We know what happens with peaceful protests, elections, and foreign interference (and more foreign interference), so how can Palestine gain it’s freedom? Any positive ideas are welcome, because this situation is already a humanitarian crisis and is looking bleaker by the day.
Historical references are also valuable in this discussion, like slave revolts or the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, although hopefully in the case of Palestine a peaceful and successful outcome can be achieved, as opposed to some of the historical events above.
Within Israel, the vast majority of people don’t particularly care about any kind of manifest destiny style reclamation of the West Bank or Gaza, and if that were the only issue, I genuinely don’t think there would be a significant problem.
What essentially everyone does care about, however, is repeatedly having rockets lobbed at them. When people feel under threat, reason starts to fall away, people begin dehumanizing the “other”, and you get the massive mess we have today. The fact of the matter is that Israel will never accept any situation where its people are under threat. No matter what you think about what acts are or aren’t justified or your opinion on how various parts of the history played out, none of that changes this basic reality.
Palestine is not going to be able to militarily eradicate Israel. There is precisely zero chance that Israelis allow themselves to be subjected to a second diaspora and they’ll fight to the death to prevent this, and that’s to say nothing of external players like the United States. Again, whether you think this is a good thing or a bad thing, it is a true thing.
On the flip side, Israel is perfectly capable of essentially eradicating the Palestinians, though this would subject it to massive international condemnation that would also have huge economic impacts. You’re already beginning to see whispers of this as the world increasingly sees Israel’s response in Gaza as being excessively harsh. The most they could do is a slow and steady degradation of Palestinian society while encouraging them to “voluntarily” leave, which is arguably what the strategy has essentially been under Likud with settlements and the like.
So, what’s required for a peaceful co-existence? Firstly, you need a mutual acknowledgement from both leaders (and also, a legitimate Palestinian leadership in the first place) that the other side exists and has a right to do so, ie, Palestinians giving up on the idea of eradicating Israel and Israelis giving up on the idea of fully annexing and ethnically cleaning Palestinian lands. This is not a trivial thing. The Israeli far-right, though they’re not dominant, are growing and believe they have a divine right to the West Bank, with the Arabs being seen as little more than animals in the way. The extreme Palestinian side is that all Israelis are essentially foreign invaders and should be forcibly removed or killed. Both of these positions must be completely taken off the table.
Secondly, Israel will not engage unless it is confident that its security will not be threatened, which will in practice mean that Palestinian authorities must be de-militarized beyond what’s necessary for basic local law enforcement. Again, this might seem unfair, and hell, it probably is. But the fact of the matter remains that Israel is the side holding the guns here, so you either play by their rules and try to find some positive outcome, or you flip the table and enjoy the complete loss, but with some moral satisfaction. Similarly, there would probably need to be some kind of border controls for imports that Israeli authorities can inspect for covert weapons shipments, since it’s a known thing that Iran does regularly try to bring weapons into Gaza. Ideally, this would be some kind of bi-national force with Palestinian cooperation.
If you reach these points, then you still have other very big questions to deal with, like precise borders, land swaps, the question of Jerusalem, how to connect Gaza and the West Bank, any right of return for displaced Palestinians both recently and during the Nakba, and plenty of other things I’m sure I’m forgetting about. But ultimately, if you have a Palestinian and Israeli leadership that are actually interested in peace and accept the existence of the other, and both agree to cooperate on matters of security and prioritizing that peace above and past grievances, no matter how legitimate, that gives you a real foundation you can build from.
I wouldn’t get my hopes up though.
What essentially everyone does care about, however, is repeatedly having rockets lobbed at them. When people feel under threat, reason starts to fall away, people begin dehumanizing the “other”, and you get the massive mess we have today. The fact of the matter is that Israel will never accept any situation where its people are under threat.
I get what you mean, but the current situation has continued since even before the rocket attacks. Gaza was blockaded before rocket attacks even became a thing (setting aside the second Intifada because that’s its own thing). What I mean is: Israeli’s feeling under threat is probably a factor, but it’s not the main issue.
and also, a legitimate Palestinian leadership in the first place
True enough, but let’s remember that it’s Israel that engineered a situation where they can claim Palestine has no legitimate leadership. You’re not wrong about the fact, but I just wanted to make the cause clear.
