I try not to get political on here because I find we get so divisive when we get into serious discussions. I will say this though, I get why Israel is doing what it's doing, but it's not working. Go back to the table and draw up a new plan.
@Stevo Hamas will not come to the table. Israel already tried multiple times. You should watch this for background.
@thedisasterautist @Dane I'm looking at this conflict through a funnel and I just don't like how Israel is going about it right now. Too many innocents getting caught in the cross-fire.
@Stevo @Dane: Should the IDF ask Hamas to stop using hospitals, schools, and apartment blocs to house command centers, ammo dumps, comms centers, and rocket-launch sites? Perhaps someone could persuade Hamas to allow Palestinians to flee to safety when shit goes down, instead of cordoning them inside the fire zones. I dunno. It''s puzzling a lot of people, especially the Israelis, how to not hurt anyone but Hamas personnel. And also to stop firing rockets, stop bombings, and such as well.
@thedisasterautist @Dane I definitely hold Israel to a higher standard than Hamas, but I also get that there's challenges that make it feel impossible to avoid some level of collateral damage. That said, if a Hamas leader is hiding in a refugee camp, maybe dropping multiple bombs is not the best choice.
@Stevo @Dane: Hamas' leadership are in Iran, Qatar, and other regional countries. Not too many of them venture anywhere near Israel, for obvious reasons. Also, Hamas don't negotiate in good faith. They negotiate for time to rebuild and rearm. That's their history. It's a classic strategy not unique to Hamas. The PLO used to do that as well. Hamas also diverts the bulk of economic and other aid for Gaza for, yes, moar tunnels, ammo, and personnel/training.
@Stevo @Dane: Alas, Hamas are also the ones elected by the Palestinians to run the place officially. Whether or not the elections are wholly legit is another matter, but one can only guess. Many Palestinians openly detest Hamas, and there's not a shortage of footage showing this, up to and including Hamas militants muzzling or elsewise apprehending such people, even when they're grieving the deaths of their children, friends, etc. killed by Hamas' tactics.
@Stevo @Dane: It's an all around bad situation and one that everyone wishes or thinks they know the answer to, even if the answer they reach is "I don't know how in the world this can be solved, but I want them to stop doing it", which is not a solution. As the fella said, "And people in Hell want ice water."
IMO, there are too many hands in the pot over it, geopolitically. Between regular Israelis and Palestinians on one side and religious extremist Zionists and Islamic river-to-the-sea...
@Stevo @Dane: ...fundamentalist Palestinians alone it's a tangle, but adding in all the regional geopolitics and then the subsequent international geopolitics, it's a fucktangle. And nobody's going to back down or back off, alas. (I mean nobody outside of Israel and Palestine are going to, and there's no getting them to.)
@Stevo @Dane: All that said, Iran and Russia/Syria are a fundamental problem there, as they are not only funding but also arming Hamas and assisting them in planning terror attacks.