A top Hamas political official told The Associated Press the Islamic militant group is willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel and that it would lay down its weapons and convert into a political party if an independent Palestinian state is established along pre-1967 borders.
What’s the difference between terrorists and the resistance to an occupation?
I suspect you are not asking in good faith, but I’m answering anyway: Methods and goals. Hamas methods are clear: Legitimate resistance doesn’t deliberately and as a core policy murder, abduct and rape civilians. Hamas are no different from IS in this regard, which nobody calls resistance or freedom fighters.
Goals: Hamas actual and openly stated goal is the creation of a global Islamic caliphate and the murder and/or enslavement of all “nonbelievers”, not the liberation of the Palestinian people.
How many Palestinian prisoners do the IDF hold from the west bank?
How are they taken?
What level of evidence is required for them to be ‘arrested’?
Do they face the same legal processes as the Israeli ‘settlers’ when arrested?
What is the difference between the words ‘hostage’ and ‘prisoner’ to you?
How many Palestinian prisoners, including children, are reported raped each year in prison?
I’m all for the establishment of a free Palestinian state, but Hamas has to go.
Preferably through police action rather than the genocide that is a military intervention by Israel.
Anyway, the Israeli government is in the wrong on all the counts you raised, but Hamas still needs to go. They’ve been fully co-opted by all sorts of outside groups, and their rule in Gaza before October 7th was one of fear and oppression. They are no one’s saviors, they’re just the meanest bastards in the prison, lashing out at the guards while abusing the other prisoners.
The actual path to peace is a multinational police and peacekeeping force to come in and take over from the IDF, keeping the IDF out of it completely, and then opening up Gaza and the West Bank to the rest of the world. Possibly even ejecting the settlers from the West Bank and giving the land back.
But a large part of this would be arresting Hamas leadership.
And don’t think I’d let the IDF and Israeli government off scot-free for their part in all this. I’m sure there’s plenty of room in the local prisons for all the bastards in this mess.
The end goal might be a single, secular state, where all people are guaranteed full rights and protections by the government.
Well that’s a lie.
This seems to directly contradict the claims of the actual Hamas statements we are looking at right now.
Interesting that you can pick and choose which Hamas leader statements to believe in forming this narrative. Also, it is a little ironic that you claim others are engaging in bad faith while you manipulate which statements are valid from the same source.
The distinction comes from the ends they seek and the means they go about achieving those ends.
-prayer of Sheik Ahmad Bahr
I could easily get behind a platform that acknowledges that 7 million Jews now live in Israel and forcing them out (or even worse, killing them) would be a humanitarian catastrophe, but instead Hamas’ position is just as unyielding and genocidal as what Bibi’s admin has been waging upon the people of Gaza and the West Bank. They’re only now talking about laying down their arms because it benefits their attempts to paint themselves as the reasonable party in this conflict which I find to be a farce. More conflict and death benefits both Likud and Hamas.