The death of Haniyeh, a significant figure in Hamas’s political and diplomatic structure, has raised serious questions about the future of ongoing ceasefire negotiations. American officials had recently indicated that these talks, mediated by Qatar, the United States, and Egypt, were close to yielding a temporary ceasefire and a potential hostage release deal.
However, the assassination has cast doubt on the feasibility of these efforts moving forward.
Any outcome where Hamas was permitted to live after October 7th or to govern Gaza was never going to be acceptable, and Hamas was unlikely to ever concede this.
Anything less than the end of Hamas would have been a terrible outcome for all sides. They’d regroup, rearm, and in a few years’ time they’d attack again, more civilians would die, and people would start clutching their pearls and warning about ‘escalation’. And in the meantime, the Palestinians in Gaza would have had to endure their brutal rule.
Once Hamas has been sufficiently degraded, there’ll be some sort of regional coalition to rebuild Gaza with Saudi, Emirati and Kuwaiti involvement and US security guarantees, a deradicalisation process for the Palestinians there, and the construction of a civil bureaucracy. The international community will be pouring in financial assistance, except that this time it won’t be used to build hundreds of miles of terror dungeons.
The West Bank is a tougher nut to crack. But Israel will have to deal with the Hezbollah Jihadis first.
You don’t think by perhaps, oh I don’t know commiting genocide and killing thousands of innocent people this will just infact coerce another generation of Hamas recruits ?
Go away zionist.
“the West Bank is a tougher nut to crack”
what do you mean by that? Hamas has little to no influence there, and it is governed by a civilian government that was democratically elected. In fact, they’ve been trying to hold new elections, something that Israel has been blocking for years now. There is little to no violence coming from the West Bank.
Contrary to that, illegal settlements (both under Israeli and international law) are tacitly or overly supported by the Israeli government. What is needed is a full Israeli withdrawal back to the internally recognized borders and internationally supervised democratic elections. That is the only way a lasting peace can be build there.
what makes you think there’s little to no violence in the west bank? Are you basing that on media coverage of incidents, or on same comprehensive data source?
not saying there is no violence at all, but there were only about 40 Israeli fatalities in and around the West Bank in all of 2023, as opposed to close to 500 Palestinians killed in the same time span:
https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/WB_info-graphic_15_Dec_2023.pdf
That is despite the fact that Israeli Settlers are routinely and violently displacing Palestinian people in these territories and resentment against Israel is higher than it has been in a long time. Considering that only a few hours away, their perceived national brethren are involved in an active war against Israel, that number is staggeringly low, and would likely be even lower if Israel kept its illegal settlements in check.
The overwhelming majority of violence in the West Bank is committed against Palestinians, not by them.
I mean how the occupation can end. It’s not obvious how that can happen, even though it obviously should. Go on Google Images, then search ‘topography of Israel and the West Bank’. If a nascent civilian government of Palestine falls to Hamas or similar forces then they’d be overlooking Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. They’d have a throughline to Iran via Syria-Lebanon. That’s not a risk Israel can take.
This simply isn’t correct. Hamas operates in much of the West Bank, as do allied groups like the Jenin Brigades and Lion’s Den in Nablus. They’re also enormously popular among West Bank Palestinians.
So democratic that the current President Abbas is currently serving the 19th year of his 4-year term.
This is misleading at best. They’re not trying to hold new elections, because every single opinion poll for about 15 years now show that Fatah would lose badly and certainly Hamas would become the new government of the West Bank, which would finally shatter the possibility of there ever being a Palestinian state. That doesn’t serve Fatah or Israel. Israel therefore keeps Fatah on life-support as the least-bad option.
Because it’s been suppressed by Fatah in co-operation with Israeli security services who’ve been operating in the West Bank before and after October 7th.
By the way, right at this moment thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank are out marching in support of Hamas and against the killing of Ismail Hainyeh: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/dismay-in-gaza-and-rare-open-support-for-hamas-in-west-bank-after-haniyeh-killing/
Yeah it’ll all blow over eventually once “Hamas” is gone.
If you’re from the UK I’m guessing you’re under 30 right?
Britain’s cycle of exterminating Irish nationalists every generation and being surprised when the next generation hates you too would be familiar otherwise.
Well, no, not overnight. There’d need to be a denazification process similar to what took place in Germany and Japan after the Second World War. The only people who know how to do that with a Muslim population are the Saudis and Emiratis, who succeeded in deradicalising their own populations in the decades following 9/11.
