Israels plan for Gazas future

How do you think you'd have forced the majority population into a western system of government and values?

Since 1945, minorities in both Syria and Lebanon have faced serious persecution and have often been forced to flee for their safety. In Syria, decades of authoritarian rule followed by a brutal civil war saw millions uprooted from their homes, with around 6.8 million people becoming refugees abroad and millions more displaced inside the country.

In 1945, Christians made up approximately 55–60% of Lebanon’s population. Today, they are estimated to be around 30–34%. Christians have left in droves and have plenty of options for Christian countries to live in.

So to use your same rationale of finders keepers to the current situation, then Palestinians should go find land that isn't populated? Maybe they should go to Poland? Is that it?

I can only speak for myself when I say its not whataboutery, I think the declaration of war is the actual root of the problem. Palestinians were also allocated land, less than they wished to accept, but nonetheless acceptance was an option. Instead of that they chose violence and have chosen violence consistently since. They didn't just want more land, they wanted ALL the land, and for Jews to have none. Thats the root of the problem for me.

Some of the Palestinians were jews, and as far as I'm aware they were happy for all members of their society - muslim, jewish or Christian - to have land within it the same way they always had. Again you're starting from the premise of partition as inevitable and normal, and then judging people's reactions to it. But it wasn't either inevitable or normal.

"How about "if only the Palestinians were accorded the same right to self determination as anyone else, including all the other ex-Ottoman mandates, and not had most of their land appropriated for settlement by foreigners in the first place?""
They were. They were offered land to make a state.

The other ex-Ottoman territories weren't "offered" land. They were recognised as the longstanding inhabitants and thus the rightful eventual rulers of such land, and this was written into the mandate agreements. Indeed that's why they were set up as mandates rather than simply given to Britain and France as colonies. So were the Palestinians, except that in that case the Zionist lobby had Britain's ear and the rest is history.

Are you saying here that the creation of the state of Israel was an unjustifiable event? It sounds like you are. I totally disagree and am shocked you'd say that. Perhaps I misunderstood?

It may have been perfectly justifiable (and beyond that, actively praiseworthy) if it had taken place on an uninhabited island ("a land without a people for a people without a land", like the Zionists claimed Palestine was - the Palestinians of course not counting as "people").

I don't buy that the creation of Israel was profoundly racist either. It was the UNs attempt to give both peoples a state of their own. Anything other than that would have been the racist thing to do. What should the UN have done instead?

What would have been racist about simply setting up in Palestine the institutions of a government to represent all its citizens, all of whom retained the right of free access to the whole country, as they had had under the Ottomans? Just as happened in Lebanon, Syria etc?

How about "if only the Palestinians were accorded the same right to self determination as anyone else?"

They were. They refused. Self determination does not mean you get 100% of the land. 100% of it did not belong to them.

Actually the beginnings of the nakba - including violent expulsions by jewish paramilitary groups and the formation of plan dalet by Israeli leaders - preceded the war with the Arab League.

Actually, that’s a misleading simplification. While it’s true that some Arab residents fled or were expelled before the full-scale war with the Arab League began in May 1948, this happened in the context of a brutal civil war that broke out after Arab leaders rejected the UN Partition Plan in November 1947. Both Jewish and Arab forces carried out attacks, and Jewish convoys and communities were routinely ambushed. Plan Dalet was primarily a military strategy to defend Jewish areas, especially as Arab militias and irregulars were intensifying their assaults on them. You are twisting it to make it sound different to how it was.

But this again is wrong-way-round thinking anyway. You're looking for ways that the founding of Israel could have been achieved in a more peaceful manner, and laying the burden for that on everybody else, while ignoring that that very event itself is absolutely unjustifiable according to any of the assumptions about national self determination that we take for granted everywhere else in the world, and only justifiable according to a profoundly racist wordview that sees the Palestinians as less than human and the rich countries of the west as having a divine right to organise the whole world's politics and demographics around their own interests.

What complete nonsense.

Palestinians have a right of self determination
So do Jews

If you are seriously making an argument that Arabs have a right of self determination in Jerusalem and Jews then I am with the other poster and I honestly just can't believe it.

But you are breaching every definition of antisemitism that exists, so maybe some self reflection. It seems to be you who sees Jews as less human to be honest!

But surely comparison of Gaza under occupation by Egypt and by Israel ignores one massive difference, which is that Egypt weren't responsible for the Nakba that carved up Palestine in the first place and forced much of the population out of their original homes? How on Earth would you then expect Palestinians (or their supporters in other countries) to have the same attitude toward the two?

