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You haven't been following Yemen. US is currently containing the situation by naval forces. There has been a war going on in Yemen for years, finally winding down. The US stopped supporting this war several years ago. Your idea of installing a govenment in Iran was already tried in Iraq.

Not sure about Saudi Arabia. They have already seen the mess in Iraq.

Most wars in recent memory planted the seeds for the next war. This is certainly true in the Middle East.

You might say that Trump's Abraham Accords were a proximate factor behind the current war.

I was not talking about Thailand. It was about Putin avoiding a visit to South Africa, which is technically required to arrest hum. The two sides are not consolidated yet, but US will be the core broker on Israel's side, and Arab League/OIC/BRICS, etc, etc will broker the Palestinian side. The old approach with US dominating didn't work and will never work.

This war is really on three fronts: Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank. If Israel ends up occupying Gaza, then administrative detention will happen there, too. Thanks for the link. It gives real life accounts of the effect of administrative detention on Palestinians. My link was a technical explanation by B'Tselem, which I posted because others were giving a distorted impression on administrative detention.

Unfortunately the "current events" are a cure worse than the disease.

Thailand was occupied by Japan and occasionally was bombed. It was not an enthusiatic supporter of Japan.

The colonies (or in this case territories taken from the Ottomans) were in the Levant and ruled by France and Britain. It was not the "West", but these two members of the Security Council (SC). I was trying to give more background to the creation of the SC. Russia and China were nonchalantly given permanent member status in 1945 without thinking about how things might change in the future.

The WSJ mentioned last Thursday some of the Hamas asks regarding hostage release. Their usual formula is all Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the captured IDF soldiers. However, the article said this: "Hamas told the negotiators it was ready to extend the truce by an additional four days, the officials said, and discuss the release of fighting-age men in exchange for senior Palestinians jailed in Israel." It's been clear for a long time that the exchange ratio for soldiers would be more akin to the Gilad Shalit case. Does "senior Palestinians" mean political prisoners such as Marwan Barghouti?

Where did I deny the existence of tunnels? However, disproportionate killing is undeniable. Instead of bunker busters, IDF should use their technology to enter the tunnels instead of destroying them. Maybe they can find traces of hostage presence in the process. Bunker busters might kill hostages instead of Hamas people. As for whether they finish al-Shifa off with bombs remains to be seen. So far they are doing a good job of making hospitals unable to function.

If you had looked at the post above, this link was there: https://www.btselem.org/administrative_detention

Well, the settlers and Ben Gvir are working on it.

Your alternative reality?

Maybe Netanyahu is quite content to see Biden twist in the wind in the expectation that young US voters will abandon Biden in 2024 and Trump will win, so that the Greater Israel project can forge ahead full speed.

Didn't he also go to the Sinai side of the Rafah crossing? I have covered administrative detention in a response to Morch above.

Apparently the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem does not agree with you: https://www.btselem.org/administrative_detention A two-state solution for now is the only way to stop this cycle of violence. Maybe in the future, Israel will deal with the apartheid within its borders. Then a one-state solution would be feasible if people wanted that. I believe that Putin did not go to South Africa and sent Lavrov instead.

Somewhere back in this topic I suggested a veto override mechanism. UN Charter followed the WW I outmoded concept of victors dictating to the world, so the "powers" were the countries given veto power in the SC. Two of these were European colonial powers at the time - Britain and France, while the US was supposedly advocating abolition of colonies. In spite of its veto power, USSR was not able to block the UN authorized defense of South Korea, while China a/k/a Taiwan was irrelevant back then. Nowadays China & Russia seem to have imperial ambitions.

This sounds really paranoid. Are getting worried that the two-state solution might actually happen?

It seems odd that Cato Institute would favor another war, but supporters of the Israeli government's agenda on Iran want to get into any organization where they can have a platform to influence opinion of various elites.

The IDF includes settler militants. That may explain why we can see settlers committing murder why IDF soldiers look on.

First of all, are the Arab Israelis also Zionists? Maybe you will claim that the Druze are Zionists??? It's not fair to accuse all Israelis for this mass murder. There are a few Israelis who still believe in peace and justice for the Palestinians. The criminals like Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, and Smotrich are certainly Zionists. Zionism went criminal as far back as the 1930s.

10 Commandments: I find it ironic that the whole settler enterprise is spearheaded by "religious" Jews, who commit murder, etc, with government-issued weapons. Long before this, a settler murdered Rabin. Supposedly blessed by a rabbi? So as to Arafat's religiosity, that is not the point on which to judge the question of his concern for the Muslim community's interest in Jerusalem. Muslims are more or less religious, but they all have a high concern about Jerusalem IMO.

Let's wait to pass judgement until there can be international observers who can look freely, not on an IDF guided tour. That would mean that IDF should hold off on dropping bunker busters on al-Shifa.

Absolutely. So it's not something that can happen when major issues such as Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine are in flux.