Israel-Hamas War 2023

[viper37]

The Beirut summer 1982 siege could be a useful guide to what might happen now.

Then the Israeli's cornered a Palestinian terrorist group in a heavily built up urban area up against the sea. IIRC West Beirut's population  was under a 10th of Gaza's and by area similarly smaller, I think it took over a month for the siege to be ended.
So I can see Palestinians killed toping 10,000, perhaps as high as 50,000 if the Israelis try to end it with occupation. 

And of course Arafat and the PLO were people you or some intermediators Could negotiate with, Hamas in contrast  will not go into exile, so I expect them to expire in the rubble surround by mountains of corpses.

Didn't Israel end this conflict in 2000 and go back in 2006 for a second round?

[viper37]

Hamas cannot have been hoping for a hostage swap given their brutality.  They must have done this hoping to create the reaction from Israel that is now coming. If it was not already an eternal conflict, it will be now.

Someone I know from another board has Palestinian family and lived there for a while.

I've never been on very good terms with the guy, but I respect him and his opinions on the conflict, without agreeing entirely with his vision.

His opinion on Hamas is that it's a classic terror group move: they don't care what you or I think about them, they don't care what Jordan and Egypt think.  What they hope to achieve is to convince Israel that the price they pay to occupy Palestine is so high that it ain't worth it.  Eventually, they will have no choice but to withdraw from a huge part of the occupied territories because their civilian population will have had enough.

I do not believe Hamas has any realistic chance of seeing this happening.  Israel will reduce the entire Gaza strip to rubble before they cede a contiguous territory to Palestinians in the West Bank.

[Iormlund]

It must be nice to view the world in black and white like you do.  Bad guys, good guys. Cobra on one side, GI Joes on the other.  Everything is so clear, so simple.  No nuance, no grey areas.  Palestinians, all bad, Israelis, all good.

I thought one of the Spanish EUOT members put it rather elegantly. To sum up:

Ones view children's potential life. The others see their potential death ("martyred" or beheaded).

[OttoVonBismarck]

The Beirut summer 1982 siege could be a useful guide to what might happen now.

Then the Israeli's cornered a Palestinian terrorist group in a heavily built up urban area up against the sea. IIRC West Beirut's population  was under a 10th of Gaza's and by area similarly smaller, I think it took over a month for the siege to be ended.
So I can see Palestinians killed toping 10,000, perhaps as high as 50,000 if the Israelis try to end it with occupation. 

And of course Arafat and the PLO were people you or some intermediators Could negotiate with, Hamas in contrast  will not go into exile, so I expect them to expire in the rubble surround by mountains of corpses.

It could resemble the Battle of Mosul as well, when the coalition took out ISIS's last major urban stronghold in Iraq. Over a month of fighting, I think a couple thousand coalition dead and several tens of thousands of ISIS dead.

A lot will depend on the nature of the urban fighting. If it is "street by street, with advances behind lines of artillery fire" the Gazan casualties will be enormous.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Hamas cannot have been hoping for a hostage swap given their brutality.  They must have done this hoping to create the reaction from Israel that is now coming. If it was not already an eternal conflict, it will be now.

Someone I know from another board has Palestinian family and lived there for a while.

I've never been on very good terms with the guy, but I respect him and his opinions on the conflict, without agreeing entirely with his vision.

His opinion on Hamas is that it's a classic terror group move: they don't care what you or I think about them, they don't care what Jordan and Egypt think.  What they hope to achieve is to convince Israel that the price they pay to occupy Palestine is so high that it ain't worth it.  Eventually, they will have no choice but to withdraw from a huge part of the occupied territories because their civilian population will have had enough.

I do not believe Hamas has any realistic chance of seeing this happening.  Israel will reduce the entire Gaza strip to rubble before they cede a contiguous territory to Palestinians in the West Bank.

I think this is how many 20th century terror groups or guerrillas see things—but it is like a former Vietnamese insurgent leader told Palestinian militants who went to him for advice in the 70s and 80s said: "The French and Americans went home. The Israelis are at home, they will never leave." It is a totally different situation when you're fighting a foreign occupation vs fighting for a shared geography with a people who live right there with you.

This is a core misunderstanding many Palestinians have to this day. They really believe some day they can make the Jews leave—and I mean leave from the river to the sea. They don't fully accept the Jews are never leaving.

