Latest Gaza - Israel conflict, an air war

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Israel has said that Hamas has fired over 1,000 rockets into their country. They estimate that at least a third didn't hit their targets. Israel has had since 2011 their Iron Dome anti-missile system that has intercepted 85 to 90% of incoming rockets.

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Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in Gaza have a wide variety of missiles
Israel is the vastly more powerful player and its air force, armed drones and intelligence-gathering systems enable it to strike targets in Gaza pretty much at will. It insists that its targeting is restricted to sites used for military purposes but the density of the Palestinian population and the fact that Hamas and Islamic Jihad facilities are located close to, and often hidden under, civilian buildings makes the avoidance of civilian casualties altogether impossible.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad, though the weaker parties, have weapons enough with which to attack Israel. They have already tried a variety of tactics. Israeli defences shot down a drone - possibly armed - that had sought to cross into Israel from Gaza. And an Israeli military spokesman said an "elite Hamas unit" had attempted to infiltrate Israel through a tunnel from the southern part of the strip. The Israeli military, it seems, had advance warning of this and, according to the spokesman, was able to "cause the tunnel to implode".

But by far and away the most significant weaponry in the Palestinians' arsenal is their wide variety of ground-to-ground missiles. Some of these (along with other systems employed like the Kornet guided anti-tank missiles used during recent days), are believed to have been smuggled in through tunnels from Egypt's Sinai peninsula.

But by far the bulk of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad arsenals come from a dynamic and relatively sophisticated manufacturing capability inside the Gaza Strip itself. Israeli and outside experts believe that Iranian know-how and assistance have played a significant role in building up this industry. Accordingly, weapons manufacturing and storage sites have been among the chief targets of the Israeli strikes.
It certainly includes many thousands of weapons of varying ranges. Clearly the Israeli military has its own estimates that it is not willing to share. All a spokesman would say was that they believed Hamas could sustain this level of fire for "a significant period of time".

The Palestinians are employing a variety of missiles, none of which, so far, appear to be especially new in terms of basic design. But the overall trend is for the weapons to have increased ranges and larger explosive payloads.
While the names and designations of specific missiles can be a bit confusing, Hamas has a huge inventory of shorter-range systems like the Qassam (up to 10km or 6 miles) and the Quds 101 (up to about 16km); bolstered by the Grad system (up to 55km); and the Sejil 55 (up to 55km). These probably make up the bulk of its inventory and for the shortest ranges can be bolstered by mortar fire.

But Hamas also operates a variety of longer-range systems like the M-75 (up to 75km); the Fajr (up to 100km); the R-160 (up to 120km); and some M-302s which have a range of up to 200km. So it is clear that Hamas has weapons that can target both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and threaten the whole coastal strip which contains the greatest density of Israel's population and critical infrastructure.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-57092245


Tragically most casualties are civilian, hard to avoid in densely populated Gaza especially when military targets are located in or close to civilian apartment blocks.

The post Israeli election negotiations for a new government were suspended due to the conflict. Bibi Netanyahu is strutting around acting like a war time prime minister in charge. Benny Ganz is the defense minister.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Latest Gaza - Israel conflict, an air war

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Israel Sends Ground Troops Into Gaza In Massive Escalation

LONDON and CAIRO -- Israeli air and ground troops have launched an attack in the Gaza Strip, authorities said, as the latest round of fighting between Israel's military and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group ruling the Gaza Strip, continued.

Israel Defense Forces issued a short statement confirming that troops were on the ground, with more details to follow. In a new statement also released at about 1 a.m. local time Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military operation will continue as long as it takes to restore law and order to the cities of Israel.

IDF Home Front Command ordered all Israelis living at the Gaza border to go into their safe rooms and stay there until further notice as well.

So far, 103 people, including 27 children and eight women, have been killed in the Gaza Strip since tensions escalated Monday. At least 580 others have been injured, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The ministry also said that some of the dead who arrived at Dar Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City were suspected to have been killed by nerve gas. The ministry did not specify who the victims were, but sources told ABC News they were Hamas fighters who were in a military tunnel.

Meanwhile, a total of seven people, including a soldier and a 6-year-old child, have been killed in Israel. An eighth Israeli, an 87-year-old woman, also died after falling while on her way to a bomb shelter, according to the Israeli Emergency Services. More than 150 others have been wounded, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

Hamas, which gained a majority in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections and took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 after battling rival Palestinian forces, began firing a barrage of rockets toward Israeli territory on Monday evening. In response, the Israel Defense Forces unleashed hundreds of airstrikes aimed at what it said were Hamas and other terror targets in the Gaza Strip, a 140-square-mile territory where 2 million Palestinians have lived under a blockade imposed by neighboring Israel and Egypt since Hamas seized power.

The Israel Defense Forces said more than 1,500 rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip into southern and central Israel since Monday, of which 350 failed and fell on the Palestinian territory. Israel's sophisticated air defense system, known as the Iron Dome, has also intercepted hundreds of rockets, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

So far, Israeli airstrikes have hit over 600 terror targets in the Gaza Strip, according to the Israel Defense Forces, including three high-rise buildings that Israeli officials said were used by Hamas. The Israel Defense Forces said it warned civilians in the buildings to evacuate before striking the targets.

Palestinians attend a funeral for people killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, May 13...
The Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 25 combatants in the Gaza Strip, most of which are affiliated with Hamas but also with Islamic Jihad, a smaller Palestinian militant group. Several senior commanders in Hamas' "general staff" were also "eliminated," according to the Israel Defense Forces.

Islamic Jihad confirmed seven militants had been killed, while Hamas said 13 of its militants had been killed, including a senior commander.

Abu Obeida, a spokesperson for Hamas' military wing, said in a video statement that the decision to attack Israeli cities was "easier for us than drinking water." Meanwhile, Netanyahu has vowed to continue retaliatory attacks.