For sure, I’m not at all trying to portray Israel as blameless here, because they are not.
I think the blockade does have some basic level of merit, at least in principle (it can’t really be doubted that Hamas does import weapons and materials with Iranian backing), but it’s critical that those kinds of controls only go as far as they’re needed and no further. However, the Israeli government has never really cared about not going to far, so Palestinians have no real reason to trust that they’re being treated in good faith, violence comes to feel like the only real option, and onwards the mess rolls along.
Along with Palestinians needing to accept that Israel is going to exist in some capacity and that it will not accept any deal that doesn’t ensure its security, Israelis need to accept that if they don’t take every step towards keeping peaceful paths available and fruitful, then people will turn to violent ones. Israel can of course easily win a conflict of violence, but it doesn’t have to be this way
Thanks for the detailed and thought out response. I can’t help but notice that it’s built on a foundation of autocracy and Israeli exceptionalism i.e. Israel holds all the guns so they call the shots and they have the singular privilege of having non-hostile neighbors while every other country in the world except the U.S. should respect negotiations and international law, and many have hostile neighbors but that’s ok. I can’t blame you, though, because the narrative is thus constructed: Israel alone has the right to security, Israel alone has the right to self-determination, Israel alone has the right to self-defense, etc. Why doesn’t Palestine? The narrative says “because they lob mortar shells over the fence” which is a pure double standard (Israeli exceptionalism). History must be erased to maintain the narrative, like the invasion of Akka among many others. When a country has such a consistent history, it’s rational to believe that they will continue annexing Palestinian lands, so it’s very important that the narrative removes the Palestinian right to self-defense as well as erasing Israel’s colonial history. The truth is different, though.
I’m speaking solely to the facts on the ground.
Regardless of anyone’s thoughts on the matter, Israel does hold all the guns here. Rights and privileges mean as much as the paper they’re printed on. In a perfect world, Israel and Palestine would exist side by side as peaceful partners, each with fully fledged institutions and militaries and all that jazz. But unless Israel is confident that a Palestinian military won’t have its destruction as its primary goal, it will not allow that to happen, no matter how much pontificating about rights and narratives and double standards anyone does. I’m not trying to talk about who’s “right”, whatever that even means. I’m talking about the actual situation and what will actually happen, regardless of anyone’s opinions on the matter.
When a country has such a consistent history, it’s rational to believe that they will continue annexing Palestinian lands
And an Israeli would say that Palestinians have a consistent history of attempting to murder Israeli civilians and so it is rational to never allow them to build up any military power, and thus the circus goes round. My point is that no amount of moral superiority means very much if you don’t have actual power to go along with it, and Palestinians simply do not. If the goal is actually to develop a real peace rather than avenge any sins of the past, both sides will have to give up on prior grievances and decide that they care more about the lives of their children than their own pride. It’s hard to imagine the situation being much worse than it already is (though I’m sure it’ll find a way)
The extreme Palestinian side is that all Israelis are essentially foreign invaders and should be forcibly removed or killed.
That’s essentially the reality of the situation, though. The land was populated by Palestinians before Europe and the rest of the Middle East NIMBY’d their remaining Jewish populations to Israel.
Maybe if it was the 1940s this would be a bit more accurate, but at this point, we’re a couple generations removed from the original mass displacements. Most Israelis today were born there.
Like I said, the way towards progress lies with both sides finding a way to get over historical grievances of who started what and who’s to blame for this and that and instead accepting the fact that they’re both here now and need to find a way to exist with each other.
That’s essentially the reality of the situation, though. The land was populated by Palestinians before Europe and the rest of the Middle East NIMBY’d their remaining Jewish populations to Israel.
This is all kinds of wrong.
Zionism was a Jewish movement. Antisemitism was not NIMBYism, that’s a pretty horrible thing to say, it was persecution, pogroms, attacks, the holocaust, a constant stream of hate and oppression. Zionism was certainly not a movement of the Europeans and Middle Easterners who persecuted us. It was our movement. Zionism was not just an escape, but also a long held dream of the Jewish people that coalesced as it became plausible in late Ottoman policy. It was finally possible for Jews to buy land in, and immigrate to, Israel, so many of us did.
