"We have no place else to go": Conflict in the Middle East
Ruth
Shipmate
As we all know, Hamas militants entered Israel from Gaza last Saturday and killed numerous civilians while taking others hostage. Israel is responding by bombarding Gaza, killing numerous civilians, and has imposed a seige: fuel, water, food, medical supplies, everything is cut off. Hamas committed terrorist acts. Israel is responding with war crimes.
In the speech President Biden gave to assure Israel of US support, he told the story of his first visit to Israel as a newly elected senator, when he met Golda Meir. He said she saw the concern on his face and told him, "Don’t worry, Senator Biden. We have a secret weapon here in Israel. We have no place else to go."
Neither do the million-plus civilians in the northern half of Gaza whom Israel has told to evacuate to the south, which seems to indicate Israel plans to send their military into Gaza in search of Hamas operators and leaders.
The historical and recent trauma experienced on both sides is gut-wrenching. The nation of Israel was formed in the aftermath of the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews perished, about one-third of all Jews in the world. The Arab states and Palestinians rejected the partition plan in 1947, lost the war, and Palestinians have suffered to one degree or another ever since, being variously crammed into the open-air prison that is Gaza, crowded out of the West Bank, or stateless, with no place to go.
How can we best discuss this?
In the speech President Biden gave to assure Israel of US support, he told the story of his first visit to Israel as a newly elected senator, when he met Golda Meir. He said she saw the concern on his face and told him, "Don’t worry, Senator Biden. We have a secret weapon here in Israel. We have no place else to go."
Neither do the million-plus civilians in the northern half of Gaza whom Israel has told to evacuate to the south, which seems to indicate Israel plans to send their military into Gaza in search of Hamas operators and leaders.
The historical and recent trauma experienced on both sides is gut-wrenching. The nation of Israel was formed in the aftermath of the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews perished, about one-third of all Jews in the world. The Arab states and Palestinians rejected the partition plan in 1947, lost the war, and Palestinians have suffered to one degree or another ever since, being variously crammed into the open-air prison that is Gaza, crowded out of the West Bank, or stateless, with no place to go.
How can we best discuss this?
Comments
The general state of the world, with its insane dictators, diseases, climate disasters, and so on, certainly doesn't help.
When will this latest war end, if ever, and what other awfulness will it bring in its wake, especially if it escalates out of control?
He is a well-armed populist and while playing the role of champion of the formerly oppressed has become the oppressor.
Whilst it is, I think, impossible not to condemn what Hamas has done, and is doing, there seems to me to be a danger of anyone who otherwise is supportive of Palestinian independence being automatically branded a terrorist, or friend of terrorists, themselves.
& its consequences. Golda was the heroine of the hour and Exodus the movie ( and the book) of the day
As someone said on another forum, one of the worst things about this is standing helplessly by while all this goes on and nothing we can do to help stop it. As I replied, yes; the only thing we personally can do is donate money or time in the aftermath.
I know the Middle East has been a troubled area for centuries, even millennia but it's still deeply distressing to see countries and regions being torn apart. It's always the same: explosions, rubble, refugees and shattered lives, the old, old story played out across the world; and so much exposure in the news that people lose interest until the next crisis elsewhere. But what is happening is real.
And indeed how are the Gaza people to go anywhere when the border crossings are closed and there are about 2m people already crammed into that space?
How far might he go down that road, if that's what he intends? And how will countries supportive of Israel (such as the UK, and the US) react?
These are rhetorical questions, perhaps, and (like @HarryCH ) I hope they won't have to be asked, or answered.
Hi @HarryCH ! Do you have a source for the quote(s) from Netanyahu you are referencing?
https://news.yahoo.com/israeli-president-says-no-innocent-154330724.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvLnVrLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAALx4Y12l6CjQWyi72Ihpz5nFvbhVe0vidMXGFs9qfy-WZatxp3zuN4gnQsQfCyPcbP6TtqS5AmMPD_4BoU5o1MaANci-4YfiADETxv2mt6n_ihzZH4CzDAv4tR3iZU4Els8oEAv4v-IO-xnV54cfvlHndNlURdnMZTzWuVbBkO0-
(Sorry for the overlong link - it does work).
Presumably Netanyahu agrees with Herzog...
