Israel-Hamas war 3

[Ran]

This again just feels like a huge distraction. In the end, Hamas is the power in Gaza at this moment. It can get steamrolled at any moment by Israel, or the US, or any other sizable power that would want to steamroll it, but until it is steamrolled, it rules Gaza, regardless of who wants to give it official recognition or not. Nothing prevents any country from choosing to recognize it if they want, and indeed, Haaretz every year or two has an article urging Israel to give Hamas official recognition, so it's not like we're talking out of our hat. There was one just this year, in fact.

[fionwe1987]

I really don't get why this is a distraction. Any road to ending Hamas and giving Palestinians basic human rights and freedoms will have to engage with this question. The statelessness and the dreadful treatment on the ground of Palestinians is not in any way a distraction from Hamas, it is a major component of their success and strength. Hamas is able to justify its actions to the populace of Gaza, and draw volunteers from it, because every avenue for peacefully resisting Israel's apartheid has also been blocked. Israel's government continues to insist there is some kind of peaceful solution without Palestinians being given freedom and self-determination.

That we're now seeing arguments that the Palestinians have a state anyway, and therefore none of this matters, is a frankly alarming argument. 

Edited October 15, 2023 by fionwe1987

[Ran]

It's a distraction because it is not a state (he said for the fiftieth time), but it certainly won't become one with Hamas running Gaza, and so while we should absolutely talk about Hamas being given the boot, the question of what next is complicated. Israel at present says it has no desire to run things, which probably means they'll turn to the unelected Fatah to run things, and Fatah is weak and rudderless and corrupt all the way through.

But I certainly have no clue who in Gaza or the West Bank could do better, and I suspect the board has very little knowledge to illuminate on this subject of the alternative Palestinian parties.

 

[Bironic]

4 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

If it is an unrecognized state, it seems clear it is not recognizable as a state. Once again, you're trying to have this both ways.

That is because calling it not a state, and calling America an imperialist nation, are not allowed in the global political order run by America. I wouldn't call Vito Corleone a murderous mob boss in his study, probably. That wouldn't change that he is. 

But Israel isn't one of those countries, and has says exactly the opposite. If Gaza is indeed a state, then Israel has been illegally blockading them for more than a decade, causing civilian losses at a scale that dwarfs what happened these past few days. So then we're saying Hamas, the government of this supposed state, had a right to attack Israel? It would have been ok, and nothing negative would have been said, if they only attack Israeli military outposts, or assassinated Netanyahu?

 

First You know that once you recognize an unrecognized state it eventually will become a recognized state? PRC wasn't recognized as the government of China until 1970(they were the defacto government from 1949!) and there are plenty of other examples...

Second calling USA an imperialist nation is done all the time by various people or states, sometimes in good faith sometimes not...

Yes generally it's accepted in international law that you have a right to resist(this inlcudes the use of force) an invading or occupying force. Which Israel at the very least in the case of the West Bank is (parts of Gaza are also controlled by Israel). The use of force is then obviously further defined: basically everything Hamas does and did doesn't fall under that category, such as intentionally killing and targeting civilians, torture, etc.) So yes if Hamas had just targeted the Israeli military(even if some civilians would have been killed in the crossfire) it would be very hard for Israel to argue that what they are doing is right. But since Hamas obviously did nothing of the sort it's much easier for Israel to make their point.

 

[Zorral]

Word salads.  All over the place. Gaza, per se, is not a state, a nation or anything but an occupied territory, which then, as a consequence, has a terrorist organization that has been nurtured and fostered by these conditionsw.  It isn't even as autonomous as the reservations for Native American peoples in the USA.  Not even as autonomous as the territory of Puerto Rico, which is administered by the USA -- and that's even with the Puerto Ricans (grudgingly) being allowed to be US citizens, just as the members of the Native Peoples of the reservations are.

[Gorn]

43 minutes ago, Zorral said:

It cannot be had two ways.  A state can make treaties and agreements that are observed by BOTH sides.

Nobody wants to, or will, if they can, negotiate even, with a terrorist organization, which also is being said here, is what Hamas is, which everyone here is agreed on.  Beyond, perhaps hostage exchanges and so on, Hamas cannot negotiate at all.

Of course it can negotiate and enter treaties and agreements. Have you ever heard of Good Friday Agreement? Or, for that matter, Oslo Accords?

[kissdbyfire]

10 minutes ago, Gorn said:

Of course it can negotiate and enter treaties and agreements. Have you ever heard of Good Friday Agreement? Or, for that matter, Oslo Accords?

Are these really comparable?

 

[Kalbear]

26 minutes ago, Gorn said:

Of course it can negotiate and enter treaties and agreements. Have you ever heard of Good Friday Agreement? Or, for that matter, Oslo Accords?

You might look up the Oslo accords and see what states actually did the negotiation and what part the government of Gaza played there before using it as a good example. 

And again it doesn't matter because Israel effectively refuses to treat hamas as a government or Gaza as a state, and warns other countries to avoid doing the same or run the risk of angering israel.

Edited October 15, 2023 by Kalnak the Magnificent

[Gorn]

14 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Are these really comparable?

 

Why wouldn't they be comparable? Gerry Adams was a terrorist. More relevantly, so was Arafat, and his PLO probably killed more Israeli civilians than Hamas did.

[Kalbear]

18 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Are these really comparable?

 

I mean, the Oslo accords started by Israel recognizing the PLO, which was a requirement effectively before making any deal. They had to do secret negotiations before that

Which again is the point - hamas cannot do that sort of thing until recognized, which Israel refuses to do.

[Gorn]

More recently, Trump administration signed a binding agreement with the Taliban.

