Hamas accepts cease-fire proposal for Gaza after Israel orders Rafah evacuation ahead of attack
Hamas accepts cease-fire proposal for Gaza after Israel orders Rafah evacuation ahead of attack
The Hamas militant group says it has accepted an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal to halt seven-month war with Israel.
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Israeli military leaflets were dropped ordering evacuation from eastern neighborhoods of Rafah, warning that an attack was imminent and anyone who stays “puts themselves and their family members in danger.” Text messages and radio broadcasts repeated the message.
God, I'd be so pissed if I got one of those leaflets. The audacity of someone who bombs a residential home to blame you for all the children that they murder
I suspect you would be even more pissed if you hadn't received any prior warning. This is the least terrible option.
The least terrible option is not invading...
And then what? For how long is this war supposed to last?
Hamas needs to be defeated, the remaining living hostages liberated - and this requires boots on the ground. The sooner Hamas are out of the picture as a major threat to both Israelis and Palestinians, the sooner the war will be over. This is the best hope Palestinian civilians have. Once the organization has been dismantled to the point that nothing more than tiny, relatively easy to deal with splinter cells remain, international aid can pour into the strip without being disrupted by the fighting, without terrorists stealing it, without the whims of the current far-right government in Israel (whose days are numbered) limiting it. Then rebuilding can begin and the international community can start work on a sustainable post-war order - which needs to involve substantial changes to Palestinians society, governance, education and media (no more UN-funded schools teaching kids to murder Jews, for example) - that paves the way towards a two-state solution. A two-state solution has been pushed into the far future by the October 7 massacres, but the process can't even begin for as long as Hamas are still in a position of power.
They literally cannot defeat Hamas. Not only are they not all located in Gaza, but murdering so many civilians makes the civilians want to strike back at Israel, which means more recruits.
This is not about defeating Hamas, this is about constructing a famine in order to drive Palestinians from Gaza (i.e. ethnic cleanse Gaza).
Hamas and their cause are considerably is less popular in Gaza than in the West Bank according to independent Palestinian polls. This more recruits talking point that I see repeated all the time has no basis in reality. The uncomfortable truth is that people in places that have been bombed by Israel are less likely to consider armed resistance a valid option and are instead dramatically preferring a two-state solution now:
https://i.imgur.com/gRNX0Qb.png
https://i.imgur.com/MgDk1PU.png
Source: https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/973
I think that most Palestinians who have been unfortunate enough to be at the receiving end of Israeli weapons and lucky enough to survive are starting to realize just how enormous the disparity in capabilities has become.
The land in Gaza is near worthless to Israel. There are almost no natural resources, the soil is of abysmal quality and fresh water is highly contaminated by seawater. The only resources that exist in abundance are sunlight and salt water. It's an awful place to settle, which is one of the reasons why Israel was willing to forcefully evict their remaining settlers in the Gaza Strip in 2005 and why today, only a far-right fringe wishes for Israelis to settle in the strip again. It is completely pointless to ethnically cleanse Gaza and has no majority within Israeli society.
There are other reasons for there being a famine in Gaza right now; it's not some dastardly Israeli master plan:
- Israel had no plans for this war and it's taking far longer than expected. Hamas attack caught them totally by surprise and the response is nowhere near as well thought out as it would have been if this war had been planned ahead.
- War obviously caused nearly all local food production to cease. Israel tanks driving straight through fields and orchards (avoiding main roads and creating their own in order to circumvent IEDs) doesn't help. Israel unsurprisingly puts the safety of their soldiers above the concerns of local farmers.
- Since the war is continuing for so long, the food supply was inevitably going to collapse. Gaza is notoriously reliant on food imports, unlike Israel, having never built up the ability to be self-sustainable. Damage to infrastructure alone makes maintaining pre-war levels impossible right now - and it doesn't help that every truck has to be screened for weapons beforehand, which takes a ton of time.
- Hamas is misappropriating a significant portion of the aid and hoarding it so that they can continue their fight. They know that this will result in more civilian suffering - but they are counting on it, because they know this will result in pressure against Israel, not them.
