I wonder if Hamas would exist if Israel treated the Palestinians well, giving them aid, food, water and the promise of a brighter future… including sovereignty of their borders.
Their origins go back to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, so they would probably exist as an Islamic extremist terrorist organization in some form regardless, but obviously it would be in a completely different context and they probably wouldn’t have anything like the support that they have now.
Hamas might not exist, but unless you can travel back in time, that doesn’t answer the question what to do about Hamas today.
Hamas is a terror organization, they’ve been in power in the Gaza strip for the last 17 years, they terrorize the Palestinian population in Gaza, and they desperately need the conflict to stay alive so they don’t lose relevance.
As things are today, treating the Palestinians well, giving them aid, food, water and the promise of a brighter future is a direct threat to Hamas. That’s absolutely not to say that those things shouldn’t be done - it’s just to say that these things pose a direct threat to Hamas’s position of power in Gaza. That’s why Hamas reroutes international help and keeps it from reaching the Palestinian population, why they stage terrorist attacks against Israel, why they torture and murder “collaborators,” why they place their infrastructure in schools and mosques and hospitals, why they use Palestinians as human shields.
So lacking the option of traveling back in time and preventing the creation of Hamas, what should be done in a world where Hamas exists, has been in power for many years, and has no intention of ever ceasing its terrorism?
Hamas today could be a thing of the past, or as close to irrelevant as possible, if Israel would put in the effort to help Palestinians. Maybe help Palestinians realize that they could have a better chance with Israel than Hamas and that peace is possible.
This would take Israel being the “bigger man” to use a turn of phrase, but every chance they’re presented with just like right now, they instead choose Zionism and indiscriminately murder civilians.
to be fair, Hamas would have been a thing of the Past is Netanyahu wasn’t supporting them through direct money and a bit of targeting non-radical secular groups that stood for an alternative to Hamas.
Yes, Hamas was aided by the guy using them as an excuse to kill civilians
if Israel would put in the effort to help Palestinians
That’s sounds good.
What would that look like?
As a reference: from 2014 to 2020, the UN spent $4.5 billion in Gaza. NGOs have poured in hundreds of millions, have opened schools, have financed hospitals, have distributed aid. USAID has spent billions of dollars, the European Union spent hundreds of millions of Euros just to put in reliable water infrastructure. Just recently, Israel agreed to open the borders to Gaza so a number of Palestinians could work in Israel and live in Gaza.
But Hamas has been intercepting foreign aid, has seized donated supplies, has interfered with aid workers, has used schools and hospitals financed by the UN and NGOs as terrorist headquarters, as weapons caches, as launching sites for missiles, as prisons and torture sites to hold, torture and murder opponents.
It seems that the only solution to the problem is to kill innocent men, women, and children!
Gotta violently kill a family of twenty so we can take out one or two hidden Hamas fighters!
I want to make this very clear, the hatred that Israel is exhibiting to the Palestinians, is exactly the same as the hatred that Hitler exhibited towards their people during WWII. Difference is, everybody is cheering on the Nazis this time.
So you’re assuming that asking for a qualified answer about what should be done to “help the Palestinians” is the equivalent of “cheering on the Nazis?”
See, that’s the problem, though: you’re already presuming that people who don’t simply go along cheering facile, generic solutions like “why don’t the Israelis just help the Palestinians” - as if things were that easy and as if that thought just had never occurred to a single person in the past 70 years of murderous conflict - must be insincere.
So for the record: no, I’m being sincere. Bombing innocent civilians in Gaza is very obviously objectionable, and indiscriminate bombing is a war crime.
At the same time, I can acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization which just committed the largest terrorist attack in the history of Israel, committing unspeakable atrocities and murdering hundreds and hundreds of civilians in Israel.
So with that premise established: what would be some realistic ways for Israel to help Palestinians in a way that would make Hamas go away and end that particular threat for Israel. Because that’s the proposition: that the terrorist threat from Hamas could be ended if Israel only helped the Palestinians instead of bombing them, correct?
Go on reddit or facebook and you’ll see exactly what I am talking about.
Explain to me exactly how bombing and killing innocent civilians is going to stop a terrorist group? You kill a shit ton of innocent people to take out a few of the bad guys. You’re not understanding that the point isn’t about helping the Palestinians, it’s about not fucking recklessly killing them to stop terrorists.
