Humanitarian crisis in Gaza

[IvanV]

Hamas has apparently said it is accepting Israel's ceasefire offer just as offered, but Netanyahu is saying it is unacceptable. The difficulty is over what might happen next. Hamas wants to use the ceasefire to talk about an end to hostilities, but Israel will not contemplate an end to hostilities until Hamas is destroyed, whatever that means.

I assume that what Israel is looking to repeat is when in 1982 about 15000 PLO members and leadership were expelled from Lebanon after the country was invaded by Israel and Beirut besieged. I'm not sure where Hamas might go to though.

There were some rather different circumstances. They were on Lebanese territory and a large number of Lebanese were dying in the cross-fire. The PLO were fighting with Lebanese factions as well as the Israelis. That might explain why there was a broad interest in getting them out of Lebanon. A mainly Muslim multi-national arrived to enforce their removal, and Tunisia was willing to take them.

Currently they are on their own land, the people dying in the cross-fire are Palestinians, there is no one willing to take them, and no mainly Muslim multi-national force is willing to act as peacekeeper. Some might be happy to leave, but they are largely civilians, and probably Hamas would wish to impede not facilitate that.

When I think if some Israelis might have a historical comparison in mind, I wonder if they are thinking of the defeat of the Nazis, where everything became nice again after that. (Except, umm, in the large areas of Europe that Stalin annexed.) And the Germans did have some more successful prior experience of parliamentary government. And more widely, very few wars have ended like that.

[Imrael]

Hamas has apparently said it is accepting Israel's ceasefire offer just as offered, but Netanyahu is saying it is unacceptable. The difficulty is over what might happen next. Hamas wants to use the ceasefire to talk about an end to hostilities, but Israel will not contemplate an end to hostilities until Hamas is destroyed, whatever that means.

I assume that what Israel is looking to repeat is when in 1982 about 15000 PLO members and leadership were expelled from Lebanon after the country was invaded by Israel and Beirut besieged. I'm not sure where Hamas might go to though.

There were some rather different circumstances. They were on Lebanese territory and a large number of Lebanese were dying in the cross-fire. The PLO were fighting with Lebanese factions as well as the Israelis. That might explain why there was a broad interest in getting them out of Lebanon. A mainly Muslim multi-national arrived to enforce their removal, and Tunisia was willing to take them.

Currently they are on their own land, the people dying in the cross-fire are Palestinians, there is no one willing to take them, and no mainly Muslim multi-national force is willing to act as peacekeeper. Some might be happy to leave, but they are largely civilians, and probably Hamas would wish to impede not facilitate that.

When I think if some Israelis might have a historical comparison in mind, I wonder if they are thinking of the defeat of the Nazis, where everything became nice again after that. (Except, umm, in the large areas of Europe that Stalin annexed.) And the Germans did have some more successful prior experience of parliamentary government. And more widely, very few wars have ended like that.

Lots of ethnic Germans displaced in the aftermath of the war. Mostly into East Germany, so perhaps less visible to western historians. Which of course might be exactly the precedent some more militant Israelis are thinking of.

[Fishnut]

It seems impossible given how awful things already are, but things are going to get an awful lot worse very quickly,

UN officials told the Guardian on Wednesday afternoon that their warehouses were now completely empty south of the river dividing the northern third of the Gaza from the south, with no likelihood of resupply as long as the main entry points into the territory remain closed after Israeli offensives launched in recent days.

An entirely man-made famine is underway. Food is waiting to be delivered, it's sitting there on the other side of the wall but Israel is refusing to let it in. This is genocide and it needs to end.