I'm devastated. May Hersh's memory be a blessing and may we see the rest of the hostages home soon.

Anonymous wrote:The crazy is real. Wow

You’re right. Israel is a crazy country

If Bibi didn’t even want the Trump deal which literally was the most pro Israel plan ever and made Jerusalem Israel’s capital, he didn’t want any deal

Pres Donald Trump says Netanyahu “never wanted peace with Palestinians”

https://www.axios.com/2021/12/13/trump-middle-east-peace-netanyahu


Trump said that at an early stage of his presidency, he realized that Netanyahu would be a bigger obstacle to peace than Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

“I thought he was terrific," Trump told me of Abbas, reflecting on their "great" first meeting. "He was almost like a father. Couldn't have been nicer. I thought he wanted to make a deal more than Netanyahu."
Abbas told Trump that he thought they could make a deal. Netanyahu urged Trump to wait.
“My whole life is deals. I'm like one big deal. That's all I do, so I understand it. And after meeting with Bibi for three minutes … I stopped Bibi in the middle of a sentence. I said, 'Bibi, you don't want to make a deal. Do you?' And he said, 'Well, uh, uh uh' — and the fact is, I don't think Bibi ever wanted to make a deal."

The reason, Trump thought, was domestic Israeli politics.


Say what you want about Trump but he was right on both counts here. Netanyahu didn’t want a deal and it is due to domestic politics.

The crazy is real. Wow

Contrary to popular misconception, Hamas and its supporters have expressed pragmatism and openness toward a political solution with Israel.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/08/israel1

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna24235665

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2024/6/24/the-us-and-israel-missed-many-opportunities-for-peace-with-hamas

In 2014, the Obama administration would follow the same path as Bush’s when it rejected another deal with Hamas, which was in new unity negotiations with the PA, and had again agreed to a deal with Israel and the West – this one even more accommodating than Haniyeh’s appeal eight years earlier. The new effort at reconciliation “could have served Israel’s interests,” wrote Jerusalem-based author and analyst Nathan Thrall:

“It offered Hamas’s political adversaries a foothold in Gaza; it was formed without a single Hamas member; it retained the same Ramallah-based prime minister, deputy prime ministers, finance minister and foreign minister; and, most important, it pledged to comply with the three conditions for Western aid long demanded by America and its European allies: nonviolence, adherence to past agreements and recognition of Israel.”

Instead, the US tacitly backed Israel’s “splintering strategy” to divide the Palestinian factions, and, with it, the land itself. In a State Department cable, published by WikiLeaks, the director of Israel’s military intelligence told the American ambassador in Tel Aviv that a Hamas victory would allow Israel “to treat Gaza” as a separate “hostile country”, and that he would be “pleased” if PA leader Mahmoud Abbas “set up a separate regime in the West Bank”. Thus the West Bank became essentially sealed off from Gaza, and the dream of a corridor between the two territories in a sovereign Palestine effectively died.

Let us travel, for example, to June 2006, when a private US citizen named Jerome Segal left the Gaza Strip carrying a letter for Washington. The letter was from Ismail Haniyeh, then and now the Hamas leader. Segal, founder of the Jewish Peace Lobby at the University of Maryland, was bound for the State Department, where he would deliver a surprising offer.

Hamas had just been elected by the Palestinian people, who had grown exhausted and angry with the corruption of the ruling, Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, and voted for change. Haniyeh, long the leader of the Islamist opposition in Palestine, was suddenly confronted with the real prospect of navigating through humanitarian and economic crises, not to mention ongoing military pressure from Israel and a looming economic siege on Gaza. In the back-channel letter, Haniyeh sought compromise.

Despite Hamas’s charter calling for the elimination of Israel, Haniyeh’s note to President George W Bush was conciliatory. “We are so concerned about stability and security in the area,” Haniyeh wrote, “that we don’t mind having a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders and offering a truce for many years”. This was essentially de facto recognition of Israel, with a cessation of hostilities – two of the key US and Israeli demands of Hamas. “The continuation of this situation,” Haniyeh added prophetically, “will encourage violence and chaos in the whole region”.

