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Notes -
The following is a comment about US media, not about the war in Gaza.
Whenever the mainstream US news covers the humanitarian disaster in Gaza (and the suffering is absolutely horrendous), the underlying subtext I get is "Israel should stop assaulting Gaza". But there's another path that would also end the humanitarian disaster, and that's the unconditional surrender of Hamas.
I'm not shocked that Hamas doesn't surrender, but I am shocked that the option is never even mentioned in passing by the talking heads. Do they not think of it? Is it too far outside the bounds of normal discourse? If this were any other military conflict in all of history, it would be considered decided by now, and Gazans would be suing for peace.
So far you’ve been getting a lot of replies saying that the US can only pressure Israel, but not Hamas. This is false. Hamas is not a leaderless organization, it’s actually very well organized and its leadership is known to all.
The heads of Hamas, those that are parallel to its government rather than military leadership, are situated in Qatar. Their locations are known. They frequently fly out of Qatar, to any place they wish, such as Egypt just recently. They are, of course, war criminals. However, there is literally no effort or any calls to bring any of these men to justice, or any sanctions on Qatar. This is despite providing direct monetary aid to Hamas, as well as the aforementioned sheltering of Hamas leadership.
Qatar is a US ally in the region, the US even has bases there (unlike Israel), the US is one of (if not the) largest importer to Qatar. In other words, the US has a lot of leverage on Qatar, if only anyone wished to use it.
Keep all this in mind when reading all these other replies.
The US allows and even encourages Qatari relationships with the Taliban, Iran, Hamas and other anti-US groups because it makes for a good meeting place, offers near-unlimited access for US intelligence for wiretaps etc, and is trusted enough by most of those groups. Both Hamas and Qatar are well aware that the former is in the latter because the US tolerates it, and this arrangement works for all three parties. Qatar is a core part of the GCC, but being less hostile to the Iranian axis suits almost everyone, and both the Saudis and the US know that Qatar depends upon Iran not extending its natural gas claim in the main Persian Gulf (which Qatar would be unable to defend itself against) into Qatar’s larger field, which many in Iran would like to claim.
Even granting all of that, it still stands in contradiction to the majority of replies here re: America not being able to influence Hamas, or at least the perception thereof in the protestors’ minds.
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