It honestly sounds to me like IDS are terrorists themselves, is that not what terrorists do? To be a terrorist is to strike terror into a civilian populous, and that is exactly what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Blowing up fucking schools, hospitals, and homes is not how you stop a terrorist group, it’s how you become one.
I find it absolutely absurd that western countries could do this today and would be heavily criticized, but Israel gets a pass because “it’s god’s land”. Christianity (the religion that many americans falsely claim to follow) does not give two shits about Israel or Jerusalem, that is the JEWS land, not Christian’s land.
This is what happens when you let religion off of a leash, needless bloodshed and suffering. Christians did the same to Jews and Muslims during the crusades, this is a situation that is no different today, that’s exactly what a Jihad is, a " holy war".
Not blockade the Gaza strip, for one. Israel killed Gaza’s economy in 2006, keeps limiting the imports of basic goods and what we’re seeing is the result. Hamas stopped rocket attacks for over a year (late 2012 to early 2014) when promised the lifting of the blockade as part of a ceasefire.
Gaza people are, by Israel’s own admission, allowed fewer calories than they need to not starve to death.
Egypt and Israel are blockading the Gaza strip because it’s under the control of a terrorist organization.
If the question is “how could Israel help the Palestinians in a way that would make the threat if Hamas disappear,” how are you envisioning that this would happen if Israel ended the blockade?
Well, the cause of the current state of rocket attacks is the blockade so there’s that. Like I said before, Hamas stopped rocket attacks, and tried to police other groups doing the same, for over a year in compliance with the 2012 ceasefire. They stopped because Israel only slightly loosened the blockade, and didn’t lift it as they’d originally promised. So that’s how this would happen if Israel ended the blockade; Israel needs to sign another ceasefire and actually follow it.
And the cause for the blockade before 2012 was that Hamas seized power in the Gaza strip, murdered its political opponents, and instituted a reign of terror where elections were suspended indefinitely, dissent was impossible, and Palestinian “collaborators” were abducted, tortured, and murdered.
And the reason for the end of the ceasefire in 2014 was that Hamas abducted the teenagers, followed by Israel imprisoning 350 Palestinian militants, followed by Hamas launching rocket attacks against Israeli civilians from Gaza.
That’s the problem, isn’t it - whatever any side does in this conflict, it’s easy to find justification for it if you only go back fast enough in history. There are more than 2000 years of history there, full of conflict between the various ethnic groups. If anyone wants to find justification for current atrocities, it’s always easy to point to atrocities previously committed by the other side.
That said: do you really believe that Hamas wild simply cease its terrorism, its atrocities, its rocket attacks, kidnappings, torture, murder and simply decide to live in peace with Israel if the blockade were to be lifted tomorrow?
And the cause for the blockade before 2012 was that Hamas seized power in the Gaza strip, murdered its political opponents, and instituted a reign of terror where elections were suspended indefinitely, dissent was impossible, and Palestinian “collaborators” were abducted, tortured, and murdered.
The blockade started in 2005. These events happened in 2006/2007.
And the reason for the end of the ceasefire in 2014 was that Hamas abducted the teenagers, followed by Israel imprisoning 350 Palestinian militants, followed by Hamas launching rocket attacks against Israeli civilians from Gaza.
The ceasefire ended without the blockade getting lifted. That’s the crux of the issue. The 2008 and 2012 ceasefires were basically “you stop terrorism and we’ll lift the blockade” What do you expect to happen when after that the blockade isn’t lifted?
That said: do you really believe that Hamas wild simply cease its terrorism, its atrocities, its rocket attacks, kidnappings, torture, murder and simply decide to live in peace with Israel if the blockade were to be lifted tomorrow?
Ant this is the thing no one is saying. Yes what they did was bad but I can understand why they exist. Freedom fighters or terrorist just depends on your point of view.
Palestinians who are Israeli citizens (20% of the population) seem to be doing quite well and are not murdering their neighbors or advocating genocide.
Shhhh, this is an inconvenient reality that the “anti-Israel folks no matter what happens” folks conveniently refuse to learn about. Granted the Christian Arab Israelis are way more chill about not murdering people or advocating genocide, but outside of college age Muslim brotherhood males, Arab Israelis are pretty fucking chill.
I wouldn’t want to be those Palestinians living in Israel, for three days after the whole Hamas incursion happened they were getting shot openly in the street by radical Israelis, but that got about as much news coverage as the fact that Netanyahu actually aided Hamas for a long time in order to undermine the PAs ability to negotiate a two-state solution.