Was Hamas serious? It was at the time in negotiations with the PA to form a unity government – suggesting the letter wasn’t just a ruse. Haniyeh now appeared to accept the concept of a two-state solution. If true, it was a stunning concession.

It would hardly be unprecedented for a militant revolutionary group, considered terrorist by the US, to come to the negotiating table. After all, the PA’s predecessor, the PLO, long carried the terrorist label, as did Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress. For that matter, Jewish militias fighting for Israel’s independence before 1948 were also labelled terrorist by the British authorities – two of them, Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, became prime ministers of Israel. Yet they all navigated a way to a reconciliation, albeit with sharply divergent goals and degrees of success.

A few voices in Israel’s security establishment endorsed engagement with Hamas. Shmuel Zakai, former brigadier general and commander of the Israeli military’s Gaza division, pressed Israel “to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians in the [Gaza] Strip… You cannot just land blows, leave the Palestinians in Gaza in the economic distress they are in, and expect Hamas just to sit around and do nothing”.

Another advocate for dialogue was a former director of the Mossad. “I believe there is a chance that Hamas, the devils of yesterday, could be reasonable people today,” said Efraim Halevy. “Rather than being a problem, we should strive to make them part of the solution.”

But we’ll never know if Hamas really wanted to help forge a solution. The US did not respond to Haniyeh’s letter. Instead, in 2007, it launched a covert effort to foment a Palestinian civil war, trying and failing to oust Hamas. In hand-to-hand street combat, Hamas battled the US-backed PA fighters. Hamas prevailed in the Battle of Gaza, and has ruled ever since. True to Haniyeh’s prediction, violence and chaos has followed, almost without pause. In war after war, Israel has pledged to destroy Hamas, and failed.

-In 2017, Hamas presented a new charter advocating for “a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of 4 June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.” Needless to say, these overtures were also rejected outright. “Hamas is attempting to fool the world, but it will not succeed,” a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the time.

Israel’s leadership would have the world believe that Hamas has committed itself to unrelenting terror since its founding, a narrative soothing for the grieving Israeli public, but also one at odds with Hamas’s complex evolution. A closer look at Hamas’s history suggests that it sought a truce with Israel in 1988, 2006, 2008, 2012, and 2017.


https://inkstickmedia.com/israel-rejected-peace-with-hamas-on-five-occasions/

-In 2008, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal agreed to a 10-year truce with Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state in the pre-1967 Occupied Territories with East Jerusalem as its capital, with genuine sovereignty, but without settlements. Israel rejected both proposals outright.

-In 2012, Hamas’s military commander Ahmed Jabari had been conducting indirect talks with Israel via Hamas’ deputy foreign minister, Ghazi Hamad, all with the approval of Israel’s then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Jabari was expected to sign the peace treaty with Israel. However the dominant view among Israel’s political leadership at the time was that truce talks with Hamas were futile. Israel believed it was preferable to strengthen its “deterrence capacity” by “severely impair[ing] the command and control chain of the Hamas leadership as well as its terrorist infrastructure.” Alas, Israel assassinated Jabari just hours after he received a draft of the deal.

Israel rejected peace with Hamas on at least five occasions.


-On June 1, 1988, two months before Hamas adopted its infamous 1988 charter that called for Israel’s destruction, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar submitted a peace proposal to Yitzhak Rabin, the then-Israeli Minister of Defense. If Israel wanted peace, it had to withdraw from the Occupied Territories, release Palestinian detainees, restore Palestinian rights, and allow Palestinians to name their own representatives. Hamas’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, similarly agreed to negotiate with Israel if it first acknowledged the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and the right of return to their land.

-Hamas stayed out of politics during the Oslo Process, a series of political agreements between Israel and the PLO that gradually transferred a degree of Palestinian autonomy within the Occupied Palestinian Territories to the newly established Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestinian National Council (PNC). During the 1990s, Hamas refused to recognize the legitimacy of negotiations with Israel and thus took no part in Palestinian elections. But, by 2006, Hamas leaders decided they could have a greater impact from within the system than without, and the group participated in the January 2006 PNC elections. To everyone’s surprise, they won.

