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A short prompt of good news for starting the week- the likelihood of the current Gaza conflict ending just got significantly higher today, as Hamas has released at least the first 7 of 20 surviving hostages to Israel, with more expected later today (or maybe already completed), as part of a Trump-mediated peace deal that is excepted to culminate in a regional summit this week.
Big if carried through, and while there was leadup to it last week, there was a fair bit of (and fair grounds for) skepticism on if the deal would actually be followed through. There were questions on if Hamas even could deliver all the living hostages given how the hostages were often not under Hamas's direct organizational control (but sometimes under other groups), and this deal does not address the bodies of the dead hostages, among other things.
There is also some irony, or possibly some future culture war conspiracy theories, about how this will not get Trump a noble peace prize, since they announced that late last week.
That said- and I think this is good news in general- it's also worth noting this doesn't mean stability or even a lasting peace. While the Yemen-based Houthis have indicated they will stop their Red Sea attacks so long as Israel upholds the ceasefire, this runs into complications like how Hamas has already engaged in gun battles with gazan clans as it tries to re-assert control, which goes significant premise of Hamas being removed as the military and civil authority of Gaza. Which remains a huge, unanswered question which could restart this problem all over again, if Hamas remains in power for lack of anyone actively displacing. The NYT is running a piece on how mediators are already signaling this isn't a comprehensive deal for either side.
One thing that isn't in question, however, is that the return of the still-living hostages is going to reshape the underpinnings of Israeli politics, as the post-October 7 war cabinet coalition that kept Netanyahu in power will lose much of the reason for being. This means political instability, for worse or for better, as Israel rebalances. The next election would be no later than late next year regardless, and could come earlier.
Absent some new (and detrimental to all) nonsense, this means that a lot of the people who only supported Nnetanyahu because of the war will likely be more willing to withdraw their support and trigger early elections, which would be no later than about a year from now anyways. This does not, however, mean a general discrediting of the Israeli right, and a decades-belated return of the Israeli left (whose original decline was after the failure of the gaza withdrawal almost two decades ago). The war was a significant polarizing effect on Israeli politics and society, and while I'd not bet on Netanyahu I'd also not bet on any part of the political left seen as opposing the war for pro-Palestinian reasonings.
I'll end it there. While there is plenty of reasons things could yet again get worse, and while I am sure eventually they will, for the moment I'll encourage people to view this new news as good news, which can well make many people's lives better.
I don't have a direct reply, but I'm going to piggy back off this post because I'd written up a related issue. I’d like to look at the prisoner exchange ratio.
We’ve looked at this issue various times before on The Motte, with amazement at the disparate ratio of prisoners being exchanged on each side, and the risks involved in releasing
terroristsfreedom fighters in a prisoner exchange only to have the prisoners commit attacks on Israel in the future.This time its 20 Israeli hostages against a list of 1900 Palestinian prisoners.
One way of looking at this is that it’s a release of ‘Prisoners of War’ and that all POWs are released at the cessation of hostilities. Except that the hostages were civilians deliberately taken as.. well as hostages, to prevent military advancement and also as leverage in negotiations such as this peace deal.
In addition, the list of 1900 is not limited to ‘POWs’ captured during the latest war, but includes 250 other
terroristsfreedom fighters that have attacked Israel prior to the current war)If this peace plan doesn’t hold then Hamas would have bolstered its force by almost 2000 fighters, not for this war, but the future wars to come.
I don't blame Trump and other peacemakers for trying and I am a fan of lasting peace, but this exchange ratio has always been a bugbear of mine and I don't think I'm alone. At a minimum they should stagger out the prisoner release with the 250 non-POWs to be released after the peace holds for 5+ years.
I feel like the political leverage the hostages represented was probably worth a lot more to Hamas than 2000 additional warm bodies. In spite of any Israeli rhetoric to the contrary, I'm pretty sure if the ceasefire breaks down, Israel will no longer be fighting with one arm tied behind their back.
Israel was lining Palestinians up and then crushing them with bulldozers (see the story about the IDF soldier who killed himself because he couldn't live with being the driver), on top of torturing people with downs syndrome (Mohammad Bhar) and murdering small children (Hind Rajab). They deployed more explosive power relative to the size of their target than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you think this is them being restrained, you're making the case that Israel needs to be removed from the Earth before they can do this to anyone else.
Having better weapons makes you the bad guy? When the Americans fought Nazi Germany, the Americans had way more bombs and planes than the Germans did. Does that mean the Americans were big meanies, or does it mean the Nazis shouldn't have picked a fight they couldn't win?
Palestine supporters do this all the time, and it's never persuasive. Israel fires more bombs, Israel kills more people, as if these are bad things to do in a war. Winning is evil? When they get attacked, the Israelis should chivalrously lower their military power to be equal to their opponents? It strikes as sour grapes; 'They're only winning because they have more weapons!' See: don't pick fights you can't win.
Every time someone says that the Israelis have killed more Palestinians than vice-versa or set off more bombs or whatever, my only thought it that they clearly haven't done enough because the Palestinians haven't stopped fighting yet! How can you set the bar for too many casualties in a war below the number required to win? You can hardly ask the Israelis to stop fighting and wait for the Palestinians to catch up in the kill count.