[viper37]

The idea that they were "always there" is silly, but the idea that means they have less right to be there than the Arabs is confusing and dumb. The Ottoman Empire had 900,000 Jews, almost none of whom were ever going to be allowed to remain in Islamist or Arab Nationalist post-Ottoman states.

That's not a really relevant statistic, since the area of conflict is Palestine.
There was likely many more Arabs under Ottoman rule in the Ottoman Empire than Jews.

Since the Empire ceased to exists in 1922, there were a little over 80 000 Jews living in Ottoman Palestine:
Jewish and non Jewish population of Palestine 1517-present.

Up until the creation of Israel, there were always more Arabs than Jews in Palestine.

I don't think any one people can claim to have an exclusive right to the territory, or more right than the other.

[frunk]

So I deal with the principle of deterrence all the time in the context of criminal law.

Deterrence is quite obviously a less than perfect solution.  Criminals frequently commit crimes even knowing the risk of going to jail is high.

But the absence of deterrence is even worse.  If criminals know they can commit a crime without consequence, the rate of that crime shoots up.

This often comes up with shoplifting.  Sometimes stores go "it's only stuff, we don't want our employees to be hurt, so let's not try to physically stop shoplifters".  Which is a perfectly rational analysis.  Problem is if/when it becomes common knowledge that a given store won't stop shoplifters that store becomes a magnet for shoplifters.

So some level of Israeli deterrence is almost certainly necessary and required - even though nobody is under any illusions it will stop all future attacks.

Deterrence of this type only works when it is targeted at the individuals committing the acts.  When it is extended to collective punishment it fails as a deterrent and can only suppress in the short term.  Why would I behave better if the punishment can fall on me for something someone I don't know does?  That only leads to resentment.

I hope Israel deals with every single person who committed, enabled or supported these acts, but the more widespread the reprisals the less of a deterrent it is and the more it is a breeding ground for future terrorism.

[The Minsky Moment]

His opinion on Hamas is that it's a classic terror group move: they don't care what you or I think about them, they don't care what Jordan and Egypt think.  What they hope to achieve is to convince Israel that the price they pay to occupy Palestine is so high that it ain't worth it.  Eventually, they will have no choice but to withdraw from a huge part of the occupied territories because their civilian population will have had enough.

With respect, that is failing to understand what Hamas is about.  They don't make any distinction between occupied or non-occupied territories.  Right now they are attacking lands originally assigned to Israel in the UN partition plan.  Their objective is and always has been the complete extirpation of Israel and its replacement by an Islamic theocracy that would either entirely Judenrein or with the few surviving Jews reduced to dhimmi-hood.

Hamas is not Fatah.  The latter has done awful things but has been willing to contemplate coexistence with some kind of Jewish state.  Not so for Hamas.

[viper37]

With respect, that is failing to understand what Hamas is about.  They don't make any distinction between occupied or non-occupied territories.  Right now they are attacking lands originally assigned to Israel in the UN partition plan.  Their objective is and always has been the complete extirpation of Israel and its replacement by an Islamic theocracy that would either entirely Judenrein or with the few surviving Jews reduced to dhimmi-hood.

Like I said, I disagree with his opinion.

I'm in agreement with you over Hamas objective.  I think their recent discourse over accepting a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders is just stalling for them.  I don't believe, even if Israel granted them that, that they would settle for this.

What I do believe however is that Hamas could have been marginalized long ago.

Not that a state in strictly the 1967 borders could have been a solution, but it should have been a basis of negotiation at the very least, instead of always proposing a patchwork of isolated lands here and there in the West Bank, always reducing them in size.

[Legbiter]

Jesus that is horrifying.

Somehow I doubt the Israelis will be interested in trading 1,000 terrorists for 1 captured Israeli, as was alluded to earlier.

It's vastly more horrific on telegram apparently.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The idea that they were "always there" is silly, but the idea that means they have less right to be there than the Arabs is confusing and dumb. The Ottoman Empire had 900,000 Jews, almost none of whom were ever going to be allowed to remain in Islamist or Arab Nationalist post-Ottoman states.

That's not a really relevant statistic, since the area of conflict is Palestine.
There was likely many more Arabs under Ottoman rule in the Ottoman Empire than Jews.

Since the Empire ceased to exists in 1922, there were a little over 80 000 Jews living in Ottoman Palestine:
Jewish and non Jewish population of Palestine 1517-present.

Up until the creation of Israel, there were always more Arabs than Jews in Palestine.

I don't think any one people can claim to have an exclusive right to the territory, or more right than the other.