Remember the Palestinian diaspora? Half of the people in Gaza and the West Bank are descendants of people who fled/were expelled from Israel in 1948-1949. You can look up Benny Morris’s four stage analysis for more details. Israel couldn’t get a Jewish majority in Palestine, so they went for ethnic cleansing. Arab Israelis are the people they allowed to stay.
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing
As mentioned above, Israel is not homogeneous. They want to have safety for their people, not ethnically cleanse Palestinian Arabs. 20% of Israeli citizens are Palestinian Arabs. Wanting to ethnically cleanse is more Hamas’s thing, as they explicitly target Jews.
Arab Israelis are the people they allowed to stay.
Right, because they were peaceful they have been treated differently than constantly hostile belligerents targeting and killing civilians for over 75 years. This conflict is about safety for Israel. Self-defense.
Bro look up the Palestinian diaspora then speak. 700000 people were expelled or terrorized into leaving using massacres and you’re going on and on about Israel’s self-defense. The IDF (or what would become the IDF) actually got orders to keep certain locations Palestinian free, which got about 140 thousand Palestinians expelled.
I am aware of it. You should look up who started that conflict, who made a one state solution not viable, who engaged in secretarian mob violence first, who rejected the UN borders and instead went to war with their neighbors over and over again, losing spectacularly every time. (I’m happy to provide sources for all these claims.)
Hint: It wasn’t the Jews. Jewish terrorist groups like Irgun would eventually commit their own atrocities once the ball got rolling, but let’s not forget who started this and who has the power to end this conflict even today. Reading up on the history of this conflict, it seems to me that the Jews have always wanted safety and security, while Arab Palestinians wanted to scapegoat and violently expel or kill Jews.
Is it any wonder they want distance and safety from the people who have been trying to kill them for around a century now? Yet every attempt results in people vilifying them and accusing them of genocide, because the people trying to drive them into the sea happen to be homogeneous.
Yeah, they’ll still exist I think, whether we like it or not. Regardless of how well Israel treats the Palestinians, Hamas still sees them as colonizers and wants them kicked out completely.
It’s been 75 years since Israel existed as a state, they’re completely accustomed to where they are now, so kicking them out and establishing a “new Jewish state” is simply gonna move the problem to a different location instead of fixing it. History repeats itself.
I wonder if Hamas would exist if Israel treated the Palestinians well, giving them aid, food, water and the promise of a brighter future… including sovereignty of their borders.
Their origins go back to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, so they would probably exist as an Islamic extremist terrorist organization in some form regardless, but obviously it would be in a completely different context and they probably wouldn’t have anything like the support that they have now.
Hamas might not exist, but unless you can travel back in time, that doesn’t answer the question what to do about Hamas today.
Hamas is a terror organization, they’ve been in power in the Gaza strip for the last 17 years, they terrorize the Palestinian population in Gaza, and they desperately need the conflict to stay alive so they don’t lose relevance.
As things are today, treating the Palestinians well, giving them aid, food, water and the promise of a brighter future is a direct threat to Hamas. That’s absolutely not to say that those things shouldn’t be done - it’s just to say that these things pose a direct threat to Hamas’s position of power in Gaza. That’s why Hamas reroutes international help and keeps it from reaching the Palestinian population, why they stage terrorist attacks against Israel, why they torture and murder “collaborators,” why they place their infrastructure in schools and mosques and hospitals, why they use Palestinians as human shields.
So lacking the option of traveling back in time and preventing the creation of Hamas, what should be done in a world where Hamas exists, has been in power for many years, and has no intention of ever ceasing its terrorism?
Hamas today could be a thing of the past, or as close to irrelevant as possible, if Israel would put in the effort to help Palestinians. Maybe help Palestinians realize that they could have a better chance with Israel than Hamas and that peace is possible.
This would take Israel being the “bigger man” to use a turn of phrase, but every chance they’re presented with just like right now, they instead choose Zionism and indiscriminately murder civilians.
to be fair, Hamas would have been a thing of the Past is Netanyahu wasn’t supporting them through direct money and a bit of targeting non-radical secular groups that stood for an alternative to Hamas.
Yes, Hamas was aided by the guy using them as an excuse to kill civilians
That’s sounds good.
What would that look like?
