Gaza-Israel Conflict 2008-2009, assesment.

The obvious solution to the conflict between these two peoples is the establishment of socialism. However, in order to analyse the problem within its actual context and to analyse the Israeli action from within its own perspective its necesary to see it from their nationalist perspective.

The action perpetrated by the Israeli army against Palestine intended to "stop the rocket attacks on Israel perpetrated by Hamas". Hamas claims to have launches said missiles as a response to the condition in which the Israeli government has put Gaza since they took power there.

The Israeli armed forces slaughtered 1,300 Palestinians achieving a 100 Palestinians per Israeli ratio. 5,300 Palestinians were wounded and the lives of proably tens if not hundreds of thousands was ruined. The infrastructure of the whole Gaza strip was severely damaged. Did the IDF achieve its claimed goal? No.

Since the Israeli attack first started the amount of rockets launched to Israel just increased and kept almost steady during the whole war that lasted nearly a month. These attacks didn't stop until after the Israeli government declared a unilateral ceasefire which, according to many, was done due to the upcoming Obama's inauguration. Hamas and other groups declared a ceasefire for one week which they'll keep so long as the IDF withdraws from Gaza.

Given this, the most likely to happen is that either the conflict will restart shortly after Obama starts his presidential term or Israel will keep occupying Gaza while Hamas breaks its ceasefire. Perhaps they may get to another short lasting bilateral ceasefire.

The thing is that this attack was as useless to Israel's claimed objectives as harmful to the Israeli and mostly Palestinian peoples. It was just a demonstration of power by Israel, an act of intimidation which far from discouraging Palestinians to keep fighting most probably has fueled the already intense hatred many Palestinians feel for the state of Israel.

Did the Palestinian resistance groups achieve their objectives? Seemingly their objective is to destroy Israel and probably if they get Israel to smash their dignity even more they might well destabilize it enough and fuel more anti-zionism around the world.

From the nationalist perspective, the solution can just be the disappearance of one of the states: either Palestine or Israel. Its obvious who wants what.

The only way trough which Israel could assume a pacific stance towards Palestinians is by dominating and epxloiting them, that is, use the relatively huge Palestinian worforce as proletarians submited to Israeli burgeoise. A great bonus for Israel is that they'd treat them as a cheap foreign workforce which would intrinsicly lack prerrogatives even an Israeli worker would have.

Palestinians don't only struggle for the reivindication of their dignity, religion and territory, they also fight because they don't want to fall into such a condition in which literaly they'd be the serfs of Israel (pretty much like the whole 1st world-3rd world relationships). One of the not so negative effects of nationalism is that the workers of a certain nation can struggle not to be cheap workers for a foreign burgeoise limiting thus the expansion of that burgeoise and making harder or even impossible for that burgeoise to create a "welfare illusion" (by distributing part of the burden to the other nation's workforce) to the workers of his own nation, increasing the chances of awareness to rise within the working classes of both nations.

As a communist, and as I stated at the start of this post, I think that the best solution to this conflict just as for any such conflict is the establishment of socialism.

Why and how? Well, in few words, the establishment of socialism would eliminate the terrible conditions in which Palestinians live and end the exploitation of both Palestinian and Israeli workers. The conflict is mainly kept going on by the ruling classes of both nations which target indiscriminately each other's people. Both working classes are used as pieces of a chess match by the ruling classes just to advance their political, and of course and mainly in the case of Israel, economic agendas.
Socialism would neutralize these ruling classes and would eliminate the casus belli for Palestinian and Israeli workers which would understand each other's conditions therefore cooperating for each other's wellbeing. In case some sense of nationalism remained within these working classes it would probably be the only way through which they'd either share the territory as being binational or split it equitatively.

I am against Israel, but Hamas is worse.

Since Hamas didn't stop attacking Israel it was the only choice Israel had to defend their people. The only way to stop them was to take Gaza over and erradicate Hamas, which proved to be a terrorist organisation, because they didn't attack Israeli military, but they attacked innocent civilians!

Hamas should be banned from politics and Fatah should take over leadership in Gaza.

Kenzu wrote:

Hamas should be banned from politics and Fatah should take over leadership in Gaza.

I have the perfect image for that.(Not spam, I am keeping on the subject)

The text below dosnt have to do much with the text, but still, Kenzu's believes in Fatah is APPROVED and Hamas is REJECTED!

Kenzu wrote:

I am against Israel, but Hamas is worse.

On which grounds?

Kenzu wrote:

Since Hamas didn't stop attacking Israel it was the only choice Israel had to defend their people.

Taking into account the results that was hardly an effective defense and, for that matter, also a lousy and bloody counteroffensive.

Kenzu wrote:

The only way to stop them was to take Gaza over and erradicate Hamas, which proved to be a terrorist organisation, because they didn't attack Israeli military, but they attacked innocent civilians!

Neither was Hamas dismantled nor dismantling Hamas will avoid armed groups to emerge from within Palestine so long as the status quo remains.

And for that matter, Israel also attacked innocent civilians. No need to mention the proportions.

By the way, Hamas did attack the Israeli military and, if proportions are to matter, while 56-70% of the casualties inflicted by the Israeli intervention were civilians, casualties product of Palestinian beligerent actions were 70% military (if taking 7 soldiers and 3 civilians. 77% if taking 10 soldiers). According to your own logic Israel has proved to be, proportionally a much worse terrorist force than Hamas.

Also, lets take into account that when a military power invades a territory, specially such a densely populated one, the line between civilians and beligerents is blurred completely. Many civilians could have taken it up to themselves to attack the Israeli army as a mere act of defense or directly as a response to the airstrikes and ground incursion.

