This is the reality of Hamas

[keenforhelp]

This is a very interesting opinion piece and underlines how difficult it is and has been for Israel.

There must be more international calls for Hamas to be removed from Gaza.

https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2023/11/17/cole-the-reality-of-hamas/

Great article, thanks for sharing. Agree with every word.

Yep

I agree that the Palestinians deserve a future and state without Hamas. Where the illegal settlers give back the land. The Israelis deserve better than the corrupt Netanyahu led government.

Unfortunately, the people of Gaza will never be freed of Hamas to create the life of hope and prosperity they deserve. They'll all be dead. The author's absolutely right that Hamas uses the people - all of them - as 'martyrs', whether they signed up for that role or not. Hamas ensures that the only obvious way to eliminate it is to eliminate the entire nation.

I don't know if there is another way; I'm neither a diplomat nor a military expert. I do know I hate seeing the wholesale devastation inflicted on ordinary people's lives. I know the Israeli rhetoric is no less vicious than Hamas's. It feels like the culmination of thousands of years of conflict, and I don't have to like it or side with either party. Both are unjustified, in my view.

The eventual few Palestinian survivors will carry a multi-generational burden of traumatised hatred. There will be no peaceful outcome for them.

Includes useful links too. The plight of the Palestinian people at the hands of their own leaders is appalling

Yes, and the genocide from the Israeli government is beyond appalling.

Bingo!

Hamas are beyond appalling. Hopefully Israel will get a better, more progressive government soon, but Hamas will still be Hamas.

And I think this is the heart of it. Democracies sometimes vote in bad governments. Israel's political system encourages coalitions which can bring in people from the fringes. There is nothing good about Hamas, its people, its ideology, its methods or its government and no evidence that it will change. We ha e to hope Pakestinian & Israeli people find ways of bringing in better governors.

More on Hamas on this thread here:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/conflict-in-the-middle-east/5095127-hamas-leader-believes-civilian-deaths-are-necessary-sacrifices-in-israeli-war-leaked-letters-show?page=1

From the article:
Correspondence between Yahya Sinwar, the terror group’s military leader, and officials tasked with brokering a ceasefire with Qatari and Egyptian officials indicate he is more interested in securing his own future than peace.

“We have the Israelis right where we want them,” Sinwar said in one of dozens of messages to ceasefire negotiators obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
The messages display a calculated disregard for human life and a belief on the part of Sinwar that Israel has more to lose from the eight-month war than Hamas.

In one message to Hamas leaders in Doha, he cites civilian losses in national-liberation conflicts in places such as Algeria, where hundreds of thousands of people died fighting for independence from France, saying, “these are necessary sacrifices”.

In a separate letter, sent on April 11 to Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas political leader, whose three sons were killed in an Israeli air strike, Sinwar claimed their deaths and those of other Palestinians would “infuse life into the veins of this nation, prompting it to rise to its glory and honour”.

Well said Sharon

Hamas is a phenomenon that we should all be scared of. They don't just want to come for jews, when they are done with that, their confidence, empowerment and weaponry, thanks to Iran, will seek the rest of Europe out. 9/11 was a walk in the park compared to their long term plans.

I don’t think there’s many that don’t believe that Hamas’s military wing is comprised of self serving brutal terrorists. But it is not realistic to try to eliminate them militarily and the human cost is too great. And don’t bother saying it’s because their government built tunnels instead of shelters-half the population weren’t born when the last election was held.

I suppose that means realistically there's a population of young Palestinians formed by this into hatred

Hamas appear to be getting what they wanted- drawing Hezbollah into outright war. Netanyahu wants it too- it puts off his day of accountability and that only a truly existential threat to Israel will overcome America’s weariness of getting more directly involved in Middle Eastern conflicts. There needs to be a ceasefire, hostage deal and de-escalation, even if it’s the wobbliest of pauses , parsed in the most ambiguous language.

Yep, as Bill Clinton said to Yasser Arafat in 2001 when Arafat rejected yet another deal - "You are leading your people and the region to catastrophe!"

Clinton has been proven correct, sadly.

Indeed.

And on the other side....

On 1 January, the Palestinian Negotiating Team (NAD) published an open letter, explaining why the proposals would "fail to satisfy the conditions required for a permanent peace". They claimed that the parameters divided the Palestinian state, including East Jerusalem, into separate cantons and unconnected islands, and protested the surrender the right of return of Palestinian refugees and lack of clarity and details. Clinton's proposal was not accompanied by a map; only the Israelis presented a map, which would allegedly render the Palestinian state unviable and lacking direct access to international borders. The Palestinians opposed the Israeli annexation of settlement blocs in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which they claimed subordinated the contiguity of the Palestinian state. They also protested that Israel would gain control over their natural resources, and was planning on ceding them less valuable land on the outskirts of West Bank and Gaza in exchange.[8][28] While Arafat flew to Washington to meet with President Clinton, the newspaper Al-Ayyam published in Arabic a letter to Clinton with the Palestinian reservations.[29]

On 2 January 2001, at a meeting in the White House, Arafat gave his qualified agreement to the Parameters with reservations. In a memorandum, his Negotiations Support Unit (NSU) had warned him "that the proposals in general are too vague and unclear to form an acceptable framework for an agreement".[30] The negotiation team opposed the use of percentages. First, the Israelis were to make clear which reasonable needs they had in specific areas; without a map, the percentages given were also ambiguous, as the Israelis did not include all disputed land or part of the Dead Sea, and it was unclear where the 80% proportion of settlers would remain. All Israeli settlers taken together occupied around 1.8% of the West Bank. The Palestinian concerns about lack of contiguity were largely related to Israeli control over large swaths of land in key development areas such as Jerusalem and Bethlehem, due to the large settlement blocs. Palestinians would be unable to move without restriction within their own state.[30]

A PLO website gives further comments on the Parameters.[31] The Palestinian position about the right of return was, as it has always been, that it is an individual universal right which can never be set aside. This right they see acknowledged in UN resolution 194.[32]

Do you have anything to say or do you just want to show everyone you know how to copy and paste from Wikipedia?

Seriously, what I have to say is in the link and states the case better than I ever could. The Palestinians should have accepted a subpar deal? Maybe they should have to avoid a genocide?

What link?

The copy and paste below it was a typo.

I'm still not seeing a link but whatever. If you want to talk about how terrible Israel you have dozens of other threads to chose from.

Yep, absolutely anything to deflect from Palestinian leaders absolutely failing the Palestinian people for decades by preferring to pick repeated fights in the region and not just with Israel either!

Even PA President Abbas admitted Arab leaders were wrong to reject the 1947 UN Partition Plan.

Reject then fight ad nauseum is s terrible, terrible plan as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman pointed out as they have no real power in the region & should accept a deal. Rejection is a tactical response to a situation they don't have a strategic ability to achieve.

You don't get better deals long after rejecting the best deal there ever was on the table (1947 UN Partition Plan) as all subsequent deals can never be as good.

I call it the Repetition of Deflection Method.

And UN GA Resolution 194 is not legally binding.

Yes.

And then you have to factor in the fact that most of the rest of the Middle East does not want Israel to exist - mostly because they are fundamentally Jew-hating cultures.

Don't forget the 1967 war - it was aimed at wiping Israel off the map as both a nation, and a sanctuary state for Jewish people.