It is easy to have a nuanced position and still come to the obvious conclusion on what’s happening now. The past is completely enough that a basic history lesson would suffice.
Okay, but what if I just throw up my hands and say “They’ve always been fighting so what’s the big deal?” while my Congressman takes a few million in kickbacks for the next billion in military aid shipped overseas?
Doesn’t that make me a serious thinking, highly educated, objective observer? Why are you waving an Israeli/Palestinian flag in my face? Don’t make me pick a side, just let the military industrial complex collect its paycheck and do the big “Whatchagonnado?” face of perfect neutrality.
well yeah that’s… not a nuanced position. “theyve always been fighting” runs counter to any non-propagandized “basic history lesson.” kind of proved their point.
“I feel like doing genocide and not doing genocide are basically the same thing.”
Let’s compromise on doing half a genocide?
I’m a centrist in that I think the Israelis and Palestinians should live happy, productive lives and not be shot.
It just so happens that only one side seems to disagree with that.
Judging from other commenters here, there are radicals from both sides wilfully ignoring atrocities of the team they pick. Two state solution is the only way that would allow peace for both Palestinians and Israelis.
Two state solution is the only way that would allow peace for both Palestinians and Israelis.
It seems like we’re headed to a One State Solution, and that state is Greater Israel. Purging everyone of a different ethnicity from the region “solves” the problem better than letting another Arab state build up its population and economy along your contested border. In fact, you could call it a kind of Final Solution.
I think a three state solution would be a more stable one in the long run, one Israeli one Palestine and one buffer state in between which is like Bosnia which means that it have two governments a Israeli and a Palestinian.
If they could agree on boundaries there wouldn’t be a war to begin with, if they could work together there wouldn’t be two separate countries at all.
fnuny meme but if you read the article i don’t think calling them “centrist” is defensible:
Mr. Aboutboul is a founding member of Students for Standing Together, a new student group at U.C.L.A. that aims to unite Israelis and Palestinians to call for a cease-fire in Gaza.
so these “centrists” are doing statistically better than your representatives. the comments here talking about “only committing a half genocide” are just doing bad faith echo chamber discourse, which i don’t find the be productive.
At Columbia University, Aharon Dardik, an Israeli American student, formed a group called CU Jews for Ceasefire after finding that his viewpoint wasn’t fully reflected in the main pro-Palestinian student movement. He is a pacifist who spent his teen years with his family in the West Bank but who ultimately refused to serve in the army in Israel. He believes in working with Israelis and Palestinians toward collective liberation and a world not divided by ethnonationalist allegiances.
Dr. Waxman also became a target of right-wing pro-Israel groups, including after he wrote on social media that he supported the International Criminal Court’s request for an arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a position he said he took as a supporter of international law.
no hate to OP but let’s laugh loudly at the ones who deserve to be scoffed and mocked, not the people who are actively supporting Palestinian emancipation. i’m sure there’s stuff to be criticized in these folks but if there is, find it and call it the fuck out specifically instead of hand-waving “centrist”—especially when doing so just deplatforms the underrepresented Jewish Anti-Zionist population.
(honestly let’s laugh at whoever wrote and approved that headline, it does no service here.)
these “centrists” are doing statistically better than your representatives.
Not at the ballot box. Pro-Genocide Reactionaries won in a landslide. Ceasefire centrists couldn’t even survive their primaries in several instances (Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman, most notably).
no hate to OP but let’s laugh loudly at the ones who deserve to be scoffed and mocked, not the people who are actively supporting Palestinian emancipation.
The problem with any conversation about “centrism” is that its a title anyone can claim, trivially, just by tilting the rhetoric to sound like you’re defending the status quo rather than advocating for a change.
Right now, the centrist position of Israel and its allies is genocide, with disputes over exactly how far the slaughter needs to extend. But there’s a universal accolade of Israel in its response to Oct 7th. Virtually no American politician, on the liberal or conservative side of the aisle, is contesting Israeli’s right to kill 10% of the population of Gaza and rising in response.
