Israel/Hamas War - Ceasefire

[Toggenburgsaregreat]

Each Saturday we are seeing demonstrations in London where people are marching with placards and calling for a ceasefire in the Hamas/Israel war.

However, it is difficult to know how the supporters of Palestine think this can be achieved? (Interestingly, no calls for Hamas to cease hostilities and return the hostages were heard - so is this really a call for unilateral disarmament?)

And who should Israel negotiate a ceasefire with? Hamas, ISIS, ISSP, The Muslim Brotherhood - all of these groups/any of these groups?

What is it the supporters of Palestine actually want?

@DownNative

If you ask people "Do you support terrorism?" then the vast majority will say "of course not". If you ask people "Do you support resisting [occupation/invasion/military action]?" then you're likely to get a different answer because you're asking a different question with different implications. Self-defence is widely considered to be an understandable reason for proportionate military action, for example. Resistance and terrorism are different words with different implications.

Surveys have shown an increase in people in Palestine who can see an argument for armed resistance. That shouldn't come as a surprise. It shouldn't be unexpected that people would hold that view when experiencing occupation, blockades and now a full-scale military operation. I suspect you would get similar data from lots of population groups if they were in similar positions and indeed there have been numerous examples in history of populations having significant proportions expressing support for resistance, including armed resistance.

Where groups like Hamas can really excel is at targeting their 'marketing' at population groups who already believe that they have to defend themselves and that armed resistance seems to them to be justified in their own lived experience. That is one way how they recruit and win 'hearts and minds', by appealing to people who are already feeling desperate and isolated and who believe they have no alternative but to defend themselves. We've seen this time and again, that vulnerable groups can get infiltrated/corrupted by or drawn to extreme views when presented these views by people with perceived power who can offer them a potential solution and a sense of solidarity.

That's one path (very simplified) to terrorism. People can be drawn along from a position of believing they need to defend their homes, to a position of radicalisation and engaging in or supporting terrorism.

Other routes exist. This is one that's particularly problematic at the moment.

(Again, please note: not condoning, just understanding.)

I'm guessing that when you ask if I am a "sneaking regarder" you are asking about my views on Hamas. My views on them are pretty much the same as on any other terrorist organisation. There is no excuse for terrorist acts, and people who engage in such acts should face the full consequences of the law.

I think you've misunderstood me, as I've not suggested leaving Hamas in power. There's no way that any peace deal can involve Hamas being in power. There can be a path that involves removing Hamas from power without thousands of innocent people dying.

If you don't think that dialogue and efforts to change the root causes of people becoming vulnerable to extreme influences would be effective, how would you approach this?

So far from reading this thread - if I can simplify:
1 no one else wants Palestinians
2 Palestinians support terrorists
3 Its Iran’s fault

Doesnt really bring us closer getting a ceasefire
1 - why can’t the Palestinians stay where they are then?
2 - Can the US support a viable well funded option- they tried to do this with the PLO and maybe need to revisit this?
3 - Iran may be behind some of the funding- but aren’t they just feeding off Palestinians despair?

Saudi Arabia is considered the lead Arab and Muslim country- they’re not going to normalise relationship with Israel at the expense of the Palestinians who they say need a state.

Oh @Fussandmisery you have a very distinct way of posting :/

Oh @Fussandmisery you have a very distinct way of posting :/

I know. I have been here a while.

I keep deciding I’ve had enough of it and deleting my account and then changing my mind and signing up again. You can’t get your old user names back 🤷‍♀️

Talking of ceasefire, here's a small protest calling for a ceasefire taking place in Tel aviv that is aggressively broken up by the police

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/police-aggressively-break-up-tel-aviv-protest-calling-for-a-ceasefire/

No, the majority support for Palestinian terrorist groups is NOT new or as a result of Israeli military operations since 7th October.

Just RTFT.

Proof this is true now and prior to?

That massive porkie you posted and doubled down on that there had been an official ceasefire in place on Oct 7th has me a bit 🤔 on a lot of what you assert.

I think you should earn back your credibility by posting links to substantiation. Just CAPTIALISING and repeating yourself doesn’t cut the mustard

"So far from reading this thread - if I can simplify:
1 no one else wants Palestinians
2 Palestinians support terrorists
3 Its Iran’s fault"

I feel like we're not reading the same thread. It seems to be an awful lot of "this is all Israel's fault and even though Palestinians have the most to gain from peace at this point, it should be Israel who stop the fighting first and then Hamas will definitely stop because they're really just innocent little freedom fighters and all they want is to live peacefully" and a lot of ignoring what Hamas have actually said and done and then just keep blaming Israel.

