be peace. In the 1990s, two Israeli generals visited Võ Nguyên Giáp when he was the Vietnamese Minister of Defense. During the visit, Giáp mentioned that he had also been visited by Palestinian leaders, who asked him, since he had managed to kick both the French and the Americans out of Vietnam, how they could kick the Jews out of Israel.

The two generals asked him what he told them. Giáp said his response was, the French went back to France, and the Americans went back to the U.S., but since the Israelis have nowhere else to go, the Palestinians will never get rid of them.

You can rehash the past and bemoan how Israel was created, but ultimately everyone will have to accept that both Israelis and Palestinians have a legitimate claim to the land and neither of them are going anywhere.

@LeopoldBloom [quote] Israel will never pull the settlers out of the West Bank. They tried that with Gaza, and instead of peace, they ended up with Hamas.[/quote]

This is an apples to oranges comparison and it does not establish causality.

[quote] It's not possible to negotiate with people whose idea of compromise is killing you. [/quote]

There's some of that on both sides, but there's also more voices for peace in the West Bank and no common political agenda between the PA and Hamas.

[quote]The only way forward is unification, not creating an unviable Palestine in two parts separated by Israel.[/quote]

As the joke goes, a Jewish Israeli man is flirting with an Israeli Arab woman. He says, what would I get if I gave a flower, she says, we can hold hands, and what would I get if I gave you a bouquet, we can kiss for a while, and what would I get if I gave you a ring, she leans in and whisper in his ear: an Arab Prime Minister.

A single country, is going to be an apartheid country, with one side (Jews) having more rights than the other side (Arabs). It is not workable. Gaza will need at least a generation outside of Hamas's death grip, to start recovering psychologically.

[quote]The Sheik Jarrah residents agreed to pay rent. The fact that they were even able to participate in a court case shows how different Israel is from the countries that surround it. There is no legal mechanism whatsoever for Jews who were ethnically cleansed from the Arab world to request compensation for their own lost property.
[/quote]

Whataboutism does not work, and the assumption that Arab = Muslim = they all look the same to me, is false bigly. There's only one democracy in the Levant, other than Israel and that is Lebanon, a country with zero political power, and with no forced evacuations of Jews.

[quote]Until Hamas and its benefactors give up their dream of a judenrein Middle East, there will never be peace. In the 1990s, two Israeli generals visited Võ Nguyên Giáp when he was the Vietnamese Minister of Defense. During the visit, Giáp mentioned that he had also been visited by Palestinian leaders, who asked him, since he had managed to kick both the French and the Americans out of Vietnam, how they could kick the Jews out of Israel.

The two generals asked him what he told them. Giáp said his response was, the French went back to France, and the Americans went back to the U.S., but since the Israelis have nowhere else to go, the Palestinians will never get rid of them.[/quote]

I see that you're still sourcing exclusively from Seth Klarman's carefully reworked history. This story is fabricated. Nevertheless, yes, the Jews are not going anywhere and the Arabs are not going anywhere either.

[quote]You can rehash the past and bemoan how Israel was created, but ultimately everyone will have to accept that both Israelis and Palestinians have a legitimate claim to the land and neither of them are going anywhere.[/quote]

Most certainly but the propaganda that's allowing Israel's generals to keep feeding the armed fortress mentality, is that Palestinians do not recognize Israel's right to exist, something the PA dropped decades ago.

@Northwest The PA is not Hamas. If Iran and the other Islamist actors turned off the spigot, Hamas would disappear.

Which is why any lasting peace will have to involve all of the countries in the region, not just Israel and the PA as if no one else is involved.

Interestingly, the Jewish birthrate in Israel and the Occupied Territories now exceeds the Palestinian one, even if you include Gaza, which has one of the highest birthrates in the world. It's not certain that unification would make Jews a minority.

@LeopoldBloom

[quote]The PA is not Hamas. [/quote]

You were talking about the West Bank and my response is around the West Bank. The PA is the West Bank and Hamas killed all the PA officials in Gaza a few years ago.

[quote]If Iran and the other Islamist actors turned off the spigot, Hamas would disappear.[/quote]

This is the cornerstone of the Biden Gaza plan. To have reasonable Arab countries, the EU and the US rebuild Gaza. Currently, those other countries are Gaza's lifeline.

[quote]It's not certain that unification would make Jews a minority.[/quote]

Everyone out there seems to think differently. When the Soviet Union allowed Jews to immigrate to Israel, 95% of the immigrants only made a quick stop in Israel, next stop: Silicon Valley. They were replaced with the brainless Orthodox.

That forced Israel to make some modifications, as a whole bunch of non-religious people made it as well, and quite a few of the "single" women, were controlled by Soviet mobsters. Based on my own observation, it turned the Tel Aviv beachfront boulevard, into prostitution central.