Israel/Palestine thread

Yeah it's not the 19th century anymore, modern nations are far less interested in running colonial projects.

Everyone knows Hamas had close to complete control of aid distribution in Gaza. Which means they directly stole a lot of stuff (reselling that to finance their military capacity to strike Israel), and directed the rest to loyalists, building a base of support (which helps when you want to organize military strikes).

If you give to a kid in the street which you know has a criminal father who will take all the money from him, after a while you can be considered responsible for directly financing the criminal father, no matter how much you want to help the kid

Grizy: I was under the impression that most of Hamas's military equipment was from Iran.

As you mention in your last sentence, UNRWA's helping Hamas was inevitable under that framework. I believe in changing the framework so its not inevitable. I think countries that will be investing in Gaza will want to change the framework as well or else this is going to become a worse problem requiring even more money to fix.

Luciom: I would not consider that direct aid, I think it's also questionable how much of that was a "collaboration".

Hamas has no friends and Iran isn’t interested in putting its neck on the line for Hamas. I’d be surprised if even a handful is out of Gaza.

Again, everyone recognizes a change is necessary.

They just all want someone else to do it. And historically that means nobody does anything.

I think this is demonstrably untrue. The Northern front persist with daily attacks and thwarted attacks, specifically because of Iran. Same is true of the drone attacks being launched from proxies in the other fronts. These fronts amplified as soon as Oct 7th happened, which certainly implies a level of coordination.

I'm not saying there are hostages in Iran. But a few in Egypt or Sudan? Wouldn't be shocked.

The only thing I know Iran doesn't want, is open direct war with the West. But anything that advances the proxy fronts is exactly what they want. And Khomeini thanking the campus students directly for joining the resistance shows how interconnected all these events are, at a big picture view. At its heart, it's still a war against western ideas.

I think we're aligned. A small handful outside of Gaza is possible but anything beyond that would require high level blessing that I don't think any government is interested in giving.

What is happening in the "northern front" is more kabuki theatre than anything else. Hezbollah has repeatedly telegraphed its unwillingness to escalate and is just making symbolic gestures to appease its hardliners and Iran.

That Israel has been under such constant attack for decades that rocket/mortar fire on its civilians amounts to symbolic gestures is emblematic of much larger problems but is not a sign Hezbollah is actually a friend of Hamas, at least not beyond a "enemy of my enemy" context.

I agree with the wider point that Iran wants to embroider the West and Israel in conflict broadly as long as it doesn't translate into open war with Iran. Where we probably disagree is Iran's risk appetite. I think they have already been telegraphing they want to backdown but are having trouble leashing their dogs in Yemen and Gaza.

After you know perfectly well what the criminal father does, and victims of the criminal father ask you to stop donating to the kid, how is it different from direct aid and why is it no collaboration with the criminal father?

There is a strong coercion aspect to this. If it still classifies as "collaboration" then fine, but it deserves a big asterisk.

I think what you're calling Kabuki theatre is actually a long protracted war of attrition, and one that Israel cannot afford to be in. They can't afford to keep the North evacuated much longer. They can't afford their agricultural sector to stay decimated. And Hezbollah very much can and will drag this out for the death by 1000 cuts approach. Hezbollah is everything that Hamas are not, and in the worst possible ways. Their weapons and training are much more sophisticated, and when that front becomes THE front, Israel will suffer very high loses. And to be clear it's a front because Hezbollah is violating 1701 (for anyone not following that close). https://peacemaker.un.org/israellebanon-...

Kids have to be back in school by Fall. The army isn't ready for that front yet (or it would have happened). But if they don't get the North open again this summer, it'll be another lost year for those families. That's not theatre, that's real life. And we can skip the "ok but what about Gaza?" posts. We are all we aware of Gaza itt. Nobody is ignoring Gaza. Adults are discussing another topic here because it came up.

This is a big part of why Israel needed a political solution with international backing. Instead of losing so much support they could have galvanised political support. No more attacks on israel could have been a rallying cry for international support.

It's never too late to try but so much harder now.

You said the hostages are free because of IDF will but don’t you mean because of Hamas’ will?

If Hamas wanted the hostages dead then they would’ve killed them. Hamas kept them alive. Hamas’ will kept them alive. Israel rescued them

Big difference

Also they wouldn’t have gotten taken if IDF stopped its 100 year illegal occupation of Palestine

The details of operation Arnon are just hair raising. They were so close from getting out without it boiling over.

