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Brisketexan

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Just now, DDD Dad said:

The article does a pretty good job of explaining it.  Perhaps you might read it instead of knee-jerking to "Israel bad, Palestinians good"

 

Brother, I'm well aware of what happened in mid-2021. My point was it's not a surprise than an incumbent ruling body experiences a surge of support in the wake of a crisis like that. It happens all the time, even if the ruling body is dogass. Not always, of course, but it happens.

I'm not disagreeing that Hamas support within Gaza among civilians is a problem, I just disagree that it justifies murdering them en masse.

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3 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

Brother, I'm well aware of what happened in mid-2021. My point was it's not a surprise than an incumbent ruling body experiences a surge of support in the wake of a crisis like that. It happens all the time, even if the ruling body is dogass. Not always, of course, but it happens.

I'm not disagreeing that Hamas support within Gaza among civilians is a problem, I just disagree that it justifies murdering them en masse.

In March of 2023 (in the more recent poll I posted), 61 percent of Gazans would support the Hamas candidate for president over Abbas.  That's two years removed from the events of 2021 and only a few months ago.

I do not support mass killings of civilians of any nationality, FWIW.  And, Hamas support within Gaza is more than just "a problem."  it could well be THE problem.

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29 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

And yet, by polling numbers, in 2021, "53% of Palestinians believe Hamas is “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people,” while only 14% prefer Mahmoud Abbas’ secular Fatah party."   https://apnews.com/article/hamas-middle-east-science-32095d8e1323fc1cad819c34da08fd87

But keep fucking that chicken.

Here is a poll from 2023, immediately prior to Oct. 7th. Full text behind the tags, with broader discussion and details. 

 

image.thumb.png.dbcd71e9f03fd14eddbeb0fab39bc127.png

 

image.thumb.png.53c106721b4f989b34970f72ab83162f.png

 

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/what-palestinians-really-think-hamas?

What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas

Before the War, Gaza’s Leaders Were Deeply Unpopular—but an Israeli Crackdown Could Change That

By Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins

October 25, 2023

Spoiler

Palestinians protesting in support of the people of Gaza, Hebron, West Bank, October 2023

Mussa Qawