Israel announces 'total' blockade on Gaza
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant says blockade will include ban on admission of food, electricity and fuel.
Edited title to match articles title.
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Iāve been tracking the comments on all of this across various websites to see what peopleās thoughts are. This genuinely might be the most contentious issue of our age. There are people who are vehemently pro Palestine and can dismiss the loss of civilian lives asā what do you expect when people are pushed like thisā . Then others are hugely pro Israel and see this as an unprovoked attack by a terrorist group and any retaliation is justified.
I think everyoneās shitty here. Hamas is a terrorist organization. They use terrorist practices and target civilians. Thatās a terrorist organization. Thereās no discussion on that point. Israel is a right wing authoritarian state that regularly commits war crimes. The total Palestinian body count far exceeds the death toll from this attack by orders of magnitude so we canāt pretend like Israel was minding its own business and was attacked.
I donāt think you can point to one or the other as being the true hero or the true victim. Itās the greatest grey area of all time.
I absolutely condemn the Palestinians and Hamas for this act. I absolutely condemn the Israelis for their continued mistreatment and violence towards Palestinians. One will say they only act this way because of the behavior of the other. But at this point where does the original blame for all of it start and end.
The only thing that is certain is that there will be far more blood shed and every dead Israeli will be met with 10 dead Palestinians. I suspect this will be the turning point for this ongoing conflict. And in the future there may no longer be a Palestine as we know it. With the US protecting Israel no other Arab countries will dare intervene militarily. If the Israelis occupy Gaza itās going to quickly become a quagmire with a never ending insurgency. It will be costly and in ten years Israel will be more unsafe then they were today.
Thereās no good answers or good parties here. Just disgusting human nature and the consequences of half baked racist geopolitics from the 40s.
But at this point where does the original blame for all of it start
The Brits
"In the beginning, some old British guy drew some lines on a map. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move." - The first line to the history of many regional conflicts across the globe
Sykes-Picot and the Balfour Declaration basically created the political climate of the Middle East.
Basically, the British and French decided that the Arabs were too stupid to figure out borders and squiggly lines that followed lame things like "shared cultural heritage" and "similar religious beliefs" were far too complicated.
I did some digging today because I was curious on what led to the Balfour Declaration, and what led to that, and so forth. The only thing I have to add here is there were geopolitics involving a separatist Ottoman sultan, and it seems the British wanted to create a sphere of influence for themselves in the area through a Jewish population (Catholic Church gave France influence, Orthodox Church gave Russia influence). Zionists were happy to work with them.
That begs the question then, how did the Zionist goal of a Jewish homeland start? The furthest I could trace it back to was Russian pogroms of Jewish migrants. The pogroms led a Jewish intellectual to contend that the only way for Jews to live freely and respected was an independent Jewish state. There was a zeitgeist of a enlightenment for Judaism at the time as well which asked questions about culture and religion and identity.
I have yet to go back further from there. It seems like oppression and discrimination against Jews during the middle ages could be a significant factor... and that would probably draw us back to the Romans in Jerusalem.
At this point, shit's just fucked. The idea of a Jewish state, the creation of one, and what led to the originating idea span centuries and several nations. And having a Jewish state is central to this whole issue. I don't think history has an answer for us here.
Which was influenced largely by the antisemitism of the West and the rise of Zionism for Jewish people which is partly radicalization as a response to thousands of years of oppression. But Brits were still in power with colonialism in full force.
Pretty much the only unbiased take anyone can have. Both sides f*cking suck. I disagree that this is the turning point tho. We've been here before and we'll stay here until both sides come to the table and actually discuss a peaceful resolution to the conflict. It'll never happen with hamas so they have to go. It'll never happen with the current Israeli government so they need to be replaced with more diplomatic leaders. Neither is gonna happen tho, the continued conflict just puts more dependence on the bad actors that keep escalating it. Honestly I see hamas cracking before Israel softens but who knows if or when that'll happen. I wouldn't be surprised if this conflict continued far beyond my lifetime.
I disagree that this is the turning point tho.
Turning point, no, but I can see this being, in retrospect, an erm fulcrum point. Like what 9/11 did to the US, where the question "why do they hate us", besides further idiocy, also led to some legitimate insight into how the US' actions affect the world and provoke reactions, similarly the notion "we bred that monster" might get some more wide-spread traction in Israel.