As a reference: from 2014 to 2020, the UN spent $4.5 billion in Gaza. NGOs have poured in hundreds of millions, have opened schools, have financed hospitals, have distributed aid. USAID has spent billions of dollars, the European Union spent hundreds of millions of Euros just to put in reliable water infrastructure. Just recently, Israel agreed to open the borders to Gaza so a number of Palestinians could work in Israel and live in Gaza.
But Hamas has been intercepting foreign aid, has seized donated supplies, has interfered with aid workers, has used schools and hospitals financed by the UN and NGOs as terrorist headquarters, as weapons caches, as launching sites for missiles, as prisons and torture sites to hold, torture and murder opponents.
So what, specifically, would you suggest?
It seems that the only solution to the problem is to kill innocent men, women, and children!
Gotta violently kill a family of twenty so we can take out one or two hidden Hamas fighters!
I want to make this very clear, the hatred that Israel is exhibiting to the Palestinians, is exactly the same as the hatred that Hitler exhibited towards their people during WWII. Difference is, everybody is cheering on the Nazis this time.
So you’re assuming that asking for a qualified answer about what should be done to “help the Palestinians” is the equivalent of “cheering on the Nazis?”
You asked a rhetorical question. I also did not say you cheered on the Nazi’s or anything of the sort.
See, that’s the problem, though: you’re already presuming that people who don’t simply go along cheering facile, generic solutions like “why don’t the Israelis just help the Palestinians” - as if things were that easy and as if that thought just had never occurred to a single person in the past 70 years of murderous conflict - must be insincere.
So for the record: no, I’m being sincere. Bombing innocent civilians in Gaza is very obviously objectionable, and indiscriminate bombing is a war crime.
At the same time, I can acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization which just committed the largest terrorist attack in the history of Israel, committing unspeakable atrocities and murdering hundreds and hundreds of civilians in Israel.
So with that premise established: what would be some realistic ways for Israel to help Palestinians in a way that would make Hamas go away and end that particular threat for Israel. Because that’s the proposition: that the terrorist threat from Hamas could be ended if Israel only helped the Palestinians instead of bombing them, correct?
Go on reddit or facebook and you’ll see exactly what I am talking about.
Explain to me exactly how bombing and killing innocent civilians is going to stop a terrorist group? You kill a shit ton of innocent people to take out a few of the bad guys. You’re not understanding that the point isn’t about helping the Palestinians, it’s about not fucking recklessly killing them to stop terrorists.
It honestly sounds to me like IDS are terrorists themselves, is that not what terrorists do? To be a terrorist is to strike terror into a civilian populous, and that is exactly what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Blowing up fucking schools, hospitals, and homes is not how you stop a terrorist group, it’s how you become one.
I find it absolutely absurd that western countries could do this today and would be heavily criticized, but Israel gets a pass because “it’s god’s land”. Christianity (the religion that many americans falsely claim to follow) does not give two shits about Israel or Jerusalem, that is the JEWS land, not Christian’s land.
This is what happens when you let religion off of a leash, needless bloodshed and suffering. Christians did the same to Jews and Muslims during the crusades, this is a situation that is no different today, that’s exactly what a Jihad is, a " holy war".
You have no idea what you are talking about
Lol ok bud
Not blockade the Gaza strip, for one. Israel killed Gaza’s economy in 2006, keeps limiting the imports of basic goods and what we’re seeing is the result. Hamas stopped rocket attacks for over a year (late 2012 to early 2014) when promised the lifting of the blockade as part of a ceasefire.
Gaza people are, by Israel’s own admission, allowed fewer calories than they need to not starve to death.
How would that make Hamas go away?
Egypt and Israel are blockading the Gaza strip because it’s under the control of a terrorist organization.
If the question is “how could Israel help the Palestinians in a way that would make the threat if Hamas disappear,” how are you envisioning that this would happen if Israel ended the blockade?
Well, the cause of the current state of rocket attacks is the blockade so there’s that. Like I said before, Hamas stopped rocket attacks, and tried to police other groups doing the same, for over a year in compliance with the 2012 ceasefire. They stopped because Israel only slightly loosened the blockade, and didn’t lift it as they’d originally promised. So that’s how this would happen if Israel ended the blockade; Israel needs to sign another ceasefire and actually follow it.
And the cause for the blockade before 2012 was that Hamas seized power in the Gaza strip, murdered its political opponents, and instituted a reign of terror where elections were suspended indefinitely, dissent was impossible, and Palestinian “collaborators” were abducted, tortured, and murdered.