We are not foreign to Israel. It is our indigenous homeland. As the rest of the world rejected us, we no longer felt safe as strangers in strange lands. We considered the possibility of having our own nation on borrowed land from the Russians, or from the Germans, or in Alaska. We didn’t care for those ideas because of how stupid they were. We wanted a homeland in our homeland. If you don’t understand Jewish indigeneity in Judea, maybe you’re not ready to talk about complex topics.
As for the Palestinian ties to the land—Palestinian nationalism barely existed before Jewish people started returning to Israel. Arabs in the various Ottoman Sanjaks or whatever division there was at the time were mostly traveling merchants or pilgrims; there was, of course, a small permanent population, which included Jews (always, despite various efforts to remove them or ban them), Christians, and Muslims, but that population expanded dramatically starting in the mid-late 1800s on all fronts. The Arabs then either continued to call themselves Syrians, Egyptians, Jordanians (“Jordan” and “Palestine” were part of the same colony, I hope you know), or they subscribed to some conception of pan-Arabism. The word “Palestinian,” to the extent was used at all before the ~1960s, was used largely to refer to whoever happened to be in Palestine (like “New Yorker,” not referring to a race of some kind), or specifically, in Europe, to refer to Jews. Palestinian nationalism largely gained traction in the 1960s as a political movement, and even then, many leaders were committed to pan-Arabism but treated Palestinian identity as a useful political fiction; Zuhair Moshen in particular, as a leader of the PLO, pushed these ideas, and in much of the politics between the West Bank and Jordan through that period. Of course, since the 1940s, Palestinian identity has taken on new meanings, but many of these meanings are young, and the vast majority of these peoples’ ties to the land start between the 1800s and 1948—a beat before similarly-shaped spikes in the Jewish return.
Palestinian nationalism is now used in other Arab countries to keep Palestinian Arabs oppressed; Jordan revoked their Jordanian citizenship, Lebanon refuses to grant them basic rights, UNRWA refuses to resettle them across multiple generations.
If Jews are indigenous to Judea does that mean that Jews never intermarried with Jews of other countries? And if they did, how can they then be called indigenous any more?
… what?
“Jews of other countries” are also indigenous to Israel / Judea / Canaan / Palestine / whatever you want to call it. I’m a Persian-American Jew. Before Iran, my community came from Israel. Is it possible that there are some Russian Jews in my family tree? Or Egyptian Jews? Or Bucharian Jews? Or Iraqi Jews? Yes. Are they all still indigenous to Israel? Yes.
Conversion to Judaism is extremely rare, but it does happen. Is it possible that some portion of my family tree converted to Judaism and is not indigenous to Israel? Sure. Does one drop of Iranian blood in m DNA make me somehow not indigenous to the place the rest of my ancestors are from? Hell the fuck no. Especially given that my ancestors in Iran were never welcome for long. It’s also worth noting that, since the Arab Conquest reached Iran, conversion from Islam has been, for most of that time, illegal (it’s currently punishable by death!), so the idea of converts to Judaism is extremely rare.
This is a strange, disturbing line of reasoning. You wouldn’t ask Native Americans with ancestors from two different tribes how they can be called indigenous, would you?
What’s going on here?
Actually the opposite, it’s a line of reasoning that supposes that no-one is really indigenous to anywhere in particular, thereby avoiding the good ol’ extreme claims to sovereignity.
The history of Israel is littered with invasion anyway, so again, the idea of indigenous peoples at this point requires a reworking of the definition of ‘indigenous’ to people who have lived there for some time.
I’m expecting a bit of the ol’ ‘It was the Jew’s to begin with’ so I’ll just say in advance there’s no point in my continuing if that starts cropping up in replies.
Actually the opposite, it’s a line of reasoning that supposes that no-one is really indigenous to anywhere in particular, thereby avoiding the good ol’ extreme claims to sovereignity.
… what? So you don’t know what indigeneity is, so you just said, “fuck it, we’re going to do away with the concept altogether so nobody has a right to live anywhere at all!”
I’m always baffled as to where you people think the Jews should be living.
The simple answer is, realistically, Palestine can’t do it alone without help. Some other country will have to step up and get involved.
Currently, even the countries who don’t necessarily back Israel aren’t interested in helping Palestinians, including major Muslim countries in the Middle East.
