Israel-Gaza war

[CumbrianLefty]

snip

These people cannot be left to their own devices. They're off their rockers.
Thank god the population wants them out, if polls are any indication.

That is a pretty good basic summary of things, yes.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

One concern I have is about the potential radicalization of southern Gaza.  If one uses the 2006 elections to argue many Palestinians support Hamas*, then one must also acknowledge that southern Gaza (ex: Khan Yunis and especially Rafah) was one of the core areas of opposition to Hamas in the election.  The majority of folks in the southern half of Gaza quite clearly rejected what Hamas was selling and wanted nothing to do with them in that elections.  

The area would be critical for anti-Hamas/non-violent Palestinian party in Gaza and I worry that if Israel handles the area the way it has Gaza City (where Hamas seemingly enjoyed very enthusiastic support in 2006), it will cost the world generations of would-be anti-terrorist Palestinians in the area.  Palestinian civilians who think of Israel as something other than hellfire and death falling from the sky have to come from somewhere in both Gaza and the West Bank.

*As I have said elsewhere, I strongly oppose using 2006 as evidence Palestinians support Hamas.  Hamas worked very hard in that election to rebrand themselves domestically by marketing themselves to Palestinian voters as a pro-democracy party that had essentially matured out of non-self-defense violence/civilian-targeted terrorism (almost as if they thought most Palestinians opposed and would not vote for terrorism or totalitarianism when presented with another option).  Instead, Hamas focused heavily on attacking corruption by Fatah and marketing itself as a good government alternative of sorts.  Very different from how they behaved once they gained power (and to be clear, I am only talking about how they marketed themselves to Palestinians, as opposed to the international community).

Even so, the popular vote was only a narrow Hamas plurality.  The real Hamas landslide came from the district seats.  No one knew how the district lines would play out and it turned out that Hamas’ vote distribution meant that they wildly over-performed in these districts which became the functional equivalent of a completely unintentional pro-Hamas gerrymander.  The maximized their district seats in their strongholds and even won most of the district seats in swingy or outright Fatah-leaning areas.  IIRC the overall popular vote was a narrow Hamas win and certainly not anything resembling a clear mandate.

[GoTfan]

Alright dude, I'm done talking to a brick wall.  Total waste of effort...

So someone brings multiple quotes of major Israeli leaders, not "Tom Tancredo figures" as you like to call them saying these things, and you're response is "My efforts are wasted on you?"

[pppolitics]

Alright dude, I'm done talking to a brick wall.  Total waste of effort...

So someone brings multiple quotes of major Israeli leaders, not "Tom Tancredo figures" as you like to call them saying these things, and you're response is "My efforts are wasted on you?"

That’s cause he is having a tough time defending the undefendable.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Alright dude, I'm done talking to a brick wall.  Total waste of effort...

So someone brings multiple quotes of major Israeli leaders, not "Tom Tancredo figures" as you like to call them saying these things, and you're response is "My efforts are wasted on you?"

That’s cause he is having a tough time defending the undefendable.

I didn't see this because I have GoTFan blocked, dude is really obnoxious.

Your post doesn't actually rebut any of what I said so I have nothing to add.  It's just you being annoying by posting a large wall of quotes.  There's no actual new argument.

Throughout this thread I've written lengthy, detailed posts explaining my position point-by-point and you've consistently ignored pretty much everything in them to move on to the next argument after losing your previous one.  I'm not interested in playing whack-a-mole with you.  Either engage in a real dialogue or buzz off.  And you can drop the juvenile attempts to bait me back into your little game with insults, they're not going to work.  Grow up.

[Pres Mike]

To those who keep repeating the racist and ignorant statements of "Why can't the Palestinians live in the Sinai" or "Just trade one desert for another" or "The UN will build (tent) cities for them"

Gaza is HABITABLE. Gaza is not a desert. Sinai is a DESERT. IT HAS NO WATER.

[Pres Mike]

What worries me is Nakba 2.0 happening. What happens if fighting gets so intense in southern Gaza that Egypt allows people to flee? 45% of all homes in the Gaza Strip has been destroyed, mostly in the North. If if the same happens in the south, we could be looking at 2.5 million homeless people. It would be the greatest humantarian crisis in 100 years.

Sadly, not. 100 years covers the Second World War, Cambodia and Syria. Among many others.

A mass displacement into Egypt might be the lesser of two evils at this point; better that than staying in the ruins of Gaza.

No. The international community can rebuild Gaza like it did after 2014. That would be faster and more humane than mass tent cities in the Sini Desert without water. Why folks keep arguing for this solution is crazy to me.