- The far-right government in Israel is unsurprisingly unwilling to allow in significant aid that gets stolen anyway in order to continue the fight.
- Aid that doesn't disappear into the tunnels gets sold on the black market instead of being distributed to the people in need. Extreme local corruption, including within international aid organizations (which are overwhelmingly staffed by locals), hampers any and all aid efforts.
Before you think I'm some mindless defender of Israel (or, worse, a Hasbara), read this: I detest the current Israeli government with a passion, just like any other far-right government. I'm frequently horrified by public statements by leading Israeli politicians, I think that the war has exposed serious operational deficiencies within the IDF, I think that individual soldiers and officers who recklessly endanger civilians or, worse, commit war crimes need to be far more seriously punished than they already are and every nation that has friendly relations with Israel should never stop pressuring them to conduct themselves as best as they can in this war.
However, I do not subscribe to the belief that Israel is guilty of committing a genocide in this war. Note that I am not denying individual war crimes - those are being committed by Israeli soldiers, there is no doubt about it - but I have seen no evidence of there being a master plan to eradicate Palestinians as a people or even attempt it. The enormous lengths the IDF goes to warning Palestinian civilians alone - to the detriment of military operations - should put this hypothesis to rest. In my opinion, and you are free to disagree, this is merely a war and wars are universally terrible. Most of us, especially in the West, have been shielded from the realities of warfare, especially the fact that it's civilians who are always and in every single war suffering the most, for so long that we are mentally unprepared for a war that is as heavily "televised" (outdated term, I know, but still appropriate) as this one.
Combine this with a shocking lack of knowledge of international law and international affairs among the wider population, even in reasonably educated circles like young academics, a massive multi-national disinformation campaign (Russia, Iran, China, Qatar as the four big players) finding fertile soil and it's not difficult to see why a small number of easily debunked talking points are dominating public discourse. It's incredibly frustrating to see idealistic, well-meaning people fall for this. It makes me fear for the future of the developed world, if I'm honest. How will they react to the likely coming war against Taiwan, for example? How easily could they also be manipulated into taking China's side there or Russia's side in a possible attack against the Baltics?
Sorry for the long diatribe. I don't blame anyone for tuning out after the fifth paragraph or sooner.
However, I do not subscribe to the belief that Israel is guilty of committing a genocide in this war. Note that I am not denying individual war crimes - those are being committed by Israeli soldiers, there is no doubt about it - but I have seen no evidence of there being a master plan to eradicate Palestinians as a people or even attempt it. The enormous lengths the IDF goes to warning Palestinian civilians alone - to the detriment of military operations - should put this hypothesis to rest. In my opinion, and you are free to disagree, this is merely a war and wars are universally terrible. Most of us, especially in the West, have been shielded from the realities of warfare, especially the fact that it’s civilians who are always and in every single war suffering the most, for so long that we are mentally unprepared for a war that is as heavily “televised” (outdated term, I know, but still appropriate) as this one.
i'm sorry, but putting the blame for war crimes on individual soldiers is just deflecting from the institution that is arming and deploying those soldiers. you don't get to bomb hospitals, aid workers, mosques, and schools and then defer the blame from that kind of abhorrent destruction onto your soldiers. if they're using IDF guns, bombs, and uniforms to kill tens of thousands of people, displace so many from their homes, and prevent food and humanitarian aid from entering the region to the point that famine is spreading, then the IDF, and by extension the Israeli government, is responsible for those deaths. as for there being no evidence of a "master plan to eradicate Palestinians as a people or even attempt it", if you're genuine in that belief, actually look at what the people who are accusing Israel of genocide are saying. there is credible evidence of both a genocide in practice and in intent. israeli and jewish scholars of genocide and the holocaust disagree with you. the UN disagrees with you. the ICC disagrees with you.
Sorry, but you think that war crimes committed by "individuals" who just so happen to go on to not face any serious punishment, is not evidence of a concerted effort to commit genocide? The indiscriminate bombing of civilians, ordered by the Israeli military's leadership is not genocidal?
