To ask if we can please try to have Palestine and Israel thread where we acknowledge how awful it is for everyone, but try not to throw shit at each other?

[theotherfossilsister]

Please

From someone who does have 'skin in the game.'

@Whereforartthoudave

"Cutting off food, water, power to a population who have no other access to food, water, power IS targeting civilians.

Just as Hamas attacked civilians, now Israel is"

++++

Seriously this so warped. So you want Israel to continue supplying food, water and electricity to the same Palestinian civilians that are celebrating the terrorist attacks.

Gaza is its own entity with its own Government (Hamas) - why is it the responsibility of Israel to supply these nutters with food, water and electricity.

Personally I think it is the pragmatic thing to do and far safer than sending Israeli forces into the vipers nest that is Gaza.

I am sure that a couple of weeks of no food and water will help focus minds and priorities amongst the Palestinians in Gaza and encourage them to remove Hamas from power, After all without food and water what have you got to lose?

I know the history and if I read the entire thread, it would be over before I finished reading what others have posted hours and hours ago.

@IslaWinds in terms of 2009 specifically, all I can find is a failed prisoner swap negotiation between Olmert and Hamas.
I've read your link but it doesn't give specific details of actual negotiation attempts off the back of a willingness to accept a two-state solution.

I had previously also believed that Hamas was in favour of negotiation and that it was Israel who was standing in the way of this. I can't remember why I specfically thought this beyond Isreal clearly having greater military power. This is why the events of the last few days shocked me so deeply and completely changed my view of Hamas, and I now see them as a group that clearly would happily murder and brutalise Jewish civilians and also a group that have zero care for the welfare of the residents of Gaza.

@ ISLAWINDS
This allowed Hamas to modulate its positions on recognising the Israeli state and on the two-state solution, from ones that opposed these issues to positions that conditionally accepted them.

Well as of 5.25 this evening, the statement from the Hamas spokesperson was "Israel should not exist". How long do we have to wait before they "modulate" their stance so that negotiations can start?

I don't see a resolution either. The situation just seems hopeless. It's an utter disaster for the innocents on both sides.

Mostly because nothing really bad happened until the 1967 invasion by Egypt and Syria.

Its not that far back really, the Zionist movement was post WWII.

I have seen nobody justifying anything of the sort in these threads. I was pointing out the huge differences in the situations.

Just to be clear - in terms of numbers and power, Israel are massacring Palestinians and have been doing so for many years with no intention of stopping until the very last Palestinian is silenced. You’re right that people will always find justification for these massacres, there are plenty of posters on this thread attempting to do so.

Generational trauma exists for many, yes. This generational trauma is due to current lived oppression and suffering within the Gaza Strip. Grandparents, parents, children and grandchildren all psychologically traumatised by a situation they literally cannot leave or change. They cannot escape their reality or address how trauma has altered their minds by being able to remove themselves. They’re desperate, and sheer hatred of them has compounded their own hate back over the generations.

Protesting about their inhumane treatment only results in more deaths:

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/02/no-justification-israel-shoot-protesters-live-ammunition

@Takoneko

Ok that's an answer thank you. I can understand being pissed off if the Brits first promised it to you then said actually we're going to give some to the Jews.

But why did the Arab leadership feel the land was theirs? They knew the Jews had always been there too, right? They knew they had placed the Jews under conditions of dhimmitude for, well, a long time. Wouldn't letting them have their own state where they wouldn't be dhimmis anymore have been, you know, kind of a decent thing to do to make up for that? Unless of course there was zero remorse for the whole dhimmi business? I mean, I can think of another group who got in quite a lot of hot water about putting yellow stars on Jews.

Gaza is under blockade from Israel, that's why Israel is able to do this. They control Gazas movement and access to medication, everything.

They don't do this as charity, they do it for control!

It's absolutely not Israel's responsibility and they should absolutely stop the blockade. But, that's not what you mean. You mean they should slaughter thousands of Palestinians in revenge. Am I right?

‘Hamas now threatening to start shooting hostages unless Israel stops bombing Gaza’

Theres a good chance Israel will kill their own people who’ve been taken hostage too. It’s grim.

Israel should stop shelling Gaza anyway

I definitely know that Zionism is not post-WWII because the Balfour Declaration was either during of after the first world war.

I don't understand the rest of your answer though. Why didn't the Arabs want the Jews to get a state when the British first offered one to both of them as they were on the way out?

The Zionist movement was post WWII

The Zionist movement has it's roots in the late 19thc, 1897 to be exact @IslaWinds

Egypt and Syria didn’t invade in 1967, Israel invaded the West Bank, Gaza, Syria and Egypt. Admittedly, in response to a lot of sabre-rattling by the Egyptians. But then the Egyptian sabre rattling was in itself a response to Israeli bombing of canal sites in Syria and an incursion into the West Bank by the IDF that ended in a violent confrontation with the Jordanian army.

Gaza also has a border with Egypt, and the Egyptians could allow refugees in across the border, and provide aid. Currently they aren't doing it.

