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Author Topic: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!  (Read 372618 times)

Sheb

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Re: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!
« Reply #5955 on: July 24, 2014, 08:29:51 am »

Well, to be honest at least the wreckage won't sink.

Now, the question is, what is Israel's endgoal? Hamas is never going disarm. So far as I can see, Israel's options are to negociate and learn to live with a Hamas that will be strengthened by having forced Israel into a ceasefire (Aka, Hamas victory) or engage either in a long-term occupation of the Gaza strip or in regulars attacks to fight the tunnel (Which will cost a lot to Israel, both in military and civilian casualties and international condemnations). Both of those are terrible.

A third options would be to try to topple the Hamas without occupying the Strip. I see two way to do this: Israel can either try to work with Fatah to return control of the strip to them by Israeli military force. Abbas however is already seen as an Israeli stooge by large segments of the population and is unlikely to agree to this unless he gets very significant compromises in return.

The other is to simply try to kill enough Hamas leaders to kill the organizations, but Hamas has proven remarkably resilient, and killing it will be a bitch. Moreover, who ever fill the vacuum will most likely be just as violent and anti-Israel. The best Israel could hope in such a situation is to buy some time while various Islamist factions battle each other for control of the strip, time bought at a heavy cost in terms of Israeli (and Palestinian) lives.

So yeah, to me it seems Israel has painted itself in a situation were it cannot win.
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smjjames

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Re: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!
« Reply #5956 on: July 24, 2014, 08:33:39 am »

Well, to be honest at least the wreckage won't sink.

Now, the question is, what is Israel's endgoal? Hamas is never going disarm. So far as I can see, Israel's options are to negociate and learn to live with a Hamas that will be strengthened by having forced Israel into a ceasefire (Aka, Hamas victory) or engage either in a long-term occupation of the Gaza strip or in regulars attacks to fight the tunnel (Which will cost a lot to Israel, both in military and civilian casualties and international condemnations). Both of those are terrible.

A third options would be to try to topple the Hamas without occupying the Strip. I see two way to do this: Israel can either try to work with Fatah to return control of the strip to them by Israeli military force. Abbas however is already seen as an Israeli stooge by large segments of the population and is unlikely to agree to this unless he gets very significant compromises in return.

The other is to simply try to kill enough Hamas leaders to kill the organizations, but Hamas has proven remarkably resilient, and killing it will be a bitch. Moreover, who ever fill the vacuum will most likely be just as violent and anti-Israel. The best Israel could hope in such a situation is to buy some time while various Islamist factions battle each other for control of the strip, time bought at a heavy cost in terms of Israeli (and Palestinian) lives.

So yeah, to me it seems Israel has painted itself in a situation were it cannot win.

Like I said earlier, they're running into the same problem that the US did with Iraq (and somewhat with Afghanistan), they went in without an exit strategy and their end goal seems to be scorched earth policy.

They could also do what we did in Vietnam, send troops into the tunnels.
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penguinofhonor

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Re: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!
« Reply #5957 on: July 24, 2014, 08:38:36 am »

That sounds a lot more lethal for the troops.
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martinuzz

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Re: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!
« Reply #5958 on: July 24, 2014, 08:42:10 am »

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/07/24/air-algerie-says-it-has-lost-contact-with-plane/

This is what, the fourth aircraft-related major accident in six months?

Now this incident, somewhat over a month ago, did not get much attention, but could have serious implications. German defense specialists classified this as a 'catastrophic event':
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/13/us-europe-airplanes-safety-idUSKBN0EO1CW20140613

Who needs stealth bombers, when you can just take out the enemies' nationwide radar with electronic warfare.
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Friendly and polite reminder for optimists: Hope is a finite resource

We can ­disagree and still love each other, ­unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist - James Baldwin

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=73719.msg1830479#msg1830479

Sheb

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Re: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!
« Reply #5959 on: July 24, 2014, 08:44:41 am »

Well, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US was at least able to install regime that could more or less stand on their own feet. It's hard to see who would lead an occupation government in Gaza. Fatah could be a partner given large enough concessions I guess, but I haven't seen any hint that Israel is trying to get Fatah to agree to this.

Vietnam would be the continued occupation option, and would bleed Israel to a degree they probably cannot accept.
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palsch

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Re: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!
« Reply #5960 on: July 24, 2014, 08:55:22 am »

"Spying is not an option, because that would be a presence in the strip and would piss them off!"
"Oh okay, what are you going to do instead then?"
"Oh, not much. We're gonna send in a bunch of tanks and bomb the shit out of them."

...Just stop and think about that for a second, dude.

You are comparing two very different things here.

