Everything else aside, this is an absolutely fantastic development and I really hope the ceasefire holds and all hostages are released.
I just fear this will cause western media and politicians to and declare the crisis to be over (after it had began on Oct. 7, of course absolutely out of the blue and without any context...) and go back to pretending everything is back to normal. Never mind that Gaza is still in ruins, the west bank is still being annexed, Israel still has the dual role of "all authority, no obligations" over the Palestinians, while making it pretty clear they have no vision for them at all, apart from "maybe they just vanish into thin air tomorrow".
And never mind that Israel still has a fundamentalist, authoritarian government that is actively at work undermining democratic structures and civil rights even inside the state - that too with no word of objection from its allies.
We'll see where all of that goes.
I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
Is this just his usual "appear unpredictable by all means" spiel or does he have a strategy there?
While this is a good development. Everything in this part of the world is on a rinse snd repeat cycle ever since the Assyrians and the Babylonians - it hasn't changed much except maybe its actually a little more humane then it was in the past (which says something). Sorry for the cynical take but this just does a temporary stop.
Actually it goes back a bit further, basically to the dawn of civilization. The first battle in recorded history was between Egypt and the Hittites, the Battle of Megiddo, in what is today the state of Israel [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Megiddo_%2815th_cent...
> ever since the Assyrians and the Babylonians
As someone who has no personal stake in this nor bias for or against either side, I've reached a similar conclusion. Both sides have their own extremist zealots who've been unspeakably brutal beyond measure for centuries. Both sides can cite truly terrible injustices going back millennia. While admitting their own side's extremists have perpetrated unimaginable atrocities against innocents, the moderates on both sides claim their side is the original victim. In reality, any such claims are now completely irrelevant. Both sides have been so blood soaked for so long, if there was ever any slightly higher moral ground on either side, it hasn't existed for hundreds of years.
To even consider debating morally relative comparisons about which side might be more aggrieved on some centuries-long tally sheet of serial genocides, or which side was victimized by the other first based on surviving bronze age mud tablets and scraps of papyri, and therefore seriously suggest one side is NOW morally justified in killing the innocents of the other... is itself an exercise so futile and morally bankrupt as to be it's own kind evil.
But if it is in fact more humane than in the past (hard to imagine TBH), hopefully that trend of gradual improvement will continue?
They literally razed Bablyon to the ground including the entire population after over 15 months being under siege and afterwards trying to change the lands hydrology so that people couldn't resettle - probably one of the harshest destruction but not the only one.
I guess its an improvement - not one thats remotely impressive.
Are you being metaphorical when you say literally? Or is this a reference to the conquest by Cyrus the Great?
I'm not trying to be pedantic here. I'm just not familiar with any historical event you are describing.
From what I've heard, and I'm not an expert, I wouldn't characterize any of the conquests of Babylon as a 'razing', And the eventual abandonment of the city was more a result of slow decline and changing geological conditions.
I do like to learn about the history of the area, so if it's just something I'm not familiar with, please point me in the right direction.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Babylonian_Empire
And literally decades later the coronation of Nabopolassar founded the Neo-Babylonian empire, soon before the Assyrian empire that destroyed old Babylon crumbled. It remained a major settlement after the destruction, it just took them a few decades to rise again.
99% of historical accounts about the sacking and destruction of cities are exaggerated. Even Carthage grew as a settlement mere years after the Romans destroyed it (the whole “salting the land” thing is an 18/19th century invention).
The destruction of water resources seems to be going ahead as planned still.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/destruction-gaza-w...
That's not true at all. The current conflict isn't some thousand year old feud. It was very much caused by the deliberate provocation and importation of European settlers via Zionism. It's easy to wave our hands and say "it's so complicated!" or "they've been doing this for thousands of years!" but it's not complicated, much like apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were not complicated. Colonialism and ethno-centric racism are never good.
Doesn't the Torah count for something? It works slower than fiber optics but is massively parallel.
No, that's mythology. Actual history is The Balfour Declaration:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
And Nakba: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
> Everything else aside, this is an absolutely fantastic development and I really hope the ceasefire holds and all hostages are released.
Don't hold your breath, Isreal already announced a ceasefire in Lebanon in the past and didn't respect it.
OK since no one else has said it yet, "according to a source familiar with the details"[1] (I know) Trump has basically told Netanyahu to agree to the ceasefire including the return of hostages. Then if they decide to break the ceasefire and go back to relentless bombings, Trump will still continue to support them.
So it could be a tactic to get Hamas to release whatever hostages are still alive, then get right back to the new status quo.
This actually makes perfect sense for Trump. He's only claimed to care about the Israeli hostages. I'm sure he feels great about taking credit for their return.
[1]: https://trendsinthenews.substack.com/p/gerald-celente-on-gaz...
Sadly I suspect this will be the case… I don’t hold much hope on this whole thing actually ending… but I do have a glimmer of hope that they may have reached a tipping point due to one of the many slowly shifting parts of this tragedy… no idea what the tipping point is from the outside but it does kinda have the vibe of “maybe this is going to fall apart if they keep pushing”
Wouldn't trumps best course of action have been to wait two weeks and make it seem like it was all because of him?
> ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire
There is no evidence of this.
Every single time Trump has blustered about doing something e.g. turning Canada into a 51st, buying Greenland the parties have been concerned but not particularly worried. Because he doesn't follow through.
So the idea that we should credit Trump for his words and ignore the months of diplomacy and pressure from not just the US but Middle Eastern countries is bizarre to me. Ceasefires are always far more complex and nuanced than they look from the outside.
Pretty obv a gift from the bibi admin
Something positive about Trump? Must be "Russian disinformation" or whatever we're saying these days...
I got it from here: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-01-13/ty-article/.p...
The broad outlines of the deal as well as all the work in pushing together the various parties is from Brett McGurk and his team, and he deserves the lion's share of the credit. That being said, there's probably some contribution as to the timing of the US inauguration, and Trump giving the nod to Steve Witkoff throw support behind McGurk, though.
Diplomacy is a lie, there's only military intelligence.
Multiple sources are crediting months of work by Brett McGurk as the lead in this. This is Biden admin accomplishment.
Who, the same sources that said Biden was mentally fit to run again? Israeli sources are saying it was Trump's team strong arming them into a deal.
One not particularly obscure theory is that Netanyahu was prioritizing Trump coming to power over a peace/hostage deal and now that Trump has power, Netanyahu seeks to benefit from prioritizing the hostages. Trump is claiming credit for it and probably doesn't care about the timing.
Not obscure at all, as it wouldn't be the first time a hostage situation is used for a presidential campaign [1]:
> The timing of the release of the hostages gave rise to allegations that representatives of Reagan's presidential campaign had conspired with Iran to delay the release until after the 1980 United States presidential election to thwart Carter from pulling off an "October surprise".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis#October_Su...
Netanyahu was simply pushing his opportunity to do what Israel hardliners have wanted to do for as long as possible (basically aggressively lash out in every direction without consequences and red lines). It was always going to need to be wrapped up, even within Israel there was strong internal pressure. Waiting until is Trump is coming in gives Israel a free golden ticket with him by timing it right and Netanyahu's careers basically over after this anyway, so he has nothing to lose by doing it earlier, absent internal revolt.
Gaza is nearly leveled. Thousands have died and millions have been forced to leave. A ceasefire now is simply to relieve some of the pressure both on Netanyahu and Trump. The former wanted for war crimes (luckily the house just passed a bill to protect him) and the latter trying to hold up an illusion of being “America first”, despite having one of the most Zionist cabinets in history (his secdef is quoted saying he wishes to rebuild the third temple).