It's the worst outbreak of violence between Israeli forces and Hamas since a 50-day war in the summer of 2014.

A burnt vehicle is seen after violent confrontations between Israeli Arab demonstrators a...
As both sides continue to trade airstrikes and rockets with no signs of backing down, violence between Arabs and Jews has broken out on the streets of Israel. Authorities responded to "wide-scale riots" in various Israeli cities on Wednesday night, according to Israel Police spokesperson Micky Rosenfield. A dozen officers were injured while responding to the incidents and hundreds of people were arrested, Rosenfield said.

Authorities imposed a curfew in Lod, where buildings and cars were set ablaze on Wednesday night. A young Arab resident was shot and killed there on Monday night amid clashes between Arab and Jewish mobs, according to Rosenfield.

There were also several different instances of Arabs attacking Jews, Rosenfeld said. In Acre, rioters torched a famous Jewish-owned seafood restaurant.

An attack on an Arab man near Tel Aviv was televised live by Israel's public broadcaster late Wednesday. The shocking footage shows a mob dragging the man out of his car and beating him until he lay motionless.

A restaurant in Acre, a mixed Arab-Jewish town in northwest Israel, is heavily damaged a...
Israel’s prime minister condemned the rioting and violent clashes as "unacceptable."

"Nothing justifies the lynching of Jews by Arabs and nothing justifies the lynching of Arabs by Jews," Netanyahu said in a statement Wednesday.

"To the citizens of Israel I say that I do not care if your blood is boiling. You cannot take the law into your own hands," he added. "You cannot grab an ordinary Arab citizen and try to lynch him -- just as we cannot watch Arab citizens do this to Jewish citizens."

Palestinians clash with Israeli security forces in the city centre of the West Bank town of...
The escalating violence in Israel has prompted at least three U.S. airlines -- American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines -- to cancel all flights to and from the Middle Eastern country, telling ABC News they are monitoring the situation and will continue to reevaluate.

Hamas warned international airlines from flying to Israel, and said they will target airports.

U.S. President Joe Biden had a telephone call with Netanyahu on Wednesday in which he "condemned the rocket attacks by Hamas and other terrorist groups" and "conveyed his unwavering support for Israel's security," according to a press release.

"My expectation and hope is that this will be closing down sooner than later," Biden told ABC News after speaking with Netanyahu. "But Israel has the right to defend itself when you have thousands of rockets flying into your territory."

A member of Sror family inspect the damage of their apartment after being hit by a rock...
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters Wednesday that he was deploying Hady Amr, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Israel and Palestinian affairs, to meet with leaders from both sides in the coming days. Amr was expected to arrive in the Middle East on Thursday.

Blinken again condemned the rocket attacks by Hamas and repeatedly backed Israel's right to defend itself.

"There is, first, a very clear and absolute distinction between a terrorist organization, Hamas, that is indiscriminately raining down rockets, in fact, targeting civilians, and Israel’s response, defending itself," Blinken told reporters.

But he also noted that Palestinian children have been killed in the Israeli airstrikes, saying, "Israel has an extra burden in trying to do everything they possibly can to avoid civilian casualties."

"The Palestinian people have the right to safety and security and we have to, I think, all work in that direction," he added.

A Palestinian man views the damage in the aftermath of Israeli air strikes that destroyed...
Despite talking to Netanyahu, Biden has not spoken to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended the lack of contact by Biden on Thursday, saying Blinken had spoken to Abbas.

"The secretary of state is an incredibly high ranking member of the administration," she said. “Fourth in line for the presidency, if I'm getting that correct. He’s very close to President Biden, and certainly that sends a clear message about the importance of communicating with all parties in the region."

Israel and the United States both consider Hamas a terrorist organization. The U.S. government has voiced support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which would create an independent Israel and Palestine.

Conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has raged on for decades, but tensions have heightened in recent weeks over a long-running legal battle on the potential expulsion of Palestinians from their Jerusalem homes.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were displaced from their homes during a war that accompanied Israel's creation in 1948. Some Palestinian refugees were rehoused in east Jerusalem by the Jordanian government in the 1950s -- before Israel captured the city from Jordan during the 1967 war. Now, several Palestinian families are facing possible eviction from land that Jewish settlers claim they lost to Arabs during the 1948 war. Israeli law allows citizens to take back such land but it does not allow Palestinians to do the same.

On Sunday, the Israeli Supreme Court decided to delay a ruling on the case by up to 30 days after the attorney general requested more time to review it.

PHOTO: Rescue workers evacuate a woman by ambulance, amidst a rocket attack from the Gaza Strip, in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, May 12, 2021.
Rescue workers evacuate a woman by ambulance, amidst a rocket attack from the Gaza...
The recent fighting comes as Muslims mark Eid al-Fitr, the end of of Islam's holy month of Ramadan. The religious holiday is typically a festive time but the celebrations were much more somber this year. Thousands of Palestinian Muslims gathered at the al-Aqsa mosque in east Jerusalem early Thursday to take part in communal Eid prayers. In the Gaza Strip, Hamas has urged people to pray inside their homes or the nearest mosques rather than out in the open.

"The explosions, airstrikes are not stopping," Suhair Zakkout, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza City, told ABC News on Wednesday. "And instead of now celebrating Eid by buying new clothes or buying toys for their children, people rush to the hospital and live their days in pain to lose their loved ones."
I https://abcnews.go.com/International/ ... s_card_hed

Now more than an air war.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
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Re: Latest Gaza - Israel conflict, an air war

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Conflicting reports if Israeli forces have actually entered Gaza, there is no doubt they are bombarding it from the air, land and sea. The confusion was apparently deliberate.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) deliberately misled Hamas in its statements about a possible ground invasion last night, a defence expert says.