No, that's not the point being made.
Would you apply this argument to the jews of Nazi germany? Was it their fault for attacking the big meanie and then having a sook and cry about how badly it went for them? Why did they pick a fight they couldn't win?
I don't think that argument would convince you to support the nazis, and it isn't going to convince me to support the Israelis.
If the Palestinians stop fighting they believe they will be wiped out, which is supported by a vast number of statements from members of the Israeli government. What alternative are you leaving besides a final solution?
My position, which I have stated on here, remains that there should be a single state solution which includes the Israelis and Palestinians both.
The Jews of Nazi Germany didn't attack the Germans. That's literally an antisemetic conspiracy theory invented by the Nazis to demonize the Jews, and I wasn't aware that anyone believed it except a few diehard neo-Nazis. Conventional history tells us that it was actually the Nazis who attacked the Jews.
If they believe that then they're simply wrong. If the Israelis wanted to wipe out the Palestinians they could have done it at any time. Ergo, they don't want to. Given that recent history suggests that every Palestinian attack on Israel is followed by an immediate upswing in Palestinian deaths, it is not clear to me how this course of action prevents the Israelis from wiping them out.
If wiping out is on the table, it seems clear to me that starting pointless wars over and over again for decades can only increase its likelihood. If it isn't on the table then the pointless wars are just that - a meaningless outpouring of useless hatred that accomplishes nothing and causes only misery.
That is in fact the point of my argument. The Palestinians were there before Israel was, and we can even directly identify many of the violent terror groups that helped establish Israel like Irgun and Lehi. The Palestinians didn't start this fight any more than the Jews of Nazi Germany started the holocaust.
Incorrect. Multiple high-ranking people in Israel and Israeli think-tanks have made it clear that they view the entirety of the region as being given to them by god, and that it should be an exclusively jewish homeland. The Palestinians aren't so stupid as to think nothing bad would happen to them when their homes become the exclusive homeland of another people!
Mass extermination of unwanted brown people to give your society a bit more lebensraum is the kind of gross crime against humanity that gets your nation completely ostracised from the rest of the world. Not only that, the actual human infrastructure of the state would likely have trouble - look at growing number of IDF suicides and imagine how much worse it would be if they were explicitly committing another holocaust without any figleaves. Just nuking them would engender such a hostile reaction from the rest of the world that Israel would simply cease to be a viable state.
In the absence of violent resistance Israel would simply do to Gaza what they are doing with the west bank and take over the land piecemeal. As I've said, they believe that a lack of resistance means they will simply be wiped out and dispossessed - and I think they're right to believe that. I do agree that this conflict is a meaningless source of misery and the world would be a better place if it didn't happen at all, but sadly I'm not in charge of the region.
When I use the word 'attacked,' I do not refer to the crime of existing while being Jewish. I use the word 'attacked' to refer to that thing where you use guns and bombs to kill people.
If the Palestinians were there first (debatable), so what? The German gentiles were undeniably 'there' before the German Jews. Does that mean the German Jews were 'attacking' the German gentiles with their presence? No. By logical extension, the Israelis are not 'attacking' the Palestinians by existing in their vicinity.
On the other hand, last year the Palestinians launched a literal attack on Israel. Lots of people died. It started a war. Ring any bells?
Then why are you so concerned that the Palestinians will be 'wiped out'? Since you've just explained why it can't possibly happen regardless of what the Palestinians do, you yourself prove that Palestinian 'resistance' is just a waste of lives. By your own argument there will be no 'wiping out' so what are we even talking about?
I see. When you say 'wiped out' you don't actually mean anyone will be killed. It's a kind of nonviolent 'wiping out' where people lose landownership in a dispute over whose ancestors stole what from whom, but continue living their lives without being bodily harmed in any way. This is one of those irregular verbs, you know, I'm buying a house, you're dispossessing the native population, he's committing genocide.
So in order to prevent the Jews from metaphorically 'wiping them out' (by existing nearby), the Palestinians must heroically resist (by massacring the Jews). I do not like this abuse of language.
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I feel like the definition of the term "proportionality" as a military/conflict term was one of the major casualties of this war, but I also don't think it matters. If Israel were to have shut down the Iron Dome, so more of its own civilians were being killed, those misusing the term proportionality wouldn't have changed to "well, now it's not genocide/war crimes because the Israeli deaths are closer in count to the Palestinian deaths", it would be "good, that's what they deserve for attacking Gaza." At least, among the die-hards, rather than the normie supporters who hear about a bad thing on social media and take their views/marching orders from it. They'd just go along with whatever the newest talking point was instead.
I feel like it might be a tad uncharitable to have said that, but I've never seen anyone change their mind when confronted with the text or context of the various laws and regulations that cover waging ethical and legal warfare.
"Proportionality" never meant that death counts had to be close or that an ineffective attack has to be met with an ineffective response. That's just something Palestine supporters claim or imply because it's useful for them. Proportionality means that the collateral damage of an attack has to be proportional to its military objective.
Yes. That's the point I was trying to get across. I believe we are in full agreement.
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