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[QuakeIV]

I can personally understand why Israel is pissed.  There has been no end to the shit everyone in the middle east has been giving them, and in Hamas case they refuse to stop launching rockets.  Israel tried a couple cease fires, but Hamas just kept launching rockets.  I have even seen Palestinians on the news saying 'this is all happening because Hamas can't keep a ceasefire'.  Just because the iron dome is functional doesn't mean that Hamas gets to just keep launching rockets like a group of insane, oversized, petulant children with expertise in rocketry.  There are leakers occasionally, and those kill people.

Israel does not have a professional military of sufficient size to deal with this, and as a result most of their forces are conscripts.  This leads to idiocy and bad target discrimination.  They do not, however, seem to have a choice in the matter as to whether or not to try to use it.  They have cut off the outside rocket supplies to Hamas, then Hamas promptly started producing their own rockets.  They are producing these rockets with general use materials that cannot be cut off from the country.  They literally have to go in and physically prevent the production and or launching of these rockets or they will just keep coming forever. 

e:  And when it comes down to it, yes, Israel is choosing the lives of their civilians over the lives of civilians in gaza.  In my opinion that is entirely reasonable.

[Leafsnail]

Israel condemned by PA (of course), Chile (not unexpected), China (huh), and Britain (woah)

Have you got an article on this?  I can only find ones suggesting that Nick Clegg condemned Israel, not the UK government as a whole.

Israel does not have a professional military of sufficient size to deal with this, and as a result most of their forces are conscripts.  This leads to idiocy and bad target discrimination.  They do not, however, seem to have a choice in the matter as to whether or not to try to use it.  They have cut off the outside rocket supplies to Hamas, then Hamas promptly started producing their own rockets.  They are producing these rockets with general use materials that cannot be cut off from the country.  They literally have to go in and physically prevent the production and or launching of these rockets or they will just keep coming forever. 

If the blockade is not working and military invasions aren't either (note that this is basically the fourth time this has happened) then maybe Israel should try another strategy.  A strategy such as ceasing the oppression that drives people living in Gaza to support Hamas.

e:  And when it comes down to it, yes, Israel is choosing the lives of their civilians over the lives of civilians in gaza.  In my opinion that is entirely reasonable.

Why?  Especially considering that they do not recognize Gaza as part of a sovereign nation.

[Leafsnail]

Of course that's not even getting into the fact that Gazan authorities have accepted and abided by ceasefires in the past, only for the IDF to break them every two years for another bombing campaign and invasion

[nenjin]

If Hamas decided to renounce violence and surrender peacefully tomorrow that would do fuck-all in the long term, because there would still be a huge violent separatist feeling in Gaza that would just transfer itself to some other group (maybe Islamic Jihad, maybe IS, maybe some secular organization like the PLO.  It doesn't really matter).

Yeah, I said this as well. Where I disagree is this: if Israel entered into honest negotiations with the PLO, and Hamas continues to fire mortars, Israel will take a hardline stance in negotiations as they usually do, and get a hardline response. Israels wants the attacks to stop, and that either means a) the PLO giving them carte blanche to march into Gaza to deal with Hamas b) the PLO dealing with Hamas themselves or c) what we have now, Israel entering Gaza without permission, consent or negotiation, and shooting anyone that ends up in their path.

So I disagree Hamas is irrelevant in this. It is at least harder to blame the PLO for random jihadists with no affiliation than it is to blame the PLO for Hamas. Israel does not have the tolerance or the patience to continue to be shelled while holding best negotiations.

[Loud Whispers]

I hear you. Women do go crazy when you blow up their kids, huh?

Based Boyle

[Leafsnail]

Yeah, I said this as well. Where I disagree is this: if Israel entered into honest negotiations with the PLO, and Hamas continues to fire mortars, Israel will take a hardline stance in negotiations as they usually do, and get a hardline response. Israels wants the attacks to stop, and that either means a) the PLO giving them carte blanche to march into Gaza to deal with Hamas b) the PLO dealing with Hamas themselves or c) what we have now, Israel entering Gaza without permission, consent or negotiation, and shooting anyone that ends up in their path.

