150 Palestinian prisoners are being released as part of Israel and Hamas’s recent hostage deal. But thousands more remain behind bars.
The fastest way to not be subjected to your enemy’s military courts is to not be at war with them.
And the fastest way to not be at war with a genocidal occupier like Israel is to just die, I guess?
Suing for peace and being willing to make concessions also ends deaths related to warfare.
If Palestine remains belligerent, they won’t be genocided, that’s more of Hamas’ thing, but I suspect Palestine will eventually be left with no territory.
Perhaps 70+ years of intifada and failed wars against an enemy they can’t hope to defeat isn’t the best strategy.
Concessions with a genocidal occupier who doesn’t want peace, how?
First of all, high civilian casualties is not genocide. That word means something specific, something Israel is not doing.
Second of all, they do want peace, but it needs to be on their terms, which makes sense given that they hold all the realpolitik cards. I believe they are willing to negotiate but not with terrorist organizations like Hamas or Fatah.
Netanyahu will be voted out soon and I suspect whoever replaces him will be more amenable to terms, unless of course these ongoing attacks on civilians move them more rightward.
The alternative, I suspect, is Palestine loses everything and there is no Palestine. Even unconditional surrender would likely lead to a better outcome than this.
Those casualties are not by accident. Civilians and journalists are getting targeted, and the justifications are as follows: “The 400 innocent civilians had a Hamas leader amongst them”, “The convoy of people fleeing to the area we told them to flee to, had Hamas militants” (No weapons or evidence was presented), and “The hospital was housing a Hamas headquarters” (shows an amount of Aks that keeps duplicating every time they re-upload the video, and two bottles of WD-40 that appear two times in two different locations).
Their own terms are to be allowed to enter any region at any time and kill, incarcerate, torture, or rape whoever they like, for their court to acquit them later. That’s not peaceful, and it’s absolutely not gonna make the people of Palestine any more peaceful or accepting towards the occupiers.
Whoever is the prime minister of this “nation” never mattered. They’re all criminals, and none of them would realistically offer peace.
Palestine losing or keeping all of it’s territory doesn’t mean shit when they are not allowed to govern it anyway. Any government put there will be for show. As soon as it starts governing by building infrastructure, organizing a police force, or a military, it’s gonna become a terrorist organization, and get crippled by blockades and attacks targeting it’s facilities and infrastructure.
I do acknowledge that there are a number of slightly-different definitions of genocide, so here’s the Merriam-Webster definition, which is how I use it: “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.” Further, it’s not about the current slaughter in Gaza, it’s about the manifest end-game of decades of Israeli policy and actions. That is, destruction of Palestine is the only possible outcome that would meet Israel’s terms.
What are their terms? At the risk of oversimplifying it:
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No one-state solution; Palestinians cannot live in the territory of Israel. It has steadfastly refused the right-of-return for refugees, and passed a law in 2018 that created a Jewish ethno-state instead of a true democracy. This makes sense in realpolitik terms, since that would leaves Jews an ethnic minority in Israel. Obviously, a non-starter. So, no one-state solution.
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No two-state solution. That’s obvious from when the government of Israel rejected the Arab Peace Initiative, on offer of peace within the 1967 borders. The rejection may have been ideological, as right-wing Israeli politicians talk about their vision of “Greater Israel” from the river to the sea, and sometimes including the Sinai peninsula. Or it could have been practical, again a non-starter in realpolitick terms, because it would’ve required evicting all the settlers who have stolen land from Palestine. Now, the land that potentially could be Palestine is so chopped up, and disjointed, it’s not really viable. So, no two-state solution.
If the people of Palestine can’t live there as citizens of Israel, and can’t live there as citizens of Palestine, then there’s a third option:
- A stateless solution, under which Palestinians live as stateless people under Israeli military rule, a.k.a. the old status quo. This hasn’t worked out so well, as people have a tendency to fight back against oppression. So, the stateless solution isn’t tenable, long-term.
Furthermore, settlers keep encroaching, keep taking more land, and in fact have used the conflict in Gaza to step up the campaign of terrorism and land theft against Palestinians in the West Bank. Not only is the Israeli government not stopping them, some of its members are floating trial balloons about nuking Gaza, and writing memos to each other (which have leaked) about forcing the people of Gaza into Egypt and seizing the land. These are examples of the sole remaining option:
- Palestinians can’t live there at all. Expulsion would do, but since other Arab nations don’t want to be destabilized by a refugee crisis, it certainly appears that Israel isn’t going to reject the option of simply killing large numbers of people. Voilà, genocide! It’s not that anybody in Israel intends to perpetrate genocide against Palestine, it’s just the cold logic of historical forces that inexorably drive them to it. Those forces don’t leave room for any good outcome should Palestinians surrender.
(And, indeed, the military detentions described in the article occur in the West Bank, which is not at war with Israel, so going along to get along isn’t working.)
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Palestine did accept the Oslo accords, and created the Palestinian National Authority under the agreement. Israel reneged on the agreement by allowing continued expansion of settlements.
I was just reading that the Oslo agreements didn’t include a ban on settlements:
Netanyahu continued construction within existing Israeli settlements, and put forward plans for the construction of a new neighborhood, Har Homa, in East Jerusalem. However, he fell far short of the Shamir government’s 1991–92 level and refrained from building new settlements, although the Oslo agreements stipulated no such ban.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_AccordsPerhaps you’re thinking of the Wye River Memorandum?
On 18 December 1998, the Clinton administration and the EU declared their contentment about the implementation of the first phase of the Memorandum by both sides. Israel, however, had only implemented stage 1 of the further redeployment (F.R.D.), meaning that it had withdrawn from 2% of Area C instead of the required 13%. Both parties accused each other of not fulfilling its share of responsibilities under the Wye River Memorandum, and the further implementation of the agreement remained unfinished.
Each side blames the other for it falling apart.
Thanks, good research! That very well could be, since it’s been more than 20 years, my memory is not exact.
They did. The result: Rabin was assassinated by a Zionist terrorist (when the whole Israeli political right was calling for his assassination, mind you), Netanyahu came in his place and the whole thing came apart. Every “effort” Israel made for peace then has been a naked farce.
Many of the people in these courts were not at war. The evidence for that is that they aren’t charged with a crime. You can end up in these courts without doing anything wrong. It would be very silly to say that these people were at war or that they were terrorists with no evidence and no charge.
Furthermore, Palestine did not decide to go to war with Israel. Israel occupies the territory of Palestine. Their first big act of expansion and occupation happened in 1948 and did in fact spark a war. Palestinians are unlikely to have gone out in search of war if one was not delivered to their homes.
Many of the people in these courts were not at war. The evidence for that is that they aren’t charged with a crime. You can end up in these courts without doing anything wrong.
Palestine has remained belligerent for over 70 years now. Arguably, they have been in a state of war since '48. Suing for peace could allow them to administer their own courts, ones that don’t treat them like hostile belligerents.
Furthermore, Palestine did not decide to go to war with Israel. Israel occupies the territory of Palestine. Their first big act of expansion and occupation happened in 1948 and did in fact spark a war.
You mean declaring themselves a country with the borders the UN created for them? Please.
The Arab-Israeli War of 1948 broke out when five Arab nations invaded territory in the former Palestinian mandate immediately following the announcement of the independence of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948. In 1947, and again on May 14, 1948
They started it, and lost.
Well too bad for them I guess because military occupation is an act of war and that’s been going on since 1970 in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