Palestinian emancipation is a far-left position in practical terms. It would require such an enormous shift in both public sentiment and national policy as to be practically revolutionary in its own right.
(honestly let’s laugh at whoever wrote and approved that headline, it does no service here.)
It’s illustrative of the state of national media in a country that has consistently been in favor of ethnic cleansing going back to its founding days.
Not at the ballot box.
??? feel like you need to read my comment again so I will just let this be. I am talking about pro-Palestine movements being further left than all but 17 represantives by calling for ceasefire. Of course they are not doing well at the ballot box; they are a minority.
The problem with any conversation about “centrism” is that its a title anyone can claim
Agree, and also a title anyone can plaster, as has been done by this post against real pro-Palestine groups whom I greatly doubt would apply the label to themselves.
It’s illustrative of the state of national media
Yea, so laugh and attack that destructive status quo rather than student groups who do better than most. Attacking these well-intentioned, if imperfect, young people and their educators honestly just makes me sad because it’s doing absolutely nothing rhetorically to shift the overton window and contributes to an alienation of young people from the left.
“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” is a quote by Elie Wiesel from his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.
Or you can just not have an opinion on a subject. It’s ok to not have an opinion sometimes.
How is it ok to not have an opinion on genocide?
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Being “ok” with anything is completely subjective and a personal choice. There is no law that says I have to have an opinion on every subject.
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I’m against innocent people being hurt or killed in general.
My experience on this platform tells me if a person or persons set out to kill every Trump supporter, or murder every billionaire, you people would be celebrating. Hypothetical I admit, but it’s my opinion most of you would be ok with genocide as long as it targets people you don’t like/support.
I’m against innocent people being hurt or killed in general.
Dude, you’re just saying that without knowing all the details. Why don’t you maybe tap the breaks and sit on the sidelines. There’s a lot of nuance you’re missing with this statement and a lot of good people you’re offending with your off-the-cuff ignorant take.
Learn to just not have an opinion for a moment. Quit trying to make the injury and killing of innocent people so political.
Dude, there’s like less than 2000 billionaires in the entire world. They aren’t a race of people, or ethnic groups.
Besides, billionaires are the people sticking their boot on everybody’s neck, and creating this dupshit class war. At some point people take a stand against oppression. Violence from the oppressed toward their oppressors is not in any way the same thing.
Nobody says, well, golly, I sure wish those slaves would have found peaceful ways to revolt against their slave owners.
They are a group of people who have something in common. If you’re trying to kill them for that thing(s), that’s genocide. You can sugar coat it in anyway that makes you comfortable, I guess.
Im not trying to do anything, except correct your delusional definition of genocide. I considered including an actual definition of genocide in my comment, but ultimately didn’t. Someone else already did, and you basically threw out a non sequitur about how definitions are made up.
You’re getting down voted bcz you are wrong, and you just keep doubling down. But, I guess if it makes you feel superior to other people, keep on keeping on.
TIL downvotes = being wrong.
:/
It isn’t a non sequitur. It’s simply a made up definition like all definitions. It doesn’t mean they’re right or wrong.
You can either refute my statement, or you can’t.
From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The legal term “genocide” refers to certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.
Yeah billionaires are not included, sorry.
Cool. Don’t care about billionaires, and I care equally what some museums definition is.
And before you run to your search engine of choice to find the “official” definition, know I don’t care about that either. Definitions are literally (like everything else) just made up. A group of people came together and said “this word means this because we say so”. I can decide what groups fall under the definition of genocide if I so choose. And you are also welcome to accept whatever definition you so choose.
My experience on this platform tells me if a person or persons set out to kill every Trump supporter, or murder every billionaire, you people would be celebrating.
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It’s not okay to not have an opinion on the bombs you’re paying for.
Sure it is. There are many things my taxes are paying for that I don’t have an opinion on.
“You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”
You can choose to not have an opinion, but that just means you’re siding with the genocide. There’s no neutral option.
That’s just your opinion. You can’t actually prove that.
I can prove that you are supporting genocide. You pay your taxes, right? Then you’re supporting genocide.
