Israel, Palestine & the Levant rolling events: Oct 23 on

From Reuters:

"We received distress calls from residents in Tel Al-Sultan where drones targeted displaced citizens as they moved from areas where they were staying toward the safe areas," the deputy director of ambulance and emergency services in Rafah, Haitham al Hams, said.
Palestinian health officials said 19 civilians had been killed in Israeli airstrikes and shelling across Gaza. Israel accuses Hamas militants of hiding among civilians, something Gaza's ruling Islamist group denies

Quite a round-up:
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-sends-tanks-into-rafah-raids-amid-gaza-wide-offensive-2024-05-29/

in the documentary I link above there’s an interview with a palestinian boy turning 18. he says that he and every one of his friends agree that what every single palestinian boy wants more than anything is a rifle. so they can take back what is theirs. so in a way i can understand the israeli point of view. it’s not paranoid to think of palestinian civilians as the enemy. they all really do hate you, and many of them have guns, and many of them really will try to kill you. i mean how else could it possibly be when you have harassed, demonized and murdered a people for decades? are they supposed to not be courageous? to not be brave? to not resist? to not fight? we’re saying the vichy french were examples now?

the reporter asks the boy what he wished for when he blew out the candles on his cake and he says, to be reunited with my friends who have been killed.

^^^ this is important to understand in any possible resolution. In fact this has shaped the situation since at least the 1920s if not earlier - the cycle of Palestinians resisting and hating the presence of Zionists and Zionists experiencing the hatred and violent resistance and fearing it, which often in turn entrenched them more against the Palestinians. Even Zionists who hoped to coexist with rather than displace Palestinian Arabs were often turned away from that hope by the cycle of violence that was beyond their control. An Israeli I know once told me "I think what Israel has done to the Palestinians is horrible. But given the chance, they do the same to us." Another Israeli told me he remembers serving in the West Bank and hearing "Iftach al Yahud!" ("slaughter the Jews") from mosque loudspeakers. Both were at least liberal politically and had supported the Oslo process. The Second Intifada was a huge factor in the rise of the far right. I say all this as analysis, not justification. Right or wrong, most people take violent threats against them as a bad thing, and people under violence or threat of violence tend to focus on the immediacy of the threat rather than its historical context/who was the first mover.

I think that hatred can be changed and calmed, but you can't just tear down the walls and assume everyone will run to hug each other.

hmm well whaddya know

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/30/stacy-gilbert-us-state-department-israel-gaza-aid

Xp

This is one problem that gets me in a little bit of a mental knot... I'm against United States - World Police Force on principle.... but how else will Israel and Palestine live in peace without a larger power enforcing it with VERY active involvement. <--- this being the case for (what I see as) the more practical and realisric two-state solution.

Realism and practicality also teaches us that the USA cannot be trusted to do this...... so what happens? What is to be done?

Realize that there will never be a two-state solution.

I do, but I don’t think that’s what HP was getting at

Honestly, all I'm getting at is for someone to give me some answers. Some hope.

Not implying I'm owed it or anything like that. I'm just sick of being outraged and dissapointed. I want to be able to point to a possible future. I want an idea to latch on to. I want hope for something better. But I don't know where to find it.

Realize that there will never be a two-state solution.

H.P.'s questions are equally valid with a one state solution tho?

An Israeli I know once told me "I think what Israel has done to the Palestinians is horrible. But given the chance, they do the same to us."

An interesting piece from a while back that I read earlier this year.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/south-africa-apartheid-white-afrikaners-the-inheritors/670554/

"He just couldn’t forgive Black people for forgiving him. Paradoxically, being left undisturbed served as an ever-present reminder of his guilt, of how wrongly he had treated his maid and other Black people under apartheid. “The Bible was right about a thing or two,” he wrote. “It is infinitely worse to receive than to give, especially if … the gift is mercy.”"

We have a place where Apartheid was undone, where there was a serious attempt at reconcilliation and a democratic process.

so what is the deal with this pretty good ceasefire proposal Biden says Israel put forward? I honestly can't believe they proposed this and in fact today's response from netenyahu indicates he has no interest in it. Was this a political move by Biden to try to force Israel to accept these terms?

like this response does not seem in alignment with this proposal that apparently came from Israel: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/01/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas-rafah

the proposal wasn't in Israel's interests (never-ending war)

Never-ending war is decidedly not in Israel's interests (and not in anybody's interests in the entire region except maaaaaybe Iran) but not-ending-right-now war is in Netanyahu's interests. There is speculation that Biden is trying to deal directly with the non-Netanyahu part of the government. But who knows.

couldn't imagine being a hostage's family member and repeatedly being told to eat shit just because the Kahane coalition needs to stay together for another six months

Well there's a reason they're blocking the Ayalon highway

My friend in a wider hostage family has been saying for months that at this point, Netanyahu is holding the same hostages.