It could have something to do with the history of Jordanian Civil war, which was a war between the King of Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Islamic countries like Jordan and Egypt haven’t exactly been stellar friends to the people of Palestine ever since. (Whether that position is justified is up to you to decide, I am not here to argue whether it is good or bad.)
So unless things change somehow, they will likely not gain their freedom.
Some other country will have to step up and get involved.
Alternatively/Additionally, some countries need to stop getting involved. Mostly Iran. They have no interest in helping Palestinians either, they just care about removing Israel from the map and will back any extremist groups in the area that does so as well.
Thank you, that is a good answer. I have been wondering why Jordan has been pretty hands-off, I’ll have to look into the Jordanian civil war.
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There are several reasons why egypt won’t help:
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The current dictator, Sisi, has effectively thrown away all international influence in exchange for US aid and western intelligence which he uses to surveil the Egyptian population. That’s why israel egypt relations are good. It’s because he has become the west’s bitch
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Leaked talks with mubarak and bibi show that bibi wants to displace all Palestinians into sinai, and basically form a new palestine
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Egyptians can no longer help Palestinians the way they used to because of increased surveillance by the government, and decreased support. Mubarak used to unofficially condone smuggling weapons and digging tunnels to gaza (whether that’s because he wanted to extract more money from the US or because he truly wanted to help is debatable, imo its the former). Sisi does not…
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Sisi led a coup against our only democratically elected president, morsi, whose party was the muslim brotherhood. The muslim brotherhood is being cracked down on really hard in egypt with all the big players either executed or thrown in prison. Even supporting them will lead to you being thrown in jail. The brotherhood has alot of support amongst Palestinians, which is why sisi does not want to let them in.
Thanks, I didn’t know that. Do you think Morsi was planning to become a dictator?
Alot of people are saying if morsi was authoritarian enough he would still be in power. Morsi wouldn’t have become a dictator, because he’s too naive and believed in the system
Sisi was the leader of mokhabraat (مخبرات) during Mubarak’s regime. Basically he ran the egyptian version of secret police, he would lock up (and execute occasionally) Morsi’s allies and any others dissenters.
Instead of executing him or sending him to jail. Morsi, who wanted to mend the relationship between factions, promoted him to the minister of defense. A position which he used to coup morsi.
In the 11 months he ruled, Morsi showed no sign of going dictator, doesn’t seem like he has it in him. He seemed like a big believer in democracy, but who knows what would’ve happened.
In other words, he was not planning to do so at the time. Else he would have consolidated military power instead of handing it over to his biggest enemy…
Sorry for all the questions but I have one more- you mentioned he showed no sign of wanting to be a dictator but what about:
In November 2012, Morsi issued a provisional constitutional declaration that granted him unrestricted authority and the authority to legislate without the need for judicial oversight or review. This was a move to stop the Mubarak-era judges from getting rid of the Second Constituent Assembly.[5] The new constitution that was then hastily finalized by the Islamist-dominated constitutional assembly, presented to the president, and scheduled for a referendum before the Supreme Constitutional Court could rule on the constitutionality of the assembly, was described by independent press agencies not aligned with the regime as an “Islamist coup”.[6] These issues,[7] along with complaints of prosecutions of journalists and attacks on nonviolent demonstrators,[8] led to the 2012 protests.[9][10] As part of a compromise, Morsi rescinded the decrees.[11] A new constitution was approved by approximately two-thirds of voters in the referendum,[12] although turnout was less than a third of the electorate.
Interestingly enough the arabic wikipedia page doesn’t say much about that…
So, for the judicial oversight part. Mubarak had stacked the court with judges that were loyal to him. Morsi knew that they would not approve any new constitution in an effort to slow him down. Basically, they wanted him to go around them in order to poke holes in the people’s new democracy.
So morsi diluted their power by freeing executive decrees and the constitutional assembly from judicial review
At the same time, the brotherhood and allies had a 75% majority in parliament, and the secular + coptic representatives felt like they would be steamrolled so they walked out. They couldn’t delay making a new constitution till they had a majority because there was a deadline set in place by the temporary constitution.
Meaning that on paper and in practicality, he had supreme power. Which he promised to give back…
We all know how that goes don’t we…
Well this time it was different, the president actually did give back ultimate power, after pushing the deadline for forming a new constitution.
