What does 'ceasing responsibility for life' mean?

They don't yet have the ability thankfully. But with Iran and Russia using them as proxies and able to supply them with advanced weaponry and their absolute ideological extremism, they are an existential threat. At the very least, they could make large swathes of Israel uninhabitable.

Why do you not think Iran is involved? Of course it is! And Russia has joined the party too.

I get the impression that Hamas wants maximum loss of civilian life as it suits their PR goals.

In fact they're possibly prepared to add to the death toll themselves if that explosion that killed civilians fleeing south was indeed a roadside IED which footage certainly suggests.

Israel has a duty to minimise as far as possible civillian casualties but anyone with half a brain will know that this is inevitable - but Hamas is now an existential threat to Israel so there is no choice.The gencoidal ones are Hamas who have shown what they would do given half a chance and that the palestinian civillians are just expendable in that aim.

Hamas is a threat to Israel in that it perpetrates terrorists attacks but I’m not sure I buy the idea they are an “existential threat”. If Hamas really do have Israel outgunned and outnumbered then why don’t they launch an actual
war against the state instead of random attacks where they slaughter civilians seemingly out of spite. If Iran really are involved I would be a lot more worried about them.

Oh it happened. I wish it hadn't but it's true. You can find it on the English speaking media too if you look. It's definitely a sad story in the Hebrew media (

And, no, Israelis did nto do that to any Palestinian woman. Perhaps you're getting confused with what the Arabs have done to one another during their various civil wars?

Again, you're turning Palestinians into innocent victims. Ohhh, they're only defedning themselves against their rapist. That's why they can behead babies and torture families. Because they're occupied (even if they're not). So they can therefore attack Israeli civillians at will and Israel cannot respond. Smacks a bit of the Hamas claim that there are no civillians in Israel.

No one is targeting the vulnerable. Israel is targetting Hamas. But Hamas is deeply embedded int he civillian population and cynically using them as expendable. Civillian casualties are tragically inevitable. Not least because Hamas and their ilk care not the least about reducing Palestinian casualties (as shown by hte hospital bombing by Islamic Jihad)

No, I've shown it means they'll have no legal responsibility for Gazans who will have to make their own arrangements.

Gaza will have to be demilitarised and Western powers will insist on it before giving rebuilding aid. Egypt, Saudi and Jordan will want a demilitarised Gaza too.

And no, you can't just go after Hamas directly as they're deeply embedded into the social fabric of Gaza. Their tunnels are under civilian homes and infrastructure. Locals are also members of Hamas. They use civilians as human shields.

If it was possible to surgically remove a terrorist group from a local population with no civilian deaths, Governments would have been doing it all along from mid 20th century to now. That would really advantage governments.

But terrorist groups cannot go up against a State's power, so guerilla terrorist tactics is their very strong preference. That way they last much longer than they otherwise would.

This! Thank you.

Yes, indeed. Where is Gaza's airport? Israel destroyed the airport in the second intifada in response to Palestinian attacks. Another disastrous decision of the Palestinians to try, yet again, to destroy Israel. If they wouldn't have launched the second intifada, they would have an airport today.

And I think you don't realise the extent and sophistication of the weaponry Hamas has and the resources they have put into them. Of the terror tunnels they have built. It's perfectly legitimate to question why, if they managed to smuggle in so many weapons, they didn't manage to bring in a few parts for some water desalination or medicines if they were short (although medicine has always been allowed through).

There was no pregnant woman who had her abdomen cut open please do not make things up. This happened to a Palestinian woman by the Israeli's and to flip the story is very horrible.

According to the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, Israel does not have the right to defend itself within the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In the same way a rapist cannot defend itself against its victim.

I agree they can remove Hamas from the area but to openly trick and kill civilians and target the vulnerable is a disgrace.

Hamas not only has control by oppressing Palestinians. They don't mind having supporters giving them weapons who have tortured, raped and killed Palestinian people. In 2017 Syria killed 4013 Palestinians living there. This was after they treated them horrific.

Always the ad hominem attacks.
ohh, you don't agree with me so you're "hasbara"

Except Israel is not an apartheid state. And it's not genocide to go after an enemy who is embedded within a civilian population and cynically using them to advance their own genocidal agenda. Israel has a duty to minimise as far as possible civillian casualties but anyone with half a brain will know that this is inevitable - but Hamas is now an existential threat to Israel so there is no choice.The gencoidal ones are Hamas who have shown what they would do given half a chance and that the palestinian civillians are just expendable in that aim.