Palestinians can’t stop Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Palestinian Popular Front and god knows how many other terrorist groups.

Israel’s government can stop their military in minutes.

Israel’s government is also legally responsible for protecting Palestinians from Hamas+ other terrorist groups because Israel occupies the Palestinian Territories.

Palestinians have no military, have no police, have no intelligence service- because Israel has taken on the responsibility to protect Palestinian civilians by denying Palestinians their own state.

Israel’s government is also legally responsible for protecting Palestinians from Hamas

That's rubbish. There is is much wrong with your post I don't know where to start.

As you well know, Gaza hasn't been occupied for quite a few years. Israel isn't responsible for those in Gaza - they have their own government who are meant to be responsible for that. You can't just make up your own facts.

Israel also hasn't denied the Palestinians their own state. Again, as you well know the reason there isn't a Palestinian state is because all the surrounding Arab nations declared war against Israel as soon as the state was established 🤦🏻‍♀️

It’s not rubbish. It’s international law.

I’m not making up facts.

As you well know, Gaza is still occupied by Israel and has been since 1967. Withdrawing military troops from the streets and building a wall manned with machine gun nests, controlling all entry/exit of everyone and everything, even water, food, electricity is still an occupation per the UN. Hamas is a provisional government within Gaza but there is no Palestinian state, and it has none of the recognition or status or apparatus of a government. You can’t have it both ways, Hamas as a terrorist organisation or Hamas as government of a nation called Gaza. Gaza is occupied by Israel. That is an indisputable fact.

Israel has denied Palestinians their own nation state. Repeatedly. Especially Nethanyu.

The Arab League only intervened and stayed in Palestinian lands after Jewish insurgents had initiated the Nakba and done ethnic cleaning where entire villages were massacred and over 250,000 Palestinians had fled as refugees to neighbouring countries. Then Israel was formally instituted. The Arab-Israeli war was never about destroying Israel. They didn’t even attack Israel. They stayed on Palestinian land and tried to defend it. They wanted a Palestinian state to be formed, just like Israel was allowed to be formed.

“As you well know, Gaza hasn't been occupied for quite a few years. Israel isn't responsible for those in Gaza..”

https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/10/1129722

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/03/israels-55-year-occupation-palestinian-territory-apartheid-un-human-rights

Responsibilities of the Occupier (Israel)
https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/misc/634kfc.htm

”The duties of the occupying power are spelled out primarily in the 1907 Hague Regulations (arts 42-56) and the Fourth Geneva Convention (GC IV, art. 27-34 and 47-78), as well as in certain provisions of Additional Protocol I and customary international humanitarian law.
Agreements concluded between the occupying power and the local authorities cannot deprive the population of occupied territory of the protection afforded by international humanitarian law (GC IV, art. 47) and protected persons themselves can in no circumstances renounce their rights (GC IV, art. 8).
The main rules o f the law applicable in case of occupation state that:

• The occupant does not acquire sovereignty over the territory.
• Occupation is only a temporary situation, and the rights of the occupant are limited to the extent of that period.
• The occupying power must respect the laws in force in the occupied territory, unless they constitute a threat to its security or an obstacle to the application of the international law of occupation.
• The occupying power must take measures to restore and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety.
• To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the occupying power must ensure sufficient hygiene and public health standards, as well as the provision of food and medical care to the population under occupation.
• The population in occupied territory cannot be forced to enlist in the occupier's armed forces.
• Collective or individual forcible transfers of population from and within the occupied territory are prohibited.
• Transfers of the civilian population of the occupying power into the occupied territory, regardless whether forcible or voluntary, are prohibited.
• Collective punishment is prohibited.
• The taking of hostages is prohibited.
• Reprisals against protected persons or their property are prohibited.
• The confiscation of private property by the occupant is prohibited.
• The destruction or seizure of enemy property is prohibited, unless absolutely required by military necessity during the conduct of hostilities.
• Cultural property must be respected.
• People accused of criminal offences shall be provided with proceedings respecting internationally recognized judicial guarantees (for example, they must be informed of the reason for their arrest, charg ed with a specific offence and given a fair trial as quickly as possible).
• Personnel of the International Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement must be allowed to carry out their humanitarian activities. The ICRC, in particular, must be given access to all protected persons, wherever they are, whether or not they are deprived of their liberty.

Because unless Hamas is wiped out, there will be another 7th October and there is NO chance the Israelis will ever allow that to happen.

I'd have more sympathy with the protesters if they also condemned the 7th October attacks and cut back on the absolutely appalling anti-semitic hate crime spewed out from a large number of protestors. But they won't because that's basically what is fuelling this. Pure old anti-semitism.