Unless you’re too young to pay taxes? In that case I could give you a pass - it’s not like you know any better anyway.
But this is something we all have to reconcile - we’re all complicit. You don’t get to wash your hands of this.
Again, you’ve proved nothing. This is just a conclusion/opinion. Just stop.
Yep. Also calling it the“Israel-Hamas war” is propaganda. Makes it sound like the only people dying in Palestine are Hamas soldiers, which is obviously nowhere near the truth.
Centrists are literally just anti-opinion and spineless.
Free Palestine.
Centrist just support the status quo. So if the status quo is genocide then they just support genocide.
So you agree the people in the article are not centrists and that the post is all a shame then? Because they don’t support the status quo and want a ceasefire and peace talks.
Calling them centrists was a lashing out against people they didn’t know and the views of various people that weren’t the same.
Overall I would argue this post is pro war, pro genocide propaganda.
Thats and worse. They do what they are paid to do. DNC centrists heard from their consultants that whoever had the most money tended to win elections, so they sold out in every way they could. Theyve almost abandoned the idea of having a party platform at all. Youd think that means we could just gofundme some government action, but you have to gofundme an amount that beats the corporate donaters’ preference. Good luck with that. Centrist will do anything to simply win, which leads directly to oligarchy.
If you don’t support indigenous resistance to occupation, you’re on the side of the occupation. There is no center.
Next you’re going to tell me the Cardassians were the bad guys.
Garak, you of all people know that’s true. The question is if they’re the winning side or not, right?
Where do you stop? At single celled organisms, or when they invaded the earth?
Edit: updated spelling error
Lets see your opinion on Uyghurs and Ukraine.
Edit: still not answered by the person the question was SPECIFICALLY directed to.
This is whataboutism.
Far from it.
All three are about a genocide. And there is no center about genocide. Yet tankies will shit themselves till they bleed arguing like there is some gray area regarding Ukraine or Uyghurs. As if someone deserves it.
Just like Murdochs propaganda will argue Palestine deserves what they get, because Hamas.
It’s textbook whataboutism. It’s like going to a Black Lives Matter protest and saying “What about all of the non-Black people who get killed by police? All lives matter!” Your response was basically “All genocides matter”.
The Palestinian genocide does have one important difference from those other genocides: it’s being enabled by US tax dollars. That’s why so many people in the US are protesting that genocide instead of some other genocide.
Do you actually care about any of these genocides, or are you just trying to score points on “tankies”?
Pro Ukraine Pro Uyghur Pro Palestine Pro Kurd
Based af
if I also support Armenia as a Turk do I become even more based?
Please stop I can only be so turned on.
Does pro Uyghur mean pro religion?
WTF does this mean? A person isn’t a religion. Do you think it’s okay to kill people because of their religion?
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occupied people > occupying forces
I can’t think of a scenario you can come up with that would change this
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so I was right; there is none
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is this a copy pasta or a new generation of satire?
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The US is not shooting Ukrainians, that simple.
I find my neoliberal Koolaid tastes like grape.
get the new kiwi flavor for 5.99$ today
THERE IT IS
A lot of words to support nazi russia.
🚽
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What were u expecting?
Or the US
Land back, all of it.
The most middle of the road opinion on Israel-Palestine issue is the two state solution. It worked on Northern Ireland with the Good Friday Agreement and it should work between Israel and Palestine. Many scholars from both sides also want to use NI peace deal as the blueprint. Compromise is the key just like with Protestants and Catholics did in Northern Ireland.
The problem is, of course radicals from both Palestine and Israel do not want this because-- well-- they’re radical.
This is false. Only Israel does not want a two state solution. Even Hamas accepted it in 2017.
This is what people mean with enlightened centrism. There are no two sides preventing peace. There is only Israel preventing peace.
I think we can track down several times two state option was on the table, starting as early as 68
Very cool and false. But now everyone accepts it except Israel.
What is the benefit from lying? I don’t get it. This is all basic info.
