Israel - Hamas war XIV

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Okay, let's go over what happened. In 2013 Israelis were largely pro Palestinian state. That is 6 years AFTER 2007. Since then their attitudes have gotten increasingly against a Palestinian state

Sigh indeed. Why do you think 6 years after the waves of suicide bombings stopped for the most part they were more open to a two state solution? 

[Kalbear]

33 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Sigh indeed. Why do you think 6 years after the waves of suicide bombings stopped for the most part they were more open to a two state solution? 

But they weren't, or at least we have no data for that. 

Why would their attitudes become less open to a two state solution after having fewer and fewer attacks that decreased over time? Again, how does it make sense to you that as you reduce attacks you reduce acceptance of a two-state solution? 

Edited January 4 by Kalbear

[DireWolfSpirit]

On 1/3/2024 at 8:27 AM, Tywin et al. said:

Now this is an escalation:
 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/03/middleeast/iran-explosions-soleimani-ceremony-intl/index.html

 

So to my surprize the Islamic State is claiming resposibility for this attack-

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-vows-revenge-after-biggest-attack-since-1979-revolution-2024-01-04/

The majority of reports the West get only report on Iran supporting terror groups. But its interesting to understand that Iran (and Syria) have their very own Arab separatist willing to attack their States.

[mormont]

Yeah, it was never likely that Israel was involved in that attack IMO.

[maarsen]

9 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

So to my surprize the Islamic State is claiming resposibility for this attack-

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-vows-revenge-after-biggest-attack-since-1979-revolution-2024-01-04/

The majority of reports the West get only report on Iran supporting terror groups. But its interesting to understand that Iran (and Syria) have their very own Arab separatist willing to attack their States.

Not really a surprise as IS is a Sunni Muslim group who consider the Shia majority in Iran to be apostates.  Iran is not an Arab state either but are Persians.

[Ran]

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

It seems odd to denigrate a stated view of Israel's leadership as "never going to pass"

The "leadership" being the likes of Smotrich and Ben-Givir, far-right idiots on Netanyahu's coattails who will not be involved in the next Israeli government. The unnamed ministers putting this stuff around are them and their part of things, stirring up trouble and trying to pressure Netanyahu.

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

and simultaneously say that something Israelis overwhelmingly don't want (a two state solution) is inevitable. Of the two which seems more wild as a prediction?

Multiple past efforts to get to the two-state solution have come close. Nothing else ever has.

I'd be happy to lay a wager on this. In 5 years, there'll still be millions of Palestinians in Gaza.

 

[Kalbear]

18 minutes ago, Ran said:

The "leadership" being the likes of Smotrich and Ben-Givir, far-right idiots on Netanyahu's coattails who will not be involved in the next Israeli government. The unnamed ministers putting this stuff around are them and their part of things, stirring up trouble and trying to pressure Netanyahu.

It's not just them, however. That's sort of the point. They've been consistent about this for a while but this is getting a lot of traction from other leadership. And the government is in talks with other countries - that's not something that just happens by blowhards. Specifically Netanyahu said:

Quote

 

Last Monday, Netanyahu told a Likud faction meeting that he is working to facilitate the voluntary migration of Gazans to other countries.

“Our problem is [finding] countries that are willing to absorb Gazans, and we are working on it,” he said.

 

So no, it isn't just those blowhards. This is Netanyahu's position to his own party. 

Also, the idea that they won't be part of the next government when Israelis are more right-wing than they have been and went even further that way because of 7-10 seems wildly optimistic to me. 

18 minutes ago, Ran said:

Multiple past efforts to get to the two-state solution have come close. Nothing else ever has.

To echo @mormont's viewpoint, you're talking about overall good solutions for Palestinians. The steady state solution - where Israel is the only state, holds direct power over Palestinians and gives them few rights and no voice - has been in place for over 2 decades, and appears to be what a good chunk of Israelis want. You may not like that as the proscribed solution but Israel certainly does, and they do even more so now. That is what I'm talking about when we're talking about a future solution; the future solution could be continuous, long term apartheid and forced resettlements with occasional devastating human rights crimes. 

Note that this has historical precedence. Nothing guarantees that ethnic minorities get their own country or that people with no state get one. The Kurds haven't. The Uyghurs haven't. Puerto Ricans and Hawaiians haven't. The Catalans haven't. 

18 minutes ago, Ran said:

I'd be happy to lay a wager on this. In 5 years, there'll still be millions of Palestinians in Gaza.