All it does it allows Israel to bulldoze cities in the Gaza Strip and build luxury beach homes and illegal settlements.

Not tent cities. Getting them somewhere safer. Gaza is in a lot worse state than in 2014. It's going to need demolishing and rebuilding anyway.

I keep thinking about this super ignorant post. You want to move 2.5 million Palestinians to the Sinai Desert. How do you expect them to live and prosper? Gaza is not a desert, contrary to popular belief.

[Horus]

Fascinating chart that shows the incredible bias American msm has in favor of Israel.

https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonCHI/status/1744712702377750616?t=wp_hZLOzHuZa_BeS...

[Pericles]

I already made this point, but just because a city has been destroyed doesn't mean its permanently unliveable. It gets rebuilt and its residents return to their homes. For example, 90% of Warsaw was levelled to the ground in 1944 and the residents that hadn't already been killed were expelled. After the war though, the city was completely rebuilt and is now a prosperous cultural and commercial European city. Even the Old Town that was destroyed was reconstructed and looks impressively authentic.

[Vosem]

Fascinating chart that shows the incredible bias American msm has in favor of Israel.

https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonCHI/status/1744712702377750616?t=wp_hZLOzHuZa_BeS...

Well, presumably this is because one side is a uniformed military and the other side, from a legal perspective (...my understanding is even from the legal perspective of the Palestinian Authority) is random criminals. You still see way too much unthinking acceptance of a Gazan narrative (both in terms of repeating numbers about casualty rates which literally don't add up, and in terms of promoting sending aid to Gaza, even though this is generally how Hamas is able to resupply).

My position is still that the media has an insanely pro-Palestinian bias until they stop repeating Hamas's numbers and begin advocating for all shipments of aid to Gaza to cease until there is an unconditional surrender, and that there should be criminal investigations brought against organizations which have sent aid to Gaza or advocated that others do so.

[Pres Mike]

I already made this point, but just because a city has been destroyed doesn't mean its permanently unliveable. It gets rebuilt and its residents return to their homes. For example, 90% of Warsaw was levelled to the ground in 1944 and the residents that hadn't already been killed were expelled. After the war though, the city was completely rebuilt and is now a prosperous cultural and commercial European city. Even the Old Town that was destroyed was reconstructed and looks impressively authentic.

Yeah but @Silent Hunter insisted the people of Gaza would rather live their homes forever and live in the Sinai Desert. According to him, the international community would build world class cities for them which would be faster than rebuilding Gaza.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

One concern I have is about the potential radicalization of southern Gaza.  If one uses the 2006 elections to argue many Palestinians support Hamas*, then one must also acknowledge that southern Gaza (ex: Khan Yunis and especially Rafah) was one of the core areas of opposition to Hamas in the election.  The majority of folks in the southern half of Gaza quite clearly rejected what Hamas was selling and wanted nothing to do with them in that elections.  

The area would be critical for anti-Hamas/non-violent Palestinian party in Gaza and I worry that if Israel handles the area the way it has Gaza City (where Hamas seemingly enjoyed very enthusiastic support in 2006), it will cost the world generations of would-be anti-terrorist Palestinians in the area.  Palestinian civilians who think of Israel as something other than hellfire and death falling from the sky have to come from somewhere in both Gaza and the West Bank.

*As I have said elsewhere, I strongly oppose using 2006 as evidence Palestinians support Hamas.  Hamas worked very hard in that election to rebrand themselves domestically by marketing themselves to Palestinian voters as a pro-democracy party that had essentially matured out of non-self-defense violence/civilian-targeted terrorism (almost as if they thought most Palestinians opposed and would not vote for terrorism or totalitarianism when presented with another option).  Instead, Hamas focused heavily on attacking corruption by Fatah and marketing itself as a good government alternative of sorts.  Very different from how they behaved once they gained power (and to be clear, I am only talking about how they marketed themselves to Palestinians, as opposed to the international community).

Even so, the popular vote was only a narrow Hamas plurality.  The real Hamas landslide came from the district seats.  No one knew how the district lines would play out and it turned out that Hamas’ vote distribution meant that they wildly over-performed in these districts which became the functional equivalent of a completely unintentional pro-Hamas gerrymander.  The maximized their district seats in their strongholds and even won most of the district seats in swingy or outright Fatah-leaning areas.  IIRC the overall popular vote was a narrow Hamas win and certainly not anything resembling a clear mandate.