There was confusion late last night when an IDF tweet suggested troops were on the ground in Gaza, before the army sent put out another statement saying that forces attacked Hamas tunnels along the border but did not cross it.

"It turned out to be a very smart tactic," Michael Stephens, a Middle East fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, told BBC Radio 4's World at One.

"Which was to make Hamas fighters move into their tunnels and get all their preparations ready so that the Israeli military... could target them."

And Mr Stephens predicted Israel would send troops into Gaza, in addition to its current aerial efforts. "A ground operation is not preferable, it's not ideal, but it's much more likely that Israeli soldiers if they do go in would be able to target these strongholds in a better manner than bombing in the air," he said.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-mid ... t-57099013

The Gaza enclave is 25 miles long and 3-7 miles wide and contains almost 2 million people. Military units are indistinguishable from civilian neighborhoods there according to reports.

2014 was the last open war between Israel and Hamas, what precipitated it was the murder of three Israeli teens by Hamas terrorists and then the murder of an Arab boy by Israeli settlers. IIRC that war went on for 7 weeks. It's the subject of the 2019 HBO series "Our Boys" which is excellent. This time it's connected to the protests on Temple Mount that started with a court case and are stoked by Palestinian groups and right wing Israelis who are also stoking the ethnic violence in areas where Arabs and Jews have lived peacefully for years.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Latest Gaza - Israel conflict, an air war

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The difference this time is the inter-Israel violence between Israeli Arabs and Jews.

Sad, and this time it's over Israel wanting to evict 7 or 8 Palestinian families from the homes they've inhabited since 1948 in East Jerusalem as I understand it, seeing their previous homes were confiscated by Jews way back then.

Curious, was Israel offering to buy them out, or just kicking them out as it seems they could've been given outstanding cash offers that they would've loved and accepted etc (bribery!)?

In any case, now hundreds or more will be killed and injured, and then Hamas will run out of missiles and/or get tired of being shelled/bombed, and things will go back to the way they were for a few more years, rinse and repeat.

Sad...

Re: Latest Gaza - Israel conflict, an air war

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DJD100 wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 2:13 pm In any case, now hundreds or more will be killed and injured, and then Hamas will run out of missiles and/or get tired of being shelled/bombed, and things will go back to the way they were for a few more years, rinse and repeat.

Sad...

I agree, only time before Hamas restocks their rockets and it starts again.

Jerusalem is ancient and property ownership can go back centuries especially if it's religious/church lands. It's the heart of three great religions and they have various sects and they all own properties in or around Jerusalem. The link at the bottom is to a Times of Israel article.

I recall reading an article about an Israeli foundation that bought land and buildings secretly from an orthodox church in East Jerusalem, when it got out the church said they needed money and that they didn't know they were selling to Jews.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-battle ... of-choice/
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Latest Gaza - Israel conflict, an air war

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"The first casualty, when war comes, is truth" - Hiram Johnson
NY Times, "Lies on Social Media Inflame Israeli-Palestinian Conflict"
In a 28-second video, which was posted to Twitter this week by a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip appeared to launch rocket attacks at Israelis from densely populated civilian areas.

At least that is what Mr. Netanyahu’s spokesman, Ofir Gendelman, said the video portrayed. But his tweet with the footage, which was shared hundreds of times as the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis escalated, was not from Gaza. It was not even from this week.

Instead, the video that he shared, which can be found on many YouTube channels and other video-hosting sites, was from 2018. And according to captions on older versions of the video, it showed militants firing rockets not from Gaza but from Syria or Libya.


The video was just one piece of misinformation that has circulated on Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media this week about the rising violence between Israelis and Palestinians, as Israeli military ground forces attacked Gaza early on Friday. The false information has included videos, photos and clips of text purported to be from government officials in the region, with posts baselessly claiming early this week that Israeli soldiers had invaded Gaza, or that Palestinian mobs were about to rampage through sleepy Israeli suburbs.
“A lot of it is rumor and broken telephone, but it is being shared right now because people are desperate to share information about the unfolding situation,” said Arieh Kovler, a political analyst and independent researcher in Jerusalem who studies misinformation. “What makes it more confusing is that it is a mix of false claims and genuine stuff, which is being attributed to the wrong place or the wrong time.”

Twitter and Facebook, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp, did not respond to requests for comment. Christina LoNigro, a spokeswoman for WhatsApp, said the company had put limits on how many times people could forward a message as a way of clamping down on misinformation.
The Times found several pieces of misinformation that spread across Israeli and Palestinian neighborhood and activist WhatsApp groups this week. One, which appeared as a block of Hebrew text or an audio file, contained a warning that Palestinian mobs were preparing to descend on Israeli citizens.

“Palestinians are coming, parents protect your children,” read the message, which pointed specifically to several suburban areas north of Tel Aviv. Thousands of people were in one of the Telegram groups where the post was shared; the post then appeared in several WhatsApp groups, which had dozens to hundreds of members.
There is a long history of misinformation being shared among Israeli and Palestinian groups, with false claims and conspiracies spiking during moments of heightened violence in the region.

In recent years, Facebook has removed several disinformation campaigns by Iran aimed at stoking tensions among Israelis and Palestinians. Twitter also took down a network of fake accounts in 2019 that was used to smear opponents of Mr. Netanyahu.

The grainy video that Mr. Gendelman shared on Twitter on Wednesday, which purportedly showed Palestinian militants launching rocket attacks at Israelis, was removed on Thursday after Twitter labeled it “misleading content.” Mr. Gendelman’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Gendelman appears to have mischaracterized the contents of other videos as well. On Tuesday, he posted a video on Twitter showing three adult men being instructed to lie down on the floor, with their bodies being arranged by a crowd nearby. Mr. Gendelman said the video showed Palestinians staging bodies for a photo opportunity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/tech ... media.html


Hope Yair Lapid and the opposition parties go after Netanyahu for spreading misinformation. It's one thing for anonymous posters to put video online and another for Netanyahu's spokesperson Ofir Gendelman to put it on line.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Latest Gaza - Israel conflict, an air war

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Israel and Hamas know that a fourth Gaza war, like the three before, would be as inconclusive as it is devastating for the impoverished territory’s 2 million Palestinians. But in the days or weeks before an inevitable truce, each will aim for something it can call a victory.

