Israel / Hammas conflict what were the options

[Homeheadaches]

In a bid to try and educate myself and understand the very complicated background, what were Israel’s options after the Hammas attacks?

They are getting pilloried for retaliating and obviously no one wants more innocent civilians killed but what could they have done instead?

Negotiated the return of the hostages? Asked other countries to help with the negotiations? Ask other countries to help come up with a long term solution?

Note - I am not saying any of that would work (I don’t have a crystal ball). But might have been an option?

I get it that they are rightly furious and deeply hurt. It’s just that I can’t see what’s happening now as any kind of meaningful or helpful solution. It looks more like straightforward revenge.

I also get it that negotiating with terrorists isn’t always considered clever or the right thing to do. But sometimes it’s a case of needs must, and the bigger picture.

Yep - I get that but I can’t imagine many countries would say ‘let’s get round the negotiating table’ as a first step after the horrific killings. Maybe if they had only taken hostages they would. It’s a knee jerk reaction to wage war but in some senses justified?

How can you negotiate with an enemy located right door who has repeatedly said their aim is to kill your entire population.

Hamas is a terrorist group according to the terrorism act 2000.

not sure why history is repeating itself where innocent civilians who are already oppressed are being bombed 😞.

Unfortunately OP if there were straightforward options they would likely have been considered.

One the one side you have Israel, with very recent memories as victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing, now built up into a military force with £££ behind it, a hawkish government and a strong feeling of “never again”.

On the other you have the Palestinians, governed for the last 18ish years by a government whose stated aim is the destruction of Israel, and who have a strong tendency to use civilians and their buildings as human shields.

The broader context isn’t great either - Hamas insurgents, Iranian “support”, an Israeli government which has had to power-share with right wing religious parties who are pro-settlers who settle on Palestinian land, especially in the West Bank. There are murders and skirmishes on both sides.

I’m not sure what I’d suggest. I’m Jewish, I don’t fully endorse what is happening and I mourn the losses on both sides.

What country would just ask for negotiation if a terrorist group killed 1400 of their people?
Would you just expect negotiations if a terrorist came and slaughtered 1400 Londoners and stole 200 women, children and babies?

U

U

U

same here, i feel very conflicted. my family in Israel really want the IDF to bomb the hell out of gaza 'to keep them safe' and its easy for me to moralize from my safe home in London, but I don't see how bombing the hell out of gaza and creating lots of widows and orphans who would become the next generation of Hamas 2.0 is keeping anyone safe.

Anyway getting rid of Hamas is another synonym for regime change. What is Bibi's plan after they depose of Hamas. How are they supposed to rule over 2 million Gazans? We have not have a good history intervening in the Middle East and imposing new governments, see Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. After 20 years and countless American lives, we now have Taliban 2.0 in Afghanistan. Biden knows this so he is telling Bibi not to invade without a plan, though what plan Bibi has in mind is anyone's guess.

Hamas might be worse than ISIS but ISIS was an insurgent group while Hamas has ruled over Gaza for years.

True, America did invade afghanistan after 9/11. I would leave you to tell me if that was a success. They got rid of the taliban...oops

can’t think of any other countries that would be expected to negotiate with terrorists!

Well Ireland had to in the end..

The objective if the IRA was to get Northern Ireland out of the UK, not to murder all English people (in NI and worldwide). Quite a difference.

Their objective was as impossible as wiping Israel off the map. As much as I agree with the idea of a united Ireland but at that time the reality was impossible.

So everyone had to compromise. (Well nearly everyone 😊) And it was essential to negotiate with terrorists. Fast forward and Martin Mcguiness, suspected of war crimes, shook hands with the queen. That for me is a moment where you think anything is possible where there is a will for peace.

The 'already oppressed humans' have been killing Palestinians for decades.

I do not agree with Hamas, but look beyond what you read on social media.

i utterly condemn Hamas for their horrific brutality against Israeli civilians yet the terrorist attack didn’t occur out the blue - the Palestinian people have been oppressed for a long time and also, unwisely, the current Israeli government strengthened Hamas.

but let’s pretend a French terrorist group came and committed a similar horror. Would I be cheering on the bombing of all of Paris - no I would not. It would simply start a bigger war with more deaths on both sides. Bodies are bodies at the end of the day and the death of innocent children can never be justified.

@mollyfolk The Good Friday Agreement only happened after the IRA accepted that Northern Ireland was part of the UK and that this will only change as part of the democratic process.

Since October 7th, Hamas has continued to declare that terror attacks like that slaughter will continue until Israel has been annihilated.

There are no options. Hamas have said they dont want Israel in the Middle East. They detest Jews which is in their Quran. They do not want to have 2 states they want the land to themselves as it’s also part of their holy book to dominate lands.

‘Bodies are bodies at the end of the day and the death of innocent children can never be justified’

When your condemnation of the terrorist organisation Hamas for their slaughter of babies and children is followed by a ‘yet’ that is exactly what you are doing.

Hamas had a ceasefire, they broke the cease fire and they will do so again and again until they are either wiped out or manage to destroy Israel and kill or chase every Jewish person out of the Middle East.

How many times do we have to see Hamas leaders tell us that what they want is to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews, that they need the blood of the elderly, women and children of Gaza to awaken their ‘revolutionary spirit’ and ‘resolve’, that they will repeat October 7-like massacres until Israel is annihilated, that they want ‘to create a world where Judaism and Christianity do not exist’ before we believe them?

There will be no peace for the people of Israel, or the people of Palestine, until the Hamas question is answered - because Hamas will not allow it.

Israel is in a lose-lose position. If they didn't respond by force to October 7 massacre, they would be seen as weak and opened to attacks whenever the terrorists felt like. They responded and they're suddenly the bad guys

Well they had two options. Do nothing or wipe out Hamas to stop it from ever happening again.

@NotSuchASmugMarried "Well they had two options. Do nothing or wipe out Hamas to stop it from ever happening again"
I don't think many would disagree that Hamas are evil and have to go. But what then? If anything will further radicalise the Palestinian population (and gain them further support outside Palestine) the current slaughter of civilians will. We'll just have the rise of a new terror group. Even putting aside the humanitarian situation I completely fail to see how this current assault on Gaza will make Israel safer in the future.

Surely there is a long long way between “doing nothing” and attempting to wipe out the civilian population of Gaza??? So those were literally the only two options?

As posters above have said, there is no other option for Israel. Hamas want the state of Israel eliminated and all Jews dead. This isn’t about land.

Adding a slightly different take, I was more than a little surprised that Israeli intelligence apparently knew nothing about the Hamas attack before it happened (their intelligence service is legendary, and designed to detect exactly this sort of thing). Iran knew it was going to happen, it seems.

There's been a fair bit of political hubris in the buildup to this also, such as Israelis visiting key Muslim sites in Jerusalem (with protection from Israeli police), Israel pushing the territorial boundaries in the West Bank, and Benyamin Netanyahu's surge towards authoritarianism, which has caused him to become distanced from certain more-moderate parts of his government, including the intelligence services.

Basically, i don't think Israel could realistically not retaliate to the Hamas attacks, although at the same time I wonder if the whole thing could have been avoided altogether by a different course of action on Israel's part in recent months.

For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.
The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.
According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Source : the times of israel