• CerealKiller01@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I think there are a few things that should be taken into account:

    1. Hamas stated time and time again that their goal is to take over all of the land that is currently Israel and, to put it extremely mildly, make nearly all the Jewish population not be there.
    2. The Oct. 7th attack has shown that Hamas is willing to commit indiscriminate murder, kidnapping and rape to achieve this goal. Some of the the kidnapped civilians are currently held in Gaza.

    Israel had no real choice but to launch an attack against Hamas in order to return the kidnapped citizens and neutralize Hamas as a threat. You could say “Yes, that’s because Because of the aforementioned illegal occupation”, but just like the citizens in Gaza have a right to be protected against bombings regardless of what their government did, Israeli citizens have the right to be protected from being murdered, raped or kidnapped.

    So, any true solution has to take both these considerations into account. Right now, the Israeli stance is that once Hamas will no longer control Gaza, the war could end (citizens on both sides will be protected). The Hamas stance is that Israel should cease hostilities so they can work on murdering, raping or kidnapping more Israeli citizens. That isn’t to say Israel is just, rather that Israel is willing to accept a solution that stops the killing of both citizen populations, while Hamas is not. The just solution is for the international community to put pressure on both parties to stop hostilities. The problem is that the parts of the world who would like to see a just solution (Eurpoe, the US etc.) are able to put pressure on Israel, while the parts who don’t hold humane values (Iran, Qatar etc.) support Hamas.

    Now, regarding the massive civilian casualties in Gaza:

    1. Hamas has spent many years integrating their military capabilities into civilian infrastructure. This was done as a strategy, specifically to make it harder for Israel to harm Hamas militants without harming civilians.

    I’m not trying to say that all civilians killing in Gaza are justified, rather that it’s extremely hard to isolate military targets. Most international law regarding warfare states that warring parties should avoid harming civilians as much as possible. Just saying “Israel is killing TWICE as many innocent civilians as Hamas, therefore they’re attacking Palestinian people as a whole” doesn’t take this into account what’s possible under in the current situation.