And the reason for the end of the ceasefire in 2014 was that Hamas abducted the teenagers, followed by Israel imprisoning 350 Palestinian militants, followed by Hamas launching rocket attacks against Israeli civilians from Gaza.
That’s the problem, isn’t it - whatever any side does in this conflict, it’s easy to find justification for it if you only go back fast enough in history. There are more than 2000 years of history there, full of conflict between the various ethnic groups. If anyone wants to find justification for current atrocities, it’s always easy to point to atrocities previously committed by the other side.
That said: do you really believe that Hamas wild simply cease its terrorism, its atrocities, its rocket attacks, kidnappings, torture, murder and simply decide to live in peace with Israel if the blockade were to be lifted tomorrow?
The blockade started in 2005. These events happened in 2006/2007.
The ceasefire ended without the blockade getting lifted. That’s the crux of the issue. The 2008 and 2012 ceasefires were basically “you stop terrorism and we’ll lift the blockade” What do you expect to happen when after that the blockade isn’t lifted?
So like I said twice now, it happened before.
Ant this is the thing no one is saying. Yes what they did was bad but I can understand why they exist. Freedom fighters or terrorist just depends on your point of view.
I wish I could give you more upvotes. This is the material reason for this conflict going back to British occupation.
Palestinians who are Israeli citizens (20% of the population) seem to be doing quite well and are not murdering their neighbors or advocating genocide.
Shhhh, this is an inconvenient reality that the “anti-Israel folks no matter what happens” folks conveniently refuse to learn about. Granted the Christian Arab Israelis are way more chill about not murdering people or advocating genocide, but outside of college age Muslim brotherhood males, Arab Israelis are pretty fucking chill.
I wouldn’t want to be those Palestinians living in Israel, for three days after the whole Hamas incursion happened they were getting shot openly in the street by radical Israelis, but that got about as much news coverage as the fact that Netanyahu actually aided Hamas for a long time in order to undermine the PAs ability to negotiate a two-state solution.
Remember the Palestinian diaspora? Half of the people in Gaza and the West Bank are descendants of people who fled/were expelled from Israel in 1948-1949. You can look up Benny Morris’s four stage analysis for more details. Israel couldn’t get a Jewish majority in Palestine, so they went for ethnic cleansing. Arab Israelis are the people they allowed to stay.
As mentioned above, Israel is not homogeneous. They want to have safety for their people, not ethnically cleanse Palestinian Arabs. 20% of Israeli citizens are Palestinian Arabs. Wanting to ethnically cleanse is more Hamas’s thing, as they explicitly target Jews.
Right, because they were peaceful they have been treated differently than constantly hostile belligerents targeting and killing civilians for over 75 years. This conflict is about safety for Israel. Self-defense.
Bro look up the Palestinian diaspora then speak. 700000 people were expelled or terrorized into leaving using massacres and you’re going on and on about Israel’s self-defense. The IDF (or what would become the IDF) actually got orders to keep certain locations Palestinian free, which got about 140 thousand Palestinians expelled.
I am aware of it. You should look up who started that conflict, who made a one state solution not viable, who engaged in secretarian mob violence first, who rejected the UN borders and instead went to war with their neighbors over and over again, losing spectacularly every time. (I’m happy to provide sources for all these claims.)
Hint: It wasn’t the Jews. Jewish terrorist groups like Irgun would eventually commit their own atrocities once the ball got rolling, but let’s not forget who started this and who has the power to end this conflict even today. Reading up on the history of this conflict, it seems to me that the Jews have always wanted safety and security, while Arab Palestinians wanted to scapegoat and violently expel or kill Jews.
Is it any wonder they want distance and safety from the people who have been trying to kill them for around a century now? Yet every attempt results in people vilifying them and accusing them of genocide, because the people trying to drive them into the sea happen to be homogeneous.
Okay this is too much nonsense to even engage with. You literally justified ethnic cleansing right now. Ethnic fucking cleansing.
20% of Israeli citizens are Arab Palestinian with full rights, but keep telling me how this is about genetics and not self-defense for Israel.
You are brainwashed.
Yeah, they’ll still exist I think, whether we like it or not. Regardless of how well Israel treats the Palestinians, Hamas still sees them as colonizers and wants them kicked out completely.
It’s been 75 years since Israel existed as a state, they’re completely accustomed to where they are now, so kicking them out and establishing a “new Jewish state” is simply gonna move the problem to a different location instead of fixing it. History repeats itself.