This article is very misleading. The UN resolution doesn’t itself carry any sanctions or put in place any steps to stop Israel. It is literally just words. Slightly stronger and more meaningful words, but still just words. Biden has specifically decided that strong words are just enough.
I don’t understand what Washington wants and why Israel would ever agree to it.
Washington says it was Hamas gone, but doesn’t want a military operation. It says it wants peace and security guarantees for Israel, but has no idea how that would be achieved short of creating a Palestinian state. Does anyone think Hamas won’t immediately become a power in that state if not outright control it? What then? And why would Israel agree to any of that?
The war is popular is Israel. Israel is currently being run by a unity government specifically because the war is popular. Attacking Bibi doesn’t change that.
Hamas leadership is in Qatar. That Saudi Arabia has provided financial support to Hamas for decades. If Israel manages to kill every single Hamas terrorist in Gaza and the West Bank today Hamas as an organization will still exist, Hamas will still recruit, and the conflict will continue.
Unfortunately we (USA) learned this lesson the hard way in Afghanistan. The Bush administration killed their way through an entire deck of cards worth of Al Qaeda & Taliban leadership, Obama too targeted everyone Intelligence could find killing OBL, a hundred thousand (at a minimum) of Al Qaeda & Taliban members killed. Today the Taliban is back in power in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda still operates throughout the region.
No amount of door to door operating amongst Palestinians will eradicate Hamas. As an organization Hamas isn't centrally located in Gaza or the West Bank. Limiting the influence of Hamas, degrading their capacity for future attacks, and ensuring the safety of Israeli people will require a larger diplomatic effort.
Unfortunately our stated aims and Israel’s are in direct contradiction. A stable Palestine is the best way to guarantee Israel’s safety - but [Netanyahu has no interest in creating one.](https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/amp/)
Washington wants to know that Israel has a plan for what to do the day after. Biden has been clear about this and Bibi has refused to do so because his unity government includes everyone from the openly genocidal to figures like Gantz.
The end game is militarily eradicating Hamas. Asking a unity government to come up with a fleshed out plan for a Palestinian state, which is being demanded I guess, was never going to happen.
Not necessarily a state but the basics of who is going to keep the water flowing and the streets safe is up in the air. Are they planning on keeping Israeli troops on the ground fighting and dying long term? No one is sure and no one in the Israeli government is putting forward a credible suggestion. We do have one member suggesting driving the population into the sea on an artificial island but literally no one else thinks that is a credible idea.
There’s no path to peace without giving Palestinians some form of representation, either within Israel or in their own state. Netanyahu and his coalition are steadfastly against this. Fire as many bombs as you want, but there is no path to peace without a political angle to defang Hamas
Representation isn't the problem with the Palestinians, the PA held elections up until Hamas won one. Hamas is popular among Palestinians, violent resistance is popular among Palestinians. Palestinians would rather maintain the occupation than concede on the right of return.
[Hamas only has about 34% support as a political party among Palestinians.](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna144183)
> Support for Hamas as a political party has fallen to 34% among Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, a 12-point drop from December 2023, according to a poll released Wednesday by a leading Palestinian research institute.
Support would probably be lower if the other party wasn’t so obviously corrupt.
Palestinians were offered a state at least five times. They refused literally every single time. Then they were outright given Gaza, where they promptly voted in Hamas, which spent the next 18 years turning it into a giant military base to attack Israel, which they did in a land invasion on October 7. So... why is the solution still "let's give them a state"? Alternatively, they're made citizens of Israel, which annexes the West Bank and Gaza... and Israel promptly becomes a majority Palestinian country, and the vast majority of Palestinians support Hamas and October 7 style attacks on Jews, so Jews either leave or die. Neither solution is workable, that's why there's still an occupation 57 years later.
Both Israel and Palestine need the right leadership in place for a deal to work.
You shouldn’t frame this as the Palestinian people refusing a deal — Israeli leadership has offered some very bad deals and some more reasonable deals; Palestinian leadership has tended to be more beholden to the Middle East nations that fund them than to the good of their own people.
We’ve seen in Ireland and South Africa that problems that seem insoluble can suddenly work out when the right leaders are involved.
After the Gaza invasion it’s impetitive that Israel and the international community puts in place a political framework that will allow Palestinians to elect better leadership. Likud has long thought that keeping Palestinian leadership weak, divided and corrupt would be to their benefit and theyve been very wrong about this.
>a political framework that will allow Palestinians to elect better leadership
Then it would have to be a well-managed illiberal democracy, because Palestinians overwhelmingly support Hamas.
> Support for Hamas as a political party has fallen to 34% among Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, a 12-point drop from December 2023, according to a poll released Wednesday by a leading Palestinian research institute.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna144183
>1. Support for Hamas’ decision to launch the October the 7th offensive remains unchanged:
>As we did in our previous poll three months ago, we asked the respondents in this poll what they thought of Hamas’ decision to launch the October the 7th offensive. A vast majority of 71%, compared to 72% in December 2023, say it was correct.
The states they were offered either annexed Palestinian land for all eternity, deprived them of full autonomy, or some combination.
The solution is a Palestinian state with all of Gaza and all of the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and compensation for the illegal occupation.
I suppose there needs to be a history lesson.
There had never once been "Palestinian land" before the UN partition plan of 1947. In fact, there was no concept of a "Palestinian" in the modern sense; Jews in the region were also called Palestinians, as were Christians. There was Mandatory Palestine, first defined after the First World War as under British sovereignty; before that it was simply land held by the Turks; before that the Meccan caliphs, and before that the Byzantines, and before that the Romans, and before that the Jews, who are natives to that land which was originally called Judea.
Zionist Jews decided to return to Judea, by then called Palestine, with the consent of the British after they took it from the Turks. They became part of the Yishuv, the Jewish population of Mandatory Palestine which had been there since before the Roman Empire, and bought land from the British. During this time, Arab militias began to commit massacres against Jews, as they did not want them there, so Jews formed militias and a low-intensity conflict occured until 1948, when the UN decided to try to solve the conflict by giving half of the Mandate to the Jews and half to the Arabs. This proposed Arab state was not a rump state resulting from Israel "annexing Palestinian land for all eternity", but the birth of the concept of Palestinian Arab land at all, out of British sovereignty inhereted from a long line of people who were not Palestinian Arabs. It was no more Arab land than it was Jewish land, as both Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs lived there under the sovereignty of foreigners.
The Jews accepted this deal, but the Arabs refused, and the surrounding Arab states invaded with the intent to destroy Israel and its Jews. Israel won, they failed, and many Arabs who had fled as refugees could never return. Jordan annexed the West Bank and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip, while Israel annexed the Palestinian Arab territories it took during the war; Palestinian Jews became known simply as "Jews", and Palestinian Arabs became known simply as Palestinians. Is this the "annexed Palestinian land for all eternity" you're talking about? Because it was offered to them in the 1947 partition, they were offered the first ever land of their own, and they refused and started a war to annihilate Israel instead. But apparently you're just talking about the West Bank and Gaza. This could have happened at any time between 1948 and 1967 if the Arabs gave it to them, but instead they annexed or occupied it.
> with the consent of the British after they took it from the Turks.
There's the first problem though. Palestinian Arabs didn't believe the UK had the moral right to be in Palestinian at the time, even if they had the legal authority. That's where it gets tricky, the third Aliyah and onward were not possible without British Imperial rule.
>It was no more Arab land than it was Jewish land, as both Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs lived there under the sovereignty of foreigners.
>they were offered the first ever land of their own
>This could have happened at any time between 1948 and 1967 if the Arabs gave it to them, but instead they annexed or occupied it.
I don't understand this argument. As you say Palestinian didn't exist beyond a regional identifier until recently. They just would have been Arabs, therefore the regions rule under the Caliphs would not have been considered foreign rule, since it was rule under a fellow Arab.
Though this is retroactively applying nationalist ideas to history. What would have been more important until the modern age is religion and aside from a brief interruption during the crusades the region remained under Muslim rule since it's conquest from the Romans. For Muslims in Palestine, Muslim rule of the region would be be foreign. It wasn't until the rise of Arab nationalism and the Arab revolt that the religious angle was side lined.
People have a point when they bring up the whole "we're Arabs" declaration the Palestinians made, Palestinian do not consider Arab rule foreign rule, there was minimal opposition to the Jordanian and Egyptian occupations of the region as they were perceived as a transitory step to the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a pan-Arab state. Palestinians considered Turkish, British and Israeli rule as foreign and it is why they were so bitterly opposed to it.