For Israel, that might mean assassinating a top Hamas commander, or destroying enough tunnels, rocket launchers and other infrastructure to say it “mowed the lawn” — a phrase widely used by Israelis to describe the temporary suppression of militants before the next confrontation.

For Hamas, the biggest prize would be capturing Israeli soldiers it could later trade for imprisoned Palestinians. A close second would be scoring a few more long-range rocket hits on Israeli cities to display the Palestinian organization’s military prowess in confronting a much stronger enemy.
To overthrow Hamas, Israel would need to reoccupy Gaza in a prolonged and bloody operation that would provoke international condemnation. Not even the most hawkish Israelis are suggesting that course. By the same token, Hamas has no expectation of lifting the Israeli-Egyptian blockade imposed on Gaza when it seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007.

The rockets Hamas has fired into Israel have brought waves of Israeli airstrikes, and about a fourth of the Palestinian projectiles have fallen short, landing in Gaza. At least 126 Gazans have been killed, including 31 children and 20 women, while at least 900 people have been injured and homes and businesses left in ruins, deepening the misery in the isolated territory. The rockets have killed seven Israelis and sown panic as far away as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

But in the cruel calculations governing so much of the Middle East conflict, the ability to fire or not fire rockets gives Hamas leverage it can use to attain more limited goals. The militant group in recent years observed a shaky, informal cease-fire with Israel, trading calm for an easing of the blockade and hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from Qatar that was delivered regularly through Israel’s Erez crossing.
The rockets also allow Hamas to rally support by portraying itself as a liberation movement fighting for Palestinian rights and defending claims to Jerusalem, the emotional center of the decades-old conflict.

Hamas banners now hang outside Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, where heavy clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters earlier this month — along with efforts by Jewish settlers to evict Palestinian families — triggered the latest violence.

Hamas can also revel in the outbreak of Arab-Jewish violence inside Israel, which in some ways resembles the kind of Palestinian uprising the militant group has long called for.

“My sense is that both sides would like to end this and go home,” Amos Harel, a longtime military correspondent for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, said.

“Hamas achieved more than it dreamed” by launching long-range rockets at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and helping to ignite violence in Israeli cities, Harel said. “If they continue, then they will risk more casualties, more damage and hardship to Gaza.”

Ron Ben-Yishai, a veteran Israeli war correspondent, also thinks Israel is unlikely to send in ground forces unless Hamas carries out a “catastrophic” attack.

“If, for example, they send a big missile and this missile hits a kindergarten in Israel, there would be a ground attack,” Yishai said.
Last month, President Mahmoud Abbas called off the first Palestinian elections in 15 years amid signs his splintering Fatah party would suffer an embarrassing defeat to Hamas. The militant group’s stature has only grown since then, with Abbas largely sidelined by the conflict.

Israel, meanwhile, derives certain advantages from maintaining the status quo that prevailed in Gaza before the latest fighting.

It routinely blames the failure of the peace process on Hamas, which does not recognize the country’s right to exist and is considered a terrorist group by Israel and Western nations.

But Harel says that for many Israelis, Hamas is the “preferred enemy” because it rejects a two-state solution. That allows Israel to isolate Gaza from the larger conflict while consolidating its control over east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank — with little if any resistance from the docile Palestinian Authority. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has never said it publicly, “but one would suspect he is actually quite comfortable with Hamas,” Harel said.
There have been no substantive peace talks in more than a decade, and Israel’s expansion of settlements and its plans to eventually annex parts of the West Bank has recently led two well-known human rights groups to accuse it of practicing apartheid. Israel rejects those allegations.

Either way, there seems no end in sight to Hamas’ rule in Gaza or the blockade Israel says is needed to contain it.

“Ground offensive or no ground offensive, ultimately it does not matter,” analyst Baconi said.

“The broader strategy is going to remain one which Israelis call mowing the lawn,” he said. That means maintaining the status quo, and “every time Gaza becomes a bit too powerful, hit it.”
https://apnews.com/article/hamas-israel ... 7ec8a46b4b
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Latest Gaza - Israel conflict, an air war

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I'm convinced this is a "Wag The Dog" scenario to keep Netanyahu in power and out of prison. Israel instigated this with the absurd, disrespectful raid on the mosque. Now, how can they change governments in the midst of a war???

Sorry, but this is bullshit. And, of course, the Palestinians and Hamas took the bait.
Good for Bibi, good for Hamas, bad for the people and State of Israel, bad for the Palestinian people and Palestinian authority.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/worl ... e=Homepage
After Years of Quiet, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Exploded. Why Now?
A little-noticed police action in Jerusalem last month was one of several incidents that led to the current crisis.

By Patrick Kingsley
May 15, 2021
Updated 3:28 p.m. ET
JERUSALEM — Twenty-seven days before the first rocket was fired from Gaza this week, a squad of Israeli police officers entered the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, brushed the Palestinian attendants aside and strode across its vast limestone courtyard. Then they cut the cables to the loudspeakers that broadcast prayers to the faithful from four medieval minarets.

It was the night of April 13, the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. It was also Memorial Day in Israel, which honors those who died fighting for the country. The Israeli president was delivering a speech at the Western Wall, a sacred Jewish site that lies below the mosque, and Israeli officials were concerned that the prayers would drown it out.

The incident was confirmed by six mosque officials, three of whom witnessed it; the Israeli police declined to comment. In the outside world, it barely registered.