Thanks for the info, I didn't know this.
It's also worth noting that Hamas was facing protests in Gaza before October 7th happened. Even news stories such as some Israeli soldiers forcing Palestinian women to go naked didn't seem to really register in Gaza specifically remotely as some of the discontent people had under Hamas rule.
But what can ordinary people do against an armed gang with strong outside backing? Not too much. Notwithstanding this, Hamas' situation in Gaza was perhaps quite a bit more perilous than people outside realized.

[Silent Hunter]

I already made this point, but just because a city has been destroyed doesn't mean its permanently unliveable. It gets rebuilt and its residents return to their homes. For example, 90% of Warsaw was levelled to the ground in 1944 and the residents that hadn't already been killed were expelled. After the war though, the city was completely rebuilt and is now a prosperous cultural and commercial European city. Even the Old Town that was destroyed was reconstructed and looks impressively authentic.

Yeah but @Silent Hunter insisted the people of Gaza would rather live their homes forever and live in the Sinai Desert. According to him, the international community would build world class cities for them which would be faster than rebuilding Gaza.

I never said that. What I said was that some Gazans might need to temporarily live in other locations if their home areas are uninhabitable, because that's a better alternative then dying.

The rebuilding of Warsaw took years, I believe. Certainly many cities had bomb sites still present into the 1960s.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Another one bites the dust.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67914727

Wissam al-Tawil has been nullified on Lebanese soil.

The Israeli's are sending a strong message to Hezbollah about their potential vulnerability.

[Pres Mike]

I already made this point, but just because a city has been destroyed doesn't mean its permanently unliveable. It gets rebuilt and its residents return to their homes. For example, 90% of Warsaw was levelled to the ground in 1944 and the residents that hadn't already been killed were expelled. After the war though, the city was completely rebuilt and is now a prosperous cultural and commercial European city. Even the Old Town that was destroyed was reconstructed and looks impressively authentic.

Yeah but @Silent Hunter insisted the people of Gaza would rather live their homes forever and live in the Sinai Desert. According to him, the international community would build world class cities for them which would be faster than rebuilding Gaza.

I never said that. What I said was that some Gazans might need to temporarily live in other locations if their home areas are uninhabitable, because that's a better alternative then dying.

The rebuilding of Warsaw took years, I believe. Certainly many cities had bomb sites still present into the 1960s.

I distinctly remember you saying
-Building settlements in Sinai wouldn't take any longer than rebuilding Gaza
-These settlements wouldn't be tent cities
-A significant portion of Gaza residents would rather leave Gaza forever and start over in the Sinai

[Pres Mike]

What worries me is Nakba 2.0 happening. What happens if fighting gets so intense in southern Gaza that Egypt allows people to flee? 45% of all homes in the Gaza Strip has been destroyed, mostly in the North. If if the same happens in the south, we could be looking at 2.5 million homeless people. It would be the greatest humantarian crisis in 100 years.

Sadly, not. 100 years covers the Second World War, Cambodia and Syria. Among many others.

A mass displacement into Egypt might be the lesser of two evils at this point; better that than staying in the ruins of Gaza.

No. The international community can rebuild Gaza like it did after 2014. That would be faster and more humane than mass tent cities in the Sini Desert without water. Why folks keep arguing for this solution is crazy to me.

All it does it allows Israel to bulldoze cities in the Gaza Strip and build luxury beach homes and illegal settlements.

Not tent cities. Getting them somewhere safer. Gaza is in a lot worse state than in 2014. It's going to need demolishing and rebuilding anyway.

[Pres Mike]

What worries me is Nakba 2.0 happening. What happens if fighting gets so intense in southern Gaza that Egypt allows people to flee? 45% of all homes in the Gaza Strip has been destroyed, mostly in the North. If if the same happens in the south, we could be looking at 2.5 million homeless people. It would be the greatest humantarian crisis in 100 years.

Sadly, not. 100 years covers the Second World War, Cambodia and Syria. Among many others.

A mass displacement into Egypt might be the lesser of two evils at this point; better that than staying in the ruins of Gaza.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Another one bites the dust.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67914727

Wissam al-Tawil has been nullified on Lebanese soil.

The Israeli's are sending a strong message to Hezbollah about their potential vulnerability.

Or a strong message that they should get more involved in the conflict and attack Israel from the north. Obviously that carries significant risks for Hezbollah—though, I suspect Hezbollah‘s relative restraint thus far has less to do with them not wanting to fight Israel, and more them (and Iran) not wanting to jeopardize their power within Lebanon itself.