Pushing back the deadline contradicts the temporary constitution meaning that it would definitely go to the supreme court. But he got around that.
Morsi then put the new constitution to a public vote, and it gained 60% approval.
As for the protestors and journalist issues, when i clicked on the wikipedia article/source it basically talked about rabaa ( a massacre that happened when the brotherhood was overthrown) and how the same things happened under morsi to his opposition (it did not). It linked to another article where it talks about a morsi speech.
In that speech he called the protestors thugs, and accused them of being paid protestors (this does happen in egypt, and sisi accidentally admitted that it happened when removing mubarak and again when removing morsi. Although i don’t think it was a major factor this time).
Basically he did say some shady stuff, but that doesn’t mean he is a dictator. I believe that he wasn’t on his way to becoming a dictator because he had ultimate power and gave it away in addition to stuff in the other comment
Hey thanks for taking the time to explain all that, I appreciate it.
This 100%.
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Im not satisfied with the responses I’ve been given to my implication that there’s a track record anywhere would be foolish to ignore if they value order and preserving their existing domestic political/governance structures and safety of actual citizens
You may have a decent vocabulary, but this requires a committee of linguists to decide what the fuck you mean by this.
They’re saying that Arab nations have a legitimate reason to be concerned about allowing in Palestinian refugees, given that every time a nation has done it, it’s sparked civil war, and that this point has not received a satisfying response.
I’m gonna guess English isn’t their native language, but luckily, I majored in linguistics.
What induced civil war occured in egypt?
I think its a bit odd that fellow muslim-dominated nations don’t jump at the chance to help their fellow Muslim bretheren and presumably do their duty to their faith
Most Muslims don’t constantly walk around thinking about Islam and embrace every Muslim in the world/share a super strong kinship with all Muslims. That’s like expecting Christians in the US to think of and heavily relate to their fellow Christians in Russia or parts of Africa and open their arms to them when they’re in need. Or hell their Christian brothers and sisters south of the border. I don’t see a lot of camaraderie going on there.
Most Muslims don’t constantly walk around thinking about Islam and embrace every Muslim in the world/share a super strong kinship with all Muslims.
That’s true, but to be honest as an Egyptian if the government came up tomorrow and said “we’ll go to war with Israel to free our brothers in Palestine” the people would support them. It’s just that the government in Egypt is a dictatorship.
I must confess I have not kept up with what is going on in Egypt since probably mid 2010s, like a lot of the world unfortunately. I am long overdue for updating my info
I think its a bit odd that fellow muslim-dominated nations don’t jump at the chance to help their fellow Muslim bretheren and presumably do their duty to their faith unless my inference is correct and this is not a religous/racial issue so much as geopolitical and sociological issue.
Idk about other Arabs, but at the very least most Egyptians would jump at the opportunity to go and free Palestine from Israeli oppression (or actually do anything other than watch), but the government is allied with Israel. You’ll likely see Egyptian policy towards Israel shift drastically if the current regime changes. I imagine it’s similar for many Arab/Muslim countries.
on the other hand, there could be an enemy of my enemy situation, because everyone in the Middle East hates Israel (and for good reason too: not only is Israel run by genocidal fucks, but they stole everyone’s land). it’s not impossible that Jordan, Egypt, and neighboring countries would gang up on Israel.
it’s not impossible that Jordan, Egypt, and neighboring countries would gang up on Israel.
This has literally already happened. Israel beat them all in six days.
Realistically? Unless the international community (or the Muslim world) have a change of heart, the Hamas way of "get Israel to broadcast their atrocities to the world as loudly as possible) seems to be the best bet currently. A direct war of liberation is impossible because of the blockade, but at this rate the international community might actually give Israel the Apartheid treatment in two or three decades.
Probably give them Madagascar. I’m sure that will solve it. /s
It will really take a global effort. I don’t think Palestine and Israel can be disentangled at this point. It’s really just about accountability for the Israeli government at this point and increasing Palestinians presence in governing.
The support of Israel in the USA becomes a partisan issue.
We are already seeing division within Democrats for supporting Israel, with younger people mostly anti-Zionism. Likely with the next Democratic President and possibly because of Israeli meddling in supporting Republicans, the USA drops its veto of Palestinian statehood. At this point, Israel likely gets very cagey and may try to start a war to expel all Palestinians, but that act of aggression will be met with a response.