...and yes this very much is a 9/11 moment for Israel, worse, actually. Caught completely on surprise, the most Jewish deaths and that in a short time-span since the Holocaust, much larger percentage of the population, it's definitely a defining moment.
This is why I mainly blame the US and Europe at this point.
Both sides in this situation are controlled by the most disgusting kind of sociopath and the only way to stop this is real (with teeth, not just bullshit talk) international pressure on both sides.
Instead there is real pressure on one side only, by declaring Hamas a terrorist organisation (which they are), whilst without pressure on the other side, the boot of Israel on Palestinian necks creates every day new people with nothing to lose, for whom joining an internationally labelled terrorist organisation is an actual step-up from their situation.
So the worst kind of Israelis have nothing to lose from joining the military or colonates and stealing from and murdering Palestinians because there are zero international sanctions on it, the Israeli authorities fully support it and they have overwhelming force, whilst the worst kind of Palestinians have nothing to lose from joining Hamas and murdering Israelis because they have nothing to lose since the actions of the above mentioned Israelis have made their baseline situation be "a life of misery treated as less than human" and even made any organisation that resists Israel (even one as bad as Hamas) be relativelly prestigious and an actual step-up for many in that environment.
Unless the "solution" envisioned by US and European leaders is genocide of the Palestinians, then both sides have to be put in a situation were they do have something to lose by doing what they've been doing and that means keeping on the pressure on Hamas and extending the sanctions to the Israeli government.
Why are you blaming just US and Europe? Why do Russia and China get a free pass? Russia gives support to Iran and Iran directly supports Hamas. China deliberately plays both sides while doing nothing to fix the situation. Nobody is actually trying to fix the whole situation but somehow only US and Europe are to blame. I'm not against being critical of the EU and US (there are things to be critical about), but let's not act like they're supposed to be the world police. We have other countries who could also work towards a solution, ideally in cooperation with US and EU, but they seem to be more interested in blaming "The west" than actually solving the issue.
It's because most people on Lemmy are from those US, EU, or "commonwealth" countries, so that's about all we have influence over. Also Russia and China's democracies are not looking so hot these days... what kind of pressure is a citizen of one of those countries expected to have anyway.
In my country I can go to a government building and take a huge dump on a picture of our elected leader, and I may get thrown in jail, but I'll probably be released after a slap on the wrist.
Sure, but if the goal is to actually influence something then the wording shouldn't be "I blame mainly US and EU."
You raise a good point, but I guess I do mainly blame my leaders, personally.
I suspect this will be the turning point for this ongoing conflict.
Agreed.
And in the future there may no longer be a Palestine as we know it.
Yea, I don't think the two-state compromise is even possible even more. Israel won't tolerate even letting Hamas stick around, so Gaza will be leveled. As for what will happen to the civilians; I've not a clue.
It goes back even further than that when you look into why Zionists wanted a Jewish state in the first place. I did a deep dive today trying to figure out the origin of the conflict and the original victims and aggressors, and I ended up in Revolutionary Russia before calling a quits for the day.
I don't know what an ideal solution is at this point, nor what an actually viable solution would be. I wonder if it would even be better for the issue to not end instead of continuing on the path it's on. The way things are going, the only place we'll end up is with one of the sides completely wiped out. :/
I suspect this will be the turning point of tbe conflict. I donāt know that we are going to walk Israel back from the full on attack.
The reality is as long as there are Palestinians alive there will be a terrorist network operating in their ranks. Israel could offer an olive branch and stop their oppression of the people but that hatred runs deep and it wonāt be long before thereās another attack and we are back to where we started.
Thereās no good solution at all. Thereās only the question of when does a military action in response to a terrorist act swap from righteous retribution to a genocide. Because short of genocide the Israelis can do nothing but occupy the territory and deal with an insurgency which will only breed more terrorists as all the fatherless sons grow up hating Israel and want to enact their revenge.
At this point a forced migration might be the option with the least bloodshed, as repulsive as it is. Then you run into the problem though that Palestinians are still shunned by the Arab world because being them being Muslim isn't enough to override antisemitism from their nationality.
Ironically I think we might need another mandated "this region is now the home of Palestinians" like with Israel if they're going to have a peaceful place to live.
For the record I don't like any of these solutions. But like you said we're quickly approaching the point where Israel may permanently end the conflict through the genocide of the Palestinians, and that's the absolutely least desirable outcome.