So I disagree Hamas is irrelevant in this. It is at least harder to blame the PLO for random jihadists with no affiliation than it is to blame the PLO for Hamas. Israel does not have the tolerance or the patience to continue to be shelled while holding best negotiations.

I'm really confused as to what you're saying.  If Israel wants peace with Gaza then it needs to negotiate with its elected government, which is currently made up of both Hamas (not part of the PLO) and Fatah (part of the PLO).  I don't see why you think it could or should negotiate with only one of them.

e: are you still under the impression that they're part of the same organization?

[GlyphGryph]

Leafnsail, no article, I was specifically commenting on the UN Meeting discussing Gaza, and the comments by the British Rep. I'm not sure to what extent the diplomats at the meeting represent their governments as a whole, but I imagine it would be about as close to official as you could get?

[QuakeIV]

Israel condemned by PA (of course), Chile (not unexpected), China (huh), and Britain (woah)

Have you got an article on this?  I can only find ones suggesting that Nick Clegg condemned Israel, not the UK government as a whole.

Israel does not have a professional military of sufficient size to deal with this, and as a result most of their forces are conscripts.  This leads to idiocy and bad target discrimination.  They do not, however, seem to have a choice in the matter as to whether or not to try to use it.  They have cut off the outside rocket supplies to Hamas, then Hamas promptly started producing their own rockets.  They are producing these rockets with general use materials that cannot be cut off from the country.  They literally have to go in and physically prevent the production and or launching of these rockets or they will just keep coming forever. 

If the blockade is not working and military invasions aren't either (note that this is basically the fourth time this has happened) then maybe Israel should try another strategy.  A strategy such as ceasing the oppression that drives people living in Gaza to support Hamas.

What would you recommend they do, then?  'Cease the oppression that drives the people of gaza to support the Hamas' isn't really an effective order that you can give.

[burningpet]

Care to provide a link to that hamas announcement of the irrelevancy of its charter?

If it's just some irrelevant document that does not represent their believes and agendas, why not change those little annoying bits about destroying israel? or the anti-semitic bits? or the aspiration to a caliphate in ALL "palestine"?

I don't see why you think it could or should negotiate with only one of them.

e: are you still under the impression that they're part of the same organization?

Every negotiation is done with Fatah as well, because israel's best interest is to keep fatah political strength so it can't let it off the loop.

[Leafsnail]

What would you recommend they do, then?  'Cease the oppression that drives the people of gaza to support the Hamas' isn't really an effective order that you can give.

The two most glaring and obvious ones would be
- end the blockade on Gaza: it isn't preventing Hamas from firing rockets anyway, as you said, but it is causing mass-malnutrition and preventing Palestinians from rebuilding their homes
- end the occupation of the West Bank, and in particular stop bulldozing Palestinian homes.  The settlements are a blatant violation of international law and it's honestly astonishing that Israel is still building them

There's all sorts of other issues that would have to be resolved too, but these are the basic reasons why there is so much support for Hamas in Gaza (other than the constant slaying of children in military operations, which would also obviously have to stop under a peace agreement).  The blockade prevents there from being any meaningful economic activity or rebuilding work in Gaza, so life is becoming increasingly bad for people living there even during peacetime.  In addition, they can look to the West Bank and see that attempts to negotiate peacefully with Israel resulted in nothing but an apparently never-ending military occupation and the annexation of their land.  Can you not see why living in such a situation may have driven these people towards anger and violence, and how if these injustices are not addressed this will continue to happen?

[QuakeIV]

That might bring the rockets to a halt.  That is certainly less wishy-washy than 'ending oppression' though.  Probably worth a shot at this rate, if 'basically this' has happened several times before.  Im not sufficiently familiar with the history of the area to agree or disagree with you there.

