Israel/Hamas War - Ceasefire

With all due respect: it is not prescisely as though the state is not capable of controlling its own citizens. Especially not when it is sending its soldiers to aid them.

If Israel was capable of clearing out Gaza settlers, you cannot plausibly claim that "oh, but, but, but, ... our hands are tied when our citizens terrorise people whom, as the occupier under international law, we are tasked with keeping safe".

That is just not how any of this works!

More than 200 Palestinians were killed on the West Bank in 2023 - before 7 October!

If you are, seriously, going to claim "oh, but: not state violence, poor, poor Israel was powerless to stop it [expect of course when it was the army doing the killing, not settlers]" ...

... well, then you better push for international intervention or something! Because a state incapable of stopping rampant violence against one particular group - despite its best efforts - is, essentially, a failed state and in need of urgent assistance (and, no, I do not mean "more free bombs from the USA).

That is not what you mean, of course.

You are deliberately poisoning the well by creating confusion over settler attacks and that between a Sovereign Power and a terrorist group.

These are two very different situations and not the same.

There was a clear ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian terrorist groups. Two pieces of evidence have been provided to you.

And YOU don't get to decide there wasn't a ceasefire in place officially from 13th May 2023 to 7th October 2023. 🤷‍♂️

There WAS a ceasefire which was deliberately and knowingly broken by Hamas on 7th October 2023.

Tell that to the mourning families of Palestinians killed and imprisoned!

You do not get to arbitrarily declare that "a ceasefire" is defined as "only people whose deaths I do not, personally, care about are getting killed". That is just really not how any of this works!

Settlers, protected and more often than not aided directly, by the army have been killing, maiming and terrorising Palestinians all along.

And, yes, Palestinian lives matter as much as Israeli ones do!!!

FWIW, I want Israeli hostages released and for residents of evacuated towns to be able to go home - but I demand the same for Palestinians. Because they are not "less". If Israelis must be safe (and they must), so must Palestinians. If they get get to vote for their own leaders and exercise democratic sovereignty, this is equally as true for Palestinians. If it is a crime (and it is!) for Israelis to be taken at random and imprisoned without a fair trial, then it is for Palestinians (and, for the record: no, military courts with a ~100% conviction rate do not count either - never even mind "administrative detention"). If Israelis do not want to be randomly attacked and driven off their fields during harvest seasons: neither do Palestinians!

In short: everything Israelis deserve: so do Palestinians!

60 million dead rather disqualifies any sneering about "scares"

That's not true.

Months later, open conflict between Sovereign Power Israel and Hamas as well as PIJ in addition to Hezbollah and the Houthis.

7th October 2023 was a NEW round of conflict.

Assault of various types is a very different kettle of fish to open conflict between a terrorist group and a Sovereign Power's military.

Let's not deliberately poison the well by confusing these two very different situations.

If there was no ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian terrorist groups, why exactly was a majority of Gazans not in favour of Hamas breaching the ceasefire?

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/polls-show-majority-gazans-were-against-breaking-ceasefire-hamas-and-hezbollah#:~:text=Overall%2C%2057%25%20of%20Gazans%20express,who%20support%20Fatah%20(64%25).

See The Guardian attachment from May 2023 also.

There WAS a ceasefire which was deliberately and knowingly broken by Hamas on 7th October 2023.

There was no ceasefire for Palestinians on 6 October: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/palestinian-killed-during-settler-assault-west-bank-town-palestinian-officials-2023-10-06/ ...

... or on 5 October: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/5/israeli-troops-kill-two-palestinians-in-occupied-west-bank-clash ...

... or on 4 October: https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/137913!

As a matter of fact, 2023 - before 7 October - to Palestinians was an exceptionally deadly year. More Palestinians were killed on the West Bank than even in 2002 (which would have been at the height of the 2nd intifada): https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/palestinians-west-bank-2023-was-deadliest-year-record

People who keep on claiming this, I can only surmise, mean "things went reasonably alright for Israel". To those of us who have Palestinian friends or family - or even just to people to whom Palestinian lives matter as much or as little as Israeli ones - that has never been, can never be "a ceasefire".

It is literally beyond me why anyone would not want a ceasefire. How could anyone justify the continuation of a slaughter?

And it's not only the sheer horrifying death figures that people are protesting over, but also the destruction of Gazan Infrastructure which has rendered large parts of Gaza uninhabitable. Over 30% of essential infrastructure has been destroyed by the Israeli attack

The BBC shared this drone footage of Gaza today. The damage and destruction is hard to even comprehend.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-middle-east-67977694

A ceasefire would be beneficial to Yemen as well. More escalation and bombing is bad for Yemen. If you care about Yemen you would naturally want a ceasefire.

This is what I’m struggling to understand. Children suffering and dying anywhere is absolutely heartbreaking.