But in hindsight, the police raid on the mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam, was one of several actions that led, less than a month later, to the sudden resumption of war between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, and the outbreak of civil unrest between Arabs and Jews across Israel itself.
“This was the turning point,” said Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, the grand mufti of Jerusalem. “Their actions would cause the situation to deteriorate.”


That deterioration has been far more devastating, far-reaching and fast-paced than anyone imagined. It has led to the worst violence between Israelis and Palestinians in years — not only in the conflict with Hamas, which has killed at least 139 people in Gaza and eight in Israel, but in a wave of mob attacks in mixed Arab-Jewish cities in Israel.

It has spawned unrest in cities across the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces killed 11 Palestinians on Friday. And it has resulted in the firing of rockets toward Israel from a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, prompted Jordanians to march toward Israel in protest, and led Lebanese protesters to briefly cross their southern border with Israel.

The crisis came as the Israeli government was struggling for its survival; as Hamas — which Israel views as a terrorist group — was seeking to expand its role within the Palestinian movement; and as a new generation of Palestinians was asserting its own values and goals.
And it was the outgrowth of years of blockades and restrictions in Gaza, decades of occupation in the West Bank, and decades more of discrimination against Arabs within the state of Israel, said Avraham Burg, a former speaker of the Israeli Parliament and former chairman of the World Zionist Organization.

“All the enriched uranium was already in place,” he said. “But you needed a trigger. And the trigger was the Aqsa Mosque.”

It had been seven years since the last significant conflict with Hamas, and 16 since the last major Palestinian uprising, or intifada.

There was no major unrest in Jerusalem when President Donald J. Trump recognized the city as Israel’s capital and nominally moved the United States Embassy there. There were no mass protests after four Arab countries normalized relations with Israel, abandoning a long-held consensus that they would never do so until the Palestinian-Israeli conflict had been resolved.

Two months ago, few in the Israeli military establishment were expecting anything like this.

In private briefings, military officials said the biggest threat to Israel was 1,000 miles away in Iran, or across the northern border in Lebanon.

When diplomats met in March with the two generals who oversee administrative aspects of Israeli military affairs in Gaza and the West Bank, they found the pair relaxed about the possibility of significant violence and celebrating an extended period of relative quiet, according to a senior foreign diplomat who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak freely.

Gaza was struggling to overcome a wave of coronavirus infections. Most major Palestinian political factions, including Hamas, were looking toward Palestinian legislative elections scheduled for March, the first in 15 years. And in Gaza, where the Israeli blockade has contributed to an unemployment rate of about 50 percent, Hamas’s popularity was dwindling as Palestinians spoke increasingly of the need to prioritize the economy over war.

The mood began to shift in April.

The prayers at Aqsa for the first night of Ramadan on April 13 occurred as the Israeli president, Reuven Rivlin, was making his speech nearby.

The mosque leadership, which is overseen by the Jordanian government, had rejected an Israeli request to avoid broadcasting prayers during the speech, viewing the request as disrespectful, a public affairs officer at the mosque said.

So that night, the police raided the mosque and disconnected the speakers.

“Without a doubt,” said Sheikh Sabri, “it was clear to us that the Israeli police wanted to desecrate the Aqsa Mosque and the holy month of Ramadan.”

A spokesman for the president denied that the speakers had been turned off, but later said they would double-check.

In another year, the episode might have been quickly forgotten.

But last month, several factors suddenly and unexpectedly aligned that allowed this slight to snowball into a major showdown.

A resurgent sense of national identity among young Palestinians found expression not only in resistance to a series of raids on Al Aqsa, but also in protesting the plight of six Palestinian families facing expulsion from their homes. The perceived need to placate an increasingly assertive far right gave Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s caretaker prime minister, little incentive to calm the waters.

A sudden Palestinian political vacuum, and a grass-roots protest that it could adopt, gave Hamas an opportunity to flex its muscles.

These shifts in the Palestinian dynamics caught Israel unawares. Israelis had been complacent, nurtured by more than a decade of far-right governments that treated Palestinian demands for equality and statehood as a problem to be contained, not resolved.

“We have to wake up,” said Ami Ayalon, a former director of the Israeli domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet. “We have to change the way we understand all this, starting with the concept that the status quo is stable.”

The loudspeaker incident was followed almost immediately by a police decision to close off a popular plaza outside the Damascus Gate, one of the main entrances to the Old City of Jerusalem. Young Palestinians typically gather there at night during Ramadan.

A police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said the plaza was closed to prevent dangerously large crowds from forming there, and to head off the possibility of violence.
To Palestinians, it was another insult. It led to protests, which led to nightly clashes between the police and young men trying to reclaim the space.

To the police, the protests were disorder to be controlled. But to many Palestinians, being pushed out of the square was a slight, beneath which were much deeper grievances.

Most Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and later annexed, are not Israeli citizens by choice, because many say applying for citizenship would confer legitimacy on an occupying power. So they cannot vote.
Many feel they are gradually being pushed out of Jerusalem. Restrictions on building permits force them to either leave the city or build illegal housing, which is vulnerable to demolition orders. So the decision to block Palestinians from a treasured communal space compounded the sense of discrimination that many have felt all their lives.

“It made it feel as though they were trying to eliminate our presence from the city,” said Majed al-Qeimari, a 27-year-old butcher from East Jerusalem. “We felt the need to stand up in their faces and make a point that we are here.”

The clashes at the Damascus Gate had repercussions. Later that week, Palestinian youths began attacking Jews. Some posted videos on TikTok, a social media site, garnering public attention. And that soon led to organized Jewish reprisals.