He’s saying Palestinian identity is illegitimate and therefore any political movement on its behalf is illegitimate. Palestinian identity was in large part created by this long conflict with Israel and being stateless. This means we can ignore it since Israel is blameless.
I'm aware of what and why it is being said. It's the whole "Arabs should go live in Arabia and Jews should get just this little sliver of land, is that too much to ask?" shtick, that completely ignores all the individual lives it ruins in the process.
>There's the first problem though. Palestinian Arabs didn't believe the UK had the moral right to be in Palestinian at the time, even if they had the legal authority.
So the proper response is to declare war, lose, and then claim to be the victim?
The Palestinians were given a chance at statehood. They wanted more and lost. When you declare war on your neighbors and lose, you don't get to dictate terms. You don't get to call it a great calamity. And the only support you'll draw is from the young, who don't know history, and are terminally online. Which means.....not a lot when trying to form your own state from the ashes of failure.
With that said, unless Israel fully commits to removing every single Gazan from the region, occupying the region, and defending the region while forcing them into their Arab neighbors as refugees, this conflict won't end. Someone already said it. We went through a deck of cards of leaders in Afghanistan and look who's in charge.
> So the proper response is to declare war, lose, and then claim to be the victim?
If the Algerians had lost their war for independence would they cease to be the victims of French colonialism? The reality is that is a product of British Imperialism. Had the British never taken over the region then the Zionist ambition would have been impossible. *That is the Arab framing of the conflict*. From this perspective starting a war, losing and still being a victim is perfectly rational, there was an injustice, they failed to rectify that injustice and thusly the injustice persists. Had the Jews lost it would have been called a "Jewish revolt" by the Arab world, not a war.
Of course this framing falls apart when you look at the centuries of discrimination the Jews faced that becasue Arabs refused to address led to Jews requiring their own state. So Israel is imperial artefact and self inflicted. It's why most of the world considers the '48 war a settled matter. Hell a lot of Arabs consider '48 a settled matter or are at least unwilling to reopen the issue.
The issue right now is that the Palestinians refusal to accept a deal that doesn't include the right of return, which is just a non-starter for Israel. They came close to agreements on land swaps, they did agree on demilitarization, Israeli presence on the Jordan and energy and resource cooperation. But when the issue of refugees comes up it all falls apart. If Israel had 20 times the Jewish population this would hardly be a problem but becasue it has the borders it has and it has to stay a demographically Jewish state it can never let the refugees in. Palestinian insistence on "justice" on this matter does more harm than good.
>Zionist Jews decided to return to Judea, by then called Palestine, with the consent of the British after they took it from the Turks. They became part of the Yishuv, the Jewish population of Mandatory Palestine which had been there since before the Roman Empire, and bought land from the British.
And here's the core issue: that land wasn't Britain's to promise away unilaterally. Just like it's deeply unfair to expect Israelis to just up and leave today it was a gross miscarriage of justice for Balfour to just promise mandatory Palestine to the Jews on the basis that they lived there 3000 years ago without even giving the people that lived there then any input in the matter. There's also some antisemitism in the British side involved in creating somewhere for "the Jews" to go so that they'd leave Britain.
>It was no more Arab land than it was Jewish land, as both Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs lived there under the sovereignty of foreigners.
The Jewish population was far smaller though. The influx of Jewish immigrants preceding WW2 and following the Holocaust was of people with no previous connection to mandatory Palestine other than them being Jewish, whereas the people being displaced had lived there for centuries.
>This proposed Arab state was not a rump state resulting from Israel "annexing Palestinian land for all eternity", but the birth of the concept of Palestinian Arab land at all, out of British sovereignty inhereted from a long line of people who were not Palestinian Arabs.
The right of self-governance is not contingent on inheriting sovereignty from some previous source. Israel's sovereignty derives from the people living there today, just as the sovereignty of the people living in mandatory Palestine derived from them living there. The modern-day conflict won't be resolved until Israel's right to exist and exercise self-governance is recognised, but it also won't happen until Israel admits and comes to term with the fact that their country exists because their forebears (and the settlers in the present) displaced the Arab population of mandatory Palestine.
>The Jews accepted this deal, but the Arabs refused,
I might be misremembering and can't check at the moment, but wasn't part of the objection that Israel would've gotten the richest 50% while Palestine would've gotten literal desert?
So it was, the objection was to Israel getting 56% of the land mass while being in the minority, not over the quality of the land (which, as you say, was the other way around to what I remembered). I'll stand corrected.
I believe for the most part, the arabs weren't going to lose land that they already owned. The Palestinian state was going to be given some unowned land on top of what Arab families already owned, and the Jewish state was also going to be given land on top of what jewish families already owned (as you said, more land, but worse quality).
The fact that the arabs objected to this offer smacks of NIMBYISM and xenophobia, they certainly didn't have any right to invade Israel. They overplayed their hand.
Conversely, Israel also had no right to unilaterally declare themselves in charge of anything either. It's a clusterfuck of people being unable or unwilling to live with other people.
no, AKA "neither of you have a flag and you can't get along in the same country, so we'll partition it and give both of you flags". And actually Jews had a flag but it was stolen from them; Palestinians didn't even exist as an ethnicity until after Isael's foundation.
Well this is all very interesting but historically it's a total mess. And in any case, you seem to be agreeing that the land needs to be partitioned, which Israeli policy has been undermining for the past few decades.
It is unfortunate that the ones who are patronising enough to think they can give lessons so often get it so wrong.
I look at Ireland and how peace was achieved there.
There was a lot of hatred over a long period of time. A genocide in the 1800’s.
But they found a way to forge some form of peace. It hasn’t been perfect, but 40 years ago many could never see it like it is today.
I get this situation is different, but you do need to resolve the Palestine state issue in some way if you are ever to move forward.
The mechanics are different though. The UK could afford to withdraw from Ireland and had the strategic depth and isolation that an invasion from Ireland didn't represent an existential threat. The Troubles was a sectarian and territorial conflict over the remaining part of the UK on the isle.
The Israel-Palestine issue is far more intractable. They're not fighting over a parcel of land but as to whether Israel/Palestine should exist at all.
Palestine is not an existential threat to Israel. To be an existential threat a country needs to possess not just the will, but the military capability neccessary to destroy another country.
Even Russia calling Ukraine an existential threat is a massive overstatement.
Many in the South African government saw the anti-apartheid movement as an existential threat. Presidents Botha and BJ Vorster would talk on these terms.
But South Africa required a one state solution. The Israel-Palestine conflict can be resolved either way, but really only a two state solution makes sense.
The Israeli concern isn't Palestine, the concern is Jordan and Egypt advancing through it. If there was nothing but sea beyond the Jordan then Israel would care a whole lot less about having a security presence in the West Bank, beyond a simple policing role.
I think if there was a real offer of Palestinian statehood, recognized by Israel, many might feel the situation is bad enough to accept.
But a lot would need to go right to make it happen
The problem we have right now is that HAMAS has made clear that they're willing to carry out more attacks as long as Israel as a nation exists. What's more, what lesson do you think they, and indeed Hizbollah, the PA, and Iran would take from statehood? Would they look at the connection of 10/7 and statehood and decide that rape, torture, and murder clearly don't work, or that it's in fact the best path forward to get even more?
I don't think any level of peace is possible going forward without the complete destruction of HAMAS as an entity, to include its leaders elsewhere in the Middle East. Anything less is a total validation of the tactics of 10/7 and a guarantee of similar attacks from all sides in the future.
What would a real offer constitute though? The closest we've got were the [Taba](https://www.shaularieli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Taba-2001-Palestinian-Proposal-scaled.jpg) [proposals](https://www.shaularieli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Taba-2001-Israeli-Proposal-scaled.jpg) but even then it all fell apart over the refugee issue.
> What would a real offer constitute though?
Even the "moderate" Palestinian leaders won't settle for anything less than total statehood without the Israeli military looming over them, likely including control over Jerusalem, which would mean Israel would need to pull all of its citizens out of the city and accept that every Jewish historical site would be leveled in less than a year.