Yep, ESH
Which is why the Palestinians need to recognise the writing on the wall decades ago and pushed to settle somewhere else where it isn't a lost cause. They can't just keep turning their people into combatants and not expect to be suppressed for it.
Israel isn't going anywhere, it will take more than the Middle East to force them and even then, they already have nukes.
You realize most of them arenāt even legally allowed to leave, right?
They can't just keep turning their people into combatants and not expect to be suppressed for it.
Steps can't be skipped when they threaten the security of Israel.
Egypt allows in only a few hundred Gaza travelers a day, so Hamas maintains a months-long waiting list. Those who pay for "coordination" ā a bribe believed to be pocketed by authorities on both sides of the border ā get bumped higher up the list.
Lots of innocent young people are just trying to get away, but canāt and are going to get destroyed because of these two extreme sides.
Egypt is wary of Palestinians, I wonder why. /s
Historically humanity has not treated āoutsidersā to their in-groups very well.
Maybe itās some form of human instinct from countless generations of violence against ourselves, itās hard to say.
Either way we shouldnāt let basic fears get in the way of helping each other.
The overwhelming vast majority of PEOPLE in the Gaza Strip are innocent civilians just like you and me, and want nothing to do with this nonsense.
Families began stockpiling food as soon as Saturday's attack began but fear that despite Hamas assurances supplies will run low.
With Israel cutting off electricity supplies into Gaza, a looming fuel shortage means private generators as well as the enclave's own power station, which is still providing about four hours of energy a day, will struggle to function.
Electricity shortages mean residents cannot recharge phones, so are cut off from news of each other and from events, and are unable to pump water into rooftop tanks.
At night the enclave is plunged into total darkness, punctuated by the blasts of air strikes.
War is indeed hell, my friend.
War is indeed hell, my friend.
I prefer Hawkeye's take: War is war and hell is hell...
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
War is war and hell is hell...
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Too bad, because they clearly harbor terrorists who have invited war on them.
Am I supposed to feel bad when they FAFO?
Yes. Most people are innocent civilians and none of them asked for this shit. Many of them were born into it, and they donāt even have the option to leave due to the blockade.
Where exactly are the Palestinians supposed to settle? The Israelis took their land, homes, and businesses, so a great many Palestinians are impoverished. Many can't afford to move. It's not like the Palestinian government can just purchase land and build new cities elsewhere as it's poor too. If the Palestinians were to all move to any other country, they'd largely be refugees, reliant on their host country for food and shelter, which is a huge financial drain. Who is going to take and care for all of them?
And if they were to move, Israel would take over the evacuated area. It'll be enough for awhile, but the population is ever growing. Who will Israel invade next?
Didn't the Palestinians also "evict" all Jewish people? They went to Israel because they were refugees. It was about the same amount of people who fled from both sides. The only difference is that Palestinians grew from under a million refugees to more than 5 million by now. That is why they want Israel. Where would you have the Jewish people go? The Hamas want all Jews gone.
That's the biggest pile of regurgitated Israeli propaganda I've seen yet. People existed in the Palestine area before the beginnings of the formation of Israel. Said formation was largely begun by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which resulted in waves of Jewish immigrants into Palestine. Israel was officially created in 1948 by the Israeli Declaration of Independence.
So, to simplify it - Palestinians lived in Palestine. The United Nations declared support for a Jewish "national home" in Palestine, a place already occupied by Palestinians. Lots of settlers moved to the area and began to displace Palestinians, causing tensions between the two groups. Israel declared its Independence in 1948. Supported by the United Nations, Israel continued to displace Palestinians and expand the borders of Israel, evicting Palestinians from their homes to be replaced by Israeli settlers. Rinse and repeat for nearly eighty years, interspersed with Israel playing the victim and acting surprised their continued genocide of the Palestinians has resulted in the formation of terrorist groups.
Can you give me a source for your side on this? Because on Wikipedia they describe it quite differently.
And also, aren't these actual quotes from the Hamas covenant?
Palestine is an Islamic land... Since this is the case, the Liberation of Palestine is an individual duty for every Moslem wherever he may be.
[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement... Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam... There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.
The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.
And so forth. Source: https://irp.fas.org/world/para/docs/880818a.htm
To me this sounds like a religious motivated anti-semitic war against Jews in general.
Yep, here are articles. As to the motivation for war, it absolutely has antisemitic elements, but I was never disputing or even discussing that. I'm simply refuting the commonly spread propaganda that the Palestinians are somehow ungrateful refugees looking to take the Israeli's land. It's pretty well the other way around.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Palestine
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
I'd love to see this Wikipedia article you mention.
