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What is the Israel thing going on?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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It's pretty easy to explain: It's complicated.
Basically, it's a conflict that had been running for a really long time.
Before WW1, the area of Israel/Palestine was inhabited by Arabs and controlled by the Ottomans.
During WW1, the Brits promised the Arabs that they'd back an independent arab state there, if the Arabs revolted and successfully kicked out the Ottomans.
The Arabs did their part, so Britain, being as trustworthy as ever, turned around and divvied the Ottoman empire up between them, and Britain got control over what was then called Mandatory Palestine, which the Arabs saw as a betrayal. The official plan was for the Brits to rule the Mandate "until such time as they are able to stand alone".
At the same time, the Zionist Jews wanted to have a national state, where they could live without persecution, and many European nations, where antisemitism was rampant, wanted them gone from Europe, so they kinda had an agreement there. The original plan was to move them to a part of Uganda, but that fell through so Palestine was chosen.
Already long before the national state was created, lots of Jews moved there and created settlements. The Arabs there weren't exactly happy about that massive influx of settlers and the Jews also weren't happy about the natives. Each of them started an uprising over the following years, and with tensions rising, the UN drafted a partition plan.
While the opinion of the Jews over that partition plan was ambivalent, though leaning towards being happy about it, the Arabs were decidedly unhappy about it. They thought, that the UN was overstepping it's rights and that the partition plan was violating the principles of self-determinism set forth by the UN charter.
So a war broke out between the Arabs (including surrounding arab countries) and the Jews there, which resulted in a victory for the Jews. After that, the area was divided up between Jewish Israel, the west bank area controlled by Jordan and inhabited by Arabs, and the tiny area called Gaza strip, controlled by Egypt and inhabited by Palestinians.
The area the Palestinians received after the war was significantly smaller than what was outlined in the UN partition plan.
In 1967, during the six-day war, Israel captured the Gaza strip and it's been under Israeli occupation ever since. In 1993, Israel granted the Gaza strip limited self-government over the area. Basically, Gaza was allowed to self-government about matters of the populated areas, but Israel remained in control in regards to the airspace, the territorial waters and all border crossings except the one towards Egypt, which is controlled by Egypt.
In 2007, Hamas took over the government of Gaza. Most of the world classify them as a terror organisation, and they have been e.g. shooting home-build missiles into Israel and also have mounted a few small-scale insurrections and attacks against Israel.
Israel on the other hand has been casually bombarding and killing Palestinians for a very long time. Also, they let Israeli settlers illegally settle in occupied Palestinian territories, which the Palestinians are not so happy about.
From 2008 until 2020, roughly 5600 Palestinians and 250 Israelis (including many civilians on both sides) have been killed, and 115 000 Pakistanis and 5600 Israelis have been injured (source: https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/16516/israeli-palestinian-casualties-by-in-gaza-and-the-west-bank/).
The Gaza strip is pretty much an outdoor prison, with a massive population density, low life expectency and abysmal living standards. People are generally not allowed to leave from there. Israel routinely cuts water/electricity, which are both supplied by Israel in response to attacks from Palestine.
All in all, it's a right mess that's been brewing for over 100 years, with no easy solutions. By now, everyone who has been responsible for causing the original mess is dead. Of the leadership neither side is in the right, both sides are making everything worse. There is no solution in sight.
The Palestinians fight the oppression by killing civilians, the Israelis counter by killing civilians and making life even more hell for the people in the occupied territories, who in turn fight even harder and kill more civilians.
Reducing oppression is hardly possible, since that would allow the Palestinians to mount bigger attacks.
Which brings us to the current situation. Palestinians managed to break out of Gaza, at many places even destroying the perimeter fence. They then invaded some towns and a music festival in the border regions, killing a few hundred Israeli civilians and taking some more hostage. Israel countered by bombarding the Gaza strip, killing a few hundred Palestinian civilians. They also, again, cut power and electricity, and the whole western world then responded with cutting food supply.
This in turn will radicalize the Palestinians even more, who will fight harder, and who knows where it ends. Probably with the Israelis finally finding the same answer to "the Palestinian Question" that Germany found for the "Jewish Question" in the 1940s.
Really nice summary. Heads up you say Pakistani instead of Palestinian a few times.
Never knew about the Uganda thing. Fascinating. Must read more on that.
Thanks, sorry about that. I meant Palestinian.
