The United States is warning Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to rein in “extremist” settlers in the West Bank in the wake of reports of violence against Palestinians. “We…
I’m glad this is being said. There are problems all around and fervor seems to be creating large envelopes of “allowed activity” for those who are willing.
This is a complex situation, but some things are clear. This is one.
Isrealis have repeatedly voted for governments that openly state they want settlement construction to kill any viable Palestinian state (Netanyahu and his far-right pals).
If the whole of Gaza can be held responsible for voting for Hamas in 2006 (and not once after since Hamas did away with elections), the whole of Isreal can be held accountable.
I don’t think either population is morally responsible for what their so-called leaders do. Subsets of them, sure, but Israelis or Palestinians as a whole? Not a chance. People are not responsible for actions they had no hand in, or which they actively opposed.
Didn’t work for his defense then doesn’t now. It’s the basis of the laws of war and Geneva Conventions.
As it turns out a place the size of jersey city with 500km of tunnels is entrenched
It’s not a claim it’s a fact that Gaza isn’t being carpet bombed. Overlay the maps of damage from satellite imagery with where tunnels were known to be previously in public knowledge.
Also here’s another interview with the former heir of one of Hamas’ co-founders and leaders in the West Bank. I have others in my comment history from this guy who is actually pretty famous.
(I don’t like the interviewer but he mostly shuts up and let’s the Palestinian who was in and out of Israeli prisons for years since he was 10 talk. Yousef touches on a lot of the same points across the different interviews he’s done but this one has a bit more nuance.)
Yeah except the person you’re responding to probably doesn’t hold all of Gaza responsible for what Hamas has done since being voted into power.
Also, the Israeli left actually now has their own egotistically altruistic motive to shut down the settler shit, that being that shutting off the valve of right of return and no longer counting the votes of settlers in the west bank gives them an electoral edge.
And after the shit Bibi’s pulled, you could bet good money that the courts would look the other way on them doing it too since the judges will for a long time see right wing governments as a threat to their judicial autonomy.
And even this one is complex. A lot of the support for the settlers comes from American evangelical Christians. They believe that Jesus will come back under two conditions.
The first is that Jews run Israel. That’s a check. The second is that Israel suffers a major attack. Well, that won’t happen so that evangelicals send money to the settlers. Not only does it align with their “Israel should have the biblical borders” beliefs, but it adds fuel to the fire - worsening the conflict and making it more likely for a huge “Jesus will return this time” attack to happen.
They also support right wing Israeli politicians for the same reason. They don’t want a guy running Israel who says “let’s get a lasting peace with the Palestinians.” They want a guy that says “I’ll burn every Palestinian house to the ground and then burn the Palestinians themselves!”
This isn’t meant to excuse actions by anyone else. It just shows that three situations are complex with a lot of people all over the place working against peace.
Riiiight… the US is so “upset” at Israel that they will only be giving Israel hundreds of billions in genocide money in the coming few years instead of trillions.
Not really? They can be hardly said to be “saying it and getting traction” while arming Israel to the hilt. They have and have had massive leverage over Israel and have largely chosen empty symbolic gestures while continuing to prop up the occupying state.
For what it's worth, a large portion of Zionist—I'd wager a majority of those in Israel, and a very large majority elsewhere in the world—think that settlements suck and Israel needs to work much harder to stop their expansion. And Netanyahu is extremely unpopular internationally, and there's no way he'll win another election in Israel. But there's some context—on the practical level and on the political level—that might be helpful to understand why this problem persists.
First, why is Netanyahu prime minister again? His second real rise to power occurred in 2009. Back in 2005, Netanyahu advocated against Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. The Sharon government went ahead with it, but terrorism in Gaza skyrocketed as a result. So Netanyahu was seen by many as the conservative who was right all along, the only one who really wanted to keep Israelis safe from terrorists. But over time, Israelis slowly realized that his way was somehow just as shitty, and also that he was a corrupt piece of shit.
So Netanyahu was brought on criminal charges for corruption.
Israel had like 87 elections, and kept trying to form a majority coalition in its government. It kind of did a couple of times, but it fell apart fast, until Netanyahu managed to form a coalition again. Except now, his main goal was to not go to prison, so he was pretty fucking desperate. He cozied up to far-right nuts and made a really strange government. Their actions led to massive protests in Israel, and they didn't feel like negotiating with the opposition or listening to protestors. They made judicial reforms, they engaged in harsher / anti-Palestinian / super-fucking-racist policies, and made other changes to Israeli law that generally just sucked.
With regards to settlements... This is going to be a dramatically oversimplified take, and some portion of settlements are on disputed territory, but let's focus on the straight up West Bank territory... basically, the usual pattern is, Israelis building in Palestine is generally against Israeli law, but some developers do it anyway, and the government generally punishes them, but also doesn't condone bombing settlements or murdering Israeli civilians because they moved into those settlements (they usually move there because they can't afford to live in more expensive parts of Israel, or because they work in the West Bank, but sometimes because they're assholes who want to expand Israeli territory for some dumb religious reason). And basically, the far right is less interested in punishing, more interested in protecting. And there's also some licensing thing I don't really understand... And freedom of movement issues, and a whole lot of other pieces, but yeah, there are a lot of complicated factors. But some of the real nutjobs in Netanyahu's coalition are actually pro-settlement, so... that sucks.
Also, people now blame him for mistakes surrounding the attack, which... We're not going to dig into, because people are going to make it something it isn't.
Bruh israeli colonists are literally going around shooting people and throwing grenades in the west bank and the military is standing behind them to guard them from retaliation.
You’re not gonna sit here and pretend israelis “get in trouble” for stealing Palestinian land. They get encouraged to do it.
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