This Hamas official has said a couple of interesting things:
- He doesn’t want Sir Tony Blair (former UK prime minister) involved in the governance of Gaza, despite Trump’s plan for the region proposing this.
- Hamas doesn’t plan to disarm, unless they are giving their weapons to a future Palestinian army.
Quote about the first point:
“When it comes to Tony Blair, unfortunately, we Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims and maybe others around the world have bad memories of him… We can still remember his role in killing, causing thousands or millions of deaths to innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq… We can still remember him very well after destroying Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Quote about the second point:
Dr Naim said Hamas would not completely disarm and that weapons would only be handed over to the Palestinian state, with fighters integrated into the Palestinian National Army… “No one has the right to deny us the right to resist the occupation of armies,” he said.
Thoughts on this?
Women and children were killed by Hamas in 2023 right? Also Israelis might be made to train in the IDF but that doesn’t mean every Israeli supports an aggressive policy towards Palestinians.
I’m not trying to take either side really - I think both Israel and Hamas should not have killed civilians. You said I should read the history, yeah maybe I should. Palestinians who were forcibly expelled from what is now Israel, maybe they should get compensation from Israel.
israel passed a law that no one will ever get anything for what was taken.
so i ask you . at what point should france have just accepted that nazis owed france?
at what point should ukraine stop fighting russia and just let them have the land they have taken?
you can look at the history. israel has deliberately targeted civilians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine
even their own.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yotam_Haim,_and_Samer_Talalka
The men had emerged from a building and were approaching a group of IDF soldiers when they were shot dead, in spite of the fact that they were shirtless and visibly unarmed while waving a makeshift white flag and calling out for help in Hebrew.
( deliberately killing civilians is a war crime)
do i take a side? yes the side that has killed less civilians deliberately.
That’s why I mentioned Dresden though. The Allies did bomb German civilians in Dresden as part of their efforts to defeat the Nazis, and that attack has been criticised because they harmed civilians, rather than just military targets.
Anyway, if we’re going to say that Israel should never have been established by force and forced expulsions of Palestinians, perhaps that is true. I suppose the same can be said about the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Therefore maybe Israel should pay compensation to Palestinian families who were affected by forced expulsion.
I see. Personally though if I came across two serial killers, one of whom had killed 5 people, and the other of whom had killed 20 people, I would say both were wrong. I wouldn’t say that the killer of 5 people was necessarily a better person. If both of these killers had the same firepower, maybe they both would have killed similar numbers of civilians.