What odds are you giving then? Because I agree that it's not likely to be the case that they'll get 'voluntarily migrated' but I think that it not an impossibility, especially given Netanyahu's saying it. At the very least I think that some forced migration is more likely than any two-state solution in the next 5 years.

[Kalbear]

I mean, hell, this is the intelligence minister for Israel and a member of the Likud - hardly a blowhard:

Quote

 

Gamliel said that Gaza must not be handed over to the Palestinian Authority, and Gazans must not be left in the Strip to be educated to hate, as that would mean that further attacks on Israel are only a matter of time. While rejecting the PA’s return, the government has offered few details on what political entity it wants to rule Gaza.

“The Gaza problem is not just our problem,” Gamliel said. “The world should support humanitarian emigration, because that’s the only solution I know.”

 

And another Likud member:

Quote

 

Likud’s Danon is another of the leading supporters of the plan to encourage Gazans to leave the Strip.

On Tuesday, he presented his five-step plan at a conference in the Knesset (demobilization, establishing a security buffer zone, Israeli presence at the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, voluntary emigration, and eradicating the terrorist atmosphere).

 

Not anonymous sources, either. 

It's good that the US is calling this irresponsible and foolish, but it's very clear that this is one of the major solutions that Israel has hit upon. 

[Mudguard]

I've been looking for polling on how popular the idea of forced displacement, excuse me I mean "voluntary emigration", is with the Israeli public, and so far this is the only thing I've found that is recent.  I'm sure more polls will be taken on this since the government is getting more and more bold at talking about it.

https://www.jewishpress.com/news/eye-on-palestine/gaza/poll-83-of-israelis-support-voluntary-emigration-from-gaza/2023/12/24/

Quote

Poll: 83% of Israelis Support Voluntary Emigration from Gaza

The Direct Polls survey that was published last Thursday (Direct Polls: Gantz and Bibi Neck-and-Neck, Smotrich Beats the Threshold) included the question: “To what degree do you support encouraging the voluntary emigration of Gaza Strip residents?”

The response of 1,487 adults (18+) who are a representative sample of the general population in Israel, with a statistical sampling error of ± 3.9%, at a 95% probability, was overwhelmingly in favor of the idea.

68% support it strongly
15% are quite supportive
8% don’t really support it
9% don’t support it at all

I'm not familiar with the news site or the polling company, but from brief googling, they both seem legitimate.  Even if the polls and the news site is biased one way or the other, it's extremely unlikely that the polling is completely fabricated and off by something like 50 points.  I think it's safe to say that right now the Israeli public is very strongly in support of a "voluntary emigration" plan.

I have to admit, it's a clever way of framing the issue to sell it to the public, and the government can use this popular support to just force everyone out and claim that they all voluntarily emigrated.  Of course, we all know that there is no voluntary emigration under these circumstances, but it provides the government with a fig leaf to do what it wants.

The biggest hurdle is finding countries willing to take all these Palestinians, but I'm sure that the government is working on it.  

[Zorral]

Yes, I posted these recent announcements right out there by the ruling officials last week.  Nope, not new stuff, particularly that 'voluntary immigration' -- to countries in Africa.  Has any of them noticed how many militant and terrorist Muslim-claiming extremists there are in parts of Africa??????? Not to mention extremist evangelicals?

Does the world really want Palestinians who are furious, despairing and degraded, to find some common ground with these guys?????????  So far these extremists haven't been able to out-and-out claim a nation -- but they are courted and assisted by Russia (though lately since Wagner got dissolved, the inheritors don't seem as effective operators as Wagner was -- and now by a fresh infusion of militantly angry population could create some interesting, shall we say, effect. 

Edited January 4 by Zorral

[Ran]

7 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Yes, I posted these recent announcements right out there by the ruling officials last week

Smotrich and Ben-Givir are, as I said, no one who's going to be around in the next government.  Here is another member of government saying this is Smotrich's nonsense idea, and as present-but-not-for-long Finance Minister, he literally has no role in any such decision, they're not actually "in the loop" but off on the sidelines. It's a peanut gallery of nonsense, caused by Netanyahu forming this bizzare coalition to try and hold on to power that is guaranteed to slip away once the next election is held as Israelis take him and Likud to task for their failure on October 7th.