And if they were to move, Israel would take over the evacuated area. It'll be enough for awhile, but the population is ever growing. Who will Israel invade next?
That is so bad faith. There is plenty of dessert left to expand into.
Where exactly are the Palestinians supposed to settle? The Israelis took their land, homes, and businesses, so a great many Palestinians are impoverished. Many can't afford to move.
A great start would be to stop all this militant jihad nonsense and concentrate on stability and engaging with the Israeli economy. If you keep having thoughts of causing harm to Israel, why would anyone on their side want to employ you people.
Quit shooting yourselves in the feet.
Lol, "you people". I think we've found an Israeli apartheid supporter.
If there's so much "dessert" to go around, why don't the Israelis fuck off and go there instead? The Palestinians were there first, they're the invaders.
Nope, the Israelis and Palestinians have claims to the region and the Israelis did historically live there during Ottoman times. The Palestinians don't have a better claim than the Israelis.
Also, Israel built infrastructure to make the dessert livable. That's not free.
Palestine lost the war, they should stop being belligerent so that Israel can trust them to not be terrorists. That's the whole reason why there's an apartheid. They've made their bed for themselves.
It's amazing the mental gymnastics that pro-Israel propagandists will go through to justify the genocide of an entire people. By your shitty logic, I should be able to go back to my childhood home, kill a few of the people who live there now, and feel justified moving in with the survivors, taking over a bedroom or two. It was mine before, after all, and I never agreed to sell it to them. I'm not responsible for the actions of my parents, right?
I would then play the victim when the survivors fight back as I systematically drive the rest of the household out and replace them with my friends and family. Then we'd start taking over neighbor's houses. Sure, we didn't live there before, but we're a growing community and I'll play off the retaliation of the first household as indicative of their "sub-human" nature. It was always my house, they were just squatting there so how dare they fight back. When the neighborhood gets fed up with our bullshit and starts burning our houses down, we'll collectively pull a "surprised Pikachu face" - we didn't do anything wrong, there's no way this could have been foreseen, much less prevented!
Edit: thank dog, another propagandist banned.
who lived somewhere hundreds of years ago matters little compared to who lives in a place for the last few generations, as it is those people who get displaced in these kind of things, not the people who lived during the time of the Ottomans
Mhm, so the historical claims of so many countries about this shallow should be at risk too huh.
Also, did we forget that the British promised both Palestine and Israel these lands? Palestine tried to wipe out the Israelis and they and their allies have been on a losing streak ever since. That includes the loss of land in a conflict. You know, consequences.
Frankly, the history of the area is not an excuse in my book. Some child born to Palestinian parents can have had no part in any of that, why should they have to face consequences for the circumstances of their birth?
And yes, I don't buy the whole "our country owned this land a hundred years ago so we should be able to take it and evict the people who grew up and live there now" kind of arguments where they apply to other countries too, but those are not the current subject of argument, Israel and Palestine are.
I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea here, I'm not saying this to defend Hamas or anything, but punishing a civilian population for the actions of a terrorist organization that lives in the area is both morally wrong and foolish, it will drive more of those ordinary people to join the terrorists, out of desperation or desire for revenge.
Do you think a Palestinian passport makes countries welcome you with open arms?
Israel isn't going anywhere
Great, they should help out their Palestinian citizens who are obviously suffering.
You know why their passport is weak? Because everywhere they went and got absorbed into the general population, they fermented revolution against the country they were in.
They did it to themselves.
It's clear that Palestinians are not interested in peace with Israel, so why ask for help?
This is racist and xenophobic. Undeniably so.
Explain how these facts are racist and xenophobic.
deleted by creator
Because everywhere they went and got absorbed into the general population, they fermented revolution against the country they were in.
Conveniently ignoring the fact that I am referencing their sources.
I'm expected to listen to political commentary from someone who doesn't know the word fomenting?
Big Marquis De Favras energy here. Didn't want to read the wikipedia entries for that more context you wanted?
Its always some loser with an anime pfp
Ahh, the good old "Ukraine should make territorial concessions for peace" style of "argument"...
Because history has shown that conceding territory to Israel or Russia is such a great way to stop them from coming again later, killing more people and "be willing to stop" for more territory.
Exaxtly, Ukraine should just compromise and give up land to Russia.
They just need to read the writing on the wall.
