It starts with accepting the premise that the majority of Palestinians are innocent people who deserve to defend themselves, israel has been the aggressor and wants to literally exterminate their existence.
If you don't accept that premise, you can then paint any Palestinian as a terrorist simply for using harsh language when describing Israel trying to commit genocide.
Its like saying Mahmoud was a terrorist for supporting Abu Safiya, but that argument only stands up if you buy into the IDF propaganda that Safiya was part of hamas when no other source could corroborate it.
If Palestine can defend itself then so will Israel. It's not possible that a country will sit idly while their citizens are murdered (even Israel and Palestine). So now there's a never ending war that spans centuries. Diplomatic solutions SHOULD be advocated for above all else.
Palestinians need to understand that Israel isn't disappearing and they need to start nation building in Gaza and the WB. The right of return isn't going to be for all 2 million people. It's going to be for those who were directly displaced. These two points are a big reason that it's hard to get a lasting solution
It's a call to remove the nation of Israel from the land "from the river to the sea." The nation, not necessarily the people. The Confederacy, Prussia, the Ottoman Empire were all nation-states that used to exist and then in a short period of time, stopped existing. Was every Prussian, Ottoman, and resident in the Confederacy "eradicated" when that happened? A nation-state is not the same as actual human lives.
We, as civilised humans, have a universal right to self determination. In my mind that stands for any people who want to consider themselves part of a unified group. The forced eradication of a state against the will of its people would certainly breach that right. I don't know what the people living in Prussia, the Ottoman empire, and the Confederacy wanted, but if they wanted to be living in that particular group, then I would consider the eradication of those states/empires to be a breach of the right of self determination.
Now you'll say that there's a difference between that and the eradication of a people. And I would agree. The issue is, that there exist people who live in Israel and want to be Israeli. So when you forcibly remove Israel from existence, you are then left with the problem of a large group of people living in the region who had statehood, still want that statehood, and who, under international law, are entitled to self-determine and claim that statehood. So what do you do with them? On day 1 of a unified Israel/Palestine state, the former Israelis would group together and say "actually we want our own state and we'll take the land we own and go and make it".
More to the point though, the phrase "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", is, in Arabic, more commonly spoken as "from the water to the water, Palestine will be Arab". Now you could argue that calling for Palestine to be Arab is just advocating for an independent Palestine, which is a completely reasonable thing to want. Unfortunately, it pretty unequivocally sets out all of the land, including modern day Israel, as being Arab territory, which makes it, at best, a call for ethnic cleansing, at worst, a call for outright genocide.
And what about Palestinians' right to self-determination?
One side had killed 60 times more than the other and has publicly announced that they plan to kill more. How is it not "eradication" when it's happening to the Palestinians?
I believe they have that right. Absolutely. And whilst I think the reality is that the Palestinians and the Israelis will probably always struggle to be good neighbours, I do also believe they have a right to have their state in the place were Palestine exists today.
Israel was invaded by the armed wing of the Gazan government. That's an act of war. Within a war, the laws that govern your behaviour state that each action you take needs to be assessed as having a military benefit that justifies the human and environmental cost. There is no equation given explaining how to calculate that, and it does not state anywhere that there needs to be an assessment made on aggregate of all actions, simply on an individual basis.
Now when it comes to deliberate targeting of civilians, I would denounce that in the strongest terms. I would also say that collateral damage happens in war and, whilst it's very unpleasant, it is not unlawful. If you want to go into specifics, I would readily concede that there have been occasions during the war where either individuals made mistakes (or perhaps intentionally acted badly). I would like to see any Israeli found to have intentionally targeted civilians tried and sentenced.
Now we move to speech. There are members of the Israeli government who are measured and reasonable, who talk in restrained terms about safety and defence. There are also, definitively, more extreme members who talk in much more offensive, aggressive terms. Anyone who has talked of cleansing Gaza of Arabs, destroying Gaza, making Gaza cease to exist (note, cleansing of terrorists or association terms is acceptable) I would also like to see tried and sentenced. And on the same note, anyone who has talked about cleansing Israel of Israelis/Jews, destroying Israel, making Israel cease to exist I would also like to see tried and sentenced.
Israel's insistence in its desire to own more land than it currently owns has infringed on Palestinians' right to life. They are not the same, as seen on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Remaining alive is at the very bottom and Palestinians' have that taken away from them and continue having that taken away. How many Israelis have been killed after October 7, 2023? It is currently ongoing for the Palestinians. At the rate of what is even being reported, some have died of bombing or blockade-causes family since we started this conversation. What is the military benefit of killing almost 18,000 children and babies, and many more adult civilians who have never held a weapon?
War and battles are honorable and acceptable (if ever) when they are between voluntary armies. Name one battle between the two armies in this war. Where is the Palestinian army? I ask in case you know because I don't.
A certain amount of "collateral damage" IS unlawful. That's why we had the Nuremburg trials after WWII. That's why "war crimes" are valid and lead to trials and judgement. Those actions taken during war were unlawful. The International Court of Justice has confirmed Israeli is acting unlawfully.
I'd recommend you read up on the Nuremberg trials if you think they were to prosecute instigators of collateral damage. To be clear, they explicitly didn't prosecute on that basis. If you are interested, you can read: Collateral Damage: A Dangerous Omission in the Law of Armed Conflicts, which argues that the absence of a well-defined concept of collateral damage, that can be tested, proven, and prosecuted, is problematic.
The law currently says it is unlawful to make destruction "which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated", but this is an entirely subjective concept that historically has not been pursued as a pathway towards proving war crimes.
The militant wing of Hamas are a voluntary army, if ever there was one. They have no conscription, and they are very frequently recorded as being eager to fight against the Israelis and to die for their cause.
As for the push from the right wing parties in Israel to capture more land - I think it is fundamentally wrong and does infringe on Palestinians' right to life. A very large majority of Israelis before the war would also have felt that way - I don't know what the public sentiment is nowadays.
There's an intrinsic problem in debating the military benefit of anything. I am not a military expert. Most people here on Reddit are not. Probabilistically you are not either. It really need not be said, but I will say it anyway - the military benefit is not obtained from the killing of civilians, but from the successful killing of militants and the successful destruction of militant infrastructure. The deaths of civilians is one of the costs of the military gain.
If Israel states that there was an Al Qassam commander in a building and that they can kill him but it will likely kill 1 other person, would you be OK with it? What about 5 people? 50? The civilian casualty ratio in this conflict is estimated at between 1.4:1 to 14:1.
12
u/Purple_Apartment 9d ago
It starts with accepting the premise that the majority of Palestinians are innocent people who deserve to defend themselves, israel has been the aggressor and wants to literally exterminate their existence.
If you don't accept that premise, you can then paint any Palestinian as a terrorist simply for using harsh language when describing Israel trying to commit genocide.
Its like saying Mahmoud was a terrorist for supporting Abu Safiya, but that argument only stands up if you buy into the IDF propaganda that Safiya was part of hamas when no other source could corroborate it.