 

[Mudguard]

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

Smotrich and Ben-Givir are, as I said, no one who's going to be around in the next government.  Here is another member of government saying this is Smotrich's nonsense idea, and as present-but-not-for-long Finance Minister, he literally has no role in any such decision, they're not actually "in the loop" but off on the sidelines. It's a peanut gallery of nonsense, caused by Netanyahu forming this bizzare coalition to try and hold on to power that is guaranteed to slip away once the next election is held as Israelis take him and Likud to task for their failure on October 7th.

 

If Netanyahu, Ben-Givir, Smotrich, and their fellow crazies are all about to get the boot, what do they have to lose in trying to implement their forced displacement plan before that happens?  Why wouldn't they do something that they really want to, while they have the chance?  

I think it's still an open question whether they will succeed.  But don't you think that they are actively trying to make this happen?  The evidence is overwhelming at this point.

[Zorral]

If the rtump fascists in and out of government have taught us anything is they will and do do what they say they will / want to do.  Listen to them.

[kissdbyfire]

Very brave of them, given the current climate in Israel.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/03/israeli-public-figures-accuse-judiciary-of-ignoring-incitement-to-genocide-in-gaza

Quote

A group of prominent Israelis has accused the country’s judicial authorities of ignoring “extensive and blatant” incitement to genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza by influential public figures.

In a letter to the attorney general and state prosecutors, they demand action to stop the normalisation of language that breaks both Israeli and international law.

“For the first time that we can remember, the explicit calls to commit atrocious crimes, as stated, against millions of civilians have turned into a legitimate and regular part of Israeli discourse,” they write. “Today, calls of these types are an everyday matter in Israel.”

 

[Mudguard]

Hell, if the forced displacement plan remains this popular with the Israeli public when the next election is called, Netanyahu can explicitly run on this issue, if he hasn't already accomplished it.  He can make the forced displacement of Palestinians the cornerstone of his platform.  If he really is that unpopular, he's going to have to do something extreme to win, and this fits the bill.

[Zorral]

6 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

“For the first time that we can remember, the explicit calls to commit atrocious crimes, as stated, against millions of civilians have turned into a legitimate and regular part of Israeli discourse,” they write. “Today, calls of these types are an everyday matter in Israel.”

Those who poo poo these calls as meaningless from meaningless persons can't be more explicitly contradicted?

[karaddin]

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

So no, it isn't just those blowhards. This is Netanyahu's position to his own party. 

It's a particularly neat trick to pull when the thing Ran is dismissing is the alternative approach to doing the thing he says is inevitable, which they don't want to do. 

Again I'm not going to claim inevitability on it actually happening, I'd love to be wrong and it won't even need international pressure to stop it, I'd be very glad to discover that Bibi has moral limits and doesn't even entertain doing it. But it's absolutely a possibility and a horrifying one.

[Kalbear]

5 minutes ago, karaddin said:

It's a particularly neat trick to pull when the thing Ran is dismissing is the alternative approach to doing the thing he says is inevitable, which they don't want to do. 

Again I'm not going to claim inevitability on it actually happening, I'd love to be wrong and it won't even need international pressure to stop it, I'd be very glad to discover that Bibi has moral limits and doesn't even entertain doing it. But it's absolutely a possibility and a horrifying one.

Yep. 

And per polling, if this is the most popular position by Israelis it doesn't really matter if Netanyahu gets ousted; it will become the position of whoever else ends up replacing them. I keep saying this to various folks but the notion that it's just a problem about Netanyahu and Likud or more far-right folks appears to be wildly optimistic. I continue to see no indication that any of the current popular parties in Israel want a two-state solution or to help the Palestinians in any meaningful way, and that was before 7-10. 

[Ran]

15 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Bibi has moral limits and doesn't even entertain doing it.

He's not going to be running things. I really don't get why this is so hard to understand. Post-Gaza is also post-Netanyahu. 

Benny Gantz is polling as the likely next prime minister, and he's already raised brows regarding talking about a two-state solution ("two-entity" is how he phrased it, to get around a bit of injunction from talking about it).

Likud us going to crater, add the far-right with them. All this guff about Gazans being forced out will go away then.

Edited January 4 by Ran

[TrueMetis]

Man, all this stuff about how the authoritarian asshole using violence and hatred against a minority is gonna lose anyway so his rhetoric doesn't matter sounds familiar. Can't quite place it though. Oh wait no, it's not that I can't place it, it's that there are so many examples I'm having a hard time picking just one.