On April 21, just a week after the police raid, a few hundred members of an extreme-right Jewish group, Lehava, marched through central Jerusalem, chanting “Death to Arabs” and attacking Palestinian passers-by. A group of Jews was filmed attacking a Palestinian home, and others assaulted drivers who were perceived to be Palestinian.
Foreign diplomats and community leaders tried to persuade the Israeli government to lower the temperature in Jerusalem, at least by reopening the square outside Damascus Gate. But they found the government distracted and uninterested, said a person involved in the discussions, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Mr. Netanyahu was in the middle of coalition negotiations after an election in March — the fourth in two years — that ended without a clear winner. To form a coalition, he needed to persuade several extreme-right lawmakers to join him.

One was Itamar Ben Gvir, a former lawyer for Lehava who advocates expelling Arab citizens whom he considers disloyal to Israel, and who until recently hung a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish extremist who massacred 29 Palestinians in Hebron in 1994, in his living room.

Mr. Netanyahu was accused of pandering to the likes of Mr. Ben Gvir, and fomenting a crisis to rally Israelis around his leadership, by letting tensions rise in Jerusalem.

“Netanyahu didn’t invent the tensions between Jews and Arabs,” said Anshel Pfeffer, a political commentator and biographer of the prime minister. “They’ve been here since before Israel was founded. But over his long years in power, he’s stoked and exploited these tensions for political gain time and again and has now miserably failed as a leader to put out the fires when it boiled over.”

Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, rejected that analysis.

“Exactly the opposite is true,” Mr. Regev said. “He has done everything he can to try to make calm prevail.”

On April 25, the government relented on allowing Palestinians to gather outside the Damascus Gate. But then came a brace of developments that significantly widened the gyre.

First was the looming eviction of the six families from Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem. With a final court decision on their case due in the first half of May, regular protests were held throughout April — demonstrations that accelerated after Palestinians drew a connection between the events at Damascus Gate and the plight of the residents.
“What you see now at Sheikh Jarrah or at Al Aqsa or at Damascus Gate is about pushing us out of Jerusalem,” said Salah Diab, a community leader in Sheikh Jarrah, whose leg was broken during a recent police raid on his house. “My neighborhood is just the beginning.”

The police said they were responding to violence by demonstrators in Sheikh Jarrah, but video and images showed they engaged in violence themselves. As the images began to circulate online, the neighborhood turned into a rallying point for Palestinians not just across the occupied territories and Israel, but among the diaspora.

The experience of the families, who had already been displaced from what became Israel in 1948, was something “every single Palestinian in the diaspora can relate to,” said Jehan Bseiso, a Palestinian poet living in Lebanon.

And it highlighted a piece of legal discrimination: Israeli law allows Jews to reclaim land in East Jerusalem that was owned by Jews before 1948. But the descendants of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled their homes that year have no legal means to reclaim their families’ land.
“There’s something really triggering and cyclical about seeing people being removed from their homes all over again,” Ms. Bseiso said. “It’s very triggering and very, very relatable, even if you’re a million miles away.”

On April 29, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority canceled the Palestinian elections, fearing a humiliating result. The decision made Mr. Abbas look weak.

Hamas saw an opportunity, and began to reposition itself as a militant defender of Jerusalem.

“Hamas thought that by doing so, they were showing that they were a more capable leadership for the Palestinians,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political expert at Al Azhar University in Gaza City.

On May 4, six days before the war began, the head of the Hamas military, Muhammed Deif, issued a rare public statement. “This is our final warning,” Mr. Deif said. “If the aggression against our people in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood does not stop immediately, we will not stand idly by.”

War nevertheless seemed unlikely.

But then came the most dramatic escalation of all: a police raid on the Aqsa Mosque on Friday, May 7. Police officers armed with tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-tipped bullets burst into the mosque compound shortly after 8 p.m., setting off hours of clashes with stone-throwing protesters in which hundreds were injured, medics said.
The police said the stone throwers started it; several worshipers said the opposite.

Whoever struck first, the sight of stun grenades and bullets inside the prayer hall of one of the holiest sites in Islam — on the last Friday of Ramadan, one of its holiest nights — was seen as a grievous insult to all Muslims.

“This is about the Judaization of the city of Jerusalem,” Sheikh Omar al-Kisswani, another leader at the mosque, said in an interview hours after the raid. “It’s about deterring people from going to Al Aqsa.”

That set the stage for a dramatic showdown on Monday, May 10. A final court hearing on Sheikh Jarrah was set to coincide with Jerusalem Day, when Jews celebrate the reunification of Jerusalem, by dint of the capture of East Jerusalem, in 1967.

Jewish nationalists typically mark the day by marching through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City and trying to visit Temple Mount, the site on which the Aqsa Mosque is built.

The looming combination of that march, tensions over Al Aqsa and the possibility of an eviction order in Sheikh Jarrah seemed to be building toward something dangerous.

The Israeli government scrambled to tamp down tensions. The Supreme Court hearing in the eviction case was postponed. An order barred Jews from entering the mosque compound.

But the police raided the Aqsa Mosque again, early on Monday morning, after Palestinians stockpiled stones in anticipation of clashes with the police and far-right Jews. For the second time in three days, stun grenades and rubber-tipped bullets were fired across the compound, in scenes that were broadcast across the world.

At the last minute, the government rerouted the Jerusalem Day march away from the Muslim Quarter, after receiving an intelligence briefing about the risk of escalation if it went ahead.

But that was too little, and far too late. By then, the Israeli Army had already begun to order civilians away from the Gaza perimeter.

Shortly after 6 p.m. on Monday, the rocket fire from Gaza began.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

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YankeeTarheel wrote: Sat May 15, 2021 5:57 pm I'm convinced this is a "Wag The Dog" scenario to keep Netanyahu in power and out of prison. Israel instigated this with the absurd, disrespectful raid on the mosque. Now, how can they change governments in the midst of a war???