The next goal is likely Iran. Destabilizing or removal of surrounding Arab countries. Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan - none of these counties pose any real threat to Israel. 50 years ago this was a very different story. We’re watching the clean break doctrine play out.
Their end goal is greater Israel. It’s the only logical explanation for how the Middle East is in the state it is today. Trump is another US politician who sold out to Zionists (check his donors, cabinet, etc). Politicians do not act honestly.
Yeah, sure, it's all Israel's fault, after the 1200 people slaughtered on October 7
There was, at the very least, a massive intelligence failure.
Responding by killing tens of thousands of civilians is on them a bit, too.
It depends on if you believe Hamas's numbers, which is dubious
No one doubts Hamas’s numbers. Israel doesn’t really contest them and they’ve been accurate in the past. https://www.vice.com/en/article/israeli-intelligence-health-...
> Israeli intelligence services have studied civilian casualty figures released by the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza and concluded the figures were generally accurate, despite earlier public claims by U.S. and Israeli officials that the ministry’s statistics are manipulated.
Looking at photos of the area makes it pretty clear, too. You don’t raze that many buildings bloodlessly.
If anything, it may be an undercount. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna187100
Trump needed some way to counter the "Zion Don" counter-programming that 4chan tried and failed to get into the hearts of the anti-zionists that have become the norm among Zoomers. That's why he acts like this.
> I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
Trump just wanted a deal - he loves being the "deal guy". Frankly, I'm shocked he didn't push Bibi into waiting until after the inauguration. Guess he felt like it was close enough that he could still take credit for it.
> Guess he felt like it was close enough that he could still take credit for it.
He's a private citizen. It isn't legal for him to engage in foreign diplomacy. Conveniently we have a feckless DoJ that won't hold people accountable.
> Frankly, I'm shocked he didn't push Bibi into waiting until after the inauguration
If you read between the lines it was clear Biden was also pushing hard to wrap it up before his term ends to add it to his legacy (that's how NYT spun it at least). But Trump also had his people negotiating there as well and enough of add a hard-line persuasive influence to force Bibi to show up in Doha last-minute on a weekend during Sabbath [1]. While Biden really didn't seem to have much influence there in the last yr.
But ultimately they both get to take credit.
The cease-fire ending will eventually need a conclusion during Trumps term as well.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-salty-envoy-may-forced-1549...
This is the most accurate summary in this thread (although note that the NYT is now also crediting the Trump team for the pressure on Bibi)
Trump wanted the war to end, and I'm sure Netanyahu was doing his Netanyahu thing.
Posting that video was Trump's way of telling Netanyahu that he will burn him by turning him into public enemy #1 with his base. That's how he got him to agree.
This makes no sense.
Netanyahu destroyed his reputation within the Democratic base and it did not concern him in the slightest. Because Israel stopped truly needing the approval of the US a long time ago.
And so the idea that he is suddenly worried about what the Trump base thinks has no basis in fact. Especially when the Trump base is not 1-1 with the Republican base i.e. the majority of the Congress still supports Israel.
Also shows that Israeli electorate/Jewish diaspora now likely a distinct/separate entity from US Jewish population...drifting apart since at least 2008 if not earlier.
Israeli massively support Trump over Harris
https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-shows-israelis-massively-...
It's irrelevant.
Netanyahu isn't letting domestic opinion polls concern him let alone the Trump base.
Utterly wrong. Netanyahu’s base loves Trump. They believe Dems are out to get them and would like to cut aid to Israel. Netanyahu absolutely can not get on trumps bad side because his base would eviscerate him.
Trump and Netanyahu famously had beef: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-59571713
Trump's a die hard Israel supporter but I think personally he feels disgust for Netanyahu, for reasons that arent too clear.
(As we all should - Netanyahu is a deeply racist genocidal maniac who cynically used this conflict to try and save his own political career)
Trump was mad at Netanyahu for being the first to congratulate Biden on winning in 2020.
> Netanyahu is a deeply racist genocidal maniac who cynically used this conflict to try and save his own political career.
What makes you think this causes Trump to think lesser of Netanyahu? Seems like the kind of person Trump fawns over as being "tough".
Oh, and like a sibling pointed out -- Trump wasn't mad at Netanyahu for being a racist, opportunistic genocidal maniac. He was mad that Netanyahu was the first to congratulate Biden on his election victory in 2020.
Read again. I said that the reasons arent too clear.
I dont doubt that Netanyahu wounded Trump's ego somehow, I just dont automatically believe a story that looks suspiciously like a plant.
So I suppose it's just back to the status quo? What has really changed that will make a difference in 2-3 years from now? Israel has sowed a whole fresh generation of "I will sacrifice everything to wipe Israel" Palestinian youth.
The entirety of Hamas leadership is gone, Hamas will most likely not going to have control in Gaza (still being debated which mechanism will govern, this is part of the deal), the crossing to Egypt will be handled by foreign countries which will prevent weapon smuggling. And in the broader spectrum, hizballah is not more, Assad is no more, all of Iran’s proxies can no longer support Hamas’ ambitions which basically means the “mokawamma” is dead. So in short, the entire Middle East have changed.
You still have millions of people in Gaza and Lebanon who got bombed by Israel. Whether it's the existing groups or new groups going forward, the grievances are still there and bigger than ever. Let's wait a few before we declare anything changed.
All of my Lebanese friends, quite young, have stories about the wars with Israel. The helicopters and bombs over Beirut. Waking up in fear in the night. They have been grieved in regards to Israel their whole life. In this respect not much has changed.
Osama Bin Laden referenced the Israeli bombing of Beirut as inspiration for 9/11 and in all fairness he has a point. When we support Israel bombing civilians or we do it ourselves, we become valid and justified targets.
Also hundreds of millions of people outside of the Middle East who now very much do not support Israel. They've lost any goodwill they may have had and that's an understatement.
As the Hamas leadership pointed out in response to this deal which was done with them, this objective failed.
Lest we forget, Netanyahu was the one that helped put them there in the first place. He did this to try and derail the two state solution - famously delivering them thoses briefcases full of cash.
For context:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/20/benjam...
> None of this was a secret. In March 2019, Netanyahu told his Likud colleagues: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1226691760/the-long-and-bitte...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas#Use_...
There's even a whole Wikipedia article dedicated to documenting Israel's decades long support for Hamas
The “briefcases full of cash” began flowing into Gaza in the mid-2010s, IIRC. Hamas had been in power in Gaza for around a decade at that point.
Israel has been funding anti PLO/PA efforts since the 80's
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-c...
Fine, sure, I guess - the article is demanding an email address so I can’t read it, but I buy it.
I’m responding to the statement “Netanyahu was the one that helped put them there in the first place. He did this to try and derail the two state solution - famously delivering them thoses briefcases full of cash.”
This is a vastly different statement than “Israel has been funding anti PLO/PA efforts since the 80’s”. It’s referring to a specific (“famous”!) instance, and attributing it to a specific person (Netanyahu), and putting it at a specific time frame (before Hamas seized power) so as to have a specific consequence (Hamas’ acquisition of power) for a specific reason (to derail a two state solution). Very little of this is correct: Netanyahu was not the one responsible for putting them into power (he wasn’t prime minister at the time), the Qatari money being referenced was allowed into Gaza many years after Hamas was in power, it was unlikely to do much to prevent a two state solution as one hadn’t really been on the table since Arafat, and so on.
