- Hamas-run government says Israeli strikes on Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza killed at least 195 Palestinians, with concerns raised by the UN that these could constitute war crimes.
- Evacuation of foreign nationals from Gaza is underway, with 320 already crossed into Egypt; about 7,500 are expected to leave within two weeks.
- The strikes targeted Hamas military leaders and infrastructure, with Israel’s campaign responding to Hamas’ cross-border attacks from Oct. 7.
- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to visit Israel and Jordan to discuss the conflict and the need to minimize civilian casualties.
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Engaging groups like Hamas, isis, or other groups that are highly integrated into the civilian population is ugly business. Hamas is not a conventional state actor with military assets on bases or mobilized for action. It’s uncles and sons and brothers in the homes of family.
The carnage in Gaza is horrifying, but Hamas isn’t likely to form lines and face the IDF in honorable field combat.
Removing the threat posed by Hamas will have an absolutely horrific cost in civilian lives. After oct 7, “the world” seems to agree that Israel has some right to remove that threat. Hamas leadership crossed a line, and like all war the cost will primarily be paid by the ordinary people who were unlucky enough to be born in the war zone.
Hamas is an Insurrection Movement against an occupying power and said occupying power killing more Palestinians is just going to give it more popular support and even more combatants, unless the objective of said occupying power is to “solve” the problem by killing all Palestinians.
Even putting the morality of the Occupation aside, the correct military way of going about this would be Counter Insurgency, but that means actually listening to and making the lives of Palestinians better, not making it worse sprinkled with random violence against civilians as the Israeli government has consistently done for 7 decades, so the only other military alternative that stands a chance of success is Genocide (i.e. stop the support for the Insurgency by killing or expelling the entire population).
I would never defend Israel’s shitty colonialist behavior over the last 7 decades. A horrible colonialist idea followed by generations of stupid mistakes and vile actions.
The question was “when is the world going to put a stop to this”. The answer seems to be that “the world” is going to let Israel attempt to dislodge Hamas. Eliminating Hamas is going to be a disgusting bloodbath and probably will just sew the seeds of the next conflict. The alternative is telling the Israeli people that they deserve to having Viking raiders pillaging the borders because the antisemitic leaders of “the greatest generation” picked a pretty horrible solution to what they called “the Jewish question”.
No good answers, no good guys.
One problem is that certain countries in said World seem to have picked up the “giving material support to those committing genocide” option, which goes way beyond the more neutral “closing your eyes” option that would seem to be the safest one since - and I agree with you on this - there really are no good options at this point given what’s happenned so far - Israel has really been fucking up the Palestinians but forcing Israel to actually stop doing that and give back the Palestinian Land right now (which is probably not possible) would be rewarding Hamas for its choice of committing terrorist acts and would incentivised them and others to do more of it.
The second problem is that there are a lot of ways of going about the whole “fighting Hamas” thing and “the world” is not just letting Israel attempt to disloge Hamas but actually letting Israel do it in unnecessarilly bloody ways (the blockade of food and water being a prime example) - even genuine self-defense is not a valid justification for choosing to do it in the way that causes the most suffering to civilians.
Whilst I agree that there are no good choices, I believe the whole “unwavering support for Israel” choice which has tied certain nations to what is already a Genocide is almost certainly influencing the current Israeli government to feel that they have total impunity and will get away with killing tens or even hundreds of thousands of people for the purpose of triggering what they themselves describe as their objective - a “Second Nakba” - so the choices they are making are immensely worse than those they would be making if they feared repercursion from going too far (this is why I keep blaming western powers such as the US, the UK, France and Germany - the “unwavering” and uncritical nature of their support is what is enabling the Israli leadership to turn a “no good choices” situation into the far more extreme situation which is a Genocide).
Or that they deserve to die from their own government because they’re better better off dead than being used as bargaining chips to release thousands of Palestinians imprisoned without a just trial.
Israel has been occupying Palestine and killing innocent civilians decades before Hamas was a thing.