Sorry, but this is bullshit. And, of course, the Palestinians and Hamas took the bait.
Good for Bibi, good for Hamas, bad for the people and State of Israel, bad for the Palestinian people and Palestinian authority.
I have to agree to have sent police into one of the holiest of Mosque in Islam, on the start of Ramadan, is totally absurd and would have been known to be a trigger point to cause further unrest that would then escalate further.

That has to have BiBi and the Israeli far right fingerprints all over it. He is doing tis to cause the new government to get a no confidence vote and a call for new election. BiBi will then run again on a promise to quell the fighting and put the Palestinians in their place.
It’s Obvious — Israel Is an Apartheid State

It has been a brutal week for Palestinians in Jerusalem.

As hard-line Israeli settlers prepared a provocative parade through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, Israeli security forces turned their guns on peaceful Palestinian protesters and worshipers performing Ramadan prayers at the Aqsa mosque, injuring hundreds in yet another brutal crackdown. Videos circulating on social media in recent days have shown Israeli police officers throwing stun grenades and shooting rubber bullets at Palestinians inside the mosque, attacking Palestinian worshippers with tear gas bombs, and viciously beating a Palestinian man in the mosque compound. On Monday, Israeli strikes in Gaza killed twenty Palestinians, including ten children.

Once again, Israel has turned its celebrations of Jerusalem Day, an Israeli national holiday commemorating the reunification of Jerusalem and the establishment of Israeli control over the Old City, into an occasion to repress Palestinians and remind the world that it is in fact, as a Human Rights Watch report acknowledged last week, an apartheid state.

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has praised the police for “taking a strong hand” against Palestinians, declaring: “Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and just as every nation builds in its capital and builds up its capital, we also have the right to build in Jerusalem and to build up Jerusalem. That is what we have done and that is what we will continue to do.”

This is nothing but a brazen land-grabbing scheme, an expansionist plan hatched in broad daylight and backed up by violent settlers. Netanyahu’s “Greater Jerusalem” vision plans to annex Jerusalem, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians — constituting nearly 40 percent of the city’s population, with thousands living beyond the “separation barrier” in East Jerusalem — are facing the daily prospect of displacement. Far-right settlers, armed to the teeth and emboldened by right-wing politicians, are insisting that the Israeli Supreme Court carry through the eviction of Palestinian families from East Jerusalem.

What is happening in Jerusalem, then, are not “clashes” between Israelis and Palestinians, as mainstream outlets would have you to believe. What is happening is the brutal daily reality of an occupying power, emboldened by unconditional US support and international apathy, exercising its military might against a stateless people living under its control, stripped of their basic human and civil rights. What is happening is a Netanyahu administration seemingly emboldened by the deafening silence from Washington, where the Biden administration has yet to take a clear stance on the its ongoing violation of Palestinian rights.

In Washington, the few exceptions to cowardly silence or pro-Israel cheerleading have come from left politicians.

Senator Bernie Sanders came out staunchly against the unbridled brutality of the government-backed Israeli settlers, tweeting: “The United States must speak out strongly against the violence by government-allied Israeli extremists in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and make clear that the evictions of Palestinian families must not go forward.”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a Twitter message: “We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian residents. Israeli forces are forcing families from their homes during Ramadan and inflicting violence. It is inhumane and the US must show leadership in safeguarding the human rights of Palestinians.”

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib shared a video on Twitter showing Israeli forces firing stun grenades into a Palestinian medical facility, saying: “There is no reason, none, to attack people while they are praying or seeking medical attention — other than to dehumanize and terrorize them.” Calling on President Joe Biden to intervene and prevent Israel from entering Temple Mount, where its forces have been attacking Palestinian worshippers, Tlaib further warned that “too many are silent or dismissive as our U.S. tax dollars continue to be used for this kind of inhumanity. I am tired of people functioning from a place of fear rather than doing what’s right because of the bullying by pro-Israel lobbyists. This is apartheid, plain and simple.”

Representative Ilham Omar also tweeted in solidarity with the Palestinian worshippers, writing: “This is happening as Muslims pray tarawih & tahajud in Palestine. Families who pray all night during Ramadan, the mosque is like home. Palestinians deserve to find refuge in a mosque and peace in Ramadan.”

For decades, consecutive administrations have given Israel a blank check to pursue its expansionist and segregationist policies against Palestinians, showering it with billions in public money and backing it to the hilt — lavishing money on an apartheid government that is killing and displacing Palestinians every day.

The United States must not be complicit in these continuing atrocities. The Biden administration must pressure Israel to end its occupation, dismantle its illegal settlements, and recognize Palestinians’ rights. It should follow the example of Senators Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who have repeatedly called for imposing conditions on US military aid to Israel.

Israel cannot be allowed to act with impunity, to kill and displace free of consequences. Occupation and apartheid must come with a cost.
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/05/israeli- ... heid-state

Biden and the US government will not put the pressure on Israel to change its ways like was done with South Africa. The right wing Republicans and many Dems would never stand for it. AIPAC money is too dear to the hearts and pocketbooks of the politicians.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

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The perceived need to placate an increasingly assertive far right gave Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s caretaker prime minister, little incentive to calm the waters.
“Netanyahu didn’t invent the tensions between Jews and Arabs,” said Anshel Pfeffer, a political commentator and biographer of the prime minister. “They’ve been here since before Israel was founded. But over his long years in power, he’s stoked and exploited these tensions for political gain time and again and has now miserably failed as a leader to put out the fires when it boiled over.”

Bibi Netanyahu is fighting for his political life and possibly his freedom. I don't know the details of the evictions in East Jerusalem, but entering al-Aqsa Mosque without presenting clear evidence that there was a security threat is a provocation. And not arresting right wing extremists at Temple Mount contributed to mounting tensions.

On the other hand pummeling Israel with rockets isn't a measured response by Hamas. Hamas and PLO have their own internal battles, something other Arab countries have tired of over decades and why some extended diplomatic relations to Israel to normalize existing unofficial relations. AOC's comment about apartheid doesn't help the situation.