That other people in the Israeli government, at a different time, backed Hamas in different instances for different reasons does not warrant conflating the two events. It’s like saying Bush did 9/11 because the CIA funded Bin Laden in the 80s.
And Israel sold arms to Iran to use against Iraq in the 1980s. "My enemy's enemy" etc.
> Soon after taking office in 1981, the Reagan Administration secretly and abruptly changed United States policy." Secret Israeli arms sales and shipments to Iran began in that year, even as, in public, "the Reagan Administration" presented a different face, and "aggressively promoted a public campaign [...] to stop worldwide transfers of military goods to Iran". The New York Times explains: "Iran at that time was in dire need of arms and spare parts for its American-made arsenal to defend itself against Iraq, which had attacked it in September 1980", while "Israel [a US ally] was interested in keeping the war between Iran and Iraq going to ensure that these two potential enemies remained preoccupied with each other". Major General Avraham Tamir, a high-ranking Israeli Defense Ministry official in 1981, said there was an "oral agreement" to allow the sale of "spare parts" to Iran. This was based on an "understanding" with Secretary Alexander Haig (which a Haig adviser denied). This account was confirmed by a former senior US diplomat with a few modifications. The diplomat claimed that "[Ariel] Sharon violated it, and Haig backed away". A former "high-level" Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official who saw reports of arms sales to Iran by Israel in the early 1980s estimated that the total was about $2 billion a year
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair
The 1980's were a very different era. The PLO was a terrorist organisation backed by the Soviet Union, and Israel was aggressive in trying to support any challenges to it.
> As the Hamas leadership pointed out, this objective failed.
Israel's objective from day one has not been to expel Hamas from Gaza (that's virtually impossible), but to remove it from power. And if the rumors about the ceasefire are true (and if the ceasefire is going to be respected), that's what's going to happen.
Hamas is the casus belli that they spent decades creating
You make it sound like Hamas was passive in this. Baiting your enemy into attacking you in order to galvanize your side still requires them taking the bait. It’s a legitimate strategy, just not a very nice one. See also: US/Japan relations ahead of WW2.
> It’s a legitimate strategy
It's a legitimate strategy for manufacturing consent not for international conflict.
Being a belligerent occupier is not a legitimate strategy for international conflict.
The wall street journal seems to disagree https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-has-another-sinw...
> What has really changed that will make a difference in 2-3 years from now?
The whole Iranian anti Israel coalition has been badly beaten!
Hezbollah barely exists anymore. The Assad regime is toppled. Iran itself has learned that Israel can attack them at will. The Houthis are still active, but too far away to do real damage.
Hamas itself still exists, but in a deeply degraded form. Their leaders are dead. Their armed forces have taken huge losses. Their amazing tunnel network is destroyed.
Israel will never again be invaded by surprise.
Hamas will probably start shooting rockets into Israel again, and kill the occasional civilian, but Israel is used to that and can deal with it.
Of any of Israel's wars in recent history none has decimated their regional enemies as much as this. Every way you cut it they are in a much more secure position militarily. Iran (aka Lebanon/Syria) losing so badly is more important than Hamas surviving because that was the cludgle that threatened them from punishing Gaza too harshly (for ex: America pushed Israel very hard not to provoke Lebanon after Oct 7 and we saw how that turned out).
Any future Hamas actions will inherently be less secure as their external help is now crippled.
Israel is weaker politically and internationally than it has ever been, dramatically so. It can only have military superiority as long as western nations are supplying it with weapons and political cover.
Israel was in an extremely secure position on October 6th. They blew it by getting soft on border security, a mistake they won’t make again. There was absolutely zero reason a single hamas fighter should’ve been able to escape Gaza.
Yes reading about the insecurity of the military outposts near the border, one only filled with all-female 20yr old comms people and only a couple guards with rifles, another base full of unarmed students in training, and the general slow response of some of the QRF was pretty shocking. Proper military response took hours to show up in some cases. It's not like the giant Ukraine border, it should be easier to manage. But I'm no expert...
I guess you didn’t notice when Hamas sowed a whole fresh generation of "I will sacrifice everything to wipe out Hamas" Israeli youth.
Honest question, but why haven't there been "I will sacrifice everything to wipe [country]" generations sowing havoc on neighbors after Dresden, Nagasaki, Nanjing or others?
I think the west learned after WW1 that it’s better to rebuild your enemies in corporation than punish them when you win and let grudges fester.
Oh because the a lot of the apparatchiks of the Nazi and Imperial Japanese regimes were absorbed into the western countries (operation paperclip, unit 731 amnesties, ratlines => colonia dignidad, jakarta method masterminded by Nazis mindset in the CIA) and the remaining nazis were propped up by the allies in west germany to continue their reign after all the dust was settled after which they eventually and successfully absorbed east germany. Note; Germany was never denazified.
Ok now a double honest question, why do zionists have unlimited justifications for committing a holocaust over the last 15 months+? And how many oceans of Palestinian children's blood does it take to wash away German guilt?
Realistically, West Bank will be gone (totally settled, all Palestinians removed) in 15 years. Gaza will further be ghettoized and, pessimistically, will be basically gone in 50 years or so.
That's indeed the current trajectory, but then what exactly will happen with the Palestinian population in that scenario? All 5+ million crammed into Gaza? Driven into Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan by force? (which are already refusing to take them today, by threat of military action) What else?
That's not realistic at all. Israel has no apparent plans to settle the major Palestinian population centers in the West Bank like Nablus, Ramallah etc. and evict Palestinians from there.
Indeed, life will probably continue getting worse for West Bank Palestinians under the Israeli apartheid regime, but there's no reason to believe they'll be literally exterminated.
I don't know why this is downvoted. Do people not realize Gaza was razed to the ground?
If Israeli goals really were to displace Palestinians, maybe they'd start within Israel proper first?
A subtle comment, which may be misunderstood.
The point is that they are NOT starting with Israel proper first, where Arabs are and have been citizens for a long time. Palestinians have been elected to the Israeli parliament, and there is an Arab Justice on the Israeli Supreme Court.
Are you being facetious? If you are, that's awesome and hilarious.
Gaza is completely unlivable and more Palestinians can be "persuaded" to move abroad now that they literally have no infrastructure to survive.
Gaza has changed.
Quite literally.
In genuinely morbid moment of being nerd snipped… I wonder if the ordinance dropped per square meter on Gaza is higher than the ordinance dropped be square meter on Vietnam… which was famously bombed so hard that detailed maps needed to be updated in order to accommodate how heavily cratered parts of the country were with heavily cratered hills and slopes literally shifting like a form of mechanical erosion by bombing.
Precision bombing today vs carpet bombing to try to hit a target.
That’s one potential mitigating factor, but they were also using large bombs like 2000 pounders on targets that I’ve not seen any reputable military commentators agree as justifying such a large bomb…
like the typical comment are things like before and after satellite image comparisons and taking it at face value the claimed target exists for the sake of arguing the point… and they would say things like “that building needed 1000 pounds max and that’s probably overkill, you would probably want to just use two 500 pound bombs one on the first pass, and one on the second if it was still standing, heck I’d probably have argued for three 250 pounders bombs with penetration aids and have flow the sortie in a staggered pass so after each drop the next pilot can confirm if the target is still standing and drop theirs if necessary, but using a 2000 pound bomb is nuts on a target that size, they have air superiority and significant ground control to ensure minimal SAM risk from MANPADS, if I had suggested a sortie like this when I was a [whatever their rank was/is], it would have severely hurt my career due to how recklessly wasteful I would have appeared”
And that kind of commentary came up a lot in certain circles. Not even arguing the validity of the targets like the whole “hidden bunker under every second building” stuff… just legitimately tactical assessment of construction typical of the region, the cumulative seismic and shock load damage from prior nearly weapon detonations, and the honest appraisal that it was extremely overkill to use bombs that size… it was morbidly educational in a way.