I don’t recall ever saying I think Palestinians should have the same feelings toward us as Israel. I don't think that. I do think when we occupied Gaza we should have given the people there citizenship of Egypt, or, created a state for them and made them citizens of that. Israel did a far better job of looking after Gaza and it’s people than we did but we wanted the Jews to be prevented from having control over Muslim land, and that is what it was all about.

Arab Palestinians are likely to feel less sense of cultural estrangement from another muslim, Arab country administering them than from a western-backed jewish one

I completely agree. Ideally they should have been administering themselves. Likewise all people who do not want to be administered in a Muslim culture, and prefer liberal democracy, should rightly have that choice to. This choice is denied to almost everyone in my region.

I wasn't around when they were occupied by Egypt and Jordan so I can't speak for what was said about it, by them or anyone else. If they had less resistance to it than being occupied by Israel that's their business.

I completely agree.

It doesn't mean they have to acquiesce to being occupied by Israel.

I completely agree. When they no longer threaten Israel, nobody has to occupy them.

However all this is putting the cart before the horse, because they shouldn't be occupied by Israel in the first place, and it's not their damn duty to check their own motives deeply and earnestly for traces of antisemitism in order to make their colonisers feel better about colonising them.

Arabs colonised Israel. Jews did not, they were there before anyone else. If you have persuaded yourself Jews colonised Israel you are seriously delusional.

And your use of words like "occupation" is misleading.

In simple terms Israel exists. It is a country with around 7 million citizens. It has existed as long or longer than Pakistan, Bangladesh, Singapore...it already exists.

If Palestinians persist with the choice of attacking Israeli citizens, bombing Israel indiscriminately, suicide bombing civilians, murdering and kidnapping any opportunity they get, and working towards trying to annihilate Israel then they are an existential threat to a sovereign country.

Whatever the history, Israel, like any sovereign country can and will defend it’s citizens and sovereignty. If they choose war, they will lose and people will die.

Israel will not allow them freedom to import / export or move people in such a way that is a threat to it’s security. If you feel that is "occupation" then the other alternative is to give them a state and control of their own imports and movements and what will happen with 100% certainty is first that they will use that freedom to attack Israel - albeit with far more serious weapons - and secondly, Israel will wipe them off the face of the planet.

If you feel that would be better, that is your opinion. I think that is the dumbest idea imaginable.

So no, they “shouldn’t be occupied in the first place”, but if they do those things, they will remain occupied. How long that is, is probably their choice. Certainly 7 October set them back at least a decade.

There were jewish and Christian minorities living peacefully alongside the muslim majority in Palestine for centuries before any of this kicked off, and it only became a major political problem once Zionism appeared.

Not true. While Jewish and Christian minorities often lived without constant violence under Muslim rule, they were legally second-class citizens under the dhimmi system - subject to special taxes, restrictions on worship, housing, dress, and public status. Describing this as "peaceful coexistence" is misleading. It’s akin to saying Black Americans lived peacefully under Jim Crow - so long as they accepted permanent inequality and humiliation, they were tolerated. The relative absence of mass killings depended not on equality or harmony, but on strict social and legal subordination.

Colonised by people from other countries, and ethnically cleansed the native population from it in order to artificially prop up its identity as majority jewish.

Due to repeated colonisation and abuse, including by Arabs, Jews were a diaspora population. Many were in Europe, many were in the middle east. That doesn't change that they were from Israel. Just as it doesn't change that I am from Egypt and am middle eastern, even if I lived for a thousand years in Europe. Jews had a right to a national home in the middle east, the place from which they came. They had a right for this to be in Israel, where they originated as a people and where all their most important cultural and religious sites were.

They were very happy to share it with Arabs, and indeed they do. Arabs were only happy to share it with Jews if they were subordinate, and that is simply not just. Had Arabs provided equality in the countries around the middle east where Jews were in diaspora, they would not have wanted to leave. And yes, they did have a long standing issue with antisemitism. If you think that's not the case, you are seriously mislead. that, however, escalated significantly in the mid 20th century when prominent Nazis quite literally flew out to the middle east with translations of Mein Kamp in Arabic, giving them lessons on how to ethnically cleanse Jews.

After World War II, Egypt became a haven for former Nazis - welcoming them not as fugitives, but as allies. Under both King Farouk and President Nasser, ex-SS officers, Gestapo agents, and Nazi scientists were recruited to help Egypt fight what they saw as their common enemies: Jews, Britain, and communism.

Nazi rocket experts were put to work developing missiles aimed at Israel. Nazi propagandists converted to Islam - one became a government adviser, churning out antisemitic propaganda for Radio Cairo, which broadcast Nazi-style conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial across the Arab world. This is the world I grew up in.