I am pro Palestine.
But I am anti Hamas.
It seems all we can do at the moment is to let the war rage on but be prepared to give aid to civilians on both sides as quickly as possible.
I admire the Doctors without Borders who are manning the hospital in Gaza.
Lord have mercy.
And Herzog was the leader of the opposition in 2015 running against Netanyahu. I would have hoped his words would be more measured and less hateful. I try to put myself in the place of Israelis still in shock after the events of last weekend, just like I have tried to put myself in the place of Gaza's living in a nightmare for years. But statements like that are directly contrary to the stated ideals of the declaration of independence the State of Israel, whether or not that state has ever lived up to them.
And I should remember that Netanyahu, as atrocious as his Prime Ministership has been for Palestinians, has actually been perhaps more reluctant to commit Israeli troops into a large ground assault anywhere than the opposition. He both views and promotes himself as a master statesman who can make Israel prosperous and respected on the world stage, keep it safe, and avoid the loss of Israeli soldiers, all while letting the two-state-solution die a slow death. So having Hamas in power in Gaza, although he never wished it into being, proved convenient because it provided a bogeyman to point to as "what happens when we take occupying troops out and evict settlers". It also provided a challenge to the legitimacy of Fatah, complicating the recognition of a Palestinian State. It suppressed other militia and movements in Gaza that, until just now, favored attacking Israel sooner (although Palestinian Islamic Jihad, given its even more direct relationship to Iran than Hamas, was an exception). And Hamas was someone they could talk to, even when they were at war with them and would bomb Gaza mercilessly from time to time. Obviously this image of Netanyahu as the protector of Israel has been shattered, and has his strategy with Hamas. But as we saw with Naftali Bennett, I'm not sure that any leader of the opposition with any chance of becoming Prime Minster (such as Yair Lapid or Benny Gantz, the latter of which just entered a unity government with Netanyahu) would be more of a peacemaker in practice. Herzog's comments seem to further that suspicion of mine.
That said, if I were Israeli, I would change Netanyahu for Lapid or Gantz in a heartbeat. If Israel, whose democracy is already critically wounded by the occupation, killed what is left of its democracy off by continuing down the path Netanyahu was leading it down recently (largely to get out of corruption charges), the current bleak prospects for the region would be even bleaker.
It is comparable (although not quite as extreme) as the rhetoric circulating that every Israeli citizen is a settler and therefore not a civilian under international law. That is blatantly untrue. I know that Hamas and less extreme, nonviolent activists for the Palestinian cause (but not Fatah, which seems to have lost almost all legitimacy in the eyes of Palestinians anyway) deny the legitimacy of Israeli sovereignty over its pre-1967 borders, but the UN and most nations of the world do recognize that Israel is a sovereign state, although most of them do not endorse its continued occupation of the Palestinian Territories, its construction of settlements, its annexation of East Jerusalem, etc.
I'm also dismayed that Deborah Lipstadt, one of my heroes for winning a libel suit against one of the most notorious holocaust deniers, has said in her official Twitter account as US Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism that "No one has the right to tell Israel how to defend itself and prevent and deter future attacks." Really?
US$38 billion in aid over 10 years, most of it to their military - I think we should get some input. I assume that's part of why we do it.
Source for the figure:
https://www.bbc.com/news/57170576
"Civilians" -- wait, does Gaza have an army?
@DoubleThink, as I understand it, Gaza is a militarised zone under the control of Israel and not an independent nation state so cannot establish its own police and army. Hamas operates as a guerilla force in occupied territories and is therefore defined by some Western superpowers as 'terrorist'.
The analogies with apartheid South Africa still hold and the status of Gaza is close to the precarity of the former 'homelands' used to exclude and contain the Black majority: open-air prisons with a rationale in what Foucault called biopower: the control, surveillance, domination, and if necessary, elimination of entire populations by certain nation-states.
The media coverage and the images found all over our screens this week has raised the question of which lives are considered most valuable, whose lives are mourned and whose lives are considered ungrievable. As Judith Butler wrote, " An ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as a life at all."
While looking up the route march last night I found a Palestinian solidarity page where people could post information about other planned demonstrations. They are happening all over the world this weekend. The diaspora being what it is, in retrospect that isn't a surprise. And an Israeli embassy official has been attacked in Beijing.