How about comments from the Prime Minister himself comparing Palestinians to Amalekites, a group his religion said needed to be exterminated in their entirety
Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass
1 Samuel 15:3
Or how about when another high-ranking member of his party says that Israel's goal is
Erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.
Is that enough evidence that the goal here is genocide? Would anything suffice?
I find this comment disturbing in so many ways. I think an example that really sums up what's wrong with it is
Israel unsurprisingly puts the safety of their soldiers above the concerns of local farmers.
"Concerns of local farmers" isn't the main issue with crop destruction. Famine and starvation are.
And the binary between being blown up by ieds and destroying fields is a false dichotomy. A better way of phrasing it would be:
Israel puts expediency above the lives of local civilians.
The UN doesn't declare famine until 30% of a population's children are displaying physical signs such as muscle wasting. This is really serious. We saw it two years ago with the deliberate famine in Ethiopia and now we're seeing it in Gaza.
Hamas isn't a group, it's an ideology*. An ideology created and reinforced by the actions of the Israeli government. And I mean that in the most literal way possible. Netanyahu himself is on record having helped prop up Hamas because having a more violent group helped to delegitimise the Palestinian democracy and weaken the parties they thought of as more likely to succeed.
The only acceptable response here is a total, unilateral surrender from Israel. For them to give back Palestinians all of their land to at least the 1967 borders (but ideally 1947) and to treat the nation of Palestine with the same respect they would give any other foreign country.
Anything less is just Israel continuing to perpetuate the violence that they created.
We look back at apartheid South Africa and say that yeah, violent resistance on the part of black activists was justified and fair. At the time they were called terrorists, same as Hamas today. The same is true of Irish independence movements, of American civil rights activists, and many other movements throughout history.
You can't oppress people for decades and then act all surprised and indignant when they lash out against that.
* yes, it is actually a group and its members are awful people who, ideally, would be stopped. But it is a group formed with an ideology and even if every current member is killed, an identical group will spring up as long as the conditions creating it exist. The idea of stopping the group is a complete fantasy.
Excellent summary
The only acceptable response here is a total, unilateral surrender from Israel.
That is how you would respond to the terrorist attacks of October 7? Seriously? Have you even thought about this for more than one second?
The better question is why did the events of 7 October 2023 take place in the first place?
Again, you cannot put the blame on a victim of oppression for lashing out against that oppression. The blame lies squarely on the oppressor. Especially when the violent group which did the lashing out was propped up by the oppressor as a means to justify increasing that oppression.
You don't lash out against oppression by massacring, raping and abducting civilians. Hamas are not resistance fighters. They deliberately attacked small, peaceful communities that were far-left and extremely pro-Palestine, the very opposite of the current Israeli government and its policies. One of the most well-known Israeli pro-Palestinian advocates was among the victims:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Silver
Read the article. She was the kind of exemplary human being that is instrumental in bringing Palestinians and Israelis together. Her death alone was a terrible blow to the peace process.
This is not a coincidence - Hamas targeted these communities in order to make peaceful coexistence unpopular in Israel, push voters to the right, because they know this would result in more heavy-handed reactions by the Israeli state. One of their many miscalculations was just how destructive to their organization this response would be.
Hamas relationship with the Israeli government in general is far more complicated than how you are trying to describe it. For starters, this off-shoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood began as a less militant religious alternative to the far more dangerous secular PLO, which is why there was initial clandestine Israeli support for them. The far more recent influx of Qatari cash that Israel signed off on happened after significant international pressure against Israel - and Netanyahu sold it to his power base as some kind of "divide and conquer" strategy after the fact. In reality, the Israeli government was under the delusion that Hamas were growing fat and lazy in power, that the billions in misappropriated aid money enabling a luxury lifestyle for the leadership would make this leadership less militant and thereby pacify Gaza. This was a foolish miscalculation.
You realize that they can't defeat Hamas, right? By killing all these kids families, the are making the situation worse for future generations.