I am sure you will try to twist that around to justify it as you have other things in your post, but try and sit with it for a minute and really consider: AFTER the Holocaust, after all the horrors of it came to light, we welcomed in Nazis and broadcast their shit over our airways. But we get off lightly here. No one in the west seems to want to hold us to account for it.

But I assure you, whatever your Palestinian friends might have told you, the intention of the Arab league in 1948 when we invaded Israel the day after it announced it's independence was to enact the Holocaust phase II - and if you genuinely believe that that was justified because they dared want independence, exactly as you would do, from our colonial rule, then I can't help you.

Yes, there are terror groups among the populations surrounding Israel that want to see it annihilated.
Not "terror groups among the populations" -the government. The government was elected on the singular policy of annihilating Israel.

Guess what: that's what you get when you use the dominance of western geopolitical power to stick a bunch of people in someone else's land and tell the original owners to fuck off somewhere else.

They were not the owners.They were a majority population on land which was historically Jewish, and which was shared by many groups, which their particular group had colonised for almost 600 years. The Arabs colonised it and many Arabs moved their and many people converted to Islam, and that does not make them the “owners” of anything. The minorities are still just as valuable and just as worthy of the same rights. Once Israel was established as a state, it had the same rights as every other state to let anyone it bloody well wanted emigrate there and if that included Jews who were refugees, then good for them. that is nobodies business - Palestinians had they accepted their own state would have been free to do the exact same thing.

If there's going to be any hope of peace or reconciliation, at some point the parties to the conflict who made that terrible, profoundly racist decision (Israel and the west) are going to have to own up to their responsibility for the consequences of it.

to be perfectly honest, I find your post to be profoundly racist. It denies Jewish right of self determination, it denies Jewish history and it seeks to undermine the same rights of all minorities.

If you want to know what would have happened had Israel never been created, just look at what’s happened to the Kurds, the Yazidis, the Copts. Would you still pat yourself on the back if you'd condemned the Jews to the same fate - powerless, scattered, and at the mercy of regimes that have erased nearly every trace of religious diversity from the region?

A Middle East belonging entirely to Islam was never its historical reality, but that’s what it's fast becoming.

Since Israel’s founding, the rest of the region has seen the ruthless purge of its minorities: Assyrian and Armenian Christians driven out or slaughtered; Kurds bombed, gassed, and displaced by the hundreds of thousands; Yazidis massacred and enslaved. I mean, did you watch the Yazidi girls being burned alive because they would not convert? Do you know thousands of them were taken as sex slaves from ages as young as 10??

Baha’is in Iran imprisoned and executed simply for existing; Coptic Christians terrorised with church burnings and forced migration. Even within Islam, Sunni and Shia have purged one another from entire cities. The once-diverse mosaic of the Middle East has been systematically flattened into sectarian rule, religious supremacy, and fear. And in all that chaos, people still ask why the Jews needed a state of their own.

Thank God they do.

"Why is it that every attempt to address this basic, foundational root cause event gets deflected by whataboutery. "But if only the Arab League hadn't declared war when Israel was formed". "But if only the Palestinians didn't react to Israel's formation with violent resistance"."

I can only speak for myself when I say its not whataboutery, I think the declaration of war is the actual root of the problem. Palestinians were also allocated land, less than they wished to accept, but nonetheless acceptance was an option. Instead of that they chose violence and have chosen violence consistently since. They didn't just want more land, they wanted ALL the land, and for Jews to have none. Thats the root of the problem for me.

"How about "if only the Palestinians were accorded the same right to self determination as anyone else, including all the other ex-Ottoman mandates, and not had most of their land appropriated for settlement by foreigners in the first place?""

They were. They were offered land to make a state. They declined to do this and set about trying to drive every last Jew into the sea instead. They could have declared a state and set about making Palestine a successful nation. They didn't. You can't deny they had the opportunity though.

"You're looking for ways that the founding of Israel could have been achieved in a more peaceful manner, and laying the burden for that on everybody else, while ignoring that that very event itself is absolutely unjustifiable according to any of the assumptions about national self determination that we take for granted everywhere else in the world, and only justifiable according to a profoundly racist wordview..."

Are you saying here that the creation of the state of Israel was an unjustifiable event? It sounds like you are. I totally disagree and am shocked you'd say that. Perhaps I misunderstood?
I don't buy that the creation of Israel was profoundly racist either. It was the UNs attempt to give both peoples a state of their own. Anything other than that would have been the racist thing to do. What should the UN have done instead?