I addressed all of this in previous posts—where the point I made was: 900,000 Jews were expelled or fled serious Arab abuse throughout the former Ottoman territories. That is before even factoring in the Holocaust refugees. As Sheilbh has noted, both Britain and America, among a number of other countries, were hostile to taking them in.

Were they just supposed to fuck off and die? Or did it maybe make some logical sense to go to Palestine where Jews had (legally under the laws of the Ottomans) bought up large tracts of land for settlement?

[viper37]

I addressed all of this in previous posts—where the point I made was: 900,000 Jews were expelled or fled serious Arab abuse throughout the former Ottoman territories. That is before even factoring in the Holocaust refugees. As Sheilbh has noted, both Britain and America, among a number of other countries, were hostile to taking them in.

Were they just supposed to fuck off and die? Or did it maybe make some logical sense to go to Palestine where Jews had (legally under the laws of the Ottomans) bought up large tracts of land for settlement?

I missed that post.  So, you're talking of all the Jews expelled from the Arab territories following the creation of Israel.

I agree Israel is their home, they had nowhere else to go.  Kinda hard to go in Europe after what had just happened.

But it's this rampant idea often propagated that Palestinians don't have any right to a country in the Middle East that I disagree with.  This idea often expressed that the refugees should move to Jordan or Syria.

If a Syrian Jew belongs in Israel now, the descendant of a Syrian Arab family who long ago emigrated to what is now Palestine/Israel belongs there just as much.  They deserve their own autonomous state with viable borders.

The people of Gaza are mainly the descendants of the refugees who were expelled of fled the IDF in the wake of the 1948 war.  Israel has always been opposed to any right of return, while at the same time keeping colonization ongoing in the West Bank creating more refugees and pushing the narrative of an empty land pre-1948, or of no Palestinian nation, as if only Zionism was a valid nationalism.

I disagree with these world views expressed by the Raz and Siegebreakers of this world.

[Razgovory]

I disagree with these world views expressed by the Raz and Siegebreakers of this world.

I say "both sides".  It's like the Allies and the Germans in WW2.  The Allies weren't perfect but they were better than the Germans.

[crazy canuck]

Ok, but isn't that the same mechanism by which the US displaced much of its Indigenous population?

No it's not remotely the same mechanism.

Take the example of Hebron.  There is a Jewish community there now of a few hundred people in a settlement recognized by the state.  Are they colonists?  Arguably so - Hebron is part of the territories occupied in Israel in the 67 war.  But hardly "cowboys and Indians" when compared to the large urban population of Hebron.

The settlement is not the first Jewish community there though.  There was a significant Jewish presence in Hebron in the Ottoman period, tracing back for many centuries.  What happened to them?  There was a massacre in the 20s and another in the 30s.  In 1948 the Jordanians took over and forbid all Jews from the land.  Does that make the Jordanians the colonial cowboys in this scenario? 

Or does the analogy just not work because the situations are not really analogous.

Your reduction of American colonialism to cowboys and Indians is absurd.

As to your other points.  You have justified forcing Palestinians off their land because war and now because of some at least partial occupation going all the way back to the 20s.  Now what about the hundreds of years the Palestinians were there?

[crazy canuck]

Hamas cannot have been hoping for a hostage swap given their brutality.  They must have done this hoping to create the reaction from Israel that is now coming. If it was not already an eternal conflict, it will be now.

Someone I know from another board has Palestinian family and lived there for a while.

I've never been on very good terms with the guy, but I respect him and his opinions on the conflict, without agreeing entirely with his vision.

His opinion on Hamas is that it's a classic terror group move: they don't care what you or I think about them, they don't care what Jordan and Egypt think.  What they hope to achieve is to convince Israel that the price they pay to occupy Palestine is so high that it ain't worth it.  Eventually, they will have no choice but to withdraw from a huge part of the occupied territories because their civilian population will have had enough.

I do not believe Hamas has any realistic chance of seeing this happening.  Israel will reduce the entire Gaza strip to rubble before they cede a contiguous territory to Palestinians in the West Bank.

Here is an opinion piece in the Globe I think will internet you.  The author makes a similar point to yours and an early point Otto made about the aims of Hamas.  It also goes into some detail regarding why Israel's policies and response make no sense and guarantees endless conflict.  I have gifted it so no need to worry about the paywall

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/519974dc5e28f762a87fb14c1570523f4fb873adfcfcb945043907ccc3c41650/LII7G6N6CFC6JD3FLXAAXVEVMM/