It’s important to stress that Lebanese Hezbollah is the key proxy for Iran’s “Axis of Resistance”; without them, Iran’s external projection of force across the region (and world) is seriously degraded.

[Comrade Funk]

Likud lawmaker Danny Danon doubles down on 'voluntary migration' calls after U.S. rejects idea

Likud MK Vaturi: Gaza must be burned. There are no innocents left there, those who remain must be eliminated

[patzer]

My position is still that the media has an insanely pro-Palestinian bias until they stop repeating Hamas's numbers and begin advocating for all shipments of aid to Gaza to cease until there is an unconditional surrender, and that there should be criminal investigations brought against organizations which have sent aid to Gaza or advocated that others do so.

The media's anti-Israel bias is bad enough that the BBC has to keep putting out apologies for its bias https://deadline.com/2024/01/bbc-apologizes-reporting-hamas-israel-execution-claims-1235700076/

[Pres Mike]

Now that I presented a map showing Sinai is a desert and Gaza is not, does anyone still support expelling 2.5 million Palestinians from Gaza? Or think the Palestinians would want that?

I notice @Silent Hunter never responded me reposting his own posts despite now claiming he did not hold that position a while back

[Silent Hunter]

Now that I presented a map showing Sinai is a desert and Gaza is not, does anyone still support expelling 2.5 million Palestinians from Gaza? Or think the Palestinians would want that?

I notice @Silent Hunter never responded me reposting his own posts despite now claiming he did not hold that position a while back

I was at work.

I never held that position then. It was not a "support" in the sense it is something I desire; it was a statement that might be the less bad option than mass death in the ruins of Gaza.

Also, in my first post I was referring to Egypt as a whole.

Your statement I support ethnic cleansing in Gaza is not only false, it is defamatory.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The argument that given the opportunity to move elsewhere to somewhere with better prospects, much of the population of the Gaza Strip would choose it, is very different from the argument that forcibly removing the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip is legitimate.

[GeneralMacArthur]

For what it's worth, Gaza has a water crisis anyway, they were totally reliant on an underground aquifer that they polluted and ruined in the 90s (no, it's not Israel's fault for failing to teach them how to properly maintain their aquifer or whatever) which is why they are now almost entirely dependent on Israel giving them fresh water.  Remember when Israel cut off their fresh water line to Gaza -- after Gaza declared war on Israel -- and people called it genocide?  If your reason for preferring Gaza over Sinai is "they have water", but that water comes from Israel anyway, then Israel could just build an extra 25 miles of pipe and Sinai would then have the same access to fresh water that Gaza currently enjoys -- provided the government of Gaza doesn't decide to slice up that pipe and turn it into rockets to fire at Israeli civilians during peacetime.

And what's more, remember that underground aquifer I said Gaza ruined with pollution?  There are several underground aquifers in the Sinai peninsula that currently offer unpolluted freshwater supply.  Now those are steadily being polluted by the Egyptian government, but still, the point is that the situation in Sinai is not worse than in Gaza with respect to water.  In fact, the Sinai Peninsula -- a place we think of as being empty -- is able to sustain a population of nearly 1.5 million people.  Most of those people live in cities along the coast, similar to Gaza, which at many points in its history was considered just an extension of the same territory (prior to 1967 it was just Egypt).  The capital city, Arish (home to 200,000) is only 25 miles west of the Egypt/Palestine border crossing at Rafah.

None of this is to make any argument in favor of, or against, such a population transfer.  But I do want to put a stop to the false notion that the Sinai Peninsula is just a barren wasteland of people living in tents, if nobody else is going to.  On the contrary, one of the main industries in Sinai currently is tourism -- those coastal cities are home to lots of beach resorts.  I myself had the opportunity to spend a night at Sharm-al-Sheikh when I was in Egypt a while back, but I chose to visit the Suez Canal instead because I'm a nerd.

BTW, Gaza also has desalination plants (a technology, by the way, that Israel invented and then graciously shared with Gaza) but they have had trouble running them because Israel as of late has been restricting their fuel, and when Israel does let them have fuel, Hamas steals it and uses it to make bombs that they can use to blow up school buses of Israeli children during peacetime.  This is a situation that has an obvious path forward but one where the Palestinians have to take the first step.

[Horus]

Likud lawmaker Danny Danon doubles down on 'voluntary migration' calls after U.S. rejects idea

Likud MK Vaturi: Gaza must be burned. There are no innocents left there, those who remain must be eliminated

"They don't really mean that" - GMac