I’ve become convinced that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing coalition partners have a lot of explaining to do, and that the international community including US officials are making a colossal mistake in waiting for the war to end before demanding answers. The US needs to become more publicly forceful in exacting major adjustments regarding Israel’s current high intensity warfare in Gaza to one of micro-targeting the Iranian backed Hamas terrorists, where civilian casualties are minimized and where ample humanitarian aid reaches Gazans.
What frightens me is that these same governing far right-wing Israelis have also been desirous of drawing the U.S. into a war against Israel’s arch enemy, Iran.
More and more, I’m starting to side with those countries calling for an outright cease-fire as long as all the hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza are returned back to Israel. I do want a competent governing body to replace Hamas in Gaza and for Israel’s prime minister and his right-wing partners to step down from power to where they are replaced with capable leaders in favor of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
The following articles tell why the U.S. needs to face reality of how Israel’s widespread, indiscriminate destruction of Gaza, home to over 2.10 million Palestinians, looks like what it is, the far-right governing body in Israel being intent to deliver on its obsession of the forced relocation of all Palestinians living in Israel and/ or their outright elimination.
As per the December 23, 2023 Washington Post report, “Israel has waged one of this century’s most destructive wars in Gaza” by Evan Hill, Imogen Piper, Meg Kelly and Jarrett Ley:
Excerpts:
“Satellite imagery reviewed by Post reporters found that the Israeli military has conducted repeated and widespread airstrikes in proximity to hospitals, which are supposed to receive special protection under the laws of war. Satellite imagery reviewed by Post reporters revealed dozens of apparent craters near 17 of the 28 hospitals in northern Gaza, where the bombing and fighting were most intense during the first 2 months of war, including 10 craters that suggested the use of bombs weighing 2,000 pounds, the largest in regular use.”
“There’s no safe space. Period,” said Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross. “I haven’t passed one street where I didn’t see destruction of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals.”
“In response to the unprecedented assault by Hamas on Oct. 7, Israeli airstrikes and a ground invasion that began 20 days later have destroyed large swaths of the besieged territory, killed at least 20,057 people and displaced a vast majority of the population.”
“The most ferocious attacks have come from the air, flattening entire city blocks and cratering the landscape.”
“The war has wounded more than 53,320 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 7,700 Palestinian children have been killed, and women and children make up around 70 percent of the dead, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which also says that 1.9 million people have been displaced, equivalent to 85 percent of the population. The vast majority of Gazan civilians fleeing the invasion are not allowed by Israel and Egypt to leave.”
“The scale of Palestinian civilian deaths in such a short period of time appears to be the highest such civilian casualty rate in the 21st century,” said Michael Lynk, who served as the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories from 2016 to 2022.”
See: Israel’s Choice: Cease-fire Now or Dead Hostages Later…/ Haaretz
As per Thomas L Friedman’s December 29, 2023 NY Times opinion piece, “What Is Happening to Our World?”:
Excerpts:
“Fresh polling data reported by AFP indicates that on the eve of Oct. 7, “many Gazans were hostile to Hamas ahead of the group’s brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel, with some describing its rule as a second occupation.”
“As Hamas’s grip over Gaza is loosened, I predict we will hear a lot more of these Gazan voices on what they really think of Hamas, and it’ll be embarrassing to Hamas’s apologists on U.S. campuses.”
‘But our story about agency and choices does not stop there. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister — 16 years — also made choices. And even before this war, he made terrible ones — for Israel and for Jews all over the world.”
“Before this war, Netanyahu actively worked to keep the Palestinians divided and weak by strengthening Hamas in Gaza with billions of dollars from Qatar, while simultaneously working to discredit and delegitimize the more moderate Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, committed to Oslo and nonviolence in the West Bank. That way Netanyahu could tell every U.S. president, in effect: I’d love to make peace with the Palestinians, but they are divided, and moreover, the best of them can’t control the West Bank and the worst of them control Gaza. So what do you want from me?”