> What has really changed that will make a difference in 2-3 years from now?
The Tel Aviv regime used to pass as a liberal democracy. After 14 months of a genocidal livestreamed campaign, its colonial apartheid character was laid bare.
>colonial apartheid character
How does this square with the Palestinians inside Israel with citizenship having the same rights as Jewish Israeli ones? Execution issues and favoritism of the ethnostate majority aside.
They don't have the same rights. Can their relatives gain citizenship? No, that's reserved for Jewish Israelis. There are many such laws.
Separate but "equal".
Yes, eventually. I have tears in my eyes. Enduring more than a year with a preposterous populist government and endless deaths, this nightmare is finally over.
100% support ceasefire. 100% agree Israel overdid it. 100% support Hamas must cease to exist. Don't leave that last part out
What is different from Hamas right to exist compared to the IDF or Likud? Hamas certainly has less blood on their hands!
Especially since Netanyahu was trying to revive Hamas prior to Hamas's attack, in order to starve off Fatah's Palestinian recognition efforts at the UN, according to the New York Times ( https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q... )
Turn on Israeli TV and they're showing the IDF raping prisoners in Sde Teiman. Degenerate behavior from the self-described Jewish state. The US taxpayer is paying the bills for all this bloodshed.
And at the same time Netanyahu was holding up maps of all of historical Palestine colored in and labelled as Israel. Clearly trying to provoke things
>IDF or Likud
The IDF and Likud does not have a policy of attacking civilians to achieve political or war goals.
They likely have some deranged and radicalized commanders who do this anyway, but it's not the organizational policy.
They spent a year bombing an inhabited city into rubble, killing tens of thousands of civilians. Whatever definition of "policy" you're using here isn't particularly useful I don't think.
The IDF and Likud literally just killed orders of magnitude more civilians than Hamas in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
This is not conventional warfare. Hamas hides among civilians. Hamas could have just surrendered and returned the hostages, and that would've saved a lot of civilians. Hezbollah could have decided not to start a missile barrage, so could've Iran and Yemen.
But none of that happened. When one side doesn't take actions it could've, don't blame the other side for consequences. This goes both ways, BTW. The next generation of Israelis will probably pay dearly for what happened now.
I know you are being downvoted (not by me). This is a good question, if all the context and history is removed, and we are only looking at who killed more.
I am trying to respond in good faith, but it looks like Hamas is accepted across the world as a terrorist organization for specifically targeting civilians. And as much as I loathe the loss of civilian life at the hands of IDF, this is not a conventional war, and Hamas hiding within civilian populations and tunneling under hospitals is on Hamas and not on IDF. Like it happened in history a million times, Hamas could've surrendered against a superior enemy and and returned hostages, to protect its own citizens.
So, that's why Hamas must cease to exist. Not Palestine itself, nor another government in Palestine - just Hamas. They could've stopped it, they didn't.
Let me know when IDF/Likud behave like this unprovoked (Yes, I know what's going on in West bank and its not remotely close to what Hamas did)
I mean, realistically speaking, the IDF is a powerful force, while Hamas is not. Israel has the ability to completely take over Gaza, but Gaza does not have the ability to take over Israel. So, as macabre as it may be, Hamas' right to exist, technically speaking, is controlled by Israel.
(All of this assuming no outside intervention for 3rd-party nations or groups of nations, of course.)
I agree
IDF 100% should cease to exist as well. It's long overdue. I don't know how an organization can officially be labelled as genocidal and be allowed to continue functioning as they do
You're welcome to try, but I do not believe you will get far.
That's the thing with militaries. You kind of have to overpower them in order to get rid of them.
It helps to have the backing of the US.
Speaking of not leaving things out:
This was genocide, supported and endorsed by the US.
The moral standing of the US and Europe has, in the eyes of the rest of the nonaligned world, plunged to new depths because of this and that has been a massive, MASSIVE help to Putin and China.
Which countries are in is this non-aligned world?
Please be careful when using the word genocide Gaza population: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1422981/gaza-total-popul...
Jews in before/after WW2 in Germany: 500k before, 200k after, 100k now. 6M European jews killed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Germany
What Palestinians went through in the last 15 months is grotesque and unforgivable, but their "elected government" could have completely avoided this.
>This was genocide
Please don't abuse this word. If Israel was conducing genocide there wouldn't be Arab Israelis, and the population of Gaza would not grow over time.
Ethnic cleansing and insufficient proportionality consideration, likely. Not genocide. The Israelis don't want to remove Palestinians from the face of the earth, they want political and physical safety for the Jews, and history has worked out such that they feel they need an Jewish-majority ethnostate.
This is not abuse of the word, complete success is not necessary for genocide to be an appropriate description.
https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide
This israeli scholar of genocide could see that just a few weeks into this escalation. Why can't you?
China gained even more from this genocidal spree & exercise in ignoring international law. BRICS got a new lease on life. And NDB is shaping up to be a legitimate competitor to the IMF.
I don't mean to be pessimistic, but how sure are we its over? They're still bombing as we speak - and yea, I know the cease-fire doesn't come into effect sunday, but doesn't that signal something? Many times Israel has said something in these scenarios they've changed their minds. Cease-fire is not "peace," either. I think for some unfortunate people that survived this, the nightmare may just be beginning. I truly hope I am wrong. We live in dark times.
Good. Next, Ukraine and Russia.
Are either Israelis or Gazans more secure than when this war began? What has either side achieved?
Hamas has been considerably weakened. Their arsenal of rockets and weapons is depleted. At the beginning of the war thousands of rockets were being shot into Israel and now there are very few and the ones that are are quite crude. Hezbollah entered the war immediately and said the only way they would exit is if Hamas exists. Israel retaliated, killed their leader, decimated their forces, and negotiated a ceasefire that got Hezbollah to back off on their original terms. Lebanon just elected an anti-Hezbollah President.
During all of this, Assad was deposed. Israel's main adversary is Iran. They are the ones who fund and supply Hamas and Hezbollah, and were the key ally of Assad. They attacked Israel multiple times during the war and Israel responded in kind, the assesments seem to be that Israel's responses were quite strong.
So prior to October 7, Iran had strong proxies and allies all over the region. They are now either in shambles or deposed.
The goal of the war for Israel is to prevent another October 7th style attack from occuring. I'd say they have made significant steps towards accomplishing that from a military perspective.
Israel has likely also created multiple generations of anger and hate against themselves. They may have reduced the likelihood of another Oct 7 in the near term, but 50 years is not something I would count on
Probably the most efficient way of creating multiple generations of anger and hate is letting a radical terrorist movement control 2 million people, which can completely mold the education curriculum and free to draft anyone to their quasi-army
So whatever it has done, it cannot possibly be worse than pre-war
> letting a radical terrorist movement control 2 million people, which can completely mold the education curriculum and free to draft anyone to their quasi-army
“Terrorist” groups Irgun, Haganah, Lehi all became part of Israeli government and army post 1948. Israel has mandatory military service for its citizens.
What could a radical terrorist organization possibily tell Gazans about what happened to their parents that sounds worse than the truth?