They’d play a central role in managing the civil administration of Gaza while that was given time to show fruits. It would obviously be far too early for any sort of democracy in Gaza, but it’s a goal to strive towards in the long term.
Ah yes, Japan, country that famously got rid of it’s militant past rather than just ignoring it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reverse_Course&diffonly=true
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi
Please understand you live in a different reality to the rest of us, one where “Emiratis” had spent 70 years have their land and lives stolen before being “denazified”, one where Saudi Arabia is a model to aspire to and definitely don’t use violence to pursue their aims, one where Palestinians were somehow radicalised by anything other than the actions of Israel and Zionism.
Sure, I’m aware that I’m better informed on this than most people are who just rely on ambient vibes and prejudices. I’m not challenging that.
Neither the Gazans nor the Arabs of Palestinians have spent 70 years having their land and lives stolen. This sort of superficial analysis is commonplace in the West but bears no relation to the historical reality of the conditions under which the State of Israel came into existence.
The best account, drawing especially on the work of Benny Morris and more recent scholars, was given in a lecture by political analyst Haviv Rettig Gur here.
Why would you trust the country that give uncondtional support to israel and it’s allies to gouvern gaza. Gaza would become like the west bank where the settlers would rules
Israel has no interest in governing Gaza. It wants to maintain security measures but that’s it.
The actual governing would be done by non-radicalised Palestinians alongside the Saudis, Emiratis and Kuwaitis, presumably some sort of council being formed and administration constructed from what remains of the civilian infrastructure of Hamas.
Israel realized that it’s better to control gaza from the outside with the blockade
The blockade was instituted in response to the Gazans electing Hamas in free and fair, internationally monitored democratic elections, and then beginning to fire rockets at Israel, to try and reduce their ability to import weapons or components which could be used to create weapons.
There didn’t even used to be a wall. Before Hamas, you could just drive from Tel Aviv to the beaches of Gaza and back with no checkpoints.
A lot of Palestinians miss those days. I’m pretty sure most Israelis do, too.
Gaza has restrictions from israel since 1967. The more tight restrictions get, the more hate there will be feom the affected people.
Sure. So what? For the next 10 years it averaged nearly 10% GDP growth per year.
I think this rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of the conditions in Gaza pre-October 7th.
Gaza was pretty wealthy. The average income exceeded that of their neighbouring Egyptians. Yes there were difficulties importing some goods or products, but it was rarely impossible for consumer goods. Plus, in the end, they (as we now know) had miles of smuggling tunnels.
That’s one reason why Egypt started squealing when Israel began to move into Rafah. There were minimal civilian casualties, but the IDF discovered the vast tunnels, some big enough to move a tank through, between Rafah and Egypt.
The idea that everyone was sort of sitting around in tents and mud is nonsense.
They also received billions of dollars in international aid, which Hamas of course simply spent building weapons and terror dungeons. But many Gazans went to work in Israel, many went to university abroad, built decent lives. All undone because of Hamas, tragically.
Watch this tourism video by a Gazan from 2019. Does this look like a Warsaw Ghetto to you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBo7i-TXy6s
Yes times could be tough. But times are often tough all around the world. Ask the Sudanese or the Ethiopians. They’ve got average incomes multiple times lower than the Gazans did. They didn’t launch genocidal wars or broadcast TV shows for children calling for beheading al-Yahud.
Removed by mod
Removed, civility.
Facts don’t care about your feelings.
It is notoriously hard to find non-radicalized folks after repeatedly dropping bombs on their homes.
If that was genuinely Isreal’s aim they would be limiting their intervention to targeted strikes or utilizing the Palestinian social apparatus to try and secure custody of the most extreme Hamas members… they’d also be rabidly going after any Isreali settlers threatening the peace process.
Genuinely trying to build a better civilian government (which is something I’m absolutely supportive of) looks a lot different than what we’ve been seeing.
IMO Netanyahu and most of his party don’t really care if Palestinians live or die - they just want to make Gaza so inhospitable that they all flee as refugees so that Isreal can freely claim the land. With some very notable exceptions I think the preference is that no Palestinians die so that it doesn’t look as bad on the international stage… though a few fucks literally want blood.
Sure. It was hard after WW2 with Germany and Japan. America literally nuked two Japanese cities, more or less wiping them from the map, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, many orders of times greater than have been killed in this defensive war by Israel.
But we managed to do it.
We did in fact succeed in both countries in deradicalising them and now they’re both thriving democracies.
