gaza tunnel system

[Noicant]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/us/politics/gazas-tunnels-israel-ground-war.html

I thought this was an interesting article about Gaza’s systems of tunnels which would help explain what the IDF are trying to get at.

I do accept that now Hamas are in they can't exactly be voted out.

But then that's all the more reason to support Israel in removing them by force, for the sake of both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

More than 20,000 olim made aliyah last year alone. It's in and around that number every year.

Lots of evidence. Look up the death and injured figures for the last 20 years alone.

Eh? I mean evidence of civilians being indiscriminately targeted.

He can still be voted out though?

In the same way he was voted in

Then why hadn’t he been? The man is a right wing loon. I have seen few (if any) Israelis or Pro-Israel supporters defend him so why is he still there?

Predominantly a West Bank issue, and we probably both agree that the settler thing is unacceptable and shouldn't be happening.

However not directly relevant to the current situation in Gaza so bringing it up is unlikely to actually solve anything in this instance.

Free movement??!
"Between 2000 and 2004, at the peak of the Israeli roadblock-and-checkpoint regime in the West Bank (which has been reimposed with a vengeance), sixty-one Palestinian women gave birth this way; thirty-six of those babies died as a result. That never constituted news in the Western world. Those weren’t losses to be mourned. They were, at most, statistics."

I’ve no difficulty understanding the unstable political situation in Israel. I’ve seen the demonstrations whilst I’ve been over there. Good article in the Guardian earlier this year.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/30/israel-hasnt-been-a-democracy-for-a-long-time-now-israelis-need-to-face-this-fact

How often are their elections? Not sure when the next one is

It looks like there have been a fair few recently.

To answer he’s in because he’s voted in, or can form a coalition

Is that genuinely what you believe? Please educate yourself on the history of Israel and Palestine.

Probably the wrong thread for this as off topic of tunnels but an opinion piece by Saree Makdisi in part a response to Israeli analyst Giora Eiland who said “to create conditions where life in Gaza becomes unsustainable.”
No Human Being Can Exist | Online Only | n+1 | Saree Makdisi (nplusonemag.com)

The post I responded to was about both being a block to peace, if that is true which it looks like then the British govt are backing one of the blocks.

Where are they supposed to go, where are they supposed to live? Are there houses waiting for them or should they just sleep in the open with IDF still bombing them. Babies, children, pregnant women, the disabled, the elderly a million of them on the move with just what they can carry? If someone ordered you to leave your home and go and live in a field or at the side of the road somewhere would you go, do you think it is reasonable to just tell people to do that.

Did you see the 82 year old women in Gaza City, on the news yesterday. She was using a chair as a walking frame. How far do you think she can walk, do you think she has a car sitting waiting for her? One woman you could arrange transport easily but what about the heavily pregnant women, the women who've just had a C Section, the people injured in the bombing, the people with heart failure/cancer or a myriad of other conditions, where will they all get transport from? How will you move the babies in incubators, the ones born in the last 3 weeks who have only lived with this horror.

Just walk off to somewhere safe. Where is the reality?

Of course when you get south there is bombing anyway so what was the point?

I haven't rtft sorry but for anyone wanting to know more about the tunnels Ross Kemp did a program about them some years ago (find on youtube), he talks about them and goes into them. It was interesting, it was scary, he was scared. They are dug by hand so as not to alert the Israelis who monitor for machinery, the workers were on low pay and the tunnels kept collapsing killing about 3 workers a week.

It is no reasonable, lot of people won't be able to move and I feel very very sad for them but in a war we can't expect others countries to be reasonable.

At least Gazans were told 2 weeks ago they will be bombarded, Russians don't tell ukranians, hamas didn't tell the kibbutz people to move or they would be beheaded in their beds in front of their children.

Hamas could move some of the most vulnerable people but instead told their population not to move. Why? Hamas leader is safe in Qatar meanwhile his people die in his name.

Thank you

I think I remember something like that being advertised at the time. I didn't get round to watching it then. Will see if I can find it now

feral, I am not giving up my house to Palestinians, but my ancestors did what most people do who are without property or a home, just make the best of it. Some were down coal mines aged 10 even. Some moved to England following the Irish famine but I am not campaigning now for rights to Irish or Scottish land. I have just got on with the life I have nor harked back to the past.

I hope Israel wins and that it continues to exist.

How to you determine who has won? Whatever happens there are going to be many thousands of unnecessary deaths.

I will keep saying - an Israeli life isn’t worth more than a Palestinian and vice versa.

@Xenia this is the war you support
How many more children need to die in Gaza so that you can carry on feeling confident in your 'democracy'

Well if you don't want to give up your home then why should they? I'd suggest Israelis give up their homes (that are most illegal and contravene international law) and take heed of your amazing ancestors who "made the most of it".

Do you think the around 100k people that have been killed in the last 20 years have been accidents every single one ?

This is just untrue. Israel is a democracy and the only one in the region. As you say Israelis are protesting and have protested against their government - you dont see much of that in gaza. You can have opinions but you can't just make stuff up.

How incredibly disrespectful. 8,000 of them are dead, hundreds of thousands displaced without food, water and medical care, God knows how many injured, and you think they should be protesting aswell? People who are still alive are hanging on by threads.

I didn't say they should be protesting at this moment. I'm talking about the respective political systems in gaza and israel. As you well know gaza has not had elections for well over a decade. Israel arguably has too many, leading to unsatisfactory coalitions, which probably has simething to do with what has happened in recent months. But it is not a dictatorship & its just silly to say it is & betrays that you are just being partisan rather than trying to understand what is happening.