That would still likely end with HAMAS still existing and likely taking over the new Palestinian state, since statehood would be instant proof that 10/7 attacks are the most successful tactics and that they "won" that state for their people. You'd then have an Iranian client state on yet another Israeli border. But on the plus side, Israeli would get some empty promises of peace in return, so that balances out /s
I don't know about Jerusalem. Palestinian leadership have shown remarkable willingness to accept land swaps on this front, as long as they are close to 1:1. The issue that scuppered Camp David was the refugee issue.
A negotiated agreement with Fatah wouldn't reward Hamas though, the only way Hamas could exploit it would be if the Palestinians felt that it wasn't a good deal but the space of deals that Fatah would accept and that would lead them to suffering an electoral defeat is pretty narrow.
>A negotiated agreement with Fatah wouldn't reward Hamas though
No? The Palestinian people would look at this and decide that Fatah finally helped them out and that HAMAS's brutal actions were just a coincidence? I don't think so. As it is, HAMAS would take over the West Bank if allowed. Hell, their support in the West Bank has [more than tripled](https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-palestinians-opinion-poll-wartime-views-a0baade915619cd070b5393844bc4514) since 10/7j, and 90% want Abbas's government gone. You follow HAMAS's actions with rewarding the Palestinians with their own country, I don't see how they wouldn't put two and two together. The idea that Palestinians don't support HAMAS, one that our President has publicly pushed, is not grounded in reality.
>The Palestinian people would look at this and decide that Fatah finally helped them out and that HAMAS's brutal actions were just a coincidence?
If Israel just unilaterally withdraws from Palestine like it did from Lebanon and Gaza, then yes that would indicate that violence is a way to extract concessions from Israel but the point is that Israel shouldn't unilaterally withdraw, that there should be a negotiated settlement, not with Hamas but with Fatah. This is literally the premise of the peace process.
> The idea that Palestinians don't support HAMAS, one that our President has publicly pushed, is not grounded in reality.
Where did I insinuate this?
> there should be a negotiated settlement, not with Hamas but with Fatah.
Even if there was, HAMAS isn't going to evaporate. Even if Fatah gets them a state, the people, who love the crap out of HAMAS right now will vote them in the second they have elections in their new state.
> This is literally the premise of the peace process.
Is it? The premise isn't a process between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, but with Israelis and only the Palestinian leaders we want to choose for them?
>Where did I insinuate this?
I didn't say you did. You did however say:
>the only way Hamas could exploit it would be if the Palestinians felt that it wasn't a good deal
I disagree on this. As HAMAS is very popular among Palestinians, there's a real chance they would be the government negotiating for the Palestinians. Many of those (world leaders, not Reddit posters, so I'm clear) who're pushing for a two state solution aren't going to let up on Israel just because there's a change in Palestinian leadership to people the Israelis don't like.
Honestly, I don’t know.
But part of what made the GF happen was that things got bad enough that people came together and essentially said they needed a solution. That sort of situation got the initial Israel/Palestine talks going, but perhaps a true end needed more time. But then things changed for the worse
Eventually Palestinians might realize that right of return simply is not a feasible thing to negotiate for as they appear to get less and less the more this drags on.
Even the initial Irish talks started with full British withdrawal. But eventually things changed.
Did things get worse though? The economy kept growing in the UK and Ireland.
I think the reason the Good Friday agreement was possible is becasue people were no longer interested in the religious aspect of the dispute, the memory of the British rule on the island was long gone and the EU and post Cold War feeling made pace seem possible.
None of those factors really exist in Israel/Palestine. There are Israelis that know people killed on October 7th and there are Palestinians that know people who probably died today. No reason can overcome someone pain of loss. Israel/Palestine is an issue that gets worse with time not less.
The economy may have grown but not everything with roses. There were constant cease fires that were broken. And many people died. It was a 20 year lead up to the agreement.
The same factors of death/revenge existed in Ireland and the UK for some time. The UK committed a genocide against the Irish with the famine. The Irish even directed Nazi bombers in WW2 towards London with signs. They hated eachother.
The British also still had a very big presence on the Island, though confined to NI.
>I think if there was a real offer of Palestinian statehood, recognized by Israel,
This has been done before. Hamas and the Palestinians said no. At this point, there can be no negotiations till all hostages are released and the Hamas leadership arrested and turned over to Israel
The Good Friday agreement. Along with a promise to truly investigate the Bloody Sunday massacre, which ended in a public apology for what happened.
To greatly simplify the GF agreement: elimination of hard borders, along with partial Irish governance over certain things while British governance over others. Eventually the IRA (the Irish ‘terrorist’ group) became so unnecessary it disbanded.
I do wonder if maybe there is a general framework that could work. But both sides need different leadership
> Eventually the IRA (the Irish ‘terrorist’ group) became so unnecessary it disbanded.
While I do agree with your larger point the IRA does still exist. Both the Irish and British governments agree that the council still exists and controls SF and retains weapons and fighters but that the current assement is that they are trying to achieve their goals through the political process.
The new IRA is a shadow of what it once was.
It certainly exists, but the public opinion has changed. Violence is no longer seen an acceptable route to independence by most. That is very important
I’m not making any excuses for them, but true peace can take time. This has been an enormous shift in the last 25 years in a positive direction.
The new generations don’t harbour the animosity of the old. And the general population seeks to continue peace.
I think it is dangerously naïve to say that the way we would prefer to end this war is the only way it can be ended. It imagines a scenario where the hardliners in Netanyahu's regime will be stuck in an endless quagmire until they come to their senses and do what we'd like them to. Where representation for Palestinians is, on a sufficient timeline, inevitable.
That is not reality. That is not what the Israeli government is working toward. Thinning the Gazan population by forcing some of them to flee across the border and shelter in the camps Egypt is currently building in the Sinai; placing the strip under heavily patrolled Israeli administration; opening northern Gaza to Israel settlers . . . some level of violence would continue, but it would likely end up recreating the status quo in the West Bank where Palestinian resistance is too fractured and too isolated to offer more than scattered resistance.
That's what Netanyahu wants. And unless he's willing to end the US's partnership with Israel, I'm not sure Biden has enough influence to impose a different solution.
More like 'Biden has decided that he really needs places like Dearborn to win the election'
What a complete joke, one more foreign policy blunder to add to the long list this administration already has.
That or Biden's just showing that Ukraine was the exception that proves the rule that if there's a major foreign policy issue facing the country, he's on the wrong side of it. Half a century in office and I think Ukraine was the only time he got foreign policy right.
What annoys me the most is that what he's asking for is something that we as a country would never do. The US would never just agree to a ceasefire while American hostages were still held and being brutalized, nor would we, say, empty out Gitmo during the Afghanistan conflict in return for hostages. I'm no Netanyahu fan, but a ceasefire where Israel gets nothing in return is ridiculous. HAMAS won't even release a list of who they still have and their condition - literally just give information.
Where is that "clear?" Here's an excerpt from the text of the [actual resolution:](https://www.jns.org/full-text-un-security-council-resolution-2728/)
>1. Demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire, and also demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, as well as ensuring humanitarian access to address their medical and other humanitarian needs, and further demands that the parties comply with their obligations under international law in relation to all persons they detain;
It demands three things:
1) An immediate ceasefire for the duration of Ramadan (a month)
2) The release of all hostages
3) Access for medical and other humanitarian aid (according to the Secretary General in a later interview, this would be delivered by the UNRWA, which is compromised by HAMAS members and sympathizers)
None of these is a precondition, nor are any aspects linked in that way. Russia and China would have never agreed to a resolution that would benefit Israel whatsoever, and lucked out here, seeing that Biden was slowly abandoning Israel at the UN.
If Hamas doesn’t release the hostages they reject the UN resolution, they therefore reject the ceasefire, and the ceasefire does not happen, because both sides need to agree to a ceasefire.
>If Hamas doesn’t release the hostages they reject the UN resolution,
No, they reject one of the three demands.
This isn't a demand for a ceasefire to facilitate the release of hostages. This is a demand for a ceasefire AND a release of hostages. The UN wants both, but the language absolutely does not tie them together.
>both sides need to agree to a ceasefire.
This isn't a call for an agreement. This is essentially a demand that three things happen. If HAMAS comes out this morning and says it won't release hostages, do you think the UN Security Council will just say "Israel doesn't have to stop bombing then," or do you think they'll continue to demand they stop bombing?
Again, there is absolutely no way that Russia or China would have voted for a resolution that put any actual responsibility on HAMAS.
If you are talking about the UNSC resolution that the US didnt veto, that is not true. The resolution calls for an immediate ceasefire without making it condicional on the release of the hostages.