The two-state solution is supported by many countries, and the Palestinian Authority. Israel currently does not support the idea, though it has in the past. The first proposal for separate Jewish and Arab states in the territory was made by the British Peel Commission report in 1937.
It was also on the table at Camp David.
How does that prove they’re lying about Israel currently not supporting it?
Right now they’re wanting to just take the land after eliminating the people who lived there
Because I said it was on the table several times in the past. And they wrote:
Very cool and false
???
Yes because they’ve (Israel) always negotiated in good faith. Even the camp David accords was a 2 state solution in name only
Ok now explain why Israel does not accept the deal since Hamas does accept it.
I do not have to read any history to disprove your lies. I can open the news right now.
You are correct. Israel, in the present does not accept the two state solution. Hence why I was talking about the past.
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Why was it rejected by PLO when it was on the table?.
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Show me where Hamas is open to a two state solution.
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What is the meaning of “from the river to the sea”
You are trying to change the topic so hard.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/5/2/hamas-accepts-palestinian-state-with-1967-borders
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The 2017 Hamas charter is openly available on the Internet, and it says it still doesn’t recognise Israel as a state and strive for “complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.” This is not really a two-state solution. Two states recognise each other’s right to exist if this is indeed a two state solution.
Of course Hamas is not stupid like the PA. They will not recognize Israel unless Israel agrees to a two state solution.
Your arguments are the most generic Hasbara so I am not assuming you are speaking in good faith.
Hamas stated “from the river to the sea” in that charter you yourself mentioned. That could not be any more ambiguous.
Yes of course they have the right to regain all their stolen land unless Israel wants to accept a deal. What is your point exactly?
Read this before typing your next comment
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/5/2/hamas-accepts-palestinian-state-with-1967-borders
without recognising the statehood of Israel
They’ve pretty explicitly been aiming for a Palestinian state in the territories occupied since 1967. And not just recently, proposals for a permanent ceasefire (which sets the first steps towards recognition and normalization of relations) with Israel under these conditions go back to 1999. Conveniently, both Israel and the US didn’t find it necessary to respond.
Hamas still doesn’t recognise Israel, do they?
Does Israel recognize West Bank as Palestine?
How will creating two segregated ethno-religious states help anything?
What do you mean? The issue of Palestine and Israel isn’t ethno-religious, it’s nationalism in nature. There are still Muslim Arabs in Israel especially in the north where they live peacefully with Israeli Jews.
Yeah those radical Palestinians, not wanting half their home cut off for colonizers.
You could say the same to most modern states. Colonisation is wrong, but mistakes were made and recognised. It’s impractical to deport people back to their ancestors’ homeland. You can’t expect white Americans and South Africans to return to Europe, or black people in the Americas to return to Africa. That’s like trying to abort an already born baby. Go far back enough, and we all came from Africa and you might as well say all humans should vacate the rest of the world and return to Africa.
Countries who support Palestine also support two-state solution. Israel is there to stay and Palestine has the right to exist. It’s simple as that. Frankly, any one who does not support two state solution are radicals. That goes for Israeli, Palestinians and outsiders who don’t support two state solution. Someone mentioned Hamas 2017 charter, but it still doesn’t recognise Israel’s right to exist. And if Hamas really want a two state solution, they would not have taken hostages, many of whom are foreigners with no dog in the race. Is this really the act of freedom fighters? Had resistance fighters in World War 2 killed civilians? Last time I asked this rhetorical question to someone, the person said it’s justified as price of freedom. If your answer is yes, then you are a radical and need time to think about your life.
Most people, specifically outsiders who don’t even live in the region and feeling safe behind the rule of law, too opinionated on Israel and Palestine issue, don’t really have a clue when they are prodded down to the kernel. They consume information from what I would call “fast food” sources and from biased ones, and thus adopt radical stances. Two state solution IS the solution.
Go far back enough, and we all came from Africa and you might as well say all humans should vacate the rest of the world and return to Africa.
You confusing migration with the colonialism. Colonialism disempowers indigenous peoples from determining how the land they lived on should be used.