This is the narrative that the extremists want to push, but it’s hardly the truth. Hamas was not some grassroots movement of frustrated Palestinians. It was an Iranian proxy force masterminded, funded, supplied, trained, and instructed by Iran.
There are certainly many angry Palestinians before and after but this is foreign meddling through and through. Hamas would not exist in this form and have done the things that it did otherwise.
In 50 years there will be no Palestine :c
There are multiple generations of hate in the West Bank as well. Israel isn't threaten by them as much as they have much more difficulty accumulating weapons.
Are the Palestinians in the West Bank supposed to love their armed illegal settler neighbors?
It feels like almost ever day that I see a video of a Palestinian's home in the West Bank being demolished or a Palestinian family being harassed by armed settlers
> Israel has likely also created multiple generations of anger and hate against themselves
Israel would have created multiple generations of emboldened anger and hate against themselves if they failed to respond to the massacre and mass kidnapping.
I don't understand how is this different to all wars? back then when the Nazis started the war and we had to declare war against them. Or when we nuked 2 cities of Japan, were we also afraid that we will create multiple generations of anger and hate? how is this different?
I'm not comparing Israel or Palestine to Nazi, it's just a bitter fact that war always create anger and hate. Something had to be done though?
Perhaps weakened them from an equipment & infrastructure standpoint - along with the rest of Gaza - but not from a manpower standpoint: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-14/blinken-s...
The right way to fight an independence movement is to either do so from within/in a more targeted fashion, or barring that, meet their demands in some shape or form. Escalating the violence to the point where you’re destroying and displacing a people might settle things down in the short term, but the movement will not die, and will more than likely grow.
The difference being that the new manpower has zero experience, is mostly kids and has no leadership. They reverted from a terrorist army, to an unorganized guerilla
Sure, but they are at least motivated; anyone would be after witnessing their family, friends, or neighbors being wiped out by “precision” bombing.
> During all of this, Assad was deposed.
And we've yet to see whether this is a good thing.
Gaddafi was seen as one of the most oppressive figures in the world during his lifetime. A few countries made it their goal to take him down and liberate the people of Libya.
Gaddafi was killed, Libya was free, and the media celebrated. Just like with Syria, media coverage was down to basically zero about a month after that happened and everyone was left thinking it was a job well done. Turns out Libya has been worse than it ever was under Gaddafi. Having an oppressive albeit relatively secular leader who maintained a stable hold on the country turned out to be better than an oppressive non-secular mess.
Not only is Hamas weakened, Hamas' and Iran's supporter (China, Russia) has been severely weakened compared to the start of the conflict. Russia is in a stalemate in the Ukraine invasion, and has lost significant economic and military resources since. Russia also lost significant influence in Middle East, with the Assad regime fall. China is a severe economic decline. Also, China distanced itself from Iran, most likely due to wanting to not get sanctioned by US and Europe. https://thediplomat.com/2024/11/china-is-recalculating-its-m....
Good points there. Still not sure how much the ouster of Assad was connected with the war (though no doubt that the weakening of Hezbollah must have contributed a lot to it) but it definitely changed the playing field.
It was 100% driven by the weakness in Hezbollah and Russia and Iran. There’s no doubt.
The monsters are still there and already planning their next attempt in genocide. While the hostages coming back is a welcome news, none of war objectives were achieved. All the sacrifices were pointless if Israel exits Gaza and leaves Hamas in control (weakened is but still in control). Netanyahu again showed that he is a coward and easily pressured and has a pathological fear of a conflict. With thousands of monsters being released back into Gaza I fear the next 7 October will be worse.
> Israel's main adversary is Iran. They are the ones who fund and supply Hamas
Well, Israel started and has been funding Hamas (I'm assuming, but who knows, that it stopped with this war) since the PLO/Arafat days to the tune of (at times tens of) millions a month.
That's not actually true. First Israel didn't fund them, they allowed others to fund them, second the Hamas back then was not the terrorists of today, they changed.
> The goal of the war for Israel is to prevent another October 7th style attack from occuring. I'd say they have made significant steps towards accomplishing that from a military perspective.
October 7th was a retaliation.
I punch you once and then you punch once me in retaliation. Assuming I don't want to get punched again, which do you think is the better option?
1) I bomb your extended family, kill your journalist wife, run your babies over with a bulldozer and tell you "next time you punch me in retaliation the punishment will be even worse".
2) I keep my hands to myself.
What was Oct 7th retaliation to, exactly?
It's a mystery: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/16516.jpeg
None of this started on Oct 7th, the inciting incident was the founding of Israel itself on top of an existing state with an existing population who were violently expelled to make way. Everything else is just ongoing fallout from that.
To be fair, there was no existing state, except the Ottoman empire which was defeated and dismantled in WWI. There was however an existing population who never got any say in what happened with their own land.
"there was no existing state, except for the existing state that there was". What?
Because the Ottoman empire was already long gone at the moment of the founding of Israel (and also Palestine had been a relatively small region within that empire, not a state on its own).
GP made it sound as if there had been an existing state in 1948.
(Not disputing however that the zionist project of establishing a state there and the entire conflict go back far longer than 1948, to a time where the Ottomans definitly were still there)
So the side that dies more has the moral high ground in your opinion?
And your solution is to remove Israel from existence, since that’s the catalyst?
I don't think Israel should cease to exist, I think it should cease doubling down on the settler-colonial project it started out as. If you choose to equate the latter with destroying Israel then I'm afraid you're telling on yourself.
Show me another conflict in history where the good guys killed 10x as many people as the bad guys. (Not even starting with all the other instances of dehumanization)
The First Gulf War.
If they wanted to stop being killed they could have had this ceasefire happen at any time.
What are you supposed to do when the losing side won't surrender and keeps fighting?
>So the side that dies more has the moral high ground in your opinion?
No the side that has been ethnically cleansed and colonized for 75+ years and made refugees in their own land have the moral high-ground. Palestinians have every right to resist to the evil they have been subjected to for almost a century.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_extremist_terrorism
What existing state was Israel founded on top of?
> founding of Israel itself on top of an existing state
This alone shows you don't know the history.
Palestine has never been an independent state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. Then it was part of the British Empire. Israel was established when the British left. It was never established "on top of" an existing state. It was declared when the British left, in accordance with the UN partition plan.
Speaking of which, Zionism started long before, in the 19th century, when Jews started buying up Ottoman land in historic Judea/Israel/Palestine.
Anyhow, the Arabs were only expelled when, instead of declaring their own state in accordance with the UN plan, they invited neighbouring states to join them in attempting to genocide all the Jews. They lost, and thus were expelled since, you know, they tried to kill their neighbours. Then what remained under Arab control was incorporated into Jordan, Syria and Egypt.
This is revisionist history.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947%E2%80%931948_civil_war_...
First of all, 1947 was a civil war between Muslim Arabs and Jews, when the British left and caused a vacuum of power. Much like a far larger civil war in India in 1947 when the Britishers left and caused a vacuum of power between Muslims and Hindus. 1 million people died in that one, but both sides established states and people moved on. Not so in Palestine. Arab League resolution 1547 and Casablanca Protocol made sure their descendants would be stateless for any amount of generations. An unprecedented thing, also UNRWA was established only for this artificially stateless group (every other refugee group in the world goes through UNHCR), UNRWA bureaucracy has labeled all their descendants as “refugees” forever, while in Western countries both Palestinians and Jews (and everyone else) have long moved on and got citizenship.