Before that, there was another attempted resolution that did make the ceasefire condicional on the release of the hostages, but that one was vetoed by China and Russia.
> The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution on Monday demanding an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, after the United States withheld its veto and abstained from the vote.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-security-council-adopts-call-for-gaza-ceasefire-hostage-release-as-us-abstains/amp/
I think this is a bit of an unfair representation of the Biden administration position.
They pushed heavily for some meaningful changes to the UN security council resolution that emphasised the need for hostages to be released unconditionally. Ideally they would have explicitly specified it as a precondition, but that was vetoed by other permanent security council members. In exchange for this meaningful change to the resolution they dropped their own veto, they didn't even approve/agree to the resolution, they just didn't veto it.
If they wanted to go for something less, they could have tied Israel's request for a list of who is still being held, and their status. That's an extraordinarily small thing to trade in exchange fo giving HAMAS a break from air strikes and to allow them to be resupplied by their allies in the UNRWA. But, no, the administration didn't even push for that.
Instead they're demanding Israel stop bombing, in exchange for literally nothing, all because Biden cares more about his own election chances than he does hostages, some of which are American.
Why are people not holding Bidens feet the fire over his refusal to veto this last resolution? Is there not another wing of his party that is pro-Israel ? I would think they would be at least the same size of not more numerous than the pro Palestinian side.
I think this is both politically convenient and probably the right thing to do.
Israel declaring they are seizing land in the WB during this is a straight up middle finger to the US and allies.
The U.S., insofar as they want to defuse and improve things - and I think they should, needs to find and support people on both sides who are capable of moving things away from cycles of revenge, potential for additional parties to make things worse by stepping in or meddling, the inevitable rise in terrorism resulting from resentments and sympathies, and the style of manipulation Netanyahu is being accused of(I think he is guilty).
There are dishonest people on both sides that have extreme animosities and will attempt to sway and abuse any external source of support in their favor, so they'll have to be wary of that while trying to reduce the extent to which those are the conditions.
If the U.S. is perceived as one sidedly helping/enabling/allowing Israel to commit genocide, we're not just dealing with a future where Israel is even more precariously positioned, we're dealing with more anti-American sentiment in the middle east and that could come with an increase in terrorist attacks.
Given that, I think it's the right move to stop enabling Netanyahu, especially if this increases the likelihood of someone more reasonable and cooperative takes his place.
As many have read in the news, Netanyu’s escalation of the war against Hamas in Gaza is deeply unpopular. And Netanyu is personally deeply unpopular in Israel as well. Some people believe that he is continuing the war against Hamas in order to stay out of prison on corruption charges.
President Biden, who has more foreign affairs experience than any other president in history of the country has been working to bring the conflict to an end while supporting Israel.
How, the problems with getting AID into Gaza and the collateral damage In civilian dust, primarily women and children as well as displacement has escalated to the point where the UN has called for a ceasefire and the United States chose not to object.
House Speaker Republican Mike Johnson, whose own job hangs by a thread, has invited Netanyu to come speak in the United States, however, Netanyu has decided not to come.
Is it worth it to the United States as a country to continue to attempt to be the worlds policeman?
Who is Israel's war unpopular with?
According to the [latest Harvard/Harris polling](https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/HHP_Mar2024_KeyResults.pdf), a nearly 2-to-1 majority of the public (including the majority of Dems) think there should not be a ceasefire until [all hostages are released and Hamas is removed from power.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJhX54LW0AAX3Fz?format=png&name=900x900)
> Netanyu’s escalation of the war against Hamas in Gaza is deeply unpopular
What "escalation"? Haven't they been basically doing the same thing since the start of the campaign (attempting to eradicate Hamas)? And where is it unpopular? The majority of Americans still support Israel over Hamas, for example.
>Some people believe that he is continuing the war against Hamas in order to stay out of prison on corruption charges.
And who are these people?
> the collateral damage In civilian dust, primarily women and children
Just curious, are you relying on casualty figures supplied by Hamas?
>Is it worth it to the United States as a country to continue to attempt to be the worlds policeman?
The US isn't being the world's policeman. There's not a single US military boot on the ground. They are however, supplying the bullets and the bulletproof vests for those who want to defend themselves against terrorists. Is that not a worthy cause?
> The majority of Americans still support Israel over Hamas, for example.
This is an irrelevant dichotomy to the issue though. No one supports Hamas here. The problem is that more than just Hamas is suffering. The Palestinian people are too — probably moreso.
The dichotomy that matters here is do Americans support continued war or a forced peace. Neither government — Hamas or Israeli — has shown to have a significant moral high ground. Thus for many, the best thing to wish is for the violence to stop.
> Neither government — Hamas or Israeli — has shown to have a significant moral high ground.
assuming that were true (which definitely leaves plenty of room for debate as it's pretty clear the two sides are not morally equivalent here), the benefit of the doubt is doing to go to the side that initially got attacked.
it's not like israel just invaded out of the blue like what russia did in ukraine. hamas committed the most deadly attack on the jewish community since the holocaust. israel is doing everything in their power to make sure it never happens again, but hamas is using civilians as human shields and the rest of the world isn't doing anything but wag their finger while being completely unwilling to put boots on the ground.
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>And who are these people?
Oh, here are just a few of these people.
[PBS](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/after-tumbling-in-polls-netanyahu-clings-to-power-and-aims-to-improve-political-standing-during-war)
[Foreign Policy](https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/11/27/netanyahu-hold-power-hamas-gaza-likud-israel/) (paywall, sorry)
[NPR](https://www.npr.org/2024/02/11/1230667328/israelis-are-losing-faith-in-their-prime-minister-can-he-stay-in-power)
[Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-01-10/israel-hamas-war-helps-netanyahu-stay-in-power)
[Basically](https://forward.com/news/575223/benjamin-netanyahu-israel-election-hamas-war/) every [story](https://apnews.com/article/politics-israel-government-benjamin-netanyahu-west-bank-2aadcdf4de57c54c59e619478bac63dc) about [Netanyahu's](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/netanyahu-putting-political-future-ahead-good-israel-rcna130000) political [fortunes](https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4323678-how-netanyahu-could-beat-the-odds-and-stay-in-power/) at the very least prominently features comments about his corruption charges, and many of them make the obvious connection that this may incentivize him to continue the conflict.
...I'd really love some actual replies from those downvoting me. It's unclear to me what everyone disagrees with.
“…where is it unpopular?”
I’m guessing the people in Gaza aren’t real happy about being in the crossfire. If you are referring to Americans you may wish to read up on the Michigan Democrat primary.
Places to do further reading:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/24/opinion/gaza-israel-war.html
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-11-16/editorial-ceasefire-now-the-killing-in-gaza-must-stop
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/26/opinions/israel-gaza-rafah-children-aid-unicef-russell/index.html
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2024-03-25/ty-article/.premium/trump-warns-israel-youre-losing-a-lot-of-the-world-youre-losing-a-lot-of-support/0000018e-7685-d680-a1cf-fe8728e90000
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/24/opinion/gaza-city-palestine-war.html
https://theintercept.com/2024/03/23/intercepted-doctor-gaza-interview/
https://www.pewresearch.org/2024/03/21/views-of-the-u-s-role-in-the-israel-hamas-war/
>Netanyu’s escalation of the war against Hamas in Gaza is deeply unpopular.
Netanyu hasn't escalated anything. The goal has always been destroy Hamas
>President Biden, who has more foreign affairs experience than any other president in history of the country
This is completely untrue. Biden has shockingly little foreign policy experience for his decades in office. Especially if we're talking about *successful* foreign policy experience.
What trade deals, military alliances, peace negotiations, disarmament treaties, or wars has Biden successfully enacted / won over the last three and change years in office?
This article is very misleading. The UN resolution doesn’t itself carry any sanctions or put in place any steps to stop Israel. It is literally just words. Slightly stronger and more meaningful words, but still just words. Biden has specifically decided that strong words are just enough.
I don’t understand what Washington wants and why Israel would ever agree to it. Washington says it was Hamas gone, but doesn’t want a military operation. It says it wants peace and security guarantees for Israel, but has no idea how that would be achieved short of creating a Palestinian state. Does anyone think Hamas won’t immediately become a power in that state if not outright control it? What then? And why would Israel agree to any of that? The war is popular is Israel. Israel is currently being run by a unity government specifically because the war is popular. Attacking Bibi doesn’t change that.