Israel took the land and removed the people of that land from the land. Two states do not remediate the harm or re-empower the indigenous people to have a role in determining the use of the land. The extermination of the Israeli population is not the solution, but flooding the region with colonists in three separate ways and leveraging those people to steal more and more land was both explicit and implicit.
Have you ever looked at the two state solution map? It is insane.
Precisely why radicals on both sides need to stand down and recognise each other to create separate states. It’s already too late to remove Israel as a state. Right now what should happen is Israel stop colonising West Bank and Gaza, while Israel has to allow Palestine their own state and thrive in peace.
When you’re born in a country you’re only a colonizer if you start conquering more territory.
The other centrist option is the zero state solution. Just glass the Levant and let any survivors fight it out mad max style while the rest of the world refuses to have any interaction with them. Unlike the two state solution, neither side had to trust, cooperate, or develop empathy and respect for the other. It’s extremely expedient: any one of a handful of leaders could implement this solution within just a few minutes. And nothing says “this peace is permanent” like a charred radioactive hellscape.
My “lose lose” zero-state solution benefits over 8 billion people who will never again have to endure on the nightly news the bitching and posturing of these two mutually genocidal tribes.
Why would you bother spending all that time to write a whole paragraph of nonsense… At least make it funny
But that is funny. Granted, I go for deadpan and maybe Lemmy isn’t into satire, but it’s worth at least a smirk.
When one side is committing genocide and the other side wants no genocide, you don’t pick the middle and support half-genocide.
More accurate would be “Committing genocide” and “Wants to commit genocide but doesn’t have the guns”, with the majority of the actual population on both sides (rather than the politicians and emboldened extremists) just wanting to not be genocided. Personally I’m picking the “chuck the politicians in a hole and let the people live” option. No idea what the ideal solution looks like but I feel like getting the fascists and religious extremists on both sides out of the equation would be a good starting point
Hamas wouldn’t exist if Israel didn’t commit genocide. You can’t win a war on terror. You can stop “terrorists” without hurting a single person though.
Hamas would not exist if Israel didn’t, it’s true, but the opposition to Israel did not originally come from genocide, Israel was attacked almost immediately upon its foundation. Whether putting there was a good idea or not is debatable (well okay it was an awful idea, but one of the other places they considered was Yugoslavia, which I’m sure would have been perfectly safe!) but Hamas and their ilk did not appear in response to Israel committing genocide
Israel was attacked almost immediately upon its foundation
It was attacked for a reason. Pretending otherwise is dishonest. The Nakba led to the attacks.
“The Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” refers to the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what today is Israel before and during the war surrounding its creation in 1948.”
Do you see the “before” in that quote? The Nakba was the cause of the attacks.
Beyond that israel was attacking the british and muslims in the area before israel became a nation-state again. This isnt the first israeli genocide in that area in service of building a new kingdom either. Its the third or fourth, depending how you count ethnic mass murders sprees of innocents as genocides. And Zealot/Zionist (Jewish far right splinter groups) terrorism has been ongoing since early Roman times at least.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish–Roman_wars
For those reasons alone, Israel should not have been granted statehood by the UN. Maybe the UN. thought giving them the state would settle the issue and the murders would stop, but the desire for ever more land shows no signs of stopping, and knows no shame or humanity.
You act like I’m defending israel. I’m not. I’m just refusing to0 defend Hamas either.
Fair enough. yes, I see in your previous comments you were thumping on @eldritch, so you are a certified good person in my book.
Yes, an Israeli government that recognizes Palestinians as people is the first step then hoping the olive branch extends to the other side
Just have to love that you get downvoted for this. Delusional people here as if Hamas would not murder them all. What they had in their constitution does not matter, because they are ignorant.
“The Jews would murder all the Nazis if they had the guns for it!”
The difference is the US isn’t sending billions of dollars in bombs to hamas
How many 100s of millions went into Gaza as aid every year? How much of that was actually funneled into other things? Also, aid to Gaza:
The United States has been a major donor, providing more than $5.2 billion through USAID since 1994.
Whoops!