Very interesting, thanks.
There’s no realistic solution right now. The stronger will always dictate the term of the possible solution and the weaker won’t accept that and will keep fighting.
I’m afraid that sounds about right. Have to rely on the generosity of the oppressor.
Realistically, it can’t.
no colonial power and no empire ever lasted forever. Everything made by human eventually dissolves. The current strategy of trying to stay alive (kinda) and keeping their identity is more than enough to eventually see the American empire collapse on itself and Israel with it.
Here’s my take on it:
- Get rid of all extremists and violent factions internally (extremely hard, of course).
- Engage in intense diplomatic lobbying, and be patient. If step 1) has been achieved, I think it would be extremely hard for Israel to resist the pressure, but maybe I’m too naive. Right now, it’s extremely easy to dismiss the Palestinian cause because of terrorism. What happened at the beginning of the conflict isn’t going to help.
Thanks for sharing your take. It seems like a lot of people think Palestine needs to do stuff but Israel doesn’t. I’m not sure if it’s a double standard, racism, Israeli exceptionalism or what.
What happened at the beginning of the conflict isn’t going to help.
Do you mean the Palestine Civil War?
It seems like a lot of people think Palestine needs to do stuff but Israel doesn’t. I’m not sure if it’s a double standard, racism, Israeli exceptionalism or what.
In my case, it’s none of that. It’s your question: “how can Palestine gain its freedom”.
Now let’s be crazy for a moment and imagine that both sides collaborate to fix the issue. I think it would be mostly the same for Israel: get rid of the lunatics, realize that Palestinians are fairly close relatives, work on forgiveness on both sides, and work on a fair two-state solution or even better a single-state solution.
Sure, not insinuating anything about you personally. It’s just that very few people would say “Israel should adhere to the 1967 borders” or "Israel should respect UN resolution 181” or any variation on Israel respecting international law.
I’ve heard a lot of people say exactly that, that Israel should adhere to those borders etc.
A large problem is that while there was a chance for that, Palestine and surrounding nations didn’t accept it, and invaded Israel instead. (Whereupon Israel fought back and expanded their borders.)
So despite being UN mandated, it’s not like there was a nice clean solution there that would work if only Israel (and/or Palestine) respected it.
Besides, the UN aren’t “Boss of the World”; they’re a diplomacy effort. That’s a bit of a tangential discussion, but I feel sometimes people treat it as if the UN have a God-given mandate to govern the world, which isn’t really true and muddies the context I think. Not that their involvement isn’t valuable - but it’s still involvement not okay daddy’s finally going to fix things since you two can’t play nice
Hamas exists because the PLO was gaining too much political power for Israel to keep stonewalling them; Hamas was funded by far-right Israeli politicians specifically to prevent the PLO from doing all of what you describe.
Realistically?
They can’t. Not without a major change in American politics, which is unlikely given the amount of lobbying power that Israel has, and the grip that Evangelicals have on right-wing political power in the US. Anti-BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) laws intended to prevent people from protesting Israeli policies by cutting funding to the country have passed in nearly all states. We can see, with the way that current events are unfolding, that even expressing support for the Palestinian people is resulting in people being labelled as antisemitic.
(For reference - Evangelicals support Israel as a Jewish apartheid ethnostate because they believe that the Jews need to control Jerusalem and Israel in order for Jesus to return. It has nothing to do with Evangelicals liking Jews, which they mostly don’t. If you don’t want to believe that, I can certainly help you find sermons from megachurch pastors saying precisely that, but I generally try to avoid listening to that trash.)
We’re very slowly starting to see that kind of change now, with the way that the youngest generations in the US as more supportive of the Palestinian people. But it’s not likely to mean much, since by the time they have enough political power to do anything, Israel will have completed genocide.
Good points. Regarding Evangelicals, don’t they believe that when Jesus returns (is that called the rapture?) all the Jews will die or something?
Not exactly; I think that it’s supposed to be more like the Jews will finally realize that Jesus was their messiah all along, and will convert on the spot to christianity. There are other things that need to happen at the same time, like the whole world turning against Israel (…like, say, because Israel was a genocidal apartheid ethnostate run by murderous far-right authoritarians…?), that two or three prophets will be killed in Jerusalem and the bodies will remain in the street for a few days, etc. The so-called prophecy is loose enough that people can always say that the end times are nigh.