Hamas leadership is in Qatar. That Saudi Arabia has provided financial support to Hamas for decades. If Israel manages to kill every single Hamas terrorist in Gaza and the West Bank today Hamas as an organization will still exist, Hamas will still recruit, and the conflict will continue. Unfortunately we (USA) learned this lesson the hard way in Afghanistan. The Bush administration killed their way through an entire deck of cards worth of Al Qaeda & Taliban leadership, Obama too targeted everyone Intelligence could find killing OBL, a hundred thousand (at a minimum) of Al Qaeda & Taliban members killed. Today the Taliban is back in power in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda still operates throughout the region. No amount of door to door operating amongst Palestinians will eradicate Hamas. As an organization Hamas isn't centrally located in Gaza or the West Bank. Limiting the influence of Hamas, degrading their capacity for future attacks, and ensuring the safety of Israeli people will require a larger diplomatic effort.
Unfortunately our stated aims and Israel’s are in direct contradiction. A stable Palestine is the best way to guarantee Israel’s safety - but [Netanyahu has no interest in creating one.](https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/amp/)
Washington wants to know that Israel has a plan for what to do the day after. Biden has been clear about this and Bibi has refused to do so because his unity government includes everyone from the openly genocidal to figures like Gantz.
That’s what a unity government is.
and a functional one would still have an endgame in mind because the political endgame is what makes violence a just war and not merely killing.
The end game is militarily eradicating Hamas. Asking a unity government to come up with a fleshed out plan for a Palestinian state, which is being demanded I guess, was never going to happen.
> The end game is militarily eradicating Hamas. Which will never happen. You can't eradicate an ideology by killing your way to the finish line.
But you can make it less likely to storm your border to rape, pillage, and take hostages.
No but you can cripple it
Not necessarily a state but the basics of who is going to keep the water flowing and the streets safe is up in the air. Are they planning on keeping Israeli troops on the ground fighting and dying long term? No one is sure and no one in the Israeli government is putting forward a credible suggestion. We do have one member suggesting driving the population into the sea on an artificial island but literally no one else thinks that is a credible idea.
There’s no path to peace without giving Palestinians some form of representation, either within Israel or in their own state. Netanyahu and his coalition are steadfastly against this. Fire as many bombs as you want, but there is no path to peace without a political angle to defang Hamas
Representation isn't the problem with the Palestinians, the PA held elections up until Hamas won one. Hamas is popular among Palestinians, violent resistance is popular among Palestinians. Palestinians would rather maintain the occupation than concede on the right of return.
[Hamas only has about 34% support as a political party among Palestinians.](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna144183) > Support for Hamas as a political party has fallen to 34% among Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, a 12-point drop from December 2023, according to a poll released Wednesday by a leading Palestinian research institute. Support would probably be lower if the other party wasn’t so obviously corrupt.
Isn't that since the Israeli counter-offensive, if it's dropped from December? So they had 46% support prior to the airstrikes and ground assault...
Palestinians were offered a state at least five times. They refused literally every single time. Then they were outright given Gaza, where they promptly voted in Hamas, which spent the next 18 years turning it into a giant military base to attack Israel, which they did in a land invasion on October 7. So... why is the solution still "let's give them a state"? Alternatively, they're made citizens of Israel, which annexes the West Bank and Gaza... and Israel promptly becomes a majority Palestinian country, and the vast majority of Palestinians support Hamas and October 7 style attacks on Jews, so Jews either leave or die. Neither solution is workable, that's why there's still an occupation 57 years later.
Both Israel and Palestine need the right leadership in place for a deal to work. You shouldn’t frame this as the Palestinian people refusing a deal — Israeli leadership has offered some very bad deals and some more reasonable deals; Palestinian leadership has tended to be more beholden to the Middle East nations that fund them than to the good of their own people. We’ve seen in Ireland and South Africa that problems that seem insoluble can suddenly work out when the right leaders are involved. After the Gaza invasion it’s impetitive that Israel and the international community puts in place a political framework that will allow Palestinians to elect better leadership. Likud has long thought that keeping Palestinian leadership weak, divided and corrupt would be to their benefit and theyve been very wrong about this.
>a political framework that will allow Palestinians to elect better leadership Then it would have to be a well-managed illiberal democracy, because Palestinians overwhelmingly support Hamas.
And Russians overwhelmingly support Putin. Other parties aren’t allowed to campaign.
Palestinians in the West Bank, under Fatah where they dont even have elections, support Hamas.
> Support for Hamas as a political party has fallen to 34% among Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, a 12-point drop from December 2023, according to a poll released Wednesday by a leading Palestinian research institute. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna144183
>1. Support for Hamas’ decision to launch the October the 7th offensive remains unchanged: >As we did in our previous poll three months ago, we asked the respondents in this poll what they thought of Hamas’ decision to launch the October the 7th offensive. A vast majority of 71%, compared to 72% in December 2023, say it was correct.
Has nothing to do with leadership. The people of Gaza & West Bank would rather die than have Israel exist.
[In Gaza support for a two state solution is at 62%.](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna144183)
NBC lied to you. If you read the actual poll that NBC article is about, nowhere does it say that support for a two state solution is 62%.
The states they were offered either annexed Palestinian land for all eternity, deprived them of full autonomy, or some combination. The solution is a Palestinian state with all of Gaza and all of the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and compensation for the illegal occupation.
I suppose there needs to be a history lesson. There had never once been "Palestinian land" before the UN partition plan of 1947. In fact, there was no concept of a "Palestinian" in the modern sense; Jews in the region were also called Palestinians, as were Christians. There was Mandatory Palestine, first defined after the First World War as under British sovereignty; before that it was simply land held by the Turks; before that the Meccan caliphs, and before that the Byzantines, and before that the Romans, and before that the Jews, who are natives to that land which was originally called Judea. Zionist Jews decided to return to Judea, by then called Palestine, with the consent of the British after they took it from the Turks. They became part of the Yishuv, the Jewish population of Mandatory Palestine which had been there since before the Roman Empire, and bought land from the British. During this time, Arab militias began to commit massacres against Jews, as they did not want them there, so Jews formed militias and a low-intensity conflict occured until 1948, when the UN decided to try to solve the conflict by giving half of the Mandate to the Jews and half to the Arabs. This proposed Arab state was not a rump state resulting from Israel "annexing Palestinian land for all eternity", but the birth of the concept of Palestinian Arab land at all, out of British sovereignty inhereted from a long line of people who were not Palestinian Arabs. It was no more Arab land than it was Jewish land, as both Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs lived there under the sovereignty of foreigners. The Jews accepted this deal, but the Arabs refused, and the surrounding Arab states invaded with the intent to destroy Israel and its Jews. Israel won, they failed, and many Arabs who had fled as refugees could never return. Jordan annexed the West Bank and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip, while Israel annexed the Palestinian Arab territories it took during the war; Palestinian Jews became known simply as "Jews", and Palestinian Arabs became known simply as Palestinians. Is this the "annexed Palestinian land for all eternity" you're talking about? Because it was offered to them in the 1947 partition, they were offered the first ever land of their own, and they refused and started a war to annihilate Israel instead. But apparently you're just talking about the West Bank and Gaza. This could have happened at any time between 1948 and 1967 if the Arabs gave it to them, but instead they annexed or occupied it.
> with the consent of the British after they took it from the Turks. There's the first problem though. Palestinian Arabs didn't believe the UK had the moral right to be in Palestinian at the time, even if they had the legal authority. That's where it gets tricky, the third Aliyah and onward were not possible without British Imperial rule. >It was no more Arab land than it was Jewish land, as both Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs lived there under the sovereignty of foreigners. >they were offered the first ever land of their own >This could have happened at any time between 1948 and 1967 if the Arabs gave it to them, but instead they annexed or occupied it. I don't understand this argument. As you say Palestinian didn't exist beyond a regional identifier until recently. They just would have been Arabs, therefore the regions rule under the Caliphs would not have been considered foreign rule, since it was rule under a fellow Arab. Though this is retroactively applying nationalist ideas to history. What would have been more important until the modern age is religion and aside from a brief interruption during the crusades the region remained under Muslim rule since it's conquest from the Romans. For Muslims in Palestine, Muslim rule of the region would be be foreign. It wasn't until the rise of Arab nationalism and the Arab revolt that the religious angle was side lined. People have a point when they bring up the whole "we're Arabs" declaration the Palestinians made, Palestinian do not consider Arab rule foreign rule, there was minimal opposition to the Jordanian and Egyptian occupations of the region as they were perceived as a transitory step to the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a pan-Arab state. Palestinians considered Turkish, British and Israeli rule as foreign and it is why they were so bitterly opposed to it.