They give the greenlight on Thursday. They put a dummy operation close enough by to have military vehicles in pxoximity without them engaging in Nuseirat. The commandos go in with the white moving truck, and have two different homes to take down. They manage extracting all 4 hostages, and make it to the truck without any spill over at all into the civilian population.

There was one angle of fire they didn't anticipate during the weeks of training, and that's the one that takes down Arnon Zamora. With all the hostages and commando units in the truck, they make a break for it. One of their drones spot a guy with an RPG waiting around the corner to take the truck out (there were least 3 more coming), so they stop the truck. It's at this moment the gear box is shot, and the truck is now disabled.

At this point it's no longer an extraction of 4 hostages, it's an extraction of 4 hostages and the commando units with them before Hamas descends on them to lynch them. We're talking Blackhawk Down situation. The call is made to send the 35th in to get them. Once the 35th is involved (which was always just one of many backup plans), it's the 35th against the whole market's defences. They manage to get military vehicles in, everyone trades vehicles, and they're off to the beach for the helicopter extract.

As an aside since we know now, we can clear up this misinformation (which is sort of classic in this conflict):

1) 18 Israeli soldiers died. No. 1 did.
2) American commandos were involved. No that was all Israeli on the ground. They've done this one before to try and discredit the IDF "victory" in the eyes of the population.
3) The American aid pier was for this. No, nobody used the pier, it was a chopper extract on the beach
4) Aid trucks were used. No they were moving trucks, but frankly I'd have been more or less fine using aid ones since Hamas does this on the daily

I will make no comments on the death toll, except to say the people reporting the death tolls are the same ones putting out public press releases on the above.

I wish that gear box never got hit. Might have been a very different day. And by the sounds of things, the IDF knows full well that a mass trade is still needed. They won't have many other shots at operations like this (and aren't using this victory to propose a shift in tactics).

lol, so the pier doesn't deliver aid but it does deliver IDF commandos who are deliberately blurring the lines between civilians and combatants in exactly the same way Hamas is being accused of.

Keep lying with punch-in-the-face outrageous one-liners, directly answering a post saying" no, the pier wasn't used" with this, what's the point of doing what you do ?

Amazing discovery by palestinian scientists

Israel retains a sliver of permanent control around the pier to safeguard it. It only makes sense to land your choppers in the area of control to get your people out. Definitely not great optics but not much choice either.

Some of these people are clearly coerced into doing these things for Hamas and are not full blown fanatics for Hamas. I don't believe in ever celebrating having to kill people, and definitely not. here. This is an awful situation where both sides are very much in the wrong, and both sides also have reasonable motives for fighting.

Wealthy gazean living off pallywood propaganda and working as spokesmen for Hamas aren't coherced by Hamas, they ARE Hamas lol.

The purported "political arm" purportedly distinct from the "military arm" doesn't exist, everyone in the "political arm" is a combatant, is a material supporter of acts of terrors, an enabler of them, and should be killed because of that.

It seems completely clear that some terrorists involved in running the powerless government of what amounts to a mixed refugee camp and imposed ghetto are worse than the terrorist bigoted apartheid state that isolates that refugee camp/ghetto. This is just obvious because the grandchildren of holocaust survivors can't be aggressors because they are victims.

Israel claims less than 100 killed, Gaza claims 274.

So correspondences from Sinwar are being leaked out. And they confirm what is already obvious. Is that from the beginning he expected lots of Palestinians civilians would die to achieve Hamas's political goals, and he was perfectly ok with this. And if anything, the levels of Palestinians dying is much lower than his desire.

What I think is the interesting question is "why" the correspondences are being leaked out now. It may indicate an indication that Qatar and the other Sunni states have hit their limit with his intransigence, and are making him the fall guy.

He calls the civilians deaths "necessary sacrifices", clear admission that they died because of Hamas choices

No boats were used Trolly. The place you can most safely land a chopper anywhere near Nuseirat is on the beach (once the flight path is safely along the water in particular). The beach is one kilometer in a straight line from there. They went to the most obvious place to land choppers on the SAND

From the beach you know there's nobody that can shoot from behind you, the sea delimits your 6 oclock. They weren't going to extract in spot where they had 360 degrees of rpgs to contend with.