Saying that governments can only sign agreements (including surrenders) with other officially recognized governments is ridiculous, especially coming from a supposed historian. US didn't recognize the Confederacy, which didn't make Lee's surrender at Appomattox any less binding.

[kissdbyfire]

8 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

I mean, the Oslo accords started by Israel recognizing the PLO, which was a requirement effectively before making any deal. They had to do secret negotiations before that

Which again is the point - hamas cannot do that sort of thing until recognized, which Israel refuses to do.

Exactly. And I fail do see how it is comparable to the Good Friday Agreement as well. 

[Padraig]

The Good Friday agreement might be a good example for this...weird discussion.

It is actually made up of 2 agreements, a bilateral international agreement (between Ireland and the UK) and a multilateral agreement between those 2 nations and 8 political parties in NI.  (Admittedly, I didn't know the technical terms of these agreements until just now).  The international agreement is the legal agreement it seems.

Gaza is quite unique, so just make up a term for it.  Call it akyfila, say.

Edited October 15, 2023 by Padraig

[Werthead]

Some news reports suggesting a change in tenor from the US, focusing more on the need to avoid civilian casualties and to de-escalate the regional tension. In fact, the UK has joined the chorus of calls for the Egyptian-Gazan border to be reopened. There is also a lot of shuttle diplomacy going on: Blinken is motoring around the Arab world like a lunatic and the King of Jordan is making whistlestop visits to European capitals to encourage a shift of emphasis to the humanitarian situation on the ground.

This is all making moderate progress: the US and EU are still backing Israel politically, but it does seem like there has been a shift to reassurances to Arab countries and to focus on protecting civilians and de-escalating the situation. Military analysts from multiple countries are now expressing worry that if Israel goes in during the next few days, it could suffer major casualties from not being prepared. The Israeli government also seems divided over it, with some suggesting a hard and fast imminent offensive and others suggesting that it may be some time before the ground operations commence.

The issue is that if Israel is resolved to go in (and they appear to be), and Iran is resolved to attack if it does (this is much less certain, and Iran has proxies and various deniable ways of escalating the situation without launching ballistic missile strikes on Israel), then all this diplomacy may ultimately be for nothing.

In terms of large-scale, regional conflagration with the possibility of escalating to a global crisis, this is a more dangerous moment than Russia's invasion of Ukraine, even if the risk of global annihilation is much lower, the risk of it simply turning into a massive, wide-ranging shitstorm is notably higher.

[IheartIheartTesla]

I will add absolutely nothing to this discussion by noting that Israel itself was not a state until the middle of May 1948, although it rapidly did achieve mostly because of international recognition.

[GrimTuesday]

1 minute ago, Werthead said:

In terms of large-scale, regional conflagration with the possibility of escalating to a global crisis, this is a more dangerous moment than Russia's invasion of Ukraine, even if the risk of global annihilation is much lower, the risk of it simply turning into a massive, wide-ranging shitstorm is notably higher.

I would also say that there is a much higher likelihood of Israel using it's nuclear weapons against Iran than Russia using them against Ukraine. They have been posturing against Iran in a very hawkish manner for a long ass time and given the fact that Iran is not a nuclear power, they do not have to worry about a second strike situation. It would give Israel the excuse it has been looking for for a long time to strike directly at Iran. I also don't think Russia would respond in a nuclear fashion even if they are aligned at the moment, so the risk of more nukes flying is pretty low.

[Rippounet]

On top of the international aspects, the ground invasion itself has the potential to go wrong. The humanitarian crisis requires the operation to start soon, but despite the military training of Israeli reservists, most of them will be fresh to combat, urban warfare involving tunnels is hellish, and the presumed objective of locating and destroying these tunnels is not an easy one. Add to this the fact that a complete evacuation of Palestinian civilians is far from assured, that there may be hostages on the ground, and that a significant number of IDF soldiers will have lost someone in the attacks, and you get something that no military in the world can be ready for.

[Kalbear]

56 minutes ago, Gorn said:

More recently, Trump administration signed a binding agreement with the Taliban.

Saying that governments can only sign agreements (including surrenders) with other officially recognized governments is ridiculous, especially coming from a supposed historian. US didn't recognize the Confederacy, which didn't make Lee's surrender at Appomattox any less binding.

It's a bit more complicated than that. In particular the taliban had to recognize the legitimacy of the afghan government and the US, and the US (and others) had to recognize the taloban as an official organization- which they had done since 2001. It certainly is possible for hamas to be in that same boat - but that requires that Israel recognize them as something official, which they have basically refused to do. And again, they also warn others of doing the same. 

It is also not entirely clear how binding the taliban agreement was, but Biden stuck with it anyway.

[Altherion]

26 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

On top of the international aspects, the ground invasion itself has the potential to go wrong.

It's not even that it has the potential to go wrong, it's that it's almost guaranteed to be a mess of epic proportions. Hamas has had more than a decade to fortify and trap the places the Israelis will be marching into and there is no technology out there right now that enables urban warfare without very high casualties (either on one side because the other is simply reducing the urban landscape to dust or on both sides because neither is willing or able to perform said reduction). It's going to be bad.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Gorn said:

Saying that governments can only sign agreements (including surrenders) with other officially recognized governments is ridiculous, especially coming from a supposed historian.

Obviously surrender in a civil war to one of the antagonists is quite different from a binding trade agreement, yes?  What trade agreement could Gaza, i.e. then, the terrorist organization, Hamas, make with anybody?  Get. Real.

BTW, it wasn't an agreement per se, that Grant made with Lee. It was unconditional surrender.  That Grant allowed, on his own recognition, the rank-and-file just leave the battlefield, with their weapons and horses, if they had them, wasn't negotiated. It was due to superior force, military and financial.

And no one had ever recognized the CSA as a state or nation or government.

Edited October 16, 2023 by Zorral