I’ve been out of that for nearly 20 years, so I’m not nearly as well versed in it as I used to be.
Seems very unlikely. The most likely way is if Israel gets annihilated, which would require also destroying the US military capacity. Absolute horror and possibly ww3 is the only way.
I think they probably have to leave. They’ve been treated horribly, but there is no hope on the horizon as far as I can see. Israel is cursed, Gaza is cursed.
By not killing civilians maybe. By engaging in actual normal warfare if it insists it cannot achieve success peacefully. By not encouraging persecution around the world or siding with nations such as Russia and North Korea. By respecting human rights within its borders. Can’t be too much to ask.
What is “normal warfare?”
I think it’s when
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both countries have a military
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the countries at war are not bound by occupation law.
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Warfare that is self-contained, distinguishes between combatant and non-combatant, does not cause damage that ends up being permanent, and doesn’t make metaphorical deals with the devil.
There is no such thing as “normal” or “good” or “moral” warfare. War is war. And war is hell. Regardless of where it’s happening or what reasons are given to justify it. Every bit of time, resources, and effort directed toward war is time, resources, and effort stolen from advancing humanity and uplifting ourselves. By it’s very nature, war has no rules. The dream of a “self-contained, limited-casualty, non-permanent damage” warfare is frankly naive. My experience may be colored by having grown up in and witnessed war in various times in my life, but there is NEVER a reason for war. Because at the end of each and every disagreement, conflict, war…etc., one thing happens: they have to sit down and talk. So it’s all just futile and wasted effort. We steal from ourselves and our children only to end up doing the very thing we should have been doing all along: putting ego (in the psychological sense) aside and talking.
That is assuming war is a single entity. War is more like a series of actions due to how blurry it is. Certainly a hacking is far better than sending a nuclear missile for example. It is these actions that are condemnable when we say war is condemnable. Sometimes a war is even one-sided enough we don’t even call it a war. In Palestine’s case, had they not resorted to what amounts to forcing the burden, they’d have less dismissal than, say, simply sending regular units.
had they not resorted to what amounts to forcing the burden
This is a justification (and not a good one, imo), like the ones I was talking about above. There is no just war. No just response. It just creates more death and destruction.
Maybe ask Israel to stop occupying Gaza (and the rest of Palestine) before demanding that. This isn’t a war between countries; this is an occupied territory fighting for freedom.
Gaza has not been occupied since 2005.
Palestinian arabs have been launching pogroms against Jews without rest since 1920, but Israel didn’t occupy the West Bank or Gaza until 1967. Maybe if Israelis felt they could possibly be safe without occupying the West Bank, they would try it. Like they tried with Gaza. Gee, look how that played out.
Gee, I wonder how Germany and Japan managed to get freedom from occupation… Oh right, they went with peace!
Ask the UN what they think of Gaza’s status. Hint: They won’t say “independent state”.
The United Nations, international human rights organizations and many legal scholars regard the Gaza Strip to still be under military occupation by Israel.[4] This is disputed by Israel and other legal scholars.[74] They argue that occupation requires an actual, physical presence by a military force that maintains authority.
Following the withdrawal, Israel continued to maintain direct control over Gaza’s air and maritime space, six of Gaza’s seven land crossings, maintains a no-go buffer zone within the territory, controls the Palestinian population registry, and Gaza remains dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities.[4][75]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaza
I don’t care what their opinion is, Israel in fact ended the occupation of Gaza in 2005.
People are now upset about a blockade that started in 2007. Aside from ignoring the reasons for the blockade, and totally ignoring the two years between the end of the occupation and the start of the blockade, people like to pretend the blockade is an occupation because it’s not very nice and they don’t know how to talk about an unoccupied Gaza (or because they’re just too stupid to know what’s going on there).
There’s still a right and wrong way to do that. The attack on October 7th is unbecoming of anyone who wouldn’t exist in shame if they had that freedom. In fact, if Palestine and Hamas are distinct, literally the only thing Palestine had to do was condemn Hamas’ actions that day, even if Palestine enjoyed the fruits of the attack, but Palestine instead decided to stand by Hamas. And here everyone is.