Smotrich and Ben Gvir just said explicitly that they'd topple the coalition if this deal was accepted

Well, now the question is whether Gantz, Gallant, or both will say they'll topple the coalition if it isn't accepted.

This is really fucked up, which I guess is par for the course.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not agree to end the war in Gaza in exchange for the release of hostages unless opinion polls show it is politically advantageous for him, a top Israeli security official told the families of those held captive, a person in the closed-door meeting and an advocacy group said Friday.

The comments by Netanyahu’s national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi, first made public by Israel’s Channel 12 broadcaster, sent shock waves through the hostage family community nearly eight months after their loved ones were kidnapped by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack.

“The Israeli government made a conscious and deliberate decision to sacrifice the hostages,” the Hostage Family Forum said in a statement Friday. “The hostages, and the entire State of Israel, have been taken captive by those who chose political interests over their national and governmental duty.”

Hanegbi met with relatives of the hostages at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv on Thursday afternoon. Among the attendees was Gil Dickmann, whose 40-year-old cousin, Carmel Gat, is among the 125 hostages still being held in Gaza.

Hanegbi "told us: ‘We understand that the only way to bring all the hostages back is through a deal that will bring an end to the war.’ And as he sees it, the Israeli government is not going to put an end to the war right now,” Dickmann told NBC News in an interview Friday.

“He said the only way to make Netanyahu do this is to make him understand that it’s going to be politically good for him, that if he sees polls that say that the Israeli public wants to see the hostages home more than it wants the continuation of the war, then he will make a deal that will bring all the hostages home,” he added. “We were shocked by this.”

BREAKING: The Israeli occupation army set ablaze the vegetable market in the city of Ramallah, the occupied West Bank pic.twitter.com/QwtWKykAbF

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) May 30, 2024

Other reports coming in as to what Israel is doing.

"An aide to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed on Sunday that Israel had accepted a framework deal for winding down the Gaza war now being advanced by US president Joe Biden, though he described it as flawed and in need of much more work. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Ophir Falk, chief foreign policy advisor to Netanyahu, said Biden’s proposal was “a deal we agreed to … it’s not a good deal but we dearly want the hostages released, all of them”."

“He said the only way to make Netanyahu do this is to make him understand that it’s going to be politically good for him, that if he sees polls that say that the Israeli public wants to see the hostages home more than it wants the continuation of the war, then he will make a deal that will bring all the hostages home,” he added. “We were shocked by this.”

To be clear, what's shocking is that a government official said it out loud, not that it's the case. Everybody knows it's the case. And while on some level I hate to see that Netanyahu's popularity seems to have bottomed out and started recovering, there's something good about it, because if Netanyahu sees a path to staying in as PM without Ben Gvir and Smotrich by ending the war and bringing the hostages home, he'll do it in half a second and declare that whatever has already occurred constitutes satisfaction of Israel's "essential war goals."

though he described it as flawed and in need of much more work.

sounds to me like a setup to sound concerned and willing to act, but in reality to delay and do nothing to end the war

40% of Israelis support Biden-announced ceasefire/hostage deal, 27% oppose, 33% not sure. Ben Gvir says he'll bring down the coalition if Netanyahu agrees, but major ultra-Orthodox party supports deal, giving Netanyahu some political cover.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/40-of-israelis-back-biden-announced-cease-fire-proposal-for-gaza-poll/3238247

^^^ this is important to understand in any possible resolution. In fact this has shaped the situation since at least the 1920s if not earlier - the cycle of Palestinians resisting and hating the presence of Zionists and Zionists experiencing the hatred and violent resistance and fearing it, which often in turn entrenched them more against the Palestinians. Even Zionists who hoped to coexist with rather than displace Palestinian Arabs were often turned away from that hope by the cycle of violence that was beyond their control. An Israeli I know once told me "I think what Israel has done to the Palestinians is horrible. But given the chance, they do the same to us." Another Israeli told me he remembers serving in the West Bank and hearing "Iftach al Yahud!" ("slaughter the Jews") from mosque loudspeakers. Both were at least liberal politically and had supported the Oslo process. The Second Intifada was a huge factor in the rise of the far right. I say all this as analysis, not justification. Right or wrong, most people take violent threats against them as a bad thing, and people under violence or threat of violence tend to focus on the immediacy of the threat rather than its historical context/who was the first mover.