In July 2009, Khaled Mashal, Hamas's political bureau chief, stated Hamas's willingness to cooperate with a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, which included a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, provided that Palestinian refugees be given the right to return to Israel and that East Jerusalem be recognized as the new state's capital
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124899975954495435

‘I am sure that a couple of weeks of no food and water will help focus minds and priorities amongst the Palestinians in Gaza and encourage them to remove Hamas from power’

How much power do you think a starving and dehydrated mother and her kids has, for example? How should she remove Hamas?

Shit. Sorry I mixed up 1967 with 1973.

@quiteoldad

The Israeli government are the bad guys, as are Hamas. Life isn't so simple that you need to have goodies and baddies, you've been watching too many westerns

I don't agree. Hamas are blood thirsty, evil terrorists who rape for laughs, deliberately murder children and innocent people, parade bodies around spitting on them, and who have acted to deprive their own citizens of their basic needs while siphoning aid money off so they can live in luxury. You trying to "both sides" it is appalling.

Your main error is that your initial post had presented the withdrawal as being one in which magnanimous settlers left them a beautiful garden

I haven't made any errors. I think leaving your enemy, who has warred with you for decades and committed tens of dozens of acts of terrorism against you, hospitals, schools, infrastructure, offices, some homes and some facilities for food production is actually extremely magnanimous. Especially in contrast to their spiteful, destructive counterparts who responded to that stroke of luck by torching it all to the ground or stealing it.

Many of the settlers left kicking and screaming, especially those that didn't get as much money as they had hoped for, for going

They had lived there for forty years. Their homes were signed over in a political deal. Their villages. Their neighbourhoods. Their dead had to be dug up from graveyards and reburied. What do you expect? Fireworks? Gratitude?

But what I find highly objectionable in your response is that twice within it you use the term "evil Jews" with the subtle suggestion that that is my view. I have never used that term, nor would I

No, but you are working in a very transparent way - in almost all your posts - to minimise Hamas evil brutality and clearly disgusting acts and blow up Israel's to make fit a narrative you have in your mind of anti Israel bias. Here you are in this post critiquing Israelis for being upset about leaving their homes. What bastards!

Do you know what they didn't do when they were forced by armed guards to leave their homes and villages? They didn't spend the next few decades blowing people up and strapping suicide vests to their children! They got on with it in their new homes!

Not the Zionist movement in Israel. We are talking about Israel right?

@IslaWinds Well, what do you think the 'Zionist movement' actually is?

And Israel was attacked by Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon in 1948- on the same day that Israel claimed independence.

@ ISLA You know Hamas and their predecessors have tried peaceful means to negotiate change for decades and Israel squashes it every time.

Please guide me to where I find proof of this. I will modify my views if there is good evidence for this. The only negotiations I could find so far is for a hostage swap.

I’m not on Twitter, Tic Tok or any other platform, where I’m sure conspiracy theorists are salivating. So I’ve seen NO theories, conspiracy or otherwise. It just seems odd, to me.

In my lifetime, Palestine have historically been less sophisticated in their attacks. They set off a missile or two, Israel respond tenfold. Rinse and repeat. The Israelis have been infinitely superior. In every way. This is different. Planned, coordinated and executed in a much more sophisticated manner. With zero warning. Were Mossad asleep? Or comatose?

I’m not sure what the royal family have to do with anything? Will you accuse me of being a Covid denier next?

With respect, I did ask a question. ‘Is it a stretch to wonder if Netanyahu welcomed the opportunity…?’. If you think the answer is no, fine. But calling me a nutter is a bit much. I think it’s a reasonable question. And what, by the way, am I denying?

@Pollyputhekettleon ·

>I, among many others here, are trying to understand the roots of this historically. As far back as we need to go...

I think that is fine and understandable, although as someone with a reasonable grasp of the 'roots' I would also say that it is legitimate to also note / ask:

1. 1948 for instance (a rather key date) was 75 years ago. Anyone who had reached 18 in the lands of the Mandate is now 93+. Or dead. So many affected on all sides now are young, with parents and probably grandparents born after 1948. They have to deal with, flourish, suffer and so on in a reality that has evolved over decades. Solutions and mitigations must surely be based on now, taking account of but not completely ordained by the past.
2. Then there's what can we do? That's us as a group of people discussing or quietly following) who skew towards women, generally mothers in the UK, with some outside that group no doubt but exchanging views and information in what we think is good faith. Plus trolls and bad actors no doubt.

When something like this happens it is, in my mind, worth considering ones own ability to do things. I have in the past contributed to the ICRC appeal for Gaza (2021). I think that is a step beyond 'raising awareness'. So far as Ukraine goes I have kept in touch with relatives, sent them funds (none of them have left for Poland or further west), contributed to a Lithuanian drone, donated to United24 and a Polish Catholic charity, helped some refugees when in Ireland and delivered an in house briefing at my main workplace.

Are others taking part in these threads trying to help in practical ways?

Edited a redundant word.