So I wrote about this before so I’ll just copy and paste:
The serious argument that October 7th was legitimate resistance relies on the fact that it was against military targets, with no evidence the leadership ordered anything close to slaughter of civilians. Add in that even after the IDF shelled and shot their own citizens the civilian casualty rate was 66% and the idea that Hamas just passed the border and randomly murdered civilians falls apart pretty quickly. Of course not denying the atrocities that actually happened, but October 7th as a whole was legitimate resistance with an army that’s prone to committing war crimes, not a terror attack with the goal of murdering civilians. This distinction is important because “atrocities were committed on October 7th” and “October 7th was a terror attack” aren’t equivalent statements.
End copy paste.
Therefore there’s no reason to condemn the attack. The lack of condemnation of atrocities committed during the attack is pretty bad and the result of rampant anti-Semitism in the Arab world, but there’s no reason to condemn October 7th itself.
The resistance argument falls apart when you remember the attacks coincided with not one but two Jewish observances. Ever since the hospital incident, it’s also widely known for fact in developed nations that those targeting Israel have been honest about the war and is good at its dishonesty.
It also coincided with the 50th anniversary of October 7th, basically the Arab victory over Israel. Also Idk if the Jewish observances were intentional or not, but attacking your enemy while they have their guard down is common sense.
What’s often downplayed is that during the Oct 7 revolt, Israeli child casualties were 3% of total casualties. We know how that figures against Palestinian child casualties.
How could they engage in normal warfare?
Edit: also, does killing civilians make a whole country fair game to be attacked violently or something?
Let me put it this way, how many of us are anti-nuclear-arms? I’m sure most of us are. Nuclear assault is seen as the epitome of abnormal warfare as it kills people who have nothing to do with a conflict, and nuclear war, defined as when the two nations start throwing nuclear weapons at each other, is seen as absolutely unnecessary escalation under any circumstances considered normal as well as no better just because someone fired the first shot. If there is no distinction between “normal” and “abnormal” warfare though, surely nuclear attack wouldn’t be off the table.
Other forms of warfare follow this logic. Biological weapons attack indiscriminate people and spread in a population and even cross borders. Arson spreads and doesn’t care what it consumes. Landmines like those still littering previously war-torn nations, including those we discuss here, are not programmed to factor in political or religious allegiance. Such things are akin to boxing out of a ring and are highly condemned. If Palestine and its allies don’t change its stance on how warfare is supposed to work, then if they did become fully independent, it would be a shameful new existence, built on national character flaws that would haunt and define any who call themselves Palestinian patriots.
When the Ismaili Muslims were still around in the 1100’s, their mode of warfare was simply to have spies sneak into a fortress and eliminate the leader, sparing the people who do the dirty work, with the intention that the heir would yield, like how in chess you wouldn’t eliminate the other pieces besides the king if you don’t have to. It was called fedai warfare and this was the world’s most peaceful form of open warfare and perhaps more normal than what we call normal. What a leap we took in modern times, where nobody is safe and nothing is off the table.
Targeting civilians is bad.
Terrorists, including those who target civilians, are combatants, and are valid targets. They remain valid targets when they use schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, and residential areas as bases for combat operations. This is pretty clear in international law.
Israel still must not target civilians, and must take reasonable measures to minimize civilian casualties of war. We’ve seen Israel, in at least some contexts, take quite extreme measures to warn civilians, help evacuate civilians, and carefully target munitions to minimize civilian death despite Hamas and PIJ using those civilians as human shields.
The raw numbers are still gruesome… unless you compare them to other instances of urban warfare, in which case the numbers are actually lower than many would expect. The civilian death ratio, as far as we’ve been able to estimate (since Hamas does not estimate), appears to be lower than usual.
Civilian deaths are tragic. It would obviously be much better if Hamas had not started this war, or if they would agree to the ceasefire Israel offered, or if they weren’t so committed to war in general. But they are. They frequently condemn even the concept of peace, and insist that they will repeat the October 7th attack as often as they can. There is no avenue to peace while they remain in power.
So the war will continue. And we will continue to hope that Israel does its best to minimize harm to civilians.
There really is no other solution than stopping the attacks and trying to establish diplomatic connections.
That’s what the PA is doing, and the result is the West Bank.
gain its* freedom?
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