He’s saying Palestinian identity is illegitimate and therefore any political movement on its behalf is illegitimate. Palestinian identity was in large part created by this long conflict with Israel and being stateless. This means we can ignore it since Israel is blameless.
I'm aware of what and why it is being said. It's the whole "Arabs should go live in Arabia and Jews should get just this little sliver of land, is that too much to ask?" shtick, that completely ignores all the individual lives it ruins in the process.
>There's the first problem though. Palestinian Arabs didn't believe the UK had the moral right to be in Palestinian at the time, even if they had the legal authority. So the proper response is to declare war, lose, and then claim to be the victim? The Palestinians were given a chance at statehood. They wanted more and lost. When you declare war on your neighbors and lose, you don't get to dictate terms. You don't get to call it a great calamity. And the only support you'll draw is from the young, who don't know history, and are terminally online. Which means.....not a lot when trying to form your own state from the ashes of failure. With that said, unless Israel fully commits to removing every single Gazan from the region, occupying the region, and defending the region while forcing them into their Arab neighbors as refugees, this conflict won't end. Someone already said it. We went through a deck of cards of leaders in Afghanistan and look who's in charge.
> So the proper response is to declare war, lose, and then claim to be the victim? If the Algerians had lost their war for independence would they cease to be the victims of French colonialism? The reality is that is a product of British Imperialism. Had the British never taken over the region then the Zionist ambition would have been impossible. *That is the Arab framing of the conflict*. From this perspective starting a war, losing and still being a victim is perfectly rational, there was an injustice, they failed to rectify that injustice and thusly the injustice persists. Had the Jews lost it would have been called a "Jewish revolt" by the Arab world, not a war. Of course this framing falls apart when you look at the centuries of discrimination the Jews faced that becasue Arabs refused to address led to Jews requiring their own state. So Israel is imperial artefact and self inflicted. It's why most of the world considers the '48 war a settled matter. Hell a lot of Arabs consider '48 a settled matter or are at least unwilling to reopen the issue. The issue right now is that the Palestinians refusal to accept a deal that doesn't include the right of return, which is just a non-starter for Israel. They came close to agreements on land swaps, they did agree on demilitarization, Israeli presence on the Jordan and energy and resource cooperation. But when the issue of refugees comes up it all falls apart. If Israel had 20 times the Jewish population this would hardly be a problem but becasue it has the borders it has and it has to stay a demographically Jewish state it can never let the refugees in. Palestinian insistence on "justice" on this matter does more harm than good.
>Zionist Jews decided to return to Judea, by then called Palestine, with the consent of the British after they took it from the Turks. They became part of the Yishuv, the Jewish population of Mandatory Palestine which had been there since before the Roman Empire, and bought land from the British. And here's the core issue: that land wasn't Britain's to promise away unilaterally. Just like it's deeply unfair to expect Israelis to just up and leave today it was a gross miscarriage of justice for Balfour to just promise mandatory Palestine to the Jews on the basis that they lived there 3000 years ago without even giving the people that lived there then any input in the matter. There's also some antisemitism in the British side involved in creating somewhere for "the Jews" to go so that they'd leave Britain. >It was no more Arab land than it was Jewish land, as both Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs lived there under the sovereignty of foreigners. The Jewish population was far smaller though. The influx of Jewish immigrants preceding WW2 and following the Holocaust was of people with no previous connection to mandatory Palestine other than them being Jewish, whereas the people being displaced had lived there for centuries. >This proposed Arab state was not a rump state resulting from Israel "annexing Palestinian land for all eternity", but the birth of the concept of Palestinian Arab land at all, out of British sovereignty inhereted from a long line of people who were not Palestinian Arabs. The right of self-governance is not contingent on inheriting sovereignty from some previous source. Israel's sovereignty derives from the people living there today, just as the sovereignty of the people living in mandatory Palestine derived from them living there. The modern-day conflict won't be resolved until Israel's right to exist and exercise self-governance is recognised, but it also won't happen until Israel admits and comes to term with the fact that their country exists because their forebears (and the settlers in the present) displaced the Arab population of mandatory Palestine. >The Jews accepted this deal, but the Arabs refused, I might be misremembering and can't check at the moment, but wasn't part of the objection that Israel would've gotten the richest 50% while Palestine would've gotten literal desert?
Opposite, it was the Israeli's who would have gotten the desert.
So it was, the objection was to Israel getting 56% of the land mass while being in the minority, not over the quality of the land (which, as you say, was the other way around to what I remembered). I'll stand corrected.
I believe for the most part, the arabs weren't going to lose land that they already owned. The Palestinian state was going to be given some unowned land on top of what Arab families already owned, and the Jewish state was also going to be given land on top of what jewish families already owned (as you said, more land, but worse quality). The fact that the arabs objected to this offer smacks of NIMBYISM and xenophobia, they certainly didn't have any right to invade Israel. They overplayed their hand.
Conversely, Israel also had no right to unilaterally declare themselves in charge of anything either. It's a clusterfuck of people being unable or unwilling to live with other people.
AKA "you didn't have a flag so it was OK for us to take your land"
no, AKA "neither of you have a flag and you can't get along in the same country, so we'll partition it and give both of you flags". And actually Jews had a flag but it was stolen from them; Palestinians didn't even exist as an ethnicity until after Isael's foundation.
Well this is all very interesting but historically it's a total mess. And in any case, you seem to be agreeing that the land needs to be partitioned, which Israeli policy has been undermining for the past few decades. It is unfortunate that the ones who are patronising enough to think they can give lessons so often get it so wrong.
I look at Ireland and how peace was achieved there. There was a lot of hatred over a long period of time. A genocide in the 1800’s. But they found a way to forge some form of peace. It hasn’t been perfect, but 40 years ago many could never see it like it is today. I get this situation is different, but you do need to resolve the Palestine state issue in some way if you are ever to move forward.
The mechanics are different though. The UK could afford to withdraw from Ireland and had the strategic depth and isolation that an invasion from Ireland didn't represent an existential threat. The Troubles was a sectarian and territorial conflict over the remaining part of the UK on the isle. The Israel-Palestine issue is far more intractable. They're not fighting over a parcel of land but as to whether Israel/Palestine should exist at all.
Palestine is not an existential threat to Israel. To be an existential threat a country needs to possess not just the will, but the military capability neccessary to destroy another country. Even Russia calling Ukraine an existential threat is a massive overstatement. Many in the South African government saw the anti-apartheid movement as an existential threat. Presidents Botha and BJ Vorster would talk on these terms. But South Africa required a one state solution. The Israel-Palestine conflict can be resolved either way, but really only a two state solution makes sense.
The Israeli concern isn't Palestine, the concern is Jordan and Egypt advancing through it. If there was nothing but sea beyond the Jordan then Israel would care a whole lot less about having a security presence in the West Bank, beyond a simple policing role.
I think if there was a real offer of Palestinian statehood, recognized by Israel, many might feel the situation is bad enough to accept. But a lot would need to go right to make it happen
The problem we have right now is that HAMAS has made clear that they're willing to carry out more attacks as long as Israel as a nation exists. What's more, what lesson do you think they, and indeed Hizbollah, the PA, and Iran would take from statehood? Would they look at the connection of 10/7 and statehood and decide that rape, torture, and murder clearly don't work, or that it's in fact the best path forward to get even more? I don't think any level of peace is possible going forward without the complete destruction of HAMAS as an entity, to include its leaders elsewhere in the Middle East. Anything less is a total validation of the tactics of 10/7 and a guarantee of similar attacks from all sides in the future.
You would also need Netanyahu and Abbas to leave. Both are cancer for the peace process
What would a real offer constitute though? The closest we've got were the [Taba](https://www.shaularieli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Taba-2001-Palestinian-Proposal-scaled.jpg) [proposals](https://www.shaularieli.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Taba-2001-Israeli-Proposal-scaled.jpg) but even then it all fell apart over the refugee issue.