I think that hatred can be changed and calmed, but you can't just tear down the walls and assume everyone will run to hug each other.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, May 30, 2024 10:40 AM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Isn’t the issue here though that Palestinians ultimately don’t want “revenge” as much as the dissolution of the Israeli state

citation needed? Think they might just want their children to stop being killed & homes destroyed for a start.

there’s a citation needed for the idea some substantial portion of Palestinians want the state free of Israeli rule ?

their own state, yes…

there’s a citation needed for the idea some substantial portion of Palestinians want the state free of Israeli rule ?

Isn’t the issue here though that Palestinians ultimately don’t want “revenge” as much as the dissolution of the Israeli state

“why does nobody ever bump the Islamophobia thread on ilx”

I don’t really get what you’re arguing with here. My point was painting the logic as primarily abt revenge ignores the concrete political goals we see ppl express all the time, like sure a 2 state solution but also ppl who have more radical anti colonial goals. I think the citation needed would be for the person insisting this is not the case ..?

fwiw the concrete political goals of the palestinian boys in the doc i watched were to get their families’ land back and be free of israeli control eg they wanted self determination. “dissolution of the israeli state” was not big on the agenda

that's more hamas talk

I don’t really get what you’re arguing with here. My point was painting the logic as primarily abt revenge ignores the concrete political goals we see ppl express all the time, like sure a 2 state solution but also ppl who have more radical anti colonial goals. I think the citation needed would be for the person insisting this is not the case ..?

tl;dr Said:

really nothing has substantially changed in the discourse since Edward Said wrote this in 1979. pic.twitter.com/Lj6P51G1RW

— michael (@Sisyphusa) June 4, 2024

I think you're both trying to say the similar things but it's hard to tell.

Seemed obvious to me. Gyacs not interested in finding that out though

to my eyes, D-40, there's a very substantial shift between the two posts gyac quoted - "the dissolution of the Israeli state" and "the state free of Israeli rule" are two different things. given the history of the conflict and the discourse around it, and the way the Palestinian cause is often framed as a desire for "the destruction of Israel," people can be very attentive to what may appear to be rhetorical elisions tending in that direction. at least, that's my read on this conversation.

not imputing any particular position to you - just trying to identify where the disconnect may be happening.

I am shocked that "the Palestinians don't want Israeli rule over them or an Israeli state generally" is a controversial opinion......

I know this is cynical and not how it is/how anyone is trying to say it.... but this feels like liberal pandering, where we rob Palestinians of their right to seek justice by assuring ourselves and the rest of the world that they are so kind and meek as to not want recompense or restitution. Hence, denying the Palistinian desire for a state/land free from Israeli rule feels far more offensive and oppressive than the opposite.

Are we just scared to say it because it could slippery-slope it's way down to anti-semitism? Fair enough to be aware of a slippery slope, not fair enough to police correct statements that haven't yet travelled downbeat direction while saying something truthful

*its, down that. I hate this samsung keyboard

I feel like I lost the plot on this argument, but I did see a poll of Palestinians recently (trying to find it, but it was by a Palestinian polling operation) where the option of a "binational state" was fairly unpopular, but "armed struggle for the liberation of Palestine" was popular. You could read that as "the liberation of Palestine" meaning something other than a binational state. OTOH, I think polling is of really limited value in situations like this, as it only gives you a sense of how people are feeling in a brief snapshot in time, based on recent events, influenced by strong emotions/frustration/lack of hope about other options, etc. I think when an option seems within reach, it is more popular than when it does not seem within reach.

And because of this, I try to remind myself to be generous in my interpretation of Palestinian opinion polls, because Israel has the power and the upper hand, and annihilation of Israel isn't actually on the table right now. And I think I posted a quote upthread from a Fatah politician who said that when he was a teenager he wanted "From The River To The Sea," yet the second it looked like a two-state solution was actually possible, he and a lot of others he knew rejoiced. To a certain extent, the same is also true of Israeli opinion polls, but I don't want to "both sides" this, because Israelis get to remain comfortable with or without a political solution, and that makes their position different.

Good posts man alive.