naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #3
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
What's going on in the West Bank right now? I haven't seen much coverage of it.
Settlers going on rampage - destroying crops, burning houses, evicting whole Palestinian villages at gunpoint (yes, unlike Israelis in Israel proper, these hilltop guys are heavily armed and unlike Gaza, Palestinians in West Bank are thoroughly disarmed).
Lots of coverage, but you have to dig up into Arabic sources to find it.
Damn. Brutal if true, and it feels plausible, given the incentives. Still, I’d like to see something more conclusive than a tweet about “dear friends” who are totally getting rounded up by the gestapo.
At least some settler and IDF bad action is moderately well-supported by the evidence (and shouldn't be very surprising; Price Taggers tend to be assholes). I think Susiya and Masafer Yatta (note: both these pieces are pre-Oct 7th) are more about the broader Area C clusterfuck, but there's a lot of Well-Respected Reporters giving pretty strong claims of Area C places doing variants of a commanded evacuation followed by invasive search, and I could absolutely believe the IDF and/or COGAT is doing it to fuck with them.
Some of this fuckery has escalated to death (contrast, with the caveat that I expect neither of these is giving a good factual analysis, though the jpost one seems like it's damning enough with faint praise that you don't need to by the AJZ version).
It's just an escalation of existing problems, rather than a change in type.
Are their guns legal? Are they formed into officially sanctioned militias or does the government just tacitly encourage it while looking the other way?
The latter. "It's not technically Israeli land, it's some no-man's land, so we won't police what our citizens do there, but we will protect them from harm".
If true, that really sucks for the people in the West Bank.
It sounds like true anarcho-tyranny. "People can harm you with impunity, but if you fight back, the government will punish you".
The limited examples of anarcho-tyranny which happen in progressive U.S. cities make my blood boil. I can't imagine how bad it would be in Palestine, where the Palestinians have no leafy suburbs to retreat to.
There's been some combat, mass arrests, and rocket strikes/counterstrikes, but Arabic Wikipedia -- which I will caution I trust not in the slightest (if you think American wikipedia is shameless propaganda...), and only provide as higher-end estimate -- lists an estimated 100 West Bank Palestinian fatalities since October 7th. Al-Jazeera (ditto!) says 110ish and highlights a lot of Palestine Islamic Jihad and a Hamas fighters in a randomly-selected instance.
Fatah's claimed official support for a general uprising and specifically to provide Gaza Palestinians medical aid, but the text is weirdly less bloodthirsty (repeat above disclaimer, but going the other valiance) than a lot of college campuses, damning with faint praise as that might be; whether this reflects translators rephrasing matters for public consumption, the organization not wanting to tall poppy themselves, or a result Fatah's long-lasting tension with Hamas (Hamas has gone out of its way to kill Fatah officials, Abbas keeps fucking with Presidential election dates), or some other thing, I dunno. On the other direction, Abbas has a pretty explicit disavowal of attacks focusing on civilians on Twitter... in English... for a couple days... which limits how much that could be read as intended for internal read.
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Notes -
What's going on in the West Bank right now? I haven't seen much coverage of it.
Settlers going on rampage - destroying crops, burning houses, evicting whole Palestinian villages at gunpoint (yes, unlike Israelis in Israel proper, these hilltop guys are heavily armed and unlike Gaza, Palestinians in West Bank are thoroughly disarmed).
Lots of coverage, but you have to dig up into Arabic sources to find it.
Damn. Brutal if true, and it feels plausible, given the incentives. Still, I’d like to see something more conclusive than a tweet about “dear friends” who are totally getting rounded up by the gestapo.
Compare @gattsuru’s estimate.
At least some settler and IDF bad action is moderately well-supported by the evidence (and shouldn't be very surprising; Price Taggers tend to be assholes). I think Susiya and Masafer Yatta (note: both these pieces are pre-Oct 7th) are more about the broader Area C clusterfuck, but there's a lot of Well-Respected Reporters giving pretty strong claims of Area C places doing variants of a commanded evacuation followed by invasive search, and I could absolutely believe the IDF and/or COGAT is doing it to fuck with them.
Some of this fuckery has escalated to death (contrast, with the caveat that I expect neither of these is giving a good factual analysis, though the jpost one seems like it's damning enough with faint praise that you don't need to by the AJZ version).
It's just an escalation of existing problems, rather than a change in type.
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Are their guns legal? Are they formed into officially sanctioned militias or does the government just tacitly encourage it while looking the other way?
The latter. "It's not technically Israeli land, it's some no-man's land, so we won't police what our citizens do there, but we will protect them from harm".
If true, that really sucks for the people in the West Bank.
It sounds like true anarcho-tyranny. "People can harm you with impunity, but if you fight back, the government will punish you".
The limited examples of anarcho-tyranny which happen in progressive U.S. cities make my blood boil. I can't imagine how bad it would be in Palestine, where the Palestinians have no leafy suburbs to retreat to.
Again, if true.
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There's been some combat, mass arrests, and rocket strikes/counterstrikes, but Arabic Wikipedia -- which I will caution I trust not in the slightest (if you think American wikipedia is shameless propaganda...), and only provide as higher-end estimate -- lists an estimated 100 West Bank Palestinian fatalities since October 7th. Al-Jazeera (ditto!) says 110ish and highlights a lot of Palestine Islamic Jihad and a Hamas fighters in a randomly-selected instance.
Fatah's claimed official support for a general uprising and specifically to provide Gaza Palestinians medical aid, but the text is weirdly less bloodthirsty (repeat above disclaimer, but going the other valiance) than a lot of college campuses, damning with faint praise as that might be; whether this reflects translators rephrasing matters for public consumption, the organization not wanting to tall poppy themselves, or a result Fatah's long-lasting tension with Hamas (Hamas has gone out of its way to kill Fatah officials, Abbas keeps fucking with Presidential election dates), or some other thing, I dunno. On the other direction, Abbas has a pretty explicit disavowal of attacks focusing on civilians on Twitter... in English... for a couple days... which limits how much that could be read as intended for internal read.
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