Excerpt:
The utter astonishment at Hamas’ brutal attack, and the refusal to understand it in the context of decades of oppression, reflect an Israeli position that genuinely wonders why the Palestinians did not cling to their status as prisoners in Gaza, say thank you for Israel’s generosity in allowing a few thousand people to work for minimal wages on the lands from which their families were expelled, and bring their occupiers flowers.
Indeed, how many Israelis care about the situation in Gaza so long as Palestinians are not firing rockets or breaching the fence to enter our communities? Who bothered to ask what “calm” looks like in the besieged enclave? As far as most Israeli Jews are concerned, the more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza should have kept their mouths shut and embraced their starvation. But today, even this option is no longer satisfactory, leaving Israelis to rally behind a new ultimatum for Gaza: emigration or annihilation.
There hasn’t been an election in Gaza since 2007, 16 years ago. Maybe they could have at least tried to have some sort of democratic process in that time? Palestine needs to appeal to the international community for support in negotiating with Israel. I agree Israel has not handled the situation humanley and has not done their best to negotiate peace either. However, Gaza is definitely not going to get anywhere under their current leadership, and this war had no chance of success for them, and their situation does not justify attacking or kidnapping civilians.
The reason Bibi installed Hamas was to to make the democratic process more difficult. I think it’s more likely that Hamas is responsible for the lack of elections than the actual democratic will of the people in Gaza. That being said, Gaza has fared better than the West Bank in terms of resisting invasion so I wouldn’t be surprised if they have support.
The international community outside the US and the UK is essentially unanimous in denouncing Israel constantly for decades for thwir imperialist project. It doesn’t mean much when the US has vero power at the UN and is itself more interested in the strategic advantage of Israel exactly as it is (although our government prefers there was less visible carnage). This has been the norm for decades, so an outside negotiation doesn’t seem like a relaible method especially since the negotiation would be taking place while ethnic cleansing is happening in the West Bank and now in Gaza.
All this isn’t to justify a thing. It’s not ok to kill inncocent people, full stop. This is to demonstrate who has the power to stop this, and the decision of Netanyahu and his Likud cronies is that having an ethnostate is the priority over having peace or allowing Palestinian nationals to have rights in their own land. Killing and eating someone is also wrong, but the Donnor party did it because they were in a desperate situation where the choice was not right or wrong but living or dying. If an outside party forced the donnor party into that circumstance and kept them there, that party is more responsible for what happened than those with no options fighting to survive.