And After over 9 years of war, Yemen remains one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. In April 2022, a UN-brokered truce offered the longest period of respite to civilians since the start of the war.

From https://civil-protection-humanitarian-aid.ec.europa.eu/where/middle-east-and-northern-africa/yemen_en#:~:text=After%20over%209%20years%20of,the%20start%20of%20the%20war.

The Cultural Revolution, the bit that caused famine and executions happened 17yrs after the Communists took control. There is no way that a ceasefire between the NRA (National Revolutionary Army) and CCP (Chinese Communist Party) caused these excess deaths.

Don’t forget Chiang Kai Shek was a dictator who was promoted to “Generalissimo” after Sun Yat Sen who had taken over China by overthrowing their monarchy (emperor). He wasn’t a “President” of China in any democratic sense.

While I can’t blame MacArthur for writing a bit a Red Scare 1950s propaganda that was all the rage in the US, I can blame you for falling for it.

There was no ceasefire in place prior to October 6th. October 7th was a massive escalation in hostilities (rockets, terror attacks, etc) that were going on weekly prior to it.

Pro ceasefire is also Pro Israel. It is only anti-Likud government.

It’s a war, so both sides are going to keep killing each other until a ceasefire. Do you think Hamas is required to do nothing while the Israeli Government is killing over a hundred Palestinian civilians every day?

Then the deaths will cease
They’re civilian deaths though that’s the trouble.

And here

I want a ceasefire to protect Israel, just like Ofer Cassif

I want Hamas to surrender and give up the hostages.
The majority of sane rational people want that but disagree with how it can be achieved. Many don't feel killing, displacing and starving tens of thousands of innocent Gazans is a just or appropriate way of achieving it.

Then the deaths will cease.
How can you be so sure of that?

I would agree with you, but as anti-semitic attacks/incidents have soared since that attacks on 7th Oct, I don't think that will happen

Well there you are then. That’s your answer.
The marches support one side or the other. Never both.

I mean the pro Palestinian marches don’t support the Israelis but a march calling for the surrender of Hamas and the return of the hostages would not necessarily support the people in Gaza.

The obvious thing to do would be to just support ceasefire rather than one particular side but my understanding is that some of the marches are actually doing that? Haven’t been to any though so can’t really say.

It’s an opinion that is completely unsubstantiated so that does make it insubstantial. The writer has provided no evidence whatsoever for his brain farts. The opinion piece has no historical record of ceasefires prolonging conflicts.

All dead babies matter, but keep in mind an average of 630 Yemeni children have been killed per year during the Yemen civil war, compared to ~9,000 Gazan children killed in 0.25 of a year, a child death toll that is 57x higher.

It has also taken ten years for the Yemeni civil war to displace 3 million people, compared to 15 days to displace 2 million people.

Btw, the UN has declared the humanitarian crisis in Gaza to be the worst in the world. Not Yemen.

However, I can't see people marching all over London will make one iota of difference.
Do you apply this to people who march for the release of the hostages too?
Protests work. Marches against the Vietnam war, for the civil rights of Afro Americans and against the apartheid in SA, to name a few, worked.
Your employment rights, your entitlement to paid annual leave and many more of your rights have been gained because people protested.
We, French, have mastered the art of protesting. That is why we, as a nation, enjoy lower pension age, 35 hours week, etc.
To date, the costs of policing the Palestine supporters rallies is £17million paid for by central government. That's mine, yours and everyone else's taxes. People on these boards are the first to complain if they are impacted by the government having no funds for x,y, or z.
Protesting is a fundamental right, long fought for, in any democratic country. May it lasts.
Pressure can be brought to bear on governments without squandering tax payers money.
How? Is marching for the hostages, squandering money too because I don't think so.
However, if someone can tell me how marching through London can bring about a ceasefire in a country over 2,000 miles away.
This has been explained, on this thread.* *

I think people are marching to show they feel disenfranchised from democratically elected leaders who say things that do not tally with what they believe or want to happen. This is different from other wars.

70% of the electorate across the political spectrum want a ceasefire and the killing of innocent civilians to stop.

The fact that the marching has continued over this length of time is a measure of people’s strength of feeling.

Maybe people feel helpless as their views are not being represented and marching makes them feel they are showing solidarity and telling elected MPs strength of feeling.

Protest does work - sometimes just to shift attitudes and rhetoric. Sometimes with historical policy changes. You can google that for yourself.

With the other conflicts you mention - I wish people would be marching/protesting about them on this scale too.
I would say it’s the speed/shock/brutality of this conflict - the world was shocked by October 7th and then Isreal responded with the world watching, in real time on social media. Most people have not seen anything like the scale, speed and brutality of what is happening to CIVILIANS in Gaza.