This is all going to get quite a lot nastier before it gets better and the spill-over effect is concerning. I don't just mean the spill-over across borders and the way Lebanon has been torn apart in recent decades and become a political plaything for different factions and powers, I mean the kind of internecine strife between opposing communities elsewhere.
They should have asked me for advice, as many Arab governments want a deal with Israel. Granted, the Arab street will boil over with anger, but since when do governments bother about that?
I'm sorry but I'm too sad/angry to say anything useful beyond that.
The Israeli Defence Forces have told people in the north of the Gaza Strip that between 10am and 4pm there will be two safe routes for them to move south.
That's today - not a lot of time for over a million people to get to what passes for safety.
Israel seems to be hinting at a false flag operation.
Apologists always say that Hamas deliberately mounts its rockets on civilian buildings and embeds its offices and quarters in residential areas, which may well be the case, but when you've got 2.7m people packed into an area the size of the Isle of Wight then everything is a residential area.
It'll be behind a pay wall but Giles Coren's column in The Times is worth reading.
As for what Hamas were intending to achieve, well I suspect that the 'best' they were hoping for was support from Hezbollah and other allies and a wave of international revulsion as Israel retaliated with maximum muscle.
They may also be seeking to expose what they'd regard as Western double-standards - and I'm sure Putin and China will exploit that opportunity too.
I suspect it will become increasingly difficult for Western liberal governments to maintain unequivocal support for Israel if it proceeds to pulverise Gaza in its entirety in an attempt to eradicate Hamas.
Hamas know this.
That doesn't justify what it's done, of course, massacring men, women and children in kibbutzim. Murdering and mutilating babies.
Ghastly as it sounds I'm prepared to believe they are capable of that. Like ISIS.
Equally, over 300 children have been killed in Israeli bombing - and the death toll is rising by the minute.
I was saddened to hear a Muslim caller on BBC's 'Any Answers' this afternoon condemn Hamas for taking hostages but not for murdering Israeli civilians.
They wanted a one-state solution, Palestine - with Israelis living within that. In which case we'd end up with Israeli uprisings and terrorism against a majority Palestinian government - or perhaps a reversal of the kind of apartheid that exists there now.
At the same time, there was a rather far-fetched suggestion from another caller that the Israeli government should pay for an armada of cruise ships to take Gazan civilians out to sea temporarily whilst Israel eradicated Hamas in a Gaza Strip free of inhabitants.
They obviously didn't realise that Hamas are civilians or that even non-Hamas supporters are unlikely to meekly submit to being forcibly removed from their homes.
The whole thing is a bloody and appalling mess and I wish I knew what the answer was.
Also someone who is treated badly understands what it is to treat others badly. That can go one of two ways. We are seeing that now. This is what Israelis see as a threat to their very existence and survival. Those scars run very deep, within living memory. Unfortunately so do the Palestinian scars.
Hamas governs within Gaza. I don't know if anyone recognizes them as legitimate -- Western powers and Israel don't, and they're not connected to the Palestianian Authority in Ramallah -- but they've been running Gaza since 2007. Wikipedia says they have a police force and a judiciary.
Hamas won the Palestinians' legislative elections a while back while. Fatah held the presidency, and the subsequent unity government fell apart pretty quickly (if it ever really existed - I don't remember). Hamas wouldn't acknowledge Israel's right to exist, Fatah wouldn't work with Hamas, Hamas and Fatah fought, Hamas won in Gaza, Fatah kept the West Bank, and Hamas has been in charge of Gaza every since. Whether winning a legislative election over 10 years ago gives Hamas a shred of legitimacy today is debateable, but the Palestinian people did elect them at one point, and clearly Hamas does represent some of the Palestinian people: they came out way ahead in an opinion poll taken two years ago.
This is not to say that I think Israel is in any way justified in retaliating the way they have. But we keep hearing that we need to think of the Israeli people and the Israeli government as separate because the Israeli government doesn't accurately represent all Israelis, and also that we need to think of Palestinians and Hamas as separate for the same kind of reason. I think this is more true for the Palestinians, who are incredibly fractured, physically and politically divided, but it's not entirely true.