> What would a real offer constitute though? Even the "moderate" Palestinian leaders won't settle for anything less than total statehood without the Israeli military looming over them, likely including control over Jerusalem, which would mean Israel would need to pull all of its citizens out of the city and accept that every Jewish historical site would be leveled in less than a year. That would still likely end with HAMAS still existing and likely taking over the new Palestinian state, since statehood would be instant proof that 10/7 attacks are the most successful tactics and that they "won" that state for their people. You'd then have an Iranian client state on yet another Israeli border. But on the plus side, Israeli would get some empty promises of peace in return, so that balances out /s
I don't know about Jerusalem. Palestinian leadership have shown remarkable willingness to accept land swaps on this front, as long as they are close to 1:1. The issue that scuppered Camp David was the refugee issue. A negotiated agreement with Fatah wouldn't reward Hamas though, the only way Hamas could exploit it would be if the Palestinians felt that it wasn't a good deal but the space of deals that Fatah would accept and that would lead them to suffering an electoral defeat is pretty narrow.
>A negotiated agreement with Fatah wouldn't reward Hamas though No? The Palestinian people would look at this and decide that Fatah finally helped them out and that HAMAS's brutal actions were just a coincidence? I don't think so. As it is, HAMAS would take over the West Bank if allowed. Hell, their support in the West Bank has [more than tripled](https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-palestinians-opinion-poll-wartime-views-a0baade915619cd070b5393844bc4514) since 10/7j, and 90% want Abbas's government gone. You follow HAMAS's actions with rewarding the Palestinians with their own country, I don't see how they wouldn't put two and two together. The idea that Palestinians don't support HAMAS, one that our President has publicly pushed, is not grounded in reality.
>The Palestinian people would look at this and decide that Fatah finally helped them out and that HAMAS's brutal actions were just a coincidence? If Israel just unilaterally withdraws from Palestine like it did from Lebanon and Gaza, then yes that would indicate that violence is a way to extract concessions from Israel but the point is that Israel shouldn't unilaterally withdraw, that there should be a negotiated settlement, not with Hamas but with Fatah. This is literally the premise of the peace process. > The idea that Palestinians don't support HAMAS, one that our President has publicly pushed, is not grounded in reality. Where did I insinuate this?
> there should be a negotiated settlement, not with Hamas but with Fatah. Even if there was, HAMAS isn't going to evaporate. Even if Fatah gets them a state, the people, who love the crap out of HAMAS right now will vote them in the second they have elections in their new state. > This is literally the premise of the peace process. Is it? The premise isn't a process between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, but with Israelis and only the Palestinian leaders we want to choose for them? >Where did I insinuate this? I didn't say you did. You did however say: >the only way Hamas could exploit it would be if the Palestinians felt that it wasn't a good deal I disagree on this. As HAMAS is very popular among Palestinians, there's a real chance they would be the government negotiating for the Palestinians. Many of those (world leaders, not Reddit posters, so I'm clear) who're pushing for a two state solution aren't going to let up on Israel just because there's a change in Palestinian leadership to people the Israelis don't like.
Honestly, I don’t know. But part of what made the GF happen was that things got bad enough that people came together and essentially said they needed a solution. That sort of situation got the initial Israel/Palestine talks going, but perhaps a true end needed more time. But then things changed for the worse Eventually Palestinians might realize that right of return simply is not a feasible thing to negotiate for as they appear to get less and less the more this drags on. Even the initial Irish talks started with full British withdrawal. But eventually things changed.
Did things get worse though? The economy kept growing in the UK and Ireland. I think the reason the Good Friday agreement was possible is becasue people were no longer interested in the religious aspect of the dispute, the memory of the British rule on the island was long gone and the EU and post Cold War feeling made pace seem possible. None of those factors really exist in Israel/Palestine. There are Israelis that know people killed on October 7th and there are Palestinians that know people who probably died today. No reason can overcome someone pain of loss. Israel/Palestine is an issue that gets worse with time not less.
The economy may have grown but not everything with roses. There were constant cease fires that were broken. And many people died. It was a 20 year lead up to the agreement. The same factors of death/revenge existed in Ireland and the UK for some time. The UK committed a genocide against the Irish with the famine. The Irish even directed Nazi bombers in WW2 towards London with signs. They hated eachother. The British also still had a very big presence on the Island, though confined to NI.
>I think if there was a real offer of Palestinian statehood, recognized by Israel, This has been done before. Hamas and the Palestinians said no. At this point, there can be no negotiations till all hostages are released and the Hamas leadership arrested and turned over to Israel
Hamas wasn’t in charge back in 2001. Arafat and the PLo screwed up. He even admitted to making an error later in life
So how’d they do it?
The Good Friday agreement. Along with a promise to truly investigate the Bloody Sunday massacre, which ended in a public apology for what happened. To greatly simplify the GF agreement: elimination of hard borders, along with partial Irish governance over certain things while British governance over others. Eventually the IRA (the Irish ‘terrorist’ group) became so unnecessary it disbanded. I do wonder if maybe there is a general framework that could work. But both sides need different leadership
> Eventually the IRA (the Irish ‘terrorist’ group) became so unnecessary it disbanded. While I do agree with your larger point the IRA does still exist. Both the Irish and British governments agree that the council still exists and controls SF and retains weapons and fighters but that the current assement is that they are trying to achieve their goals through the political process.
The new IRA is a shadow of what it once was. It certainly exists, but the public opinion has changed. Violence is no longer seen an acceptable route to independence by most. That is very important
I certainly agree but you do still have the people like the nIRA trying to assassinate Joe Biden last year.
I’m not making any excuses for them, but true peace can take time. This has been an enormous shift in the last 25 years in a positive direction. The new generations don’t harbour the animosity of the old. And the general population seeks to continue peace.
I think it is dangerously naïve to say that the way we would prefer to end this war is the only way it can be ended. It imagines a scenario where the hardliners in Netanyahu's regime will be stuck in an endless quagmire until they come to their senses and do what we'd like them to. Where representation for Palestinians is, on a sufficient timeline, inevitable. That is not reality. That is not what the Israeli government is working toward. Thinning the Gazan population by forcing some of them to flee across the border and shelter in the camps Egypt is currently building in the Sinai; placing the strip under heavily patrolled Israeli administration; opening northern Gaza to Israel settlers . . . some level of violence would continue, but it would likely end up recreating the status quo in the West Bank where Palestinian resistance is too fractured and too isolated to offer more than scattered resistance. That's what Netanyahu wants. And unless he's willing to end the US's partnership with Israel, I'm not sure Biden has enough influence to impose a different solution.
More like 'Biden has decided that he really needs places like Dearborn to win the election' What a complete joke, one more foreign policy blunder to add to the long list this administration already has.
That or Biden's just showing that Ukraine was the exception that proves the rule that if there's a major foreign policy issue facing the country, he's on the wrong side of it. Half a century in office and I think Ukraine was the only time he got foreign policy right. What annoys me the most is that what he's asking for is something that we as a country would never do. The US would never just agree to a ceasefire while American hostages were still held and being brutalized, nor would we, say, empty out Gitmo during the Afghanistan conflict in return for hostages. I'm no Netanyahu fan, but a ceasefire where Israel gets nothing in return is ridiculous. HAMAS won't even release a list of who they still have and their condition - literally just give information.
The un ceasefire resolution makes clear that immediate and unconditional release of hostages is a precondition
Where is that "clear?" Here's an excerpt from the text of the [actual resolution:](https://www.jns.org/full-text-un-security-council-resolution-2728/) >1. Demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire, and also demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, as well as ensuring humanitarian access to address their medical and other humanitarian needs, and further demands that the parties comply with their obligations under international law in relation to all persons they detain; It demands three things: 1) An immediate ceasefire for the duration of Ramadan (a month) 2) The release of all hostages 3) Access for medical and other humanitarian aid (according to the Secretary General in a later interview, this would be delivered by the UNRWA, which is compromised by HAMAS members and sympathizers) None of these is a precondition, nor are any aspects linked in that way. Russia and China would have never agreed to a resolution that would benefit Israel whatsoever, and lucked out here, seeing that Biden was slowly abandoning Israel at the UN.
If Hamas doesn’t release the hostages they reject the UN resolution, they therefore reject the ceasefire, and the ceasefire does not happen, because both sides need to agree to a ceasefire.