Israeli operations within Gaza would be justification for Hamas to conduct military operations against Israel, similar to those that triggered this sort of offensive in the first place.

There are basically two states at the moment the conflict takes on the Gazan side;

1) Low level rockets attacks from non-Hamas or deniable forces, along with tunnel preparations and maybe isolated tunnel attacks.
2) Full scale, Hamas conducted rocket launches and the use of the complete tunnel network to conduct attacks whenever possible.

Your policy is that state 1 should be accepted by Israel, maybe with limited countermeasures. My point was that some of your proposed countermeasures would be enough to trigger a switch to state 2. Combine this with Hamas having access to better resources (a lifting the blockade) and you have a situation that Israel could never accept.

In your opinion. As it turns out, most of the nations in the UN human rights council disagree with you. As do I. Dunno what else to say to you if you're going to disagree on as fundamental of a level as "innocent lives are equally valuable"
In my opinion a government that takes action that will knowingly let it's own civilians die from an enemy military action is a government that has lost all moral authority. One of the core purposes of government is the national defence. Abandoning that purpose means the government has abandoned it's core purpose and should be replaced.

It's not saying that they should be free to kill as many people they are able to for that purpose, but that taking a policy approach that doesn't attempt to stop citizen deaths is a morally unacceptable position for any government.

Fair enough. But your article also includes:

Quote
By the end of 2010, [Egypt] claimed to have sabotaged some six hundred tunnels by various means, including plugging entrances with solid waste, sand, or explosives, and flooding passages with sewage. Use of tear gas and other crowd-control techniques inside the tunnels resulted in several deaths.
Even if I might be underestimating, you're OVERestimating their sophistication, invulnerability, and invisibility.
You ignored the part where it noted that they only took the oldest, most obvious tunnels, ignoring the more used and sophisticated ones. It's also talking about long term, smuggling tunnels, not ones that were kept concealed until immediately before a militant attack.


You seem to be trying to play gotcha with arguments and phrasing rather than actually trying to understand the conflict and situation any better. I've been trying to make you engage on a level a bit deeper than blanket condemnations of Israel.


The war crime stuff... I don't think there's any point continuing with that discussion. You have comprehensively ignored my points. I just want to point out that the 2009 Golstone report which accused Israel of war crimes was largely regretted by it's author once he had access to more information. And that was a UN fact finding mission conducted months after the conflict, not some people reading articles posted hours and days after events.


Now, the question is, what is Israel's endgoal?
Honestly? De-facto occupation.

While they don't want to officially re-occupy the strip, the only way they can get out of this situation is to have Hamas either accept a ceasefire with no further concessions from Israel (eg, no lifting of the blockade, unacceptable to Israel and the final sticking point for Hamas) or to cripple Hamas so badly that they have a couple of years of security.

The latter would take months of military presence at least. Decapitating Hamas is unlikely to work; the leadership is too slippery and has too many levels to be effectively disabled that way. Rather the targets would be their infrastructure; their tunnels, weapon supplies and other resources. A comprehensive enough effort could set them back to a near 2007 state, before they managed to solidify their hold over the entire strip's infrastructure.

Honestly, the ground invasion was inevitable but a bad option. This looks at the situation in Israel that lead to the operation. The pressure from within the Israeli government was to go even further, and at the same time;
Quote
But the more likely explanation is that Israel just didn’t have any other options. Israel could have continued its aerial and artillery exchanges with Hamas, but this campaign did not appear to be damaging either the will or the capability of Hamas. It could have loosened its rules of engagement and struck Hamas more effectively—but doing so would have inflicted unconscionably disproportionate civilian damage. It could have capitulated to Hamas’s ultimatums to release hundreds of security prisoners and reopened Gaza to shipments of arms- and tunnel-making materials. Apart from the moral implications of such a concession, doing so would simply have strengthened Hamas and ensured additional fighting. An extended cease-fire would be ideal. But so far, Egyptian attempts to broker such a cease-fire seem to have fallen on deaf ears. So Netanyahu was left with a choice that wasn’t really much of a choice.
The problem is how long the offensive can be maintained before they have to withdraw and declare victory. The longer they stay the more damage they can do to Hamas, but the more Israeli soldiers will die. It's very unlikely to me that there will be anything other than a unilateral end to the fighting - eg, Israel withdrawing - even if Hamas efforts end up tapering off due to lack of resources. Hamas gains political capital by killing Israelis and keeping the conflict going, even as they trade it for material losses and lives of Gazans.
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smjjames

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Re: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!
« Reply #5961 on: July 24, 2014, 08:57:13 am »

It's also hard to see any occupaton government being anti-israel.