By "boots on the ground" do you mean killing children?
"Think of the children" has rarely ever been used rationally and your comment is no exception. No, that's obviously not what I'm saying and you know that. The sooner the war is over, the fewer children will die.
So you mean "kill children faster".
this is not "think of the children". its "tens of thousands of children have died, and will die, as a result of the actions of the Israeli government". we aren't appealing to the potential harm that might come to children, we are recognizing the current and ongoing slaughter of children and adults happening in Gaza.
They would all be still alive if Hamas hadn't massacred their way through Israel on October 7. Every single nation on Earth would have reacted to this with a full-on war - there is no other way any nation can react to this.
People are just under the delusion that somehow, clean wars with few or no civilian casualties are even possible. They are not, especially not against an enemy that does everything they can to increase the suffering of their own civilians.
Every single nation on Earth would have reacted to this with a full-on war
I find it a bit bizarre that people keep using this talking point when there's ample evidence that other countries do not react to terrorism by slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians.
Many countries have shown themselves able to respect international law. Britain for example managed not to massacre the children of Ireland en masse when it was dealing with the IRA.
again, deflecting blame. it doesn't matter who started it, it doesn't matter what "every single nation on Earth" would have done (although I think there's plenty of examples of other nations not doing the kinds of things Israel is doing in response to a terror attack), its doesn't even really matter whether we call it a war or a genocide, we can see it, and it is wrong. killing tens of thousands of children is wrong, inducing starvation and famine is wrong, destroying hospitals is wrong. if this is war, than i want to kill war, if this is what nations do, then there should be no nations.
i've heard this talking point from other Zionists and Israel-apologists. that this is just what war is like, that casualties are inevitable, that against an enemy like this that Israel's actions are necessary. fuck that noise. if this is what war is like, it is our obligation to seek peace at every opportunity. if killing doctors and journalists, families and childrens, if that is justified in your worldview, then that worldview is not worthy of respect, not worthy of consideration. whatever you call what Israel is doing, however you rationalize it to yourself, these things are useless platitudes. it does not matter who threw the first stone. it does not matter that Hamas has done terrible things to Israeli civilians, any logic, any excuse that leads us to accept mass starvation as an acceptable practice is not worth following. i want to live in a world where no children die of hunger, where people can live and die in peace, and the state of Israel has positioned itself against those goals, is pursuing an agenda that has and will kill innocent people.
if you can recognize that this is what war is like, can recognize the harm being done to the Palestinian people, you are morally obligated to oppose it, if only out of self interest. i don't want to die of starvation. i don't want my friends and family to be bombed, driven from their homes, killed in the streets. jailed and tortured. and if i want that, i cannot stand by as it happens to others, cannot accept the platitude of necessity. because if it necessary here, it can be necessary elsewhere. if we can justify war, we cannot expect to find peace.
"Think of the children" as a phrase is meant to satirize the fallacious appeals of "moral panic" arguments in support of conservative social values.
Your idea that it also covers arguments for literally not killing children is odd. There's nothing necessarily fallacious about singling out children as a subset that it's especially important to avoid killing.
In this case half the civilians are children and they are being killed, so it's a reasonable thing to want to stop.
The implication of your use of the phrase here is that no one should consider children's wellbeing even when real harm is being done to them. I find that idea dystopian and inhumane.
This would be slightly more believable if Rabin wasn't assassinated and Netanyahu didn't basically tear up the Oslo accords.
Also, Netanyahu marched about calling for Rabin's death prior to his assassination. Important extra context.
This isn't an evacuation from a natural disaster like a hurricane. They could , you know, just stop the disaster from happening by not bombing civilian infrastructure (which is a war crime)
No, it's not a war crime to bomb civilian infrastructure that is being used for military purposes. This distinction appears to be entirely lost on people. I'll let you think about why the Geneva Convention explicitly creates this exemption.
Maybe because they are killing a fuckton of civilians as they target said civilian infrastructure. It is a warcrime. Pretty fucking clear violation of the Geneva convention. Do better.