In March 2006, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh put out a peace overture and wrote:

“We in Hamas are for peace and want to put an end to bloodshed. We have been observing a unilateral truce for more than a year without reciprocity from the Israeli side. The message from Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to the world powers is this: talk to us no more about recognising Israel’s ‘right to exist’ or ending resistance until you obtain a commitment from the Israelis to withdraw from our land and recognise our rights.”

He added, “Peaceful means will do if the world is willing to engage in a constructive and fair process in which we and the Israelis are treated as equals.”

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Zionism and Greater Israel is about controlling the entire Levant from the Tigris and Euphrates River to the sea not from the Jordan River to the sea

Well, Jews are indigenous to that entire region so maybe they just want to be able to live there in peace without the continued menace and threats of Arab Muslims they endured for, oh, several hundred years. And Israel isn’t intent on expanding unless it’s through defense of its boundaries. 1948 War, Six Day War …. Maybe stop attacking Israel if you don’t want them to expand.

At least you admit you’re helping isis

Some Israelis aren’t intent on expanding. The current administration backed by the likud, extremist right, and the US that is funding this ‘war’ is intent on expanding. Local non Israelis and non Jews want the same, to live in peace, without menace and threats and without an apartheid system. There are extremists on both sides but Israel is far from the ‘perfect victim’ that you try to portray.

Israel is a destabilizing force to U.S. and Middle East national security and I’ll stand by that.

Love the Jewish people and love many Israelis but the truth is the truth.

The US and the Middle East are actually very similar populations in a way because they’re highly polarized politically and easily propagandized.

Iran is the foil for Israel right now because they want the levant too

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If Hamas and Fatah could release a two state peace plan, that would be very helpful. As far as I can tell, the one from the 1947 partition was pretty good. A nice contagious country from the hills of Lebanon to the Mediterranean Sea all the way down to the Sinai, with some nice areas like Jenin, Nablus, Hebron and Ramallah - as well as the olive groves all the way to Jordan and the Dead Sea. Jerusalem would be an international city. And there would be a beautiful seaside coast. And no Israelis anywhere.

Is the Hamas and Fatah plan better?

Zionists had machinations to take over the 1948 partition land via invasion anyway.

If the Palestinians accepted it, they would not have been in peace. Israel always had plans to grow their population and territory.

Israel was planned to take all of it and Lebanon and Syria and Jordan as well.

Ah. So you're saying neither Fatah nor Hamas have any intention of pursuing a two state peace plan. And Israel was going to take over Lebanon and Syria and Jordan and Iraq.

Gotcha.

Seems reasonable.

Fatah and Hamas have always begged Israel at times for two state talks over the years going back to the PLO’s failed 1988 summit in Algeria before Oslo!! For a two state solution based on 1967. Israel paid it no mind. The only reason they signed Oslo is because America asked for it. They never planned to abide by it.

Hamas itself updated its charter in 2017 post Donald Trump to recognize Israel in a two state solution and Israel ignored it. Hamas even promised disarmament at one point in favor of statehood in West Bank and Gaza and end of occupation and settlers and Israel ignored it.

Hamas was ironically more concerned about fighting ISIS in The Sinai and Golan Heights than Israel ever was. They were unconcerned about that terror threat right on its border in the Golan Heights . Gee, wonder why. Because “ISIS” was fighting Iran for them?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Zionism and Greater Israel is about controlling the entire Levant from the Tigris and Euphrates River to the sea not from the Jordan River to the sea

Well, Jews are indigenous to that entire region so maybe they just want to be able to live there in peace without the continued menace and threats of Arab Muslims they endured for, oh, several hundred years. And Israel isn’t intent on expanding unless it’s through defense of its boundaries. 1948 War, Six Day War …. Maybe stop attacking Israel if you don’t want them to expand.

At least you admit you’re helping isis

Some Israelis aren’t intent on expanding. The current administration backed by the likud, extremist right, and the US that is funding this ‘war’ is intent on expanding. Local non Israelis and non Jews want the same, to live in peace, without menace and threats and without an apartheid system. There are extremists on both sides but Israel is far from the ‘perfect victim’ that you try to portray.

As the clouds part the sky shows it’s true colors