Second of all, the ones in charge of the place were the British. They defeated the Ottomans (who in turn had been EXTREMELY brutal to Christians including Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians) for over 100 years. Just google the massacres of Chios, Sayfo, Hamidian massacres and the Armenian genocide. To their credit, Palestinian Arabs did not participate in such things, and they were loyal Ottoman subjects. In fact, British had to go and recruit Arabs from Arabia (the Hashemite brothers including King Faisal of Syria and King Abdullah of Jordan) and promise them vast territories (see Lawrence of Arabia) to help them overthrow the Ottomans. The very thing that Ottomans massacred Armenians for (suspecting them of siding with Russia against their empire) the Hashemites ACTUALLY DID.
The Mandate of Palestine was actually unanimously given to Britain by the League of Nations which was set up by Britain and France and a few other winners of WW1 specifically to avoid wars like WW1 and to give each nation self determination peacefully (they forgot Kurds). The Russians approved of this — Russia had become embroiled in their own civil war, with Bolsheviks like Trotsky supporting the Mandate system because it meant each nation would have self determination. (It was Bolsheviks like Trotsky that exposed the enbarassing Sykes-Pikot agreement to divide Ottoman territory years earlier!)
There were other mandates in Syria, Iraq (Faisal) and Jordan (Abdullah) etc. where Jews were NOT allowed to settle. Funny how almost no one has a problem with THOSE, even though they were literal KINGDOMS, set up by the British under the same Mandate system, with ONE GUY in charge, appointed by British in exchange for helping them win WW1. The Hashemites were from Arabia! But when British did the same with Chaim Weitzmann for helping them win the war vs Germany, and established a national home for Jews in Palestine — ooh no. Jews? What right do THOSE GUYS have to be there?
Third of all, the attacks on Jews were happening before any founding of a state. They started happening in 1920 with the Nebi Musa riots, and continued through the 20s and 30s.
The main factor was that the most antisemitic and intolerant people were promoted to be leaders of Palestinian Arabs. I am talking about Al Husseini, and Al Qassam (for whom Hamas named the Qassam rockets and brigades).
Al Husseini whipped many Palestinian Arabs into a xenophobic frenzy much like for example right wing nationalists in Britain have done against immigrants. But he went further and met Hitler, joined the Nazis and even led SS divisions. The guy truly had some genocidal hatred.
Samuel Herbert was the governor put in charge by the British, and he made such bad mistakes as bringing back extremists like Husseini (and Jabotinsky) which the British exiled for fomenting unrest. And he actually maneuvered the young Husseini into being Grant Mufti, when it should have gone to more seasoned Muftis like from the Nashashibi clan and even other Husseinis.
I should also point out that during this entire time, CIVILIAN LEADERS have been FRIENDLY to Jews. Faisal of Syria made an agreement eith Weitzmann to help Zionists. In 1947 Abdullah of Jordan even secretly met with Golda Meir and initially promised to stay out of the civil war in 1947, but had to get involved after Lydda/Ramle.
The mayor of Jaffa (also a Husseini) actually HELPED DEFEND the original Zionist settlement that became Tel Aviv. By the way which btw didnt take anyone’s land, it was built on empty sand dunes.
In fact, I CHALLENGE ANYONE HERE to name one instance — just one — of Jews stealing land prior to 1947 civil war. It’s just a meme that’s completely not true (not a single example).
On the contrary, Jews BOUGHT AND OVERPAID for all the land they had in Palestine, until that civil war. They eradicated Malaria (google Jacob Kliger), drained swamps, planted trees and worked WITH ARABS to make the land livable.
It’s true that many socialist Zionist kibbutzniks and hassidic Jews didnt hire Arabs and preferred to hire Jews so the peasants (fellaheen) were fired from working the land and had to work for Arabs instead. But under capitalism that is completely 100% fine. The same exact thing happened in 1930s depression, as automation like combines displaced farmhands and owners of farms fired tons of farmhands. Read “grapes of wrath” by Steinbeck and others at the time to see the kind of migration that took place from farms and the economic depression that ensued. And yet no one in the USA would justify pogromming the farm owners and tractor operators.
I have found that many anti-zionists if they go back in history start justifying pogroms on Jews much earlier than 1947, for things like “but they bought land and fired people” or “well maybe they would have attacked Al Aqsa”.
Finally, starting in the 1960s, the Soviets and KGB actually trained the Palestine Liberation Organization, and put Arafat in charge of it. They also trained other marxist-leninist militant organizations such as PFLP etc. Much like USA trained mujahideen (Arabic for “jihadists”) in Afghanistan and fomented a civil war leaving 2 million Afghan civilians dead!
The Palestine Liberation Organization and Arafat fought a civil war vs the king of Jordan in 1970 in which up to 25,000 Palestinians were killed in 11 days! (No antizionist talks about that.). Got expelled to Lebanon and kicked off a civil war there (years before Israel invaded Lebanon to help Christians). They also got HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PALESTINIANS expelled from Kuwait because Arafat sided with Saddam. The PLO and Hamas have been the most destructive forces for Palestinian civilians across the entire region, and even Arafat himself admitted that “what Kuwait did to us was worse than the Nakba”.
Look, this is the true history and the main factor is that the ANGRY TERRORISTS with foreign funding (whether it was the generation of Islamist Al Qassam, the marxist PLO, or the Islamist Hamas or PIJ) dominated instead of CIVILIAN LEADERS.
Palestinian civilian leaders chose peace and annexation to Syria / Jordan every chance they got. People forget this. They were pragmatic and sane people, and regular Palestinians were better off under them than militants armed by KGB or now Iran who taught “struggle forever” to kids of plebs while they became billionaires living in mansions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deiShtWReYE
Ask any Palestinian on the street and they have NO IDEA about any of their leaders before “Abu Ammar” aka Arafat. So sad! In fact they even dont know about Al Husseini. Soviet Propaganda had done an amazing job. Most antizionists don’t realize the KGB roots of Palestine liberation movements nor that they are saying word for word the KGB propaganda from the 60s:
>What was Oct 7th retaliation to, exactly?
I would say 75+ years of Zionist terrorism[1][2][3], ethnic-cleansing, apartheid, being locked up in a concentration camp. I mean you could have looked those up yourself but something tells me you just didn't care to look it up.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_extremist_terrorism
It really depends what people have to lose. If they're left without families, place to live, purpose in life other than revenge... what exactly could be "even worse" at that point?
The framing here is pretty ridiculous. Israel definitely punches back much harder than Hamas, but comparing October 7th to a punch and Israel's response to running over babies with a bulldozer is absurd.
Hamas blatantly escalated the conflict by a large margin, there's no denying that. You can't cry over your adversary's response when you do something like that, I'm sorry. Next time keep your hands to yourself, or perhaps just continue throwing rockets at civilians: Israel seems to be willing to tolerate that.
By conservative estimates (see the 2024 Khatlib paper in the Lancet), roughly 7--9% of the population of Gaza will perish as a result of the actions of Israel on the strip. Many more will flee. According to UN, clearing the rubble in Gaza will take 15 years. That's just clearing the rubble, not rebuilding the damaged buildings, which is about 66% of the total.
There are some clear indications that the intention of the Israeli government is to destroy in whole, or in part, the Palestinian people, for example by killing members of the group, or inflicting upon it conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of the group.
There's a wealth of quotes from high ranking officials, going all the way up to the Knesset, stating almost exactly that. One quote I think of from time to time is "Erase them, their families, mothers and children." given in a motivational speech directed at the IDF.