$5.2 billion through USAID since 1994.
and $200 billion in aid to Israel since 1946, including $12 billion in direct military aid since October 7, 2023, since which date there have been 40x more palestinian deaths than israeli!
whoops indeed! everyone point and laugh at the silly goose 🫵🤣
You conflate Hamas with Palestinians in general. Thats just dirty racism.
They said bombs, not aid. Also, Israel blocks the aid you’re talking about, kills aid workers, and massacres civilians seeking what little gets through.
They sent 20 billion in weapons just in August and you are talking about a quarter of that in aid over 30 years?
Centrists
You’d have to ask Netanyahu, he funded Hamas.
So we pay to bomb them and to feed them…
Have we considered not bombing them so we don’t have to pay to feed them?
Except the ones getting paid to bomb them stop the food
Pretty much, yes.
Hamas isn’t Palestine and Zionists aren’t Israel.
I knew it would happen. Not painting Israel the the only bad guys is badwrongfun. The leadership on both sides are so far below decent people neither can see daylight - though Israel becoming fascist is more ironic, admitedly
At my university the police literally threaten anyone who tries to be pro Palestine… every Jewish group is pro zionist
The US government is violently supressing free speech where it relates to Israel, and pretending its because of a threat to all Jews. Heres whats in that bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/6090/text SEC. 4. DEFINITIONS.
For purposes of this Act, the term “definition of antisemitism”—
(1) means the definition of antisemitism adopted on May 26, 2016, by the IHRA, of which the United States is a member, which definition has been adopted by the Department of State; and
(2) includes the “[c]ontemporary examples of antisemitism” identified in the IHRA definition.
Whats in the IHRA definition?
This definition for what antisemitism is:- Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
- Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
- Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
- Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
It attached itself to the civil rights bill of 1964. So it can take action against anything related to the federal government, like schools, federal contracts, etc, but it does not apply to you and me as private citizens (yet). I can and will say all day that Israel is a genocider, is a violent theocratic racist state, should not have been granted statehodd by the UN, and is as bad as the Nazis.
99% agree but not sure where “violently” comes in. I would label it more structural oppression or coercion. Still awful, and violence has certainly been invoked under other legislation and government action, but just to be accurate :)
What I’ve seen plenty of those alleged “centrists” doing is the opposite - removing the nuance. For example, conflating the four sides (Israelis, Palestinians, State of Israel, Hamas) into two.
How is “Everyone needs to end the violence and seek an ideal solution for everyone involved.” a nuanced position? That’s what I expect every person to believe when they first start thinking of Israel and Palestine.
How is “Everyone needs to end the violence and seek an ideal solution for everyone involved.” a nuanced position?
It’s not nuanced, just naive. You’ll never get Israel as it currently exists to willingly acknowledge that Palestinians deserve human rights, which is exactly why the non-violent option already failed multiple times.
Same thing the other way around. Both sides hate each other.
It’s not true the other way around and has never been, that’s again more propaganda.
Hamas proposed a full prisoner swap as early as Oct 8th, and agreed to the US proposed UN Permanent Ceasefire Resolution. Additionally, Hamas has already agreed to no longer govern the Gaza Strip, as long as Palestinians receive liberation and a unified government can take place.
Gaza has never stopped being under Israeli occupation since 1967. Israel has always been the obstacle for peace, and has been the one preventing a ceasefire.
De-development via the Gaza Occupation
Between July 1971 and February 1972, Sharon enjoyed considerable success. During this time, the entire Strip (apart from the Rafah area) was sealed off by a ring of security fences 53 miles in length, with few entrypoints. Today, their effects live on: there are only three points of entry to Gaza—Erez, Nahal Oz, and Rafah.
Perhaps the most dramatic and painful aspect of Sharon’s campaign was the widening of roads in the refugee camps to facilitate military access. Israel built nearly 200 miles of security roads and destroyed thousands of refugee dwellings as part of the widening process.’ In August 1971, for example, the Israeli army destroyed 7,729 rooms (approximately 2,000 houses) in three vola- tile camps, displacing 15,855 refugees: 7,217 from Jabalya, 4,836 from Shati, and 3,802 from Rafah.