During its 1948-1949 war of establishment, Israel conquered 78 per cent of Palestine and drove 750,000 Palestinians, out of a population of 1.3 million, from their towns, villages and land. The remaining 22 per cent of Palestine was ruled by Jordan until 1967 when Israel completed its occupation of Palestine and captured Syria’s Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

In November 1967, the UN Security Council adopted resolution 242 calling for Israel to withdraw from “territories occupied” during that war. This became the “land-for-peace” formula which has been combined with the two-state solution. Instead of withdrawing, Israel planted settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and the Syrian Golan and annexed East Jerusalem.

In 1973, Egypt and Syria waged the first Arab-initiated war on Israel and reclaimed lost territory but Israel reconquered Sinai and the Golan.

In 1979, Egypt concluded the first Arab peace treaty with Israel based on land-for-peace involving total Israeli withdrawal from Sinai. Although the agreement was also meant to end Israeli military rule in the Palestinian territories and grant Palestinians autonomy, Israel did not comply with this part of the deal. Neither Egypt nor the US insisted on compliance.

In November 1988, the Palestinian parliament-in-exile issued a declaration of independence, calling for a Palestinian mini state in the West Bank and Gaza with its capital in East Jerusalem. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat stated: “We accept two states, the Palestine state and the Jewish state of Israel.”

At that time there were fewer than 100,000 Israeli settlers in the occupied territories. This policy set the stage for secret negotiations in Norway between Palestinian and Israeli teams. This led to the Oslo accord signed under the auspices of US president Bill Clinton on the White House lawn on September 13th, 1993.

Palestinians believed this would end Israel’s 1967 occupation and lead to a Palestinian independent state of Palestine by 1999. However, Israel’s prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was ready to concede only a Palestinian “entity”, not a state. Under Oslo, the interim Palestinian Authority was established to administer Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank and Gaza until the sides resolved the fate of Israeli settlers, Palestinian refugees, East Jerusalem and borders by 1999. The settler population, meanwhile, had grown to 280,000.
Clinton did not press hard for the resolution of these issues.

The 2002 Arab summit, a meeting of Arab League leaders in Beirut, combined land-for-peace with the two-state solution by calling for full Israeli withdrawal from territory occupied in 1967 and the establishment of a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in exchange for full Arab normalisation with Israel. Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon rejected the proposal and promptly invaded the West Bank.

The 2003 roadmap for peace put forward by a group of entities known as the Quartet – namely the US, Russia, the European Union and the UN – which defined stages for achieving the two-state solution within three years was accepted by the Palestinians but rejected by Sharon as it mandated dismantlement of some settlements.

In 2005, he pulled 8,500 Israelis from Gaza settlements to focus on settlement expansion in the West Bank. Instead of leaving Gaza to develop on its own, Israel retained control by land, sea and air and in 2007 imposed a blockade.
Sharon’s successor Ehud Olmert put forward another proposal in 2008 that contained reasonable territorial swaps. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas rejected the deal as there was no agreement on the extent of Israeli withdrawal, nor on the status of Jerusalem or the return of Palestinian refugees.

In 2009, Barack Obama began his first term as US president with an address in Cairo in which he promised a “new beginning” for US relations with the Muslim world. He admitted “the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity and a state of their own”. He promised to revive the roadmap, ensure that Palestinians would halt attacks on Israel, Israelis would cease settlement growth and the sides would achieve coexistence in two states. The talks broke down in April 2014, by which time Binyamin Netanyahu was prime minister.

He and most of his predecessors have done their utmost to block the emergence of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state by accelerating the construction of settlements and military bases. Today there are 720,000 Israeli settlers living among three million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This is where the two-state-solution/land-for-peace formula is meant to resolve the 75-year-old Palestinian-Israeli dispute. Devastated Gaza with no Israeli settlers is to be a separate issue as there has to be a land link across Israel connecting the strip to the West Bank.
https://www.irishtimes.com/world/middle-east/2023/12/25/long-history-of-moribund-two-state-solution-forms-backdrop-to-gaza-conflict/

Israel is not the occupying power.

There really are some extraordinarily incorrect assertions on this thread.

No, Israel is not still occupying Gaza. I also didn't say Hamas is their government. I mean, I guess they are, but I feel like PA should take some responsibility for the people of Gaza.

Your UN links don't say what you want them to say. They don't say Gaza is occupied. They mention the occupied Palestinian territories, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Gaza is not a part of the OPT because, well, they're not occupied.