“Netanyahu’s goal has always been to destroy the Oslo option once and for all. In that, Bibi and Hamas have always needed each other: Bibi to tell the U.S. and Israelis that he had no choice, and Hamas to tell Gazans and its new and naïve supporters around the world that the Palestinians’ only choice was armed struggle led by Hamas.”
“The only exit from this mutually assured destruction is to bring in some transformed version of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank — or a whole new P.L.O.-appointed government of Palestinian technocrats — in partnership with moderate Arab states like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. But when I raise that with many Israelis right now, they tell me, “Tom, it’s not the time. No one wants to hear it.”
“That makes me want to scream: No, it is exactly the time. Don’t they get it? Netanyahu’s greatest political achievement has been to persuade Israelis and the world that it’s never the right time to talk about the morally corrosive occupation and how to help build a credible Palestinian partner to take it off Israel’s hands.”
“He and the settlers wore everyone down. When I covered the State Department in the early 1990s, West Bank settlements were routinely described by U.S. officials as “obstacles to peace.” But that phrase was gradually dropped. The Trump administration even decided to stop calling the West Bank “occupied” territory.”
“The reason I insist on talking about these choices now is because Israel is being surrounded by what I call Iran’s landcraft carriers (as opposed to our aircraft carriers): Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Shiite militias in Iraq. Iran is squeezing Israel into a multi-front war with its proxies. I truly worry for Israel.”
“But Israel will have neither the sympathy of the world that it needs nor the multiple allies it needs to confront this Iranian octopus, nor the Palestinian partners it needs to govern any post-Hamas Gaza, nor the lasting support of its best friend in the world, Joe Biden, unless it is ready to choose a long-term pathway for separating from the Palestinians with an improved, legitimate Palestinian partner.”
“Biden has been shouting that in Netanyahu’s ears in their private calls.”
“For all these reasons, if Netanyahu keeps refusing because, once again, politically, the time is not right for him, Biden will have to choose, too — between America’s interests and Netanyahu’s.”
“Netanyahu has been out to undermine the cornerstone of U.S. Middle East policy for the last three decades — the Oslo framework of two states for two people that guarantees Palestinian statehood and Israeli security, which neither side ever gave its best shot. Destroying the Oslo framework is not in America’s interest.”
“In sum, this war is so ugly, deadly and painful, it is no wonder that so many Palestinians and Israelis want to just focus on survival and not on any of the choices that got them here. The Haaretz writer Dahlia Scheindlin put it beautifully in a recent essay:”
“The situation today is so terrible that people run from reality as they run from rockets — and hide in the shelter of their blind spots. It’s pointless to wag fingers. The only thing left to do is try and change that reality.”
“For me, choosing that path will always be in season.”
Gronda Morin 
This area of the world is very complex, going far back before recorded history. But in this modern world you seem to have a good grasp on what is happening in present day Israel. If you can see it and I can see it, why cannot everyone see it. Israel, under Netantahu, is conducting a war of genocide. He is stealing land that does not belong to him. And he aims to build an empire on land donated to the Israeli people by busybody nations that had no rignt to donate it.
I love the maps of the area from 1917 to now. They show exactly what is being done to Palestinian people — who do not deserve to lose their land. The Israelis are the real aggressors here! They need to stop — or be stopped!
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Hi!
This relationship between Israel and Palestine is like a bad divorce. Both sides can make valid points in their favor while neither side has absolutely clean hands. At some future time, there are going to have to be adults in the room to get both sides to look beyond their grievances and self-interests in order that their own constituents can live in hope with peace and prosperity in their lifetimes. Right now, this seems like “mission impossible.”
Both sides suffer from extremists within their ranks who seem to benefit from the status quo.
Hugs, Gronda
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It certainly was not a narriage of lovers. Israelis were forced on the Palextinians. I do not think the sides are evenly guilty. But once the marriage took place, it becsme heated very quickly on both sides.
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