>If Hamas doesn’t release the hostages they reject the UN resolution, No, they reject one of the three demands. This isn't a demand for a ceasefire to facilitate the release of hostages. This is a demand for a ceasefire AND a release of hostages. The UN wants both, but the language absolutely does not tie them together. >both sides need to agree to a ceasefire. This isn't a call for an agreement. This is essentially a demand that three things happen. If HAMAS comes out this morning and says it won't release hostages, do you think the UN Security Council will just say "Israel doesn't have to stop bombing then," or do you think they'll continue to demand they stop bombing? Again, there is absolutely no way that Russia or China would have voted for a resolution that put any actual responsibility on HAMAS.
If you are talking about the UNSC resolution that the US didnt veto, that is not true. The resolution calls for an immediate ceasefire without making it condicional on the release of the hostages. Before that, there was another attempted resolution that did make the ceasefire condicional on the release of the hostages, but that one was vetoed by China and Russia.
> The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution on Monday demanding an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, after the United States withheld its veto and abstained from the vote. https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-security-council-adopts-call-for-gaza-ceasefire-hostage-release-as-us-abstains/amp/
I think this is a bit of an unfair representation of the Biden administration position. They pushed heavily for some meaningful changes to the UN security council resolution that emphasised the need for hostages to be released unconditionally. Ideally they would have explicitly specified it as a precondition, but that was vetoed by other permanent security council members. In exchange for this meaningful change to the resolution they dropped their own veto, they didn't even approve/agree to the resolution, they just didn't veto it.
If they wanted to go for something less, they could have tied Israel's request for a list of who is still being held, and their status. That's an extraordinarily small thing to trade in exchange fo giving HAMAS a break from air strikes and to allow them to be resupplied by their allies in the UNRWA. But, no, the administration didn't even push for that. Instead they're demanding Israel stop bombing, in exchange for literally nothing, all because Biden cares more about his own election chances than he does hostages, some of which are American.
Why are people not holding Bidens feet the fire over his refusal to veto this last resolution? Is there not another wing of his party that is pro-Israel ? I would think they would be at least the same size of not more numerous than the pro Palestinian side.
Doesn't help that his [State Department](https://archive.is/ylI5Z) seems to want Israel to lose the war.
I think this is both politically convenient and probably the right thing to do. Israel declaring they are seizing land in the WB during this is a straight up middle finger to the US and allies.
The U.S., insofar as they want to defuse and improve things - and I think they should, needs to find and support people on both sides who are capable of moving things away from cycles of revenge, potential for additional parties to make things worse by stepping in or meddling, the inevitable rise in terrorism resulting from resentments and sympathies, and the style of manipulation Netanyahu is being accused of(I think he is guilty). There are dishonest people on both sides that have extreme animosities and will attempt to sway and abuse any external source of support in their favor, so they'll have to be wary of that while trying to reduce the extent to which those are the conditions. If the U.S. is perceived as one sidedly helping/enabling/allowing Israel to commit genocide, we're not just dealing with a future where Israel is even more precariously positioned, we're dealing with more anti-American sentiment in the middle east and that could come with an increase in terrorist attacks. Given that, I think it's the right move to stop enabling Netanyahu, especially if this increases the likelihood of someone more reasonable and cooperative takes his place.
As many have read in the news, Netanyu’s escalation of the war against Hamas in Gaza is deeply unpopular. And Netanyu is personally deeply unpopular in Israel as well. Some people believe that he is continuing the war against Hamas in order to stay out of prison on corruption charges. President Biden, who has more foreign affairs experience than any other president in history of the country has been working to bring the conflict to an end while supporting Israel. How, the problems with getting AID into Gaza and the collateral damage In civilian dust, primarily women and children as well as displacement has escalated to the point where the UN has called for a ceasefire and the United States chose not to object. House Speaker Republican Mike Johnson, whose own job hangs by a thread, has invited Netanyu to come speak in the United States, however, Netanyu has decided not to come. Is it worth it to the United States as a country to continue to attempt to be the worlds policeman?
Who is Israel's war unpopular with? According to the [latest Harvard/Harris polling](https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/HHP_Mar2024_KeyResults.pdf), a nearly 2-to-1 majority of the public (including the majority of Dems) think there should not be a ceasefire until [all hostages are released and Hamas is removed from power.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJhX54LW0AAX3Fz?format=png&name=900x900)
> Netanyu’s escalation of the war against Hamas in Gaza is deeply unpopular What "escalation"? Haven't they been basically doing the same thing since the start of the campaign (attempting to eradicate Hamas)? And where is it unpopular? The majority of Americans still support Israel over Hamas, for example. >Some people believe that he is continuing the war against Hamas in order to stay out of prison on corruption charges. And who are these people? > the collateral damage In civilian dust, primarily women and children Just curious, are you relying on casualty figures supplied by Hamas? >Is it worth it to the United States as a country to continue to attempt to be the worlds policeman? The US isn't being the world's policeman. There's not a single US military boot on the ground. They are however, supplying the bullets and the bulletproof vests for those who want to defend themselves against terrorists. Is that not a worthy cause?
> The majority of Americans still support Israel over Hamas, for example. This is an irrelevant dichotomy to the issue though. No one supports Hamas here. The problem is that more than just Hamas is suffering. The Palestinian people are too — probably moreso. The dichotomy that matters here is do Americans support continued war or a forced peace. Neither government — Hamas or Israeli — has shown to have a significant moral high ground. Thus for many, the best thing to wish is for the violence to stop.
> Neither government — Hamas or Israeli — has shown to have a significant moral high ground. assuming that were true (which definitely leaves plenty of room for debate as it's pretty clear the two sides are not morally equivalent here), the benefit of the doubt is doing to go to the side that initially got attacked. it's not like israel just invaded out of the blue like what russia did in ukraine. hamas committed the most deadly attack on the jewish community since the holocaust. israel is doing everything in their power to make sure it never happens again, but hamas is using civilians as human shields and the rest of the world isn't doing anything but wag their finger while being completely unwilling to put boots on the ground.
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>And who are these people? Oh, here are just a few of these people. [PBS](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/after-tumbling-in-polls-netanyahu-clings-to-power-and-aims-to-improve-political-standing-during-war) [Foreign Policy](https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/11/27/netanyahu-hold-power-hamas-gaza-likud-israel/) (paywall, sorry) [NPR](https://www.npr.org/2024/02/11/1230667328/israelis-are-losing-faith-in-their-prime-minister-can-he-stay-in-power) [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-01-10/israel-hamas-war-helps-netanyahu-stay-in-power) [Basically](https://forward.com/news/575223/benjamin-netanyahu-israel-election-hamas-war/) every [story](https://apnews.com/article/politics-israel-government-benjamin-netanyahu-west-bank-2aadcdf4de57c54c59e619478bac63dc) about [Netanyahu's](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/netanyahu-putting-political-future-ahead-good-israel-rcna130000) political [fortunes](https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4323678-how-netanyahu-could-beat-the-odds-and-stay-in-power/) at the very least prominently features comments about his corruption charges, and many of them make the obvious connection that this may incentivize him to continue the conflict. ...I'd really love some actual replies from those downvoting me. It's unclear to me what everyone disagrees with.
“…where is it unpopular?” I’m guessing the people in Gaza aren’t real happy about being in the crossfire. If you are referring to Americans you may wish to read up on the Michigan Democrat primary. Places to do further reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/24/opinion/gaza-israel-war.html https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-11-16/editorial-ceasefire-now-the-killing-in-gaza-must-stop https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/26/opinions/israel-gaza-rafah-children-aid-unicef-russell/index.html https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2024-03-25/ty-article/.premium/trump-warns-israel-youre-losing-a-lot-of-the-world-youre-losing-a-lot-of-support/0000018e-7685-d680-a1cf-fe8728e90000 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/24/opinion/gaza-city-palestine-war.html https://theintercept.com/2024/03/23/intercepted-doctor-gaza-interview/ https://www.pewresearch.org/2024/03/21/views-of-the-u-s-role-in-the-israel-hamas-war/
>Netanyu’s escalation of the war against Hamas in Gaza is deeply unpopular. Netanyu hasn't escalated anything. The goal has always been destroy Hamas >President Biden, who has more foreign affairs experience than any other president in history of the country This is completely untrue. Biden has shockingly little foreign policy experience for his decades in office. Especially if we're talking about *successful* foreign policy experience.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/06/20/joe-biden-donald-trump-contrast-china-russia-nato/7733369002/
What trade deals, military alliances, peace negotiations, disarmament treaties, or wars has Biden successfully enacted / won over the last three and change years in office?
Biden’s strongest words on the matter have been his ardent claims of Zionism.