Given that this is their intention (and I have every reason to believe it is), I'd say that this has been a pretty successful affair for Israel. Sure, Jews worldwide (including Israel) are much less safe now than they were two years ago, but the Israeli government does not give me the impression that this is at all their goal.
This makes no sense to me. If 8% (171,000 people) of Gaza were to perish, that would leave Gaza with the population it had in 2020. The ceasefire reportedly will have Israel pulling out from Gaza fully and a massive influx of humanitarian aid is expected to enter Gaza. If the ceasefire goes through, the death rate will drop greatly and the population will begin to grow again.
As horrible as the destruction has been, this is nowhere close to eliminating the people of Gaza. If genocide was a goal of any of the Israeli leadership, they abjectly failed.
Israel is definitely more secure, because of the on front confrontation with Iran and its proxies.
1. Hezbollah suffered heavy blows and lost significant political and military power in Lebanon. Didn’t retaliate nearly as heavy as feared.
2. For the first time Israel struck with its military directly in Iran and showed real abilities by destroying most of Iran’s air defenses.
3. As a result of the two points above and other reasons, there was significant shift of powers in Syria which led to Assad regime collapse (significant amount of supplies to Iran’s main proxy Hezbollah went through Syria), but the affect of the regime change in Syria is yet to be determined.
That (security) was never Hamas' intention; they were worried about being forgotten, after Israel and KSA were close to normalizing relations, and now they've managed to gunk up the gears of any peace process, at the cost of 40,000 Gazan lives. So... a victory for Hamas? They've never been interested in peace anyways.
There is an argument to be made that Iran and Hezbollah have been degraded, which makes the entire region safer. I'm not going to claim this, as I'm no expert, but there is a an argument to be made.
For the Gazans, the next months and years will be more determinative. Will they get the support and aid they need to rebuild and keep terrorist organizations from running their country? (They should have their own country instead of being effectively an open air prison)
The strengthening of the "us Vs them" mentality and terror politics
Israeli's are (not that they think it was worth it), Gazan's are not. This war severely weakened Iran, Iran's proxies (Lebanon/Hezbollah, and Syria) and also interestingly Russia.
Gazan's now have a ruined country with exactly nothing to show for it.
Depending on how you interpret it, this war was actually a good thing for Lebanon (they have a government for the first time in years), and Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster.
Israel has a bunch of land that is politically and practically simpler to annex, than before. Israel is more secure by far, knowing that the US will continue to fund them even in the face of being convicted of humanitarian crimes.
If Israel wanted Gaza, they wouldn’t have given it up twenty years ago.
> being convicted of humanitarian crimes.
The UN and ICC have both shown they're absolutely powerless and useless.
This is not in dispute. None of what I initially posted is in dispute.
I would propose this "war" was relatively cheap in Israeli civilian lives lost for what was gained.
Demonstrably increasing the reach of Israel action without external repercussions, makes it a security win for Israel. None of the international community will put troops in front of Israel to benefit Palestine. That's worth something to know (converting an unknown to a known).
Can you concretely suggest what each side should have done at some point in time, to avoid being where we are now? I feel like you're making a rhetorical statement that's hard to map to specific actions.
If neither side has really changed what's to prevent them from going to war again?
It happened for a reason and unless that reason has changed then one should expect the same outcome.
Hamas was built over a long period by Iran, through Syria. Iran is much weaker than before, Syria is no longer a route to send supplies, and Hezbollah has been gutted.
Concretely, Israel will not be caught offguard for an Oct 7-style attack for quite a while. So the macguffin (hundreds of hostages) will probably not come up again.
Oh please. Israelis could have voted in a different party/leader that would have taken another path. West Bank settlement expansions could have been halted and reversed (to a sensible degree of course). These are bread and butter suggestions that everyone who thinks honestly about this conflict sees clearly.
There are of course many more suggestions I didn't state. To pretend that there was just no way to avoid this is shameful.
> Negotiations on implementing the second phase of the deal will begin by the 16th day of phase one, and this stage was expected to include the release of all remaining hostages, a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
Am I missing something or did they really only agree to _just_ a ceasefire?
You're not missing anything, this is a ceasefire like the first one, Israel will demand the rest of the Hostages at the end of it, Hamas will refuse, and the fighting will resume after lots of finger-pointing about whose fault it is.
Everyone is tired of this shit. Bibi will be on meathooks if he unilaterally backs out. Hamas will have no friends at all if they renege.
Hamas did not lose any friends the last few times they reneged. I think both sides agree this peace will just last until Hamas can rearm, but I just think both sides agree that's as good a deal as either is getting.
> Trump's Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff was in Qatar along with White House envoys for the talks, and a senior Biden administration official said Witkoff's presence was critical to reaching a deal after 96 hours of intense negotiations.
Why did it take for a new US president to get this ceasefire deal to happen when the first proposal was rejected? [0]
Of course it "needs to be take longer" since lots of money was made by government contractors in this war and why would it need to end earlier if Biden was throwing money on Israel instead of reaching a ceasefire deal much earlier with the first deal.
All would have been avoid had it not been for Biden's weak leadership which was shown on display in-front of the world for the last 4 years.
There is no denying or spinning that.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-mediators-sea...
What a bizarre comment. We don't have a new US President until next week.
> We don't have a new US President until next week.
You do realize that this war happened under this "existing president" and since November, Trump will be the "new US President"? Both Hamas and Israel both also knew this.
Even with this existing president (Biden), only until he lost the election this deal was reached and it started under his term and he prolonged to fund and waste money on Israel in this war even when the first ceasefire deal was rejected with an excessive amount of lives lost.
So why wasn't this stopped earlier with the first deal? Why did Biden (the existing president) wait until the very end to reach a deal when the first was rejected?
Can you not answer the above instead of dodging the question(s)?
[flagged]
Hamas agreed to this deal months ago. Give Trump credit for applying pressure to the party that actually rejected it.
That's not true. Hamas finally agreed to let Israel monitor the Philadelphi corridor and to keep a buffer zone.
Hamas also finally released an actual list with names of who they would release.
Those were the changes the made the deal. Israel did not change their position.
If you think you are right, then tell me: What did Hamas want that they didn't get before, than now because of Trump Israel agreed to? There's not a single thing, but I'll let you have a chance to find something.
I credit Trump's pressure on Hamas - Hamas eventually softened a lot of their positions because they realized they had no choice.
And I wish Biden had done a better job of supporting Israel, this war could have ended a lot sooner if Hamas had realized that the entire world was pressuring them to surrender. Instead the message got diluted with support for Palestinians, which Hamas interpreted as support for themselves.
Did you hear a single call by any country for Hamas to surrender? I didn't.
Edit: I got a very quick -4 mod on this, I assume because people don't like to realize Trump is doing more for both Israel and the Palestinians than Biden, and the Democrats lost the election partly because of their lack of support for Israel.
> Did you hear a single call by any country for Hamas to surrender? I didn't.
US, UK, France, Germany, Italy in a joint message: https://it.usembassy.gov/joint-statement-on-israel/
Spain: https://www.politico.eu/article/pedro-sanchez-spain-humanita...
Italy, France, Germany ask for EU sanctions to force Hamas surrender: https://www.reuters.com/world/italy-france-germany-call-ad-h...
Secretary of State calls out other countries for not demanding Hamas to surrender: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/20/politics/blinken-israel-hamas...
You should expand your media diet.
Except for the Sec of State no other article is calling for a surrender.
The first one condemns the attacks two days after. The second one is "Humanitarian cease-fire", and condemning Hamas for attacks - Not a call to surrender. The third one is sanctions.