Shall I link to photos of the massacres Hamas and their friends committed? The beheaded babies (yes, it's true, it wasn't 40 but babies were beheaded by these butchers), the 3 year old who was taken and no one knows where she is or if she alive or dead, the pregnant woman whose stomach was cut open, the children INTENTIONALLY massacred, the people who were massacred after having their hands tied behind their backs, the people INTENTIONALLY burned alive in their own homes, the family of four coming back from camping and masacred when civillian cars were ambused, the family who were tortured - the father had his eye gouged out - in front of their famiy, the women and children gang raped to the point that their pelvic bones were broken. Absolute horrors were inflicted on Israel on 7 October, we were shown what conflict in the middle east looks like.

Listen to the zaka volunteers describe one of the families they came across. No justification:

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1715015632968646746

Hamas can no longer exist next to Israel.

On the contrary, they were downplaying the threat Hamas poses and not taking account of the security factor which ultimately explains the blockade around Gaza.

I don’t see how? If Israel are “ceasing responsibility for life” then I would take they to mean they are going to let civilians suffer and die in a conflict they literally (operative word -literally)cannot escape from.
None of this means Israel should not fight Hamas. It’s they way they’re going about it. Israel have an army and a secret service, can they not go after Hamas directly rather than oscillating between ignoring them and bombing the hell out of Gaza?

And please dont say 'But they can't, they had a blockade' when clearly they COULD since they had sophisticated weaponry with which to attack Israel and build their terror tunnels

You keep arguing that because Hamas have smuggled in weapons Palestinians should have smuggled in everything they need to build desalination plants? I saw you saying somewhere else that they should just have just smuggled in medical supplies for their hospitals. Yet you can't see how fucked up that is? That Israel have such tight control that if they want to have a thriving economy they need to smuggle everything in? Bit by bit, they need to smuggle in all of the parts to build a desalination plant, bit by bit all the parts to build power plants etc etc all because the lovely folk over in Israel only let in 16% of items needed for vital water infrastructure.

And then Israel would just leave them be? The same people that force people to ask permission to dig a well and then deny them? Where is Gazas airport? The truth is Israel want them to rely on them for everything. This isn't something that happened by accident, this isn't something Israel were doing out of the goodness of their hearts. This was all so Israel could keep as much control over Gaza as possible so one day when they were feeling particularly genocidal, they could stop it all.

No, there's no requirement under international law to supply them with electricity. Maybe water if they really can't provide for themeselves as that's clearly essential for human survival. No one wants to see innocent Gazans die. They will get water.

Electricity, however, is not a human right. There are many places without electricity in the world.

Who supplied them with electricity prior to 1967? Egypt? Definitely wasn't Israel as Gaza was occupied by Egypt from 1948-1967. Go back to that source. Find another supplier. Use solar power.

I appreciate that this is really shitty for Gazans. I feel very sorry for them. But given that the majority support their Hamas government, they should now demand that their government find them an aleternative electricity source given that until the massacres, they had electricity from their hated enemy. Perhaps, while planning and executing an extremely sophisticated and cruel attack intentionally focused on civiliians, they made contingency plans for when the enemy that they just attacked decides not to supply them with electricity?

On the contrary, they were downplaying the threat Hamas poses and not taking account of the security factor which ultimately explains the blockade around Gaza.

The political settlement cannot come about until the security threat is properly addressed. Even Egypt acknowledged that.

Furthermore, they ignore the oppression Hamas practices on their own in keeping with other terrorist groups to varying degrees. Hamas has control of life within Gaza.

god the hasbara is out in force today

please continue to justify the actions of an apartheid state currently committing genocide.

I’ll just leave this here

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cyo3DSZrJXu/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Hence blockade since Hamas came to power in Gaza. Never again will they be able to convince them world they're not interested in attacking Israel, only governing Gaza.

The role of Hamas and Iran is highly relevant here. Its naive to think various Palestinian leaders and terrorist groups haven't oppressed Gazans for their own ends.

I don’t think Desertrose2023 was arguing Hamas are harmless rather that Gaza is not a country/state in its own right. That is quite relevant to the topic - the humanitarian crisis caused by Israel getting off essential supplies and blocking aid, which it can do because it controls most of Gaza’s borders (I’m aware Egypt is also guilty)

This is the usual portrayal of Palestinians as hapless victims, innocent and pure, lacking any agency in the face of the evil and cruel satanic Israel. The idea that bad Israel is entirely responsible for Hamas and the good Palestinians had absolutely nothing to do with it is both childish and ridiculous and absolves the Palestinian of any responsibility for their home-grown monster.

I guess ISIS was Israel's fault too? Islamic extremism is not restricted just to the Palestinians.