I'm surprised you don't think Egypt were at least partly responsible for the Nakba. They were one of the main players in the league of Arabs that declared the war of annihilation on the brand new Jewish state as soon as it came into being. The Nakba was the explosion of Arabs from their homes as a result of this war. Opinions may differ as to whether Egypt was fighting in support of the Palestinian Arabs getting their own state, or as a foil for a cynical land grab of their own.
If that war hadn't been declared- by Egypt and others- and then fought, do you think as many Palestinians would have lost their homes?

Egypt weren't responsible for the decision to form the state of Israel on somebody else's land in the first place, they were implacably opposed to it.

Why is it that every attempt to address this basic, foundational root cause event gets deflected by whataboutery. "But if only the Arab League hadn't declared war when Israel was formed". "But if only the Palestinians didn't react to Israel's formation with violent resistance".

How about "if only the Palestinians were accorded the same right to self determination as anyone else, including all the other ex-Ottoman mandates, and not had most of their land appropriated for settlement by foreigners in the first place?"

Actually the beginnings of the nakba - including violent expulsions by jewish paramilitary groups and the formation of plan dalet by Israeli leaders - preceded the war with the Arab League. But this again is wrong-way-round thinking anyway. You're looking for ways that the founding of Israel could have been achieved in a more peaceful manner, and laying the burden for that on everybody else, while ignoring that that very event itself is absolutely unjustifiable according to any of the assumptions about national self determination that we take for granted everywhere else in the world, and only justifiable according to a profoundly racist wordview that sees the Palestinians as less than human and the rich countries of the west as having a divine right to organise the whole world's politics and demographics around their own interests.

Because some people seem to think that if you bomb, kill, starve and intern enough Palestinians Hamas will disappear.

And other people think that a genuine plan to get rid of Hamas would involve a plan for transitional governance, a plan for rebuilding and presenting a peaceful political path for Palestinians to have their own state.

That’s why basically.

"But surely comparison of Gaza under occupation by Egypt and by Israel ignores one massive difference, which is that Egypt weren't responsible for the Nakba that carved up Palestine in the first place and forced much of the population out of their original homes? How on Earth would you then expect Palestinians (or their supporters in other countries) to have the same attitude toward the two?"

I'm surprised you don't think Egypt were at least partly responsible for the Nakba. They were one of the main players in the league of Arabs that declared the war of annihilation on the brand new Jewish state as soon as it came into being. The Nakba was the explosion of Arabs from their homes as a result of this war. Opinions may differ as to whether Egypt was fighting in support of the Palestinian Arabs getting their own state, or as a foil for a cynical land grab of their own.
If that war hadn't been declared- by Egypt and others- and then fought, do you think as many Palestinians would have lost their homes?

I also can't believe we're still referring to Jews in Israel as colonizers but I suspect thats a bit much for me tonight.

So why is it we can’t all unite to rid Gaza of Hamas.
i appreciate that people will still be against Israel and that’s fine.
Maybe after Hamas has toppled and Gaza is no longer under their regime the world can look to ending the hostilities once and for all

I appreciate the measured and reasonable tone of your analysis and am certainly not deaf to some of the very valid points that you make.

But surely comparison of Gaza under occupation by Egypt and by Israel ignores one massive difference, which is that Egypt weren't responsible for the Nakba that carved up Palestine in the first place and forced much of the population out of their original homes? How on Earth would you then expect Palestinians (or their supporters in other countries) to have the same attitude toward the two?

Beyond that, regarding whether the uniquely vociferous objection to Israeli occupation is due to antisemitism as others have suggested - that may be partly true. Certainly in a broader sense Arab Palestinians are likely to feel less sense of cultural estrangement from another muslim, Arab country administering them than from a western-backed jewish one, which was specifically formed both to serve western geopolitical interests and to assauge western guilt about their own antisemitic history. But that's surely up to the Palestinians to decide. I wasn't around when they were occupied by Egypt and Jordan so I can't speak for what was said about it, by them or anyone else. If they had less resistance to it than being occupied by Israel that's their business. It doesn't mean they have to acquiesce to being occupied by Israel.

However all this is putting the cart before the horse, because they shouldn't be occupied by Israel in the first place, and it's not their damn duty to check their own motives deeply and earnestly for traces of antisemitism in order to make their colonisers feel better about colonising them. There were jewish and Christian minorities living peacefully alongside the muslim majority in Palestine for centuries before any of this kicked off, and it only became a major political problem once Zionism appeared, aspired to a separatist state to be colonised by people from other countries, and ethnically cleansed the native population from it in order to articifically prop up its identity as majority jewish.