I'm not seeing the call to surrender in your links. I'm seeing sanctions. I think parent is asking for explicit calls that Hamas surrenders (i.e. lays down their arms and returns the hostages). Not a ceasefire, a surrender.
The first two links are just weak platitudes. The 3rd link is a year old and the sanctions never happened. The last one is just Blinken talking, not a serious demand.
So I maintain what I said.
1 civilian for 50 terrorists. This deal is a complete disgrace and betrayal of everything that's been achieved over this war. Its a guarantee that HAMAS will rebuild and kill again.
This whole war was a textbook example of indecisive, prolonged operation with no clear strategic objective. So many soldiers lives wasted for nothing.
Look, you may fool peoe with your “all Palestinians are terrorists” rhetoric in zionist circles, but I would hope that most other people would be able to see through the propaganda.
Israel has imprisoned people in “administrative detention” with no legal recourse for decades, for all kinds of bullshit reasons. If my home was being taken by settlers, which happens in the West Bank on the daily, I would do more than just throw stones. And it would land me in jail as a “terrorist”.
So you're saying that palestinians are not terrorists, but if you were palestinian, you would become one. That's certainly a way to make a point, I guess.
So your argument is that, in order to not be a terrorist I would have to allow Israeli settlers to steal the homes of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank without fighting back. Yes, if you apply that definition, I would, in fact, be a terrorist.
Sorry dude, you are not on the good side of history. You justify terror bomb attack and missile over civilian cities... BTW - throwing stones kills and blowing buses and making wild-firing as regular basis? That's only prove that this not their home... They need to change their strategy to more human values, and not becoming a 16-th old century barbaric acts.
Moderates? where are you? Supporting terrorism is not a free-speech.
“Throwing stones kills” said the heavily armed settler laughing, leveling a rifle at my chest. Arabs never lived here. You are just a figment of history’s imagination, and must be expunged. The IDF soldiers standing around laughed as he pulled the trigger.
Almost on weekly basis there are terror attack of west-bank peaceful that are coordinate on civilians, last week 3 older women were murdered on daylight as "innocent west-bank 'peace makers'"...
The different is that one side defend against such evil and brutal attacks, and the other side is cinicly "allow" to conduct them. For a tech-person I hope you have more critical thinking ability to spot different.
One easy solution: the illegal west bank settlers should simply LEAVE THE WEST BANK
one hard problem - Jordan is not accepting back their citizen back.
Why is that a problem of the people of West Bank?
you should be more specifc. this reads as though youre trying to say that israeli government representatives killed some Palestinians in the west bank as part of their occupation and ethnic cleasing campaign, but im not clear that thats what youre intending to say
Ok, Here is a reference for just one of the events -> https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjgv1r4x81o
I agree. In terms of objectives achieved the only one was the release and return of Israeli civilian hostages and even that is still mostly hypothetical, otherwise Israel failed to eliminate Hamas and will be withdrawing from Gaza which Netanyahu had declared would be annexed.
Hamas won the war even if they lost the battle. They still exist to fight another day (and judging from history they absolutely will), at the cost of countless Palestinian civvies. Israel lost the war even if they won the battle, at the cost of significant Israeli lives and reputation.
For most of us outsiders looking on, the moral to take away is this: Don't wage wars, everyone loses. Don't. Wage. Fucking. Wars. If a war must be fought, whether as the aggressor or defender or intervener, realize that everyone involved is fucking retarded and then fight all-or-nothing to end it swiftly with decisive achievements before anyone can realize what happened.
Great - I hope this national liberation movement pushes back the neo-colonial invaders.
Time to pay the piper.
IMO Iran is the winner (least damaged) out of all this. Their proxies are smashed, but the core strength is still the same.
Israel has blown all its international credibility. The International Court of Justice verdict will be very interesting. If it goes against Israel then BDS will (should) become the policy for all countries.
Israel already violated multiple clear orders from the ICJ so I honestly don't see what mechanism would hold them accountable.
Iran invested all its resources into proxies waging wars for it. Them being smashed means Iran is ruined on all those war investments. With economy in shambles and expansionist war failed, it's hardly "least damaged".
This is untrue on multiple levels. Iran invested most of its resources on its own military - the proxies are extremely cheap - and Iran's most powerful Iraqi proxies are fine, while the Houthis actually came out of this stronger.
who's the strongest proxies? i thought it was Hezbollah, who are now in shambles
By equipment and manpower, it's the proxy groups of the Iraqi PMF by a country mile, and apparently the Houthis are stronger than anyone expected.
They aren't cheap, at that scale they required huge expenses. And the more they wanted to expand, they more expenses it meant. They overstretched in hopes of that paying off, and it all went crashing down.
The only upside for them now is that those expenses suddenly became unnecessary, but it's not going to stop them from trying to do it all over again.
They really don't. It's estimated Hezbollah cost around a billion dollars a year, probably less now due to the massive PPP multiplier increase.
The Iranian proxies are not actually fully on Iran's teat, they have their own revenue stream and direct Iranian funding is now only a small part of it.
More like Iran pays them and tries to milk their criminal profits back to some degree. But they spend more than they make, for them it's about expansionism, not about profits.
I have never seen so many downvoted comments that aren’t dead in a thread before. If anyone had examples of other threads of this ilk I’d be curious to see them.
I’m completely ignorant as to the public sentiment on this topic, no social media besides this site.
> I have never seen so many downvoted comments
Must be those pesky chinese or russian bots. Or could it be something else entirely? A chosen group of bots perhaps?
> that aren’t dead in a thread before.
Give it some time. They start with the downvotes and when things quiet down some, then come the mass flagging of comments.
honestly, one thing I like about this conflict is that euphamistic comments like this don't get you banned anymore.
the ostracizing has been diluted so much that its become even counterproductive. everyone can laugh about something as benign as that, as the real frictions have been laid bare for all to see.
You will see it in any thread about Israel or Jews. Tons of flagged and downvoted posts. I emailed hn about it.
Unlike those highly motivated people, normal people don't spend time upvoting and vouching, so you end up with a tattered mess of a thread.
> or Jews
Any example of this that isn't Israel related?
Astroturfing
Many people believe they need to add support to their cause at the expense of accuracy, so instead of elaborating or explaining why they just try to drown out discourse that doesnt automatically help them
But fortunately there is no need to debate your beliefs anymore, just go bet on them in the prediction markets
You get paid for being more correct that someone else, geopolitics is greater than sentiment
How is this hacker news? From the HN guidelines:
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. *If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.*
There are exceptions to the rules, like US election results or the end of major wars
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42614703.
Really major political developments often have a thread on HN.
We should always celebrate peaceful interactions over violent ones.
I'd guess because of the word "Most" in that line of the guidelines?
From the same page of guidelines:
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.
Yeah, the irony is the guidelines have weasel words allowing this post but not the comment
It is news because several newspapers credit the achievement to Trump and his envoy Witkoff. Ha'aretz has more on this, but it's paywalled so here is another one:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/with-epic-deal-...
This is not just Trump bragging and taking credit, search other sources.
US foreign policy does not actually change when the administration does.
I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but multiple sources are agreeing on the fact that Trump’s team had a role to play in this. But I guess this upsets the “vote blue no matter who” crowd.
> This is not just Trump bragging and taking credit, search other sources.
This claim is not justified by the link you provide. What evidence do you have to support it?
The downvoters here are insane. Go ahead and flag yet another fact while real events are going on in the world.