Another indigenous population beginning with P who got fucked over by brits who had never been to the area. Easy mistake to make.
I mean, I do know the difference between Pakistani and Palestinians. It's just that I know significantly more Pakistanis than Palestinians, so my brain autocompleted wrong.
Sorry to all Palestinians/Pakistanis I might have offended here!
Having said that, the Palestine territory was not chosen arbitrarily, but probably because of the significance Jerusalem has to the Jews, where their ancient kingdom and temple had been.
I feel like there are many things Israel does that are not useful in stopping attacks and ending them should be possible. Intentionally killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure are among those.
Hamas intentionally uses civilian buildings and schools as ammo warehouses. Israel aims for the ammunition and ignores the civilian casualties. Neither side wants to avoid civilian deaths in Gaza.
It's totally true that killing civilians means you radicalize all their family and friends.
In 2006, the newly elected Hamas government actually stepped down during a negotiated cease fire and agreed to a unity government.
Then the Israelis accidentally (at least according to their statements) bombed a residential building, killing 24 civilians including children and injuring many more.
That's when the Hamas took back the government (some would point out, illegally, since there was no official election after they stepped down) and resumed the attacks on Israel.
But all in all, it's a prisoner's dilemma situation. The current situation sucks, but for both sides it would probably be worse, at least in short-term, to unilaterally reduce aggressions without the other side doing the same.
Understandably (after all this bloodshed over such a long period), there are quite a few people on both sides who will stop at nothing short but the eradication of the other side. That's not exactly a viable basis for negotiations.
And with every attack, every uprising, every repression and every civilian killed, this gets worse.
I don't see how, as far as attacking non-military targets goes.
It is rather hard not to do that when Hamas will hide behind civilians and set up shop in civilian centers.
Not everything they do can be explained away by that.
Just came to say thanks for the elaborated summary. Was already informed about the greater outlinings, but this adds some interesting details about the conflict.
This will be a 'thing' for many more decades. The hatred on both sides is so deeply grounded...quite depressing to see.
The really difficult thing is that nobody who caused the situation in the first place is still alive. Almost every Israeli or Palestinian alive today was born into this inherited conflict. So everyone there can argue that they have the right to be there in their own way. And everyone there has decades of inherited conflict and trauma. This is not going to get better any time soon.
A majority, but to say almost every is an exaggeration. There are lots of Israelis who were not born into the conflict but choose to migrate into it. That said they tend to move in from places that have an antisemitism problem like the US and Ukraine, and in the case of Ukraine there are obviously additional factors for leaving, so I find it hard to blame individuals though they are fueling a colonial project even if they don't vocalize support for it.
Fair point. I put the immigrants into the "born into the conflict" category, because they, too, didn't create the conflict to begin with. But you are right, they willingly moved into the situation, for whatever reason that made sense to them.
It's post like this that Lemmy needs that just make my day because I learn just a bit more than what I knew 5 minutes ago, thank you for the thoughtful post.
your summary is excellent but I think you have a typo re: Pakistanis, did you mean Palestinians? it's hard to terrorize the people 6 countries and 3500km to the west.
Yeah, that's a typo. I edited it already, but there's a long standing lemmy bug that causes edits to not be propagated to all instances. So if you view it from the instance I am on, it's ok, but on other instances you still see the typo.
It was discussed below already.
Pretty good summary, but I would object, that "Hamas" is something like a "government" in Gaza. It's a terrorist group that took control of the Gaza territory and it's people without ever having been elected by someone (in fact, they are suppressing any kind of election since they took over the power from the Palestinian authorities). They are also using the Gaza population as "living shields" against counter strikes to their terror attacks. Nowadays they also have international hostages, which would make a counter-offensive even more difficult.
A possible - although very unlikely - solution to the conflict could be a de-radicaiisation on both sides and the Palestinians finally overthrowing the Hamas-regime and any other terrorist groups, because those are not fighting for Palestinian freedom, but for some crappy "Jihad" ideas and the destruction of Israel.
Unfortunately this will never happen...
That was almost 20 years ago. Was that the last election
A government doesn't have to be democratically elected. Even a dictatorship that came into power due to a military coup is considered a government.
As long as the Hamas control the area, they are a government.
If you check out the corresponding Wikipedia section (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip#Governance) you can see, that they are considered a government.