Herzog, though -- come on. "They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime"? Sure. And that he doesn't recognize that Israel has perpetrated great evil in Gaza and that Hamas has in response risen up -- gah.
If Israel is deliberately killing people it has told to move to safety, on the very road those people are supposed to use, then this is a most appalling crime...as if there weren't enough of them being committed already - on both sides.
[Redacted]
(ETA redaction, see below, DT, Admin)
For a start, it is often forgotten that the Palestinian Authority was established as a temporary form of non-state governance after Oslo - with the eventual goal being a Palestinian state inside the 1967 borders. The negotiation that kicked off the Palestinian Authority was between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, which (supposedly, some might say) includes all Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and the refugee camps (which are mostly in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria).
Fatah was the faction of the PLO associated with Arafat.
Now, there's a straight line between the failure of the Palestinian Authority to establish a fully functioning state, as envisioned by Oslo, and the emergence of Hamas. There is good reason to believe that Israel directly contributed to the emergence of Hamas *because* they had no interest in a Palestinian state.
In the last decades, pressures of the occupation have meant that Palestinians in the West Bank have become closer to those in the Jordan camps (mostly because it is relatively easy to visit Jordan from the WB) and have become increasingly estranged from those in Gaza (because it is almost impossible for anyone from the WB to visit Gaza and vice versa. Unless you are dying and need hospital care because those facilities are not available in Gaza).
Conditions in the WB are bad, but there is a level of freedom albeit one that is regularly impacted by military and settler activity. In contrast the conditions in Gaza are awful.
The Palestinian Authority is considered by many Palestinians to be weak and worthless because it has done little to help in the WB and is seen as collaborating with the Israeli military. Objectively they have no choice.
In Gaza, Hamas controls things tightly inside the fence. But it is (or perhaps was, the fact that they could get so many arms has shaken the belief) generally accepted that Israel entirely controls what goes in or out. Even from the Egyptian side.
Egypt and Jordan governments generally see their role as limiting the impacts of the occupation on their countries and have, over the decades, signed peace agreements.
Then there are the residents of East Jerusalem (who are stateless because they refuse to become Israeli citizens. Generally they have a rough time but not as bad as being in the WB.
And Israeli Arabs - who took on Israeli citizenship. Generally seen as a discriminated minority within Israel, especially by the furthest Right Israeli politicians who see them as the 'enemy within'.
I've forgotten why I started writing this post..
Deliberate I doubt. I give them that much credit.
Insufficiently careful? That I can believe.
Unfortunately I can also believe a false flag operation. Time will tell.
(ETA shorten quote, see below, DT, Admin.)
It's going to be bad.
Doublethink, Admin
I think this is plausible - that in the coming days pressure will be put onto Egypt to accept millions of refugees in the desert. Many civilians will be put into tented camps in the desert (basically it is all desert on the Egyptian side of the border with Gaza, many miles from the nearest city).
Meanwhile I'm sure that armed groups will fight to the end in the crumbled remains of Gaza. Certainly the language from the PM of Israel seems to be that they're going to fight on until nothing is left.
Edit: also there is a kind of military logic to this - if the camps are pushed far enough away from the Israeli border, it will be a buffer zone which will be easier to manage and prevent incursions.
Of course the problem is a) whether Egypt will play ball and b) whether there will be wider implications with anyone else. Certainly the Israeli military is going to be distracted for quite some time
Egypt will have a massive humanitarian crisis on its hands - aid agencies are going to need all the support they can get - but will neighbouring countries pitch in and help as well?
The main weight will fall onto the UN, in particular the UNRWA and/or the other UN relief agencies.
Highly unlikely other nearby nations will help - for a start Syria is still a mess due to the war and already has big refugee camps. Jordan has Palestinian refugees - and also refugees from everywhere else. Lebanon isn't in a position to do anything. Egypt is a mess. Iraq ironically has some Palestinian refugees but it is going to be weird if more end up there.
UN managed camps in the Egyptian desert looks like the least worst option.
Yes, I see what you mean. None of the options are especially promising...
There doesn't seem to be a way people can escape in order to seek refuge.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/14/aid-flights-land-in-egypt-amid-efforts-to-open-safe-corridors-into-gaza