placnx

I thought more about the difficulties of Palestinians to organize. Among the simple, non-intellectual, people I think that there's an attitude of fatalism. Here's a current example of how people react to intimidation: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/21/the-most-successful-land-grab-strategy-since-1967-as-settlers-push-bedouins-off-west-bank-territory

These worldwide demonstrations are asking for humanitarian aid and/or ceasefire. BTW I am a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Do you support Ben Gvir being in the current government then? The pogroms against Palestinians in the West Bank are fueling serious anger in the West Bank at a time when Israel doesn't need another problem. https://www.timesofisrael.com/ben-gvir-pays-tribute-to-racist-kahane-ultimately-he-was-about-love-of-israel/

The article noted that many in the demonstration were Jews. Inevitably there a fringe hotheads, but what the BBC showed seemed to be quite orderly, a lot of older people.

We need more doctors and nurses, and for the moment they're still alive.

Are you talking about the Kahanist in the ISraeli government?

Yes, it was an oversize pothole caused by a huge explosion, and the buildings around there show little if any damage.

Fear of being doxed is not it. Rather it's concentrating on what's important - saving lives in Gaza. You should try to see the situation of these people under occupation, put yourself in their shoes. In the West Bank, the settlers supported by the IDF are a nightmare getting worse by the day. Nonetheless, if Israel would give them back a life in the West Bank where they could live and thrive, meaning that settlers in their midst would have to go, no more apartheid, I'm confident that there could be genuine peace. Gaza would be integrated with the West Bank, and elections would replace the dinosaurs in the PA.

On the BBC today at the Sydney demonstration the organizers are reported to have asked the participants not to shout inflamatory slogans, as this would undermine the subject, which maybe was asking for humanitarian aid and/or ceasefire. On some campuses in the US I have heard that the River to the Sea chant was uttered, and alumni are getting excited.

By now your should know my thoughts through numerous posts. I have spoken so many times of the two-state solution. While a state with equal rights was promised in Israel's Declaration of Independence, that would require the promised constitution that never happened (so now Israelis are faced with a malleable Basic Law which Bibi et al want to "fix").

The IDF is not known for truth when they are at fault, but of course other armies do the same. There are things that do not look right about the hospital narrative, but we may not be able ever to know for sure, unless something emerges from government archives many years hence.

Since when am I excluded from the back & forth when you replied to @thatbeachlovers with something which I felt was another nitpicking as @placeholder has noticed, too? Deflection? No, correction. I am fully aware of the Palestinians' organizing troubles, both historically and currently. Past Israeli governments had a part in this, as they didn't want Palestinians to have a credible government. That would have removed an excuse for not granting them more autonomy. So the Oslo arrangement has led the PA into becoming a stooge of Israel, assisting most of the time in oppressing the people and preventing alternate political actors from emerging. Then there is the lack of elections since 2006.

This war has a counterpart on the West Bank with settler terrorism, and the struggle for Palestinian freedom is becoming universal as demonstrations are happening everywhere, even in countries like Germany that try to suppress anti-Israel speech.

Actually someone else spoke of navigating 5 checkpoints to buy food (if available). I spoke of the economic damage caused by 550+ checkpoints keeping people from going about their business, thus damaging the Palestinian economy. I believe that I gave Morch a blue heart for criticizing settler activity in that post.

In response to your several posts with complaints that I did not address your comments above, I felt that the point concerning withdrawals from Sinai & settlements from Gaza was not remarkable enough respond to, much less the piling on - blaming the victims further in your second paragraph. At one earlier post I tried to explain that Palestinians had agency in political organizing and resistance, although that in the earlier pre-1930s was filtered through the predominant focus on Arab nationalism. From the 1930s it's true that they were not as organized as the Zionist side which benefited from the connivance of the British occupiers, as exemplified by Orde Wingate, whose major role you dealt with by ignoring his Palestine activities such as the Special Night Squads, and instead evoking his later career in Burma. Whataboutism? As to your complaints that I did not respond to your blockade comments, please show me which of your voluminous comments you are referring to.

My view that Palestinians cannot get freedom without the world's intervention is a pessimistic and realist assessment.

Please tell me which phrase was hyperbole. 550+ checkpoints is public knowledge.

I've responded about the blockade in other posts. There are hundreds of stories, but these may be several stories on the same incident, and there are various levels of seriousness, no doubt.

The blockade is collective punishment under international law. Egypt has its own interests which include not annoying Israel or the US.

Obviously the Palestinians cannot get their freedom without the world imposing a solution on Israel.

Having to spend hours at checkpoints to commute to one's job or healthcare is not productive for the individual or the economy. Meanwhile settlers come and go on their lovely roads with their extraterritorial (read: 19th C colonial) rights.

The 18-20000 is a recent development, about 1% of the Gazan population. Perhaps the hope was to cultivate some as spies.

Two wrongs don't make a right is another way of expressing what @placeholder said. It is disingenuous to ignore the blockade in place since at least 2007, where Gazans have been kept in a state of near starvation and their economy cannot properly function. The attack was an act of desperation provoked by the prospect of Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, as Netanyahu's obvious intent was to eliminate external opposition to the settler colonization of the West Bank while continuing the blockade of Gaza. Saudi Arabia was the author of the peace proposal in place since 2002, which was not compatible with the policy of filling Area C with settlements, so getting the Saudis to effectively sign off on existing Israeli policy would have meant abandoning their peace proposal. This attack is in a sense a trap for the current ultra-Orthodox/Kahanist faction in the Israeli government as they seize the opportunity to increase their pogroms on the West Bank. There are too many witnesses with cameras. For now centrist Israelis are overcome with horror at these massacres of secular Israelis, so it will take a while for backlash to resume against the judicial "reform" agenda and the disproportional death and destruction in Gaza and the West Bank pogroms. In the meantime the world will have taken stock of massive war crimes and depopulation in Gaza, so Hamas probably anticipated that Israel would end up with Europe and most of the world against it, with only the US still supporting it, and with qualifications. Whether merely attacking military targets would have produced a sufficiently vehement reaction is debatable. That this attack may accelerate the end of the current Israeli government is probable.

Thanks. I'll give feedback tomorrow on the results.

With 500+ checkpoints and settlers gobbling Area C, the West Bank is heading in the direction of Gaza. Just this week, I've just heard that four Palestinian villages have been depopulated, i.e. ethnically cleansed. For the past two years settlers assisted by IDF have been attacking villages and towns. When Palestinians resist, IDF steps in to shoot them. The Gaza economy is non-functional due to the blockade, so it's no wonder that there is high unemployment. Gazans are forced to survive on aid and need 150 trucks per day in "normal" times.