This would only be true if you had literally zero clue about the extent of Hamas’ physical embeddedness within the infrastructure of Gaza. They’ve had 17 years to turn the entire strip into a deathtrap. Particularly easy to do that when they don’t care about Palestinian civilians. They’re all just ‘martyrs’, as Haniyeh agreed.
Does Israel want a Palestinian state? No, not really. Especially not after October 7th. But it was willing to go along with that in the 1990s after the First Intifada made its point with dignity. In December 2000, they accepted President Clinton’s offer to the Palestinians of a two-state solution, with a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem, some minor landswaps for the largest WB settlements, Palestinian airspace sovereignty, shared custody over the Temple Mount, etc.
The response was that Arafat walked away and launched the Second Intifada, a multi-year onslaught of wave after wave of suicide bombers, mass shootings, driving vehicles into crowds, bombing restaurants, and slaughtering schoolchildren. The Palestinians also had the distinction of inventing an entirely unprecedented form of terrorism: they pioneered the use of children as suicide bombers.
The Israeli left, which had pinned its colours to the ‘land for peace’ strategy which had worked with Egypt (Sinai) and Jordan, has never recovered from the Palestinian Second Intifada. The Intifada only ended when Israel created the walls and security checkpoints across and around the West Bank, the same thing which Palestinians today so hate. Well, guess what, maybe you should have made better choices…
So does Israel today want a Palestinian state? No. Why would they? They offered one in 2000 and got wave after wave of suicide bombers. They pulled out of Gaza unilaterally in 2005 and gave the Palestinians a democratic election. They elected Hamas, which culminated in October 7th, the single worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. You’ve got the West Bank where the PA and UNRWA teach children how to count and do geometry by talking about firing rockets at Tel Aviv.
In a future scenario where the Palestinians were willing to live in peace next to Israel? Many Israelis would still say yes. But nobody in Israel thinks that’s ever going to be the actual scenario, and if they did then October 7th more or less decided that one for them.
Your account is about 8 hours old (from when I made this comment), so I kind of just assume you’re trying to troll or rage-bait.
7th October happens when you steal land and displace 750 000 people, murder along the way, create a apartheid state and humiliate a entire race. Hamas is a creation out of Israel’s actions. Israel is the core reason as to why there’s so much hatred and death.
So you’re fine with Israel literally murdering, stealing land and humiliating Palestinian people. Apparently. However when these people literally fight back, it is suddenly wrong in your eyes.
Not true. Israel will never allow it. Their PM proudly boosted that he’s proud of not allowing a Palestinian state.
You’ve proven to be an immensely Israel supporter and Zionist. You purposefully overlook Israel’s hateful behavior. A bit of history of your ‘‘precious’’ Israel:
Israel became an actual state in 1948 by displacing 750 000 Palestinian people and murdering many (men, women and children). Laying sieges, bombarding villages and population centers, setting fires to homes, properties and goods. Planting mines among the rubble to prevent any of the expelled people from returning (source: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by ilan Pappé).
Hamas did not exist until 1987, they became an actual group only in 1987 because of all the horrifying things Israel had done from 1948 up until 1987. Which is approximately 40 years after what Israel had done to the Palestinian people.
You ought to learn about history and political matters before you even write or speak about these matters. You clearly have no knowledge about the state you are so hard trying to defend.
Since you’re a Zionist, I will finish this comment with a list of sources of Israel’s action and then block you. I don’t want to read zionists stuff, I know you can still comment but that won’t be my problem.
1. Strapped down, blindfolded, held in diapers: Israeli whistleblowers detail abuse of Palestinians in shadowy detention center.
Death toll in Israeli attack on displaced Palestinians in Rafah rises to 45.
Israeli forces’ systemic denial of fair trial rights to Palestinian child prisoners amounts to arbitrary detention.
Israel prevents hundreds of worshippers from entering Al-Aqsa on first night of Ramadan.
Israel’s PM Netanyahu ‘proud’ of preventing establishment of a Palestinian state.
Far-right minister says nuking Gaza an option, PM suspends him from cabinet meetings.
Israel Defense Minister Calls Palestinians ‘Human Animals’ Amid Israeli Aggression.
Video shows Israeli settler trying to take over Palestinian house.
Hamas official says group would lay down its arms if an independent Palestinian state is established
This was added on Instagram yesterday, swipe to the left for the video with English subtitles;
EDIT: Corrected the links, added some more text.
OK