Kenzu wrote:

Hamas should be banned from politics and Fatah should take over leadership in Gaza.

Some think the same of the Israeli government and Israel. Also, you like the banhammer don't you? (just kidding :p)
And on this one I guess I must agree with CKX's post and consider his addition a rather good contribution which illustrates part of my point.

Armed resistance movements come from within the Palestinian population. The more bombs Israel drops, the more tanks and bulldozers that crush palestinians' homes, te more bullets that kill Palestinians, the more hatred that will be injected into the Palestinian people.

Israel could obliterate Hamas and it wouldn't mean shit. It's the status quo what is generating the problem, not Hamas, or Al Aqsa brigades or Al jihad or Mr. Ahmedinejad. Why were these movements born in the first place? Why, after 60 years haven't they died off? I have to wonder what a 4 year old Palestinian boy who saw his parents getting shot or blown to bits and who is growing up in such an environment will evolve into. I wouldn't be suprised if he joins Al Aqsa brigades, Hamas or if he starts a new movement or individually does somethng against Israel.

At this point I have to wonder... why don't people read one's posts?

you can't do it can you zelot?

No, kenzu. Hamas only broke the ceasefire because Isreal bombed their tunnels, which they used to bring in weapons, because they thought Isreal would attack, which they did. You see the issue?

And socialism wouldn't help. Atheism would. It's all about holy land, mainly, and a given faith's right to that specific sun blasted region. If they were both atheist, this whole conflict would not have happened in the first place. Though the initial displacement of Palestine by the Isrealies didn't help. Of course, Isreal were promised that land by their God, so it's all okay.

Tyrong Kojy wrote:

And socialism wouldn't help. Atheism would. It's all about holy land, mainly, and a given faith's right to that specific sun blasted region. If they were both atheist, this whole conflict would not have happened in the first place.

One word: Zionism. Faith is hardly a main point. Zionism is a nationalist (and sometimes even national-socialist) movement based on cultural traits taken from Judaism. The whole "chosen people of god" has fallen to even a 3rd priority motive if at all relevant for the existance of the state of Israel with the supposed exodus initiated by the romans and the Holocaust taking 1st and 2nd place in relevance.

Palestinians, and actually a majority of the Islamic martyrs, unlike what many atheistic, antitheistic and christian westerners would like to think, are not dying off for 72 virgin pussies in heaven besides Allah. The context in which these martyrs develop is quite clear and inmenesely deeper than that and is the main reason for which many persons are eager to die. A simple and shallow example to prove this notion wrong is the fact that there are entire female martyr brigades. In Islam there's no 72 virgin cocks for the gals.

They're eager to die fighting against the consequences of western Imperialism. In most cases they're in a position of disadvantage and they do recur to desperate means, often suicidal. They're suffering and feel indignated for the condition to which they've been pushed to live and for the smashing of their dignity as a people.

There's enough historic and physical evidence demonstrating that religion was never a problem between Jews and Muslims until the creation of the State of Israel. Actually Jews cooperated greatly with muslims: they conquered Spain together, they lived in peace together and in the Ottoman Empire they even ascended to high-profile possitions both in politics and military.

It wasn't until the advent of Zionism that muslims and jews have started to have problems. Just as it wasn't until the success of Western Imperialism and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire that all those Islamist militants or as westerners call them "terrorists" began appearing.

Zionism is the politically-correct-as-per-context jewish cousin of Nationalsocialism.

Judaism, as practiced by most jews is more of a multinational culture based on some religious practices and beliefs which mixes and twists history with religion. Religious beliefs that are convenient are taken as factual and those that are not are not given importance. The nation for this culture as to give it its nationality was chosen upon a religious belief that was decided to become a fact by twisting history at will giving birth to Zionism.

Most self-proclaimed jews are not "real jews", at least not religiously. Judaism has become much for of a culture than a religion and this culture since the creation of Zionism has been fusing with it being zionism part of this new Jewish culture.

Tyrong Kojy wrote:

Though the initial displacement of Palestine by the Isrealies didn't help.

More like it is the focal point of all this problem.

Tyrong Kojy wrote:

Of course, Isreal were promised that land by their God, so it's all okay.

I know such a fervient antitheist like you would like to see it that way but it's simply too shallow (while sarcastically funny and sad) perspective to see it.

Socialism would help because it would eliminate any reason for confrontation between them and would leave the ruling classes, the masterminds of this problem, completely powerless.

It was meant to be slightly sarcastic, yes. I know things are much deeper than religion, it's just that's not helping things and is a widely used method of justifying things.

And yes, many suicude bombers aren't doing it for the tang. I know that. Everyone does. I know religion isn't the only reason, or even the main reason, but it is used to justify things, and is used as A reason. And without religion as one of the main catalysts for many of the world's conflicts, well, there would be fewer issues. As has been quoted ont his site many times, religion is a great way to control the masses. I like this one, "An evil man can do good things, but it takes religion for a good man to do evil things." I wish I could rememeber who said that.

religion is the justification for the violence on both sides.

but the guilt is not on both sides.
those zionists came to palestine and disseized the farmers who lived there.
and they did this with flamethrowers, grenades and rifles.
because the said that it is their right to own that land.

this resulted in now 60 years of occupation, blockade and so on.

in my opinion it is the full right of the palestinians to act in self-defense.
becauce they get cut from gasoline, food, money, land to grow food on, everything.
those rockets are not usefull and they hit the wrong people but sitting there, waiting to get "settled" further and further, beeing bombed, that aint life.
no doubt about the reactionary character of hamas but at least they did not get bought by imperial forces yet, not as fatah did.
by the way, hamas got democraticly voted[bad english, sorry]

and the stop-of-fire was interrupted by israel and not by hamas.