- Page 105
Through 1993 Israel imposed a one-way system of tariffs and duties on the importation of goods through its borders; leaving Israel for Gaza, however, no tariffs or other regulations applied. Thus, for Israeli exports to Gaza, the Strip was treated as part of Israel; but for Gazan exports to Israel, the Strip was treated as a foreign entity subject to various “non-tariff barriers.” This placed Israel at a distinct advantage for trading and limited Gaza’s access to Israeli and foreign markets. Gazans had no recourse against such policies, being totally unable to protect themselves with tariffs or exchange rate controls. Thus, they had to pay more for highly protected Israeli products than they would if they had some control over their own economy. Such policies deprived the occupied territories of significant customs revenue, estimated at $118-$176 million in 1986.
- page 240
In a report released in May 2015, the World Bank revealed that as a result of Israel’s blockade and OPE, Gaza’s manufacturing sector shrank by as much as 60% over eight years while real per capita income is 31 percent lower than it was 20 years ago. The report also stated that the blockade alone is responsible for a 50% decrease in Gaza’s GDP since 2007. Furthermore, OPE (combined with the tunnel closure) exacerbated an already grave situation by reducing Gaza’s economy by an additional $460 million.
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Page 402
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The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development - Third Edition by Sara M. Roy
Blockade, including Aid
Hamas began twenty years into the occupation during the first Intifada, with the goal of ending the occupation. Collective punishment has been a deliberate Israeli tactic for decades with the Dahiya doctrine. Violence such as suicide bombings and rockets escalated in response to Israeli enforcement of the occupation and apartheid.
After the ‘disengagement’ in 2007, this turned into a full blockade; where Israel has had control over the airspace, borders, and sea. Under the guise of ‘dual-use’ Israel has restricted food, allocating a minimum supply leading to over half of Gaza being food insecure; construction materials, medical supplies, and other basic necessities have also been restricted.
The blockade and Israel’s repeated military offensives have had a heavy toll on Gaza’s essential infrastructure and further debilitated its health system and economy, leaving the area in a state of perpetual humanitarian crisis. Indeed, Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population, the majority of whom are children, has created conditions inimical to human life due to shortages of housing, potable water and electricity, and lack of access to essential medicines and medical care, food, educational equipment and building materials.
- Amnesty International Report pg 26-27
Peace Process and Solution
Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
Human Shields
Hamas:
Intentionally utilizing the presence of civilians or other protected persons to render certain areas immune from military attack is prohibited under international law. Amnesty International was not able to establish whether or not the fighters’ presence in the camps was intended to shield themselves from military attacks. However, under international humanitarian law, even if one party uses “human shields”, or is otherwise unlawfully endangering civilians, this does not absolve the opposing party from complying with its obligations to distinguish between military objectives and civilians or civilian objects, to refrain from carrying out indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks, and to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and civilian objects.
Israel:
Additionally, there is extensive independent verification of Israel using Palestinians as Human Shields:
Deliberate Attacks on Civilians
Israel deliberately targets civilian areas. From in general with the Dahiya Doctrine to multiple systems deployed in Gaza to do so:
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The Dahiya Doctrine & Israel’s Use of Disproportionate Force
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‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza
Israel also targets Israeli Soldiers and Civilians to prevent them being leveraged as hostages, known as the Hannibal Directive. Which was also used on Oct 7th.
They had it in their constitution and you want to tell me that is just propaganda. Holy cow. Here you go, in case you actually care.
That’s absolutely an important aspect to learn about, yeah. The 1988 Charter of Hamas, which while fucked up for wanting Sharia Law and belief in the antisemitic conspiracy theory of the Elder Protocols of Zion, does not call for the extermination of all Jewish People nor all Israelis.
Hamas wants an end to Israel as an Apartheid State, not an extermination of all Israelis. Under Ahmed Yassin in the 1990’s, truces were offered in exchange for Israeli to withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank to the 1967 borders. The 2017 Charter explicitly accepts a Two-State Solution of the 1967 Borders. Check Article 7 and 13 of the 1988 Charter to see yourself, compare it to Article 20 and 24-26 in the revised charter.