And just because the Arab nations weren't successful in their destruction of Israel in 1948 doesn't mean that wasn't their intention 🤦🏻‍♀️ They tried and failed. Do you know why Israel ended up with more land after the war? Because that land was where they were being attacked from.

Stop rewriting history. It won't help anyone. I want peace, I want illegal settlers out of the West Bank and I want a Palestinian state but making up facts won't help us get to that point. It will only stir up more hatred. We don't need a bad guy and a good guy, we need two half-decent guys who both understand that the other also has a right to be upset about the past but are both willing to look and move forward.

1. The majority of people saying there needs to be a ceasefire do condemn the October 7th attacks.

1. A small number of horrible people and a small number of ill-informed people do not constitute an outpouring of hate crime. The numbers of people being cautioned, arrested, etc is actually quite low considering the numbers of participants in demonstrations.

1. Quite a few people participating in demonstrations actively challenge and attempt to better inform people expressing hate. That doesn't make for good news stories though.

1. People may participate in demonstrations for a number of reasons. Some of us have family, friends, colleagues who have died and are at risk of dying in Gaza or who are facing persecution in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. I really don't think it is anti-semitic or hate-filled to want our dead loved ones to be remembered, to want an end to innocent people being killed, and to want steps to be taken towards peace and justice in the Middle East. And yes, that needs to be justice for all.

The United Nations says Israel is the Occupier of the Occupied Palestinian Territories which are East Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza
https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/10/1129722

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/03/israels-55-year-occupation-palestinian-territory-apartheid-un-human-rights

I’m not the one rewriting history.
My links do say that Israel occupies Gaza. Here is another one with screen shot. https://www.ochaopt.org/

Israel occupies Gaza.
How do you think Israel ended up with 78% of the land when the UN partition gave them 33%? They went into Palestinian lands and attacked. They invaded.

And this- Gaza is part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2024/01/israel-occupied-palestinian-territory-situation-100-days

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/03/high-commissioner-human-rights-notes-significant-increase-violence-occupied

Thank you for proving the UN bias. They're really not the right people for the job, are they?

Gaza isn't occupied but they seem to have renamed the whole of Palestine "Occupied Palestinian Territories". Not quite as catchy a name. It's not all occupied, only parts of it are, so it's very misleading. Goes to show how much words matter though. Renaming it all to make it sound as though Gaza is also occupied seems to have worked though - it's got people claiming it's occupied almost two decades after Israel withdrew 🤷🏻‍♀️ The UN really should know better.

And I already answered your question about the land in my previous post. Stop pretending Israel was the aggressor 🤦🏻‍♀️

I'd have more sympathy with the protesters if they also condemned the 7th October attacks and cut back on the absolutely appalling anti-semitic hate crime spewed out from a large number of protestors. But they won't because that's basically what is fuelling this. Pure old anti-semitism.

I completely agree with this. I get why people are angry about the situation in Gaza, it’s awful, but the fact that the “pro Palestine” protestors are so vicious in their chants and so hateful with their placards makes me really think they don’t actually want to help Palestinians, they’re just rabidly anti Israel because they’re simply anti semitic. They never seem to address the many Palestinians killed by frequently failed rockets fired from Gaza that are intended to kill Israelis citizens. And they say nothing of Hamas’ strategy to use their own people as human shields. I think it’s pretty gross actually.

Antisemitism is a virus that mutates: in the Middle Ages Jews were hated for their religion. Then in post enlightenment Europe when hating people for their religion was no longer fashionable, Jews were hated for their race. In the 21st Century obviously racism is totally out, so now Jews are hated for their Nation State, Israel. We’ll just claim it’s because of their human rights record and just ignore all the other countries in world with far worse human rights records, meanwhile we won’t constantly challenge their right to exist. We’ll also conveniently ignore the Palestinians’ history of initiating wars, their violence, their faulty leadership and their constant refusal to take opportunities for accommodation. There are 56 Islamic nations, and 159 in which Christians form the majority. There is and only ever has been one Jewish state, tiny and vulnerable. That is why Anti-Zionism, denying Jews the right to their one and only collective home by misrepresenting Judaism, is the new antisemitism, every bit as virulent and dangerous as the old.

There needs to be a Palestinian State - alongside the Israeli State not instead of the Israeli State (can’t believe this needs to be said, but here we are) and a future of dignity and hope for Palestinian youth. But these - let’s face it, quite ignorant and evidently uneducated protestors - are helping to fuck this up. Because they misrepresents the conflict as a zero-sum game: either Israel wins and the Palestinians lose, or the Palestinians win and Israel loses.
But the conflict is not a zero-sum game. From war and violence, both sides lose. From peace and security, both sides win.