Fakeedit: CNN said that the Algerian flight which disappeared did crash, so...... yeah.
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palsch

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Re: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!
« Reply #5962 on: July 24, 2014, 09:07:01 am »

Telegraph article about the narratives around a proportionate response from Israel. Honestly, much as I hate to agree with the Telegraph, this part does seem accurate to much of the criticism to me;
Quote
When people say Israel’s response to Hamas aggression must be “proportionate”, they don’t mean it. What they actually mean is that Israel shouldn’t respond at all.

Which is fine: everyone’s entitled to their view. But Israel’s critics should at least be honest about what they’re really proposing. And what they’re proposing is that while Israel has a right to defend itself in principle, it shouldn’t do so in practice. It should just turn the other cheek.
One of my biggest issues, and why I stay out of the debate most of the time, is that (at least here in the UK, on the left) much of the anti-Israeli narrative is dominated by those who don't believe it is a legitimate state, that it has no right to exist and that greater Palestine should be restored (as the chant goes) "from the river to the sea". Truth is secondary to achieving a political goal, and that goal is often the de-legitimisation and eventual destruction of Israeli. Attempts to bring legitimate criticism tends to be hijacked by those groups, and so I've basically stopped voicing my own criticisms. It's put me on the pro-Israel side almost every time the discussion comes up, regardless of how many specific criticisms of the Israeli government I might have.
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Sheb

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Re: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!
« Reply #5963 on: July 24, 2014, 09:11:11 am »

While I agree with you that a government as a duty to protect its citizens. However, if we use your dichotomy of:

There are basically two states at the moment the conflict takes on the Gazan side;
1) Low level rockets attacks from non-Hamas or deniable forces, along with tunnel preparations and maybe isolated tunnel attacks.
2) Full scale, Hamas conducted rocket launches and the use of the complete tunnel network to conduct attacks whenever possible.

It is clear that Israeli are better protected by the state doing everything to keep the situation at state 1 (Unless there is a possibility that military actions, while causing state 2 for a while will eventually lead to a state 3 of long-lasting peace). So yeah, to quote you:
Quote
In my opinion a government that takes action that will knowingly let it's own civilians die from an enemy military action is a government that has lost all moral authority.

This of course apply to Hamas (who should have tried preventing the escalation too, and refrain from provoking Israel during state 1 ), but it applies to Israel too.

Regarding an occupation, I don't think Israel will be able to significantly degrade Hamas' capabilities. My guess is that at some point, Israel will declare victory, pull back, and leave a strengthened Hamas (They will boast of having pushed back an invasion) at the cost of a large number of Israeli lives and diminished international standing. Basically, the Vietnam scenario.
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smjjames

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Re: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!
« Reply #5964 on: July 24, 2014, 09:13:11 am »

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/24/world/meast/mideast-crisis/index.html

Israel just hit an U.N. shelter in Gaza, many dead......... *shakes head*

I'll try to find other news sources, but it's breaking news* out of CNN.

*Do the 'breaking the news' joke and I'll smack you over the head with a trout. :P

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2014-07-24/gaza-fighting-rages-amid-cease-fire-bid

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/07/24/4252051/gaza-fighting-rages-amid-cease.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/israeli-fire-hits-compound-housing-u-n-school-in-gaza-killing-15/

Edit: Okay, apparently all three of those articles have the same wording, not sure what the origional source is.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2014, 09:25:27 am by smjjames »
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palsch

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Re: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!
« Reply #5965 on: July 24, 2014, 09:30:30 am »

It is clear that Israeli are better protected by the state doing everything to keep the situation at state 1 (Unless there is a possibility that military actions, while causing state 2 for a while will eventually lead to a state 3 of long-lasting peace).
The switch to state 2 was before the ground offensive. Hell, before the air strikes. You can argue the government's actions helped lead to these events, especially with regards to their treatment of the kidnapping case, but the primary trigger was non-state actors. Which is one of the main problems; you have too many parties who can break the status-quo for it to be comfortable or acceptable long term for Israel. Like I said later, I see the current ground push as a desperate attempt to find a temporary state 3, as in the past.
Regarding an occupation, I don't think Israel will be able to significantly degrade Hamas' capabilities. My guess is that at some point, Israel will declare victory, pull back, and leave a strengthened Hamas (They will boast of having pushed back an invasion) at the cost of a large number of Israeli lives and diminished international standing. Basically, the Vietnam scenario.
I think they will weaken Hamas somewhat militarily, it's a question of how much logistical damage (tunnel network) they can deal and how many political gains Hamas make in the meantime. A lot of that is going to come down to the PR war as well.
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GlyphGryph

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Re: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!
« Reply #5966 on: July 24, 2014, 09:32:29 am »

As far as Gaza is concerned, the problem isn't so much "Israel only has options of doing this or doing nothing, and doing noting is morally wrong", so much as that they seem to be unwilling to take risks that might fail and make their leadership look "weak", even if it might make things better. The things they have done to basically ruin any chance of Fatah being a strong ally attest to that.