Palestinians are not fighting back out of some inherent Antisemitism, they are fighting back for their livelyhood against ethnic cleansing. To Palestinians who have only ever known life under a violent oppressive supremacist Apartheid regime, Israel is synonymous with that existence. Destroying Israel refers to the end of the Settler Colonialist Regime, which includes the Apartheid and Occupations. And instead a Regime Change in Palestine that has equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians. It does not refer to the ethnic cleansing of all Israelis, that kind of mentality of ‘Transfer’ is central to Zionism, not Anti-zionism.
Any kind of conflation of Judaism and Zionism needs to be called out, regardless of who says it. That includes any members of Hamas, any other resistance group, or any Israelis who conflate them, intentional or not.
It’s also important to recognize where this conflation is coming from. Israel intentionally does this conflation to deflect any criticism as simply antisemitism, which comes at the expense of a rise of genuine antisemitism as they then point to the actions of Israel as representing all Jewish people. Which is obviously untrue. When the IDF destroys your house and kills your family, and then says it’s in the name of all Jewish people, it becomes harder for those people to got their house destroyed to make that distinction between Judaism and Zionism. So it is equally important to condemn the conflation and understand the context behind it.
So you interpret it to be essentially the mildest thing possible, to only mean the end of that government or how they handle Gaza? What actions that Hamas did leads you to believe that is the case instead of any of the far more brutal interpretations? That would be in line with all of their actions in the last decades?
I interpret it through a historical and materialist context. Israel is an Apartheid State committing genocide. I suggest reading books by Historians or watching documentaries that show the reality of the situation to understand what’s really been happening for all these decades.
Gaza Infographics
Historian Works on the History
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Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History - Nur Masalha
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The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948 - Nur Masalha
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A History of Modern Palestine - Ilan Pappe
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The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi
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The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe
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The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences - Avi Shlaim
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The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories - Ilan Pappe
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The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development - Sara Roy
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10 Myths About Israel - Ilan Pappe (summery)
Documentaries
A shocking insight into Israel’s Apartheid | Roadmap to Apartheid | Full Film
Palestine 101 with Abby Martin
Life in Occupied PALESTINE by Anna Baltzer
How Israeli Apartheid Destroyed My Hometown
One year of Israel’s war on Gaza: Al Jazeera special coverage
Palestine 1920: The Other Side of the Palestinian Story | Al Jazeera World Documentary
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Israeli peace initiatives from after 1948 failed? Because I know of literally zero of those.
Because people aren’t interested in solutions. They really just want to talk about the genocidal colonialist imperialist western project. And then move on. With little consideration or forethought for either the Palestinians or the Jews - literally anyone living in the region.
Case example: Hasanabi fans cheering Hezbollah rockets hitting areas inside Israel. But because the rockets have incredibly low precision they were frequently hitting Arab quarters in Haifa and elsewhere.
To sum up: whenever you talk to anyone about me or ip first establish how much they actually understand about the conflict before continuing the conversation any further. My experience is that most people online are locked behind memes and virtue signaling while having absolutely no comprehension of what in actually going on there
Centrist opinions be like Six million Western European Jews were killed in the holocaust so millions of Eastern European and American Jews, who were supported by the Nazi’s, deserve to kill any middle easterner that stands against the formation of their own imperialist state
We must only kill half the Palestinians.
The problem is, it very much feels like the “middle of the road” opinion on this issue is “both nations have the right to exist.”
Both sides are going to tell you that you are supporting genocide. And now you’re a centrist for thinking everyone is shit in the terrorist vs right wing government fight…but that’s enough about the IRA.
People have a right to exist and to self-determination, not nations. “Israel has a right to exist” is just a strawman argument.
Especially since the Israeli people already have self-determination and overwhelmingly support their government committing countless crimes against humanity to ensure that Palestinians never will.
“Imagine” if they wrote a song about this roughly 50 years ago.