The reason a ton of civilian infrastructure gets destroyed in Gaza has less to do with Israel being callous and far more with how Hamas are operating, how deeply they decided to embed themselves within civilians.
Read this:
https://stratcomcoe.org/publications/hybrid-threats-hamas-use-of-human-shields-in-gaza/87
I mean actually click on the PDF link and at the very least read the first few pages. It's a thoroughly researched, yet accessible academic paper that shows just how systematic Hamas is in their use of human shields.
I'm pressing you on reading the above report, because I highly doubt you actually ever read the Geneva Conventions (so many people I've debated are using them in a vague manner, never able to name any specific sections), because there are explicit exemptions contained within that you would be familiar with if you had actually read them. If for example a hospital is being used for military purposes, it loses its protection under international law:
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/article-19?activeTab=undefined
Guess what Hamas have been doing? Example:
An older report:
As well as carrying out unlawful killings, others abducted by Hamas were subjected to torture, including severe beatings with truncheons, gun butts, hoses and wire or held in stress positions. Some were interrogated and tortured or otherwise ill-treated in a disused outpatient’s clinic within the grounds of Gaza City’s main al-Shifa hospital. At least three people arrested during the conflict accused of “collaboration” died in custody.
If Hamas wasn't using their own population as human shields and shooting rockets from next to the refugee camps then perhaps there would be no need for it. I also find it quite ironic how they're yet again criticized for bombing civilians while there's a perfect example right there of to which lenghts they're going to warn them beforehand. I doubt Hamas did that before shooting rockets at the aid delivery corridor a few days back. Again, 350 meters from a civilian campsite.
This "warning them beforehand" fig leaf only works if you think of everyone as fit healthy and mobile.
Anyone with disabled people, chronically ill people, terminally ill people and elderly people in their own lives knows it's not that simple.
Most of us don't have people physically weakened by famine in our own lives but it doesn't take Einstein to know this is a problem too. And from NGOs we know there's a lot of parentless children and a disproportionate number of child amputees in the mix as well.
If your response to this many civillians being killed is "it's their fault for not getting away" you need to examine your logic, I think.
I brought up the roof knocking because it's what Israel does aswell as dropping leaflets and sending text messages and making phone calls before the strikes. This goes against all the accusations about genocide and intentionally targeting civilians. It would be quite cynical to think that this all is just a cover up so that they can continue with their plan of murdering every single Palestinian. I'm just not buying that. The high number of civilians in that area are a huge inconvenience for Israel and killing them is extremely bad PR. They know this and Hamas knows it aswell.
For the high number of civilians killed I think the most simple explanation is also the most likely to be true; it's urban warwafe on a country with extremely tiny land area and a population of millions. You could blindly drop a bomb quite literally anywhere there and you're likely to hit someone. This is what war looks like.
No, it's really not necessarily what it looks like at all, though you could be forgiven for thinking it. I think perhaps this is the difference between those who focus on this issue because they're interested in Israel, versus those who focus on it mainly because they're interested in human rights.
You could blindly drop a bomb quite literally anywhere
Blindly dropping bombs on densely populated areas is a war crime.
Yes, killing this many people this fast is a consequence of the choices the IDF is making. No, they are not inevitable choices.
For instance, in its entire war against Islamic State the US dropped just one 2,000lb bomb. Israel is dropping hundreds of them.
Roof knocking and leaflets are a fig leaf - a fiction with the aim of avoiding international condemnation, a bit like the peculiar interpretations of "occupying force" and international law we see from them.
I've seen footage of those leaflets raining down on innocent people in Gaza, the panic and despair. It's not humanitarian at all. Ironically some of the people best equipped to get away in time are Hamas fighters, which is probably why the IDF uses "Where's Daddy" to kill suspected Hamas leaders when they are at home.
continue with their plan
Israeli politicians and public figures have been pretty clear in their national discourse about what their plans are. I don't think we need to speculate further than that.
Wait until you hear about what happened in Baghdad