I actually used to have an attitude somewhat like yours, and many times took the Israeli side in debates about the conflict. A combination of reading more of the history, and the sheer scale of inhumane barbarity unleashed by Israel (not just in relation to the war, but in settlements in the west bank etc.) over the last year and a half changed my mind. And meeting Palestinian refugees and learning to see things from their point of view. Yes, there are terror groups among the populations surrounding Israel that want to see it annihilated. Guess what: that's what you get when you use the dominance of western geopolitical power to stick a bunch of people in someone else's land and tell the original owners to fuck off somewhere else. If there's going to be any hope of peace or reconciliation, at some point the parties to the conflict who made that terrible, profoundly racist decision (Israel and the west) are going to have to own up to their responsibility for the consequences of it.

No need for the eye roll. I’ve been respectful to you.
I’ve no argument to make, these are stated facts. ‘Joint military exercises’ and ‘admin’ does not describe what I have said, nor does it describe what we collectively fund with our taxes.

I’ll welcome you not to take my word for it.

Anyway some people have veered off topic. At the very least nobody on the thread seems to think humanitarian city is a reflection on the camp that will be built here.

So at least we agree on one thing.

So your argument here is that we use "tax money" for joint military exercises that benefits the UKs security, and we spend money on admin approving trade deals which profit UK businesses?

🙄

Thank goodness some people are strong and brave enough to tell it how it is. Respect to Baroness Kennedy.

Thanks @MixedMetals Its progress at least to see more people are calling this ‘plan’ out for what it is.

It is true. These are activities which very specifically support Israel’s war on Gaza, which we directly pay for with our taxes.

I have not stated anywhere anything about transfer of cash to Israel or paying for bombs and bullets, so there is no need for correction or seek accuracy. I know nothing I have said is inaccurate or overstated. But agree that we do profit. To ‘politically support’ is to pay with taxes. We pay for the politics with tax money.

As I said, the Government facilitates and maintains arms trades agreements which are constantly ongoing - so yes, it absolutely 100% uses tax money to do this.

Re: the base, we fund its very existence and operation to be used to transport and facilitate use of arms.

And there was more list and detail, so I have understated them, tbf.

You're not entirely wrong, but you're overstating parts and blurring key distinctions. The post I replied to claimed our taxes were paying for the war which is not true,

The UK does not fund Israel’s war - there are no cash transfers, no military aid packages like the US. provides. What we do have is commercial arms trade, where private companies sell parts under government-issued export licences. That’s not “funding” - it’s regulated trade, and the profits go to British firms, not to Israel. It has nothing to do with our taxes.

You're right that military cooperation exists: RAF surveillance flights over Gaza, joint exercises, and possibly intelligence-sharing. That is publicly funded and morally significant. But again, it's not the same as paying for Israel’s bombs or bullets. It is part of the UKs defence also.

As for base usage and cargo, yes - the UK allows U.S. weapons shipments to transit through places like RAF Akrotiri, and doesn’t inspect them. That’s not financial backing either.

So let’s be accurate: we are not paying for Israel’s war, we are profiting from and politically supporting aspects of it. Entirely different.

I'm glad you won't be replying anymore because I could feel my brain cells dying reading the above post.

To break it down... in the previous sentence I was talking about Hamas.

Then I said "They wanted to destroy Israel" (Hamas!).

And yes, Hamas even wanted to destroy 8 month old babies like the one you refer to.

What are Israels plans for a post-Hamas Gaza? Is Hamas just the pretext here?82% of Jewish Israelis support the expulsion of Gazans. If Bibi manages to expel them, he’ll be a hero. If he doesn’t, then who knows.

That reply is utterly unhinged. No where have I said any of the things you’ve written. I literally said Gaza would be better without Hamas.
Bizarre behaviour.

Everyone reasonable would agree that Gaza would be better off without Hamas.

But it seems to be misleading that you can destroy Hamas in this way. Especially as there is no plan for a transitional governing body and ultimately a replacement. That is not the plan. The plan is to destroy Gaza and eliminate all the Palestinians by forcefully displacing them.

That’s not my opinion that’s the opinion of the old administration in the US, it echos the words of some in the IDF, it’s what international governments have said. It’s not an extreme view.

Oops misread your response!

Apologies.

They wanted to destroy Israel - yes even 8 month old babies like the one you refer to

8 month old babies want to destroy Israeli?
No, they want to be safe, fed and loved.

I feel so sorry for your way of thinking.
I’ve humoured you enough and won’t be replying to you anymore.

Netanyahu and his coalition.

Yes, I do.