What does a "free Palestine" look like to you?

[ReplacementUsername]

If you're in the "Free Palestine" camp, what does this look like to you? What would you do about Hamas and what would you do with Israel and Israeli people?

It's only an open air prison because the Palestinians won't countenance a two state option. Gaza was delivered to them, with functioning water and power supply funded by international agencies. Their Hamas "government" prefer to live in Qatar and rip the infrastucture to shreds to fund civil unrest.

Your second paragraph is so completely incoherent that I don't begin to understand what you are saying.

My bingo card is filling up! Open-air prison... Just waiting for apartheid state, genocide, ethnic cleansing.

The Hamas propaganda machine has really worked a number on a lot of you.

At the end of the British mandate the solution was 2 states one for Palestinians one for Jews. The Jews agreed to this Palestinians did not. All these years later would both sides accept this now? Hamas and their backers Iran would not. It's easy to say have a two state solution which I think is the best, harder to deliver

I agree that Hamas are barbarians. No one could possibly disagree with that. I disagree that genocide is going to help establish a lovely Western style democracy. Most people do, at this point, I think.

My second para, rewritten: Israel continues to use Hamas as an excuse for genocide. It is not the only state to be threatened by Islamists. It is not the only state to have its very existence questioned. It is just the one with the most backing.

And as a brown person, I am so fed up of this constant sanctimonious lecturing about Western style democracies. They haven't worked so well for the rest of the world, especially those who are black and brown. Admittedly, the Arab regimes are even worse, but then most of them are propped up by the US, which is very happy to look the other way when it wants to.

I see your point. But I also believe that democracy is "the least worse" option there is.

Well, the citizens not voting violence-loving terrorists in for starters.

So you don’t agree innocent people are being mercilessly killed, half of them children?

That’s Hamas propaganda is it?

The last election was in 2006, was it not? You cannot possibly slaughter over 2000 children who weren't even alive back then, and then tell their mothers- even the ones in hijabs- that they should now be grateful for democracy.

No I would have to agree with you that Hamas' mandate is running out of steam after almost 20 years @Lentilweaver .

I have no issue with hijabs either, except when women are forced into wearing them.

I spent quite a few months in Oman in the late 80s, my sister lived there for three years, other friends for even longer and no Omani women wore the hijab or niqab then, only a thin veil over their hair. Women worked, in public facing jobs dealing with men and women. I don't know when the tide turned, but as an enthusiast of secular Arabia, I really don't think it was a change for the better.

@Papyrophile your comment about women in Oman is interesting. I live far from Oman in a northern town with a sizeable Muslim community. What I have noticed over the years is the number of local British born Muslim women wearing hijabs but also increasingly wearing niqabs. Even the teenage girls at a local secondary school are now starting to wear head coverings, they must be 13-15 years old.