Its not a practical problem, it is a political one. From my point of view, their best option is strengthening Fatah by making them look like an ally, whose alliance with Israel is ultimately of great benefit to their people, rather than the current strategy of making them look like a stooge whose benefitting Israel at the expense of their own people. Options like pulling out the settlers combined with large increases in the number of legitimately humanitarian missions, increases in trade, basically giving Fatah clear wins where they managed to "get the best of Israel" in the minds of the person on the ground seems like it would do a lot to erode Hamas's power - Hamas is popular because they at least give the people a way to strike back - if they were given an outlet that would allow them to do so in a nonviolent way (while also improving the quality of their own lives), I can't help but imagine a large chunk of them would take it.

Israel will negotiate with the moderates, but the negotations still seem to feel like another battleground, with Israel intending to "win" the negotiations by "coming out on top, and getting more conscessions than they give", when the reality of conceding to and thus strengthening the position of the moderates seems like it would do more to protect Israeli interests long term... so long as those handling the negotiations are able to survive the political fallout.

Extening the economic links between the countries, providing support they can later threaten to withdraw, investing in building hospitals and schools in Palestine instead of tearing them downn its that sort of long term thing that might end up resulting in true peace down the road.

But it doesnt seem like Israel is in a position to act long term. They respond, they react, but they always claim their hand was forced and they had no choice. That needs to chang.
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Sergarr

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Re: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!
« Reply #5967 on: July 24, 2014, 09:44:23 am »

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/24/world/meast/mideast-crisis/index.html

Israel just hit an U.N. shelter in Gaza, many dead......... *shakes head*
Of course the resident Israeli will say that they all were actually HAMAS terrorists and they deserved to die.

EDIT: Oh, I finally realized the end-game for Israel: With 100:1 kill ratio, they can just simply slowly exterminate and push away the Palestinians from Gaza.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2014, 09:49:32 am by Sergarr »
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GlyphGryph

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Re: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!
« Reply #5968 on: July 24, 2014, 09:51:17 am »

Journalists seem to be growing increasingly unhappy with their treatment by Israel
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/24/world/middleeast/foreign-correspondents-in-israel-are-targets-of-intimidation.html?_r=0

The flight bans into Tel Aviv have been lifted, it seems. (Source: BBCTV)

Here's a bbc link about the Shelter/School bombing:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28468526

Also mentions that UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos saying that the Gazans are running out of food.

Ynet reports at least 15 dead; quotes UNRWA as saying they gave the IDF the exact coordinates. Also asked for a safe corridor to evacuate with no response. IDF says they "are looking into it".

Robert Turner, the UNRWA director in Gaza, said there was no warning from the Israelis about the attack on the school in Beit Hanoun.

He said they were in contact with Israeli forces about a window to evacuate the school before the attack happened.

"This is a designated emergency shelter,” he said.

“The location was conveyed to the Israelis.

He said he had no information that there was military activity around the school.

"This was an installation we were managing, that monitored [to ensure] that our neutrality was maintained.

“We always call on all parties to ensure that civilians are not harmed."

I'm sure somehow Hamas will be blamed by certain posters for "forcing" Israel to make this "tragic mistake".

In other news, an Amnesty International report from Cast Lead:
Amnesty International, for its part, did not find evidence that Hamas or other Palestinian
groups violated the laws of war to the extent repeatedly alleged by Israel. In particular, it
found no evidence that Hamas or other fighters directed the movement of civilians to shield
military objectives from attacks. By contrast, Amnesty International did find that Israeli
forces on several occasions during Operation “Cast Lead” forced Palestinian civilians to serve
as “human shields”. In any event, international humanitarian law makes clear that use of
“human shields” by one party does not release the attacking party from its legal obligations
with respect to civilians.

Amnesty International delegates interviewed many Palestinians who complained about
Hamas’ conduct, and especially about Hamas’ repression and attacks against their
opponents, including killings, torture and arbitrary detentions, but did not receive any
accounts of Hamas fighters having used them as “human shields”.
Basically amounts to: "Hamas are some bad dudes, but they don't seem to be bad in the way Israel claims to the extent Israel claims in order to justify their own terrible actions."
« Last Edit: July 24, 2014, 09:58:17 am by GlyphGryph »
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LordSlowpoke

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Re: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!
« Reply #5969 on: July 24, 2014, 10:11:30 am »

because america is a silly place

hurr muslims are terrorists

durr israel kills muslims so it must be good
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