At least 274 Palestinians were killed and 698 wounded in Israeli strikes on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, Gaza’s health ministry said on Sunday. The Israeli military said its forces came under heavy fire during the daytime operation.
The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, called it a “massacre”, while the UN’s aid chief described in graphic detail scenes of “shredded bodies on the ground”.
“Nuseirat refugee camp is the epicentre of the seismic trauma that civilians in Gaza continue to suffer,” Martin Griffiths said in a post on X, calling for a ceasefire and the release of all hostages.
I agree that removing Hamas would make it far easier for there to be a peaceful solution. Unfortunately, Israel and Netanyahu took that option off the table a long time ago. If they don’t like that they should have thought about the consequences of their actions. The PLA was willing to negotiate and that didn’t work for them. Hamas is far less willing to peacefully negotiate, which gave Israel a handy whipping boy for not resolving this peacefully. Now people are dying and they claim to be the wronged party, when in fact both parties have wronged each other for hundreds or thousands of years.
If you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind. Unfortunate that it’s messy for everyone around them.
I don’t think there’s any reality where anyone absolutely has to suffer Hamas (though Iran would have a say otherwise), and their negotiations have been such that they’d be able to rebuild in Gaza, which Israel doesn’t agree with. Realistically Hamas needs to be neutered politically, and that comes with reformed governance.
And in a better world, I’d agree with you. But when Isreal spends a decade or more propping them up, well, that’s how it goes.
Hamas actions are their own, no one forced them to put civilians in danger. While netanyahu needs to go, he is not to blame for the attrocities Hamas commits against their own people. Notwithstanding netanyahu’s errors, this is not just the way it goes.
Realistically Likud and the Jewish Power Party needs to be neutered politically. Why is nobody talking about how Israel has convicted terrorists in its cabinet while at the same time complaining that Palestinians should have popular political parties banned? Rightwing extremism on one side begets rightwing extremism by the other side in response. This has been the case for over 30 years, we just had the 30 year anniversary of Israeli terrorist Baruch Goldstein’s massacre which kicked of Hamas’ wave of bombings in Israel.
Yes and… No. But mostly no.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/23/opinions/gazan-hope-for-peace-masri/index.html
As a proud Palestinian from Gaza who has dedicated my adult life to trying to put an end to this never-ending cycle of war and suffering for my people, I have learned this: No matter how much you and your people are hurting, more hateful absolutism — from either side — is never the answer. While glorifying radical positions may feel like advancing social justice, it only contributes to the very extremism that makes peace impossible.
On the Israeli side, the Knesset must move from an approach of conflict management to one focused on engaging in continuous negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization, aimed at reaching an end to the military occupation and the emergence of a negotiated two-state reality. On the Palestinian side, those supporting Hamas’ terrorism must stop.
In Gaza’s legislative council elections of 2005 and 2006, I, along with more than 50% of voting age Palestinians, voted for Fatah, which controlled the Palestinian Authority at the time. I did not vote for Hamas because they rejected peace, coexistence and a two-state solution and adopted armed resistance against Israel. Unfortunately, Fatah candidates split the vote, giving power to Hamas, who received only 44.45% of the people’s vote with only one majority win in one out of 16 districts.
Hamas should have been disqualified from running in the first place for its unwillingness to recognize the Oslo Accords of 1993 that made the election possible. However, two factors led to Hamas’ participation in the 2005 elections. First, then-President of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas thought Hamas would change and that his party, Fatah, would win. Second, US President George W. Bush’s administration clearly misunderstood the situation in the region and, in his effort to spread democracy, supported the inclusion of all Palestinian factions in the election and didn’t push to stop Hamas from running even though Hamas had been identified as a terrorist organization by the US Department of State in 1993.
Since 2007, when Hamas administered its bloody coup against the Palestinian Authority, Gazans have been subject to collective punishment policies from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt, which closed its border to Gaza (only briefly opening it on occasion to allow the movement of people and some goods).