[burningpet]

- end the blockade on Gaza: it isn't preventing Hamas from firing rockets anyway, as you said, but it is causing mass-malnutrition and preventing Palestinians from rebuilding their homes

When there was no blockade, hamas terrorists blew themselves in the middle of tel-aviv, jerusalem and haifa and were able to drive out their "brothers" from fatah by killing them.

When hamas and israel reach a truce (and they have many times), other elements in the gaza strip continue to target israeli civilians, in direct violation of the truce conditions that explicitly says Hamas will monitor and control the strip and prevent attacks on israel. if it can't prevent rockets being shot at israeli civilians and sometimes even perform the attacks through proxy groups, it makes the truce a completely one sided truce that does nothing but allowing hamas to further arm itself while still performing terror operations with israel being forced to comply to the truce.

All of your suggestions could have been beautiful, if they weren't already attempted and miserably failed.

And if palestinians wanted to build their homes, they could ask hamas to give them their Aid money and construction materials it uses for building offensive tunnels and their own multiple expensive villas throughout the strip and other rich arab countries. it could also ask hamas to not multiply prices by 4-8 so they could simply buy the materials themselves, or they could ask hamas not to attack the crossings and kill the civilian workers there that monitor the goods that are coming in.

But the easiest thing would be to just ask hamas to not refuse significant american and european aid in exchange for recognizing israel.

[nenjin]

Yeah, I said this as well. Where I disagree is this: if Israel entered into honest negotiations with the PLO, and Hamas continues to fire mortars, Israel will take a hardline stance in negotiations as they usually do, and get a hardline response. Israels wants the attacks to stop, and that either means a) the PLO giving them carte blanche to march into Gaza to deal with Hamas b) the PLO dealing with Hamas themselves or c) what we have now, Israel entering Gaza without permission, consent or negotiation, and shooting anyone that ends up in their path.

So I disagree Hamas is irrelevant in this. It is at least harder to blame the PLO for random jihadists with no affiliation than it is to blame the PLO for Hamas. Israel does not have the tolerance or the patience to continue to be shelled while holding best negotiations.

I'm really confused as to what you're saying.  If Israel wants peace with Gaza then it needs to negotiate with its elected government, which is currently made up of both Hamas (not part of the PLO) and Fatah (part of the PLO).  I don't see why you think it could or should negotiate with only one of them.

e: are you still under the impression that they're part of the same organization?

No, I'm not. And IIRC, the current situation is that Hamas requires a discussion of their other demands subsequent to any cease-fire agreement, and Israel wants a cease-fire agreement before anything else is discussed. So currently, Hamas won't come to the table. At least as of yesterday.

[Leafsnail]

burningpet: There are a lot of unsourced assertions in that post (as always!) but I noticed you did not address the non-blockade issue, which is the still ongoing military occupation of and annexation of the West Bank.  If the Gazans do lay down their arms how do they know they won't just be treated in the same way as those on the West Bank, ie like shit?  This was the issue that kicked off the current wave of violence around ten years ago.

You also seem to be confused about the reason that Gazans can't rebuild their homes.  The reason is that Israel explicitly forbids construction materials such as concrete from being imported through the blockade (so any materials that are imported are illegal, and would have to be used in secret).  Aid money and Hamas' actions are irrelevant.

No, I'm not. And IIRC, the current situation is that Hamas requires a discussion of their other demands subsequent to any cease-fire agreement, and Israel wants a cease-fire agreement before anything else is discussed. So currently, Hamas won't come to the table. At least as of yesterday.

Israel wrote up a ceasefire agreement (with Fatah I believe) and then presented it to Hamas without consulting them.  You can't expect really expect the other side to just agree to a fait accompli they had no part in discussing.

I guess Israel is happy to offer a ceasefire, because they've already applied their collective punishment and the status quo is fine for them.  The status quo is not at all fine for the Palestinians though, as the humanitarian situation is getting worse and worse in Gaza and the West Bank continues to be annexed.  That is presumably why Hamas wants some of its demands to be addressed before a ceasefire is reached.

[burningpet]

obviously Hamas actions are entirely relevant. what on earth makes you think otherwise?