It looked like Naftali Bennet would partner with Yair Lapid and push Netanyahu out of office but latest reports are Bennet might partner with Likud. The Israelis and Arabs both play the victimhood card to stir up support internally and internationally. I understand Biden's reluctance to waste too much political capital on a situation he can't resolve when he wants to accomplish so much more.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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tonguengroover wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 12:42 pm Not taking political sides here but talk about land grabs. Reminds me of our native Americans. I would be PO'd too.


What's the source of the map? Israel occupies lands on the west bank, but I question if they've annexed those lands into Israel. They occupied Gaza but gave it back to the Palestinians.

I too try to stay out of the politics, I'm just an observer.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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highdesert wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 2:15 pm
tonguengroover wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 12:42 pm Not taking political sides here but talk about land grabs. Reminds me of our native Americans. I would be PO'd too.


What's the source of the map? Israel occupies lands on the west bank, but I question if they've annexed those lands into Israel. They occupied Gaza but gave it back to the Palestinians.

I too try to stay out of the politics, I'm just an observer.
I observe as well. Lots of articles on these maps pro and con. With claims it was a British colony, the UN set borders yata yata. Still I believe originally it was controlled by Palestine.

Just search https://www.google.com/search?q=palesti ... e&ie=UTF-8
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,”

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There are many, many regions in the world that were already populated by local peoples/cultures for centuries that was later conquered by European colonists who artificially decided borders for colonial control and later political and economic influence when the word "colony" went out of fashion. This caused no end to conflicts and suffering due to upsets to the local religious and political balance of powers. Possibly the most overt imbalance was created after WWII when a million European Jews were effectively "provided" land by UN charter, lands which was already populated by Palestinians (devout peoples practicing another religion), land which the British previously colonized and was quickly losing control. This is the storied birth of the state of Israel.

Think about it... traumatized (largely European) Jews fighting to carve out a safe home after fleeing (yet another) an extermination campaign in Germany, the latest of literally hundreds of pogroms in Europe and the Middle East throughout history, settles in land occupied and surrounded by Arabs that Israeli guerrilla fighters wrestled away from the Brits. And the UN thought this was OK. How could anyone not imagine this was not a powder-keg in the making which could start the next world war and lead to the second use of nuclear weapons in human history?

But I agree with those here that the current conflict is artificially generated by a single embattled corrupt Israeli politician which belongs in jail.
Last edited by Bisbee on Sun May 16, 2021 5:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

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tonguengroover wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 2:52 pm
highdesert wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 2:15 pm
tonguengroover wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 12:42 pm Not taking political sides here but talk about land grabs. Reminds me of our native Americans. I would be PO'd too.


What's the source of the map? Israel occupies lands on the west bank, but I question if they've annexed those lands into Israel. They occupied Gaza but gave it back to the Palestinians.

I too try to stay out of the politics, I'm just an observer.
I observe as well. Lots of articles on these maps pro and con. With claims it was a British colony, the UN set borders yata yata. Still I believe originally it was controlled by Palestine.

Just search https://www.google.com/search?q=palesti ... e&ie=UTF-8

Thanks for the link. The writer correctly notes that the West Bank was never Palestinian, it was Jordanian. The green Palestinian area in the last map must be area controlled by the Palestine Authority - Hamas controls the Gaza strip and the PLO controls areas in the West Bank.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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Bisbee wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 5:04 pm But I agree with those here that the current conflict is artificially generated by a single embattled corrupt Israeli politician which belongs in jail.

Ireland is another example, England later Britain controlled Ireland because it was given to them by a pope. James VI of Scotland who was also James I of England and Wales settled Lowland Scots in Northern Ireland to help subdue the locals, that was in the 1600s and centuries later they were still fighting.

And at a certain time people had to adjust to the reality in the Irish Republic and the Province of Northern Ireland that war wasn't the solution. Northern Ireland is still part of the UK and the Republic of Ireland is an independent nation in the EU, but they work together over an open border. The UK PM Tony Blair and the Irish PM Bertie Ahern got the parties together and negotiated a treaty that was approved by all the voters.

Sadly I don't see anything like that happening in the Middle East conflict anytime soon. Like Trump who was a divider, Bibi Netanyahu sees the conflict as a way to keep the parties divided. I hope Yair Lapid is successful in creating a new government that kicks Bibi out of office and he's convicted of fraud. The loss of life on both sides is tragic.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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Isn't that the same as the history of South America? Are there ANY Indigenous Peoples left in Argentina?
Pretty much all of Africa was cut up from the 16th to the mid-20th Century by Europeans. So was Southern Asia.
Europeans invaded and conquered most of the world, even China wasn't immune. Only Japan remained unconquered until August 1945.
Specifically the roots of the conflict in Israel and surrounds go back to the end of WWI, the Paris Peace Conference, and the Balfour Declaration--over 100 years ago.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

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All around the world the continuing conflicts and effects of European colonialism reverberates like the echos of war and domination.

Even when you have indigenous populations learning to employ the technology and industrialization as defense against the European colonists, they also learn colonialism for securing the fuel and raw materials necessary, resulting in their own imperialist ventures on neighboring peoples ostensibly for protection from “Westerners”. Such was the unfortunate history of the development of modern Japan which feared becoming the next “Sick Man of Asia”, becoming themselves the hated Imperial Army in WWII in China, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines...
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

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We need more strong voices from the Jewish American community to bolster human rights in Israel. And yeah, we Americans certainly deserve a say in how $3.8B of our tax money is being spent at the end of the day.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

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Bisbee wrote: Mon May 17, 2021 3:00 pm We need more strong voices from the Jewish American community to bolster human rights in Israel. And yeah, we Americans certainly deserve a say in how $3.8B of our tax money is being spent at the end of the day.
I’d prefer it not be spent there.
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