Hamas began blowing up buses and cafes in Israel in the 90s, intentionally to derail the peace process (and they were quite successful about it too) so if they were interested in helping their own people, this was a strange way to go about it. Their stated goal is the destruction of the State of Israel and replacement with an Islamic state.. And, silly me, I thought that being responsible for the wellbeing of 2 million people might change them, might make them accept the reality that Israel is here to stay, might make them more moderate - since they have to speak to Israel about keeping the water and electricity on, deal with waste management and sanitation - but I was so wrong and I feel that I was a naive fool. Hamas has always said what they want to do. Even now, they are still firing rockets to Israel. We should believe them and take them out their word.

Very well argued! Fully agree. 👍

Gaza is not a country. When will people understand that. It is a small territory of was Palestine where millions of displaced Palestinians made refugees by Israel live. It’s surrounded by a security perimeter controlled by Israel, and is totally dependent on Israel for the distribution of funds and access to basic humanitarian services. This is why describing this current genocide campaign as a ‘war’ is completely inaccurate - it’s not a battle between two nation states. One is a nuclear superpower the other is an open air prison controlled by its oppressor.

Exactly this.
The blockade of Gaza has made it very difficult for them to develop infrastructure and so Israel are obliged (as an occupying power) to provide them with water and electricity supplies. And yet you get posters acting as if they’re acting out of benign charity.

Hamas is backed and supplied by a nuclear power, Iran. The reality is that since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Hamas improved their weapons capabilities, increased coercive control of Gazans and Iran supplied them with more destructive weapons.

Hence blockade since Hamas came to power in Gaza. Never again will they be able to convince them world they're not interested in attacking Israel, only governing Gaza.

The role of Hamas and Iran is highly relevant here. Its naive to think various Palestinian leaders and terrorist groups haven't oppressed Gazans for their own ends. Terrorist groups that claim to defend their people usually oppress them, especially as their position is always unstable as Hamas' is due to popularity of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Lion’s Den.

@SomeCatFromJapan is correct on this being a major factor. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi believes if Palestinian areas had been demilitarised long ago there wouldn't be a war today. He's right.

Advice like this is why I’ve lost faith in humanity.

@Jelllytot the fact you’re so impacted shows you’re a human with a heart. Take a mental health break if you need to from the news but there’s lots you can also do if you want to help. You can donate to charities like UNICEF, PCRF and UNRWA who do a lot to support children in Gaza and elsewhere. You can also spread awareness about what’s happening so people understand the war crimes happening there and hopefully raise their voices for a humanitarian ceasefire.

Apart from the fact that there is no carpet bombing (things would look very different if Israel was carpet bombing), what it means is that the Palestinians will have to fend for themselves or turn to Egypt. Israel is done supplying them with electricity and water (which it has done even with the Hamas government, even with the missiles).

No more work permits to work in Israel. No more treatment in Israeli hospitals (you know, like the treatment of the granddaughter of the Hamas leader https://apnews.com/article/bfddfc52de874861aa9c39cd08fcf8b9)

It's very sad but not sure what choice Israel has now. It would be one thing if Hamas was a fringe group. It's not, it has massive support in Gaza and would win elections if held tomorrow. Gazans support armed struggle against Israel and a repeat of the Hamas (except it wasn't just Hamas, Islamic Jihad and even ordinary Gazans all joined in the killing, looting and kidnapping) massacre is very likely.

If they hate Israel so much, fine, it looks like they'll need to turn to Egypt for support and imports/exports and work or even build up their own economy. You can't always be a victim, sometimes you need to own your own ideology and the consequences of your (collective) decisions.

And please dont say 'But they can't, they had a blockade' when clearly they COULD since they had sophisticated weaponry with which to attack Israel and build their terror tunnels depiste an apparent blockade, when the quiet in Gaza before the massacre led to increasing exports through Israeli ports, increasing numbers of work permits to Israel and a hope that this would improve economic conditions in Gaza. What naive fools we were.

What Hamas did 2 weeks ago has changed things for ever. My own personal wish is that people will realise that Israelis and Palestinians are both here to stay and need to work things out (Israelis that occupation is not just and not sustianble and Palestinians that Israel is here to stay and they are not going back to the grandparents' villages from 1947) but I suspect that Israel will go further right and the left/peace camp further weakened and Palestinians will contiue to court Iran and Russia and become more religiously extreme. Israel is not going to turn back on the electricity for them.

let’s not be cute and pretend Hamas were formed in a vacuum. Israel is entirely responsible for the creation of Hamas. Their existence is a direct consequence of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and their ongoing land grabs and dehumanization of the Palestinian people.

You moron! Israel gave FREE WATER AND ELECTRICITY to Gaza!

My understanding is they’ve cut the supply’s off not handed them a bill.

Why is the BBC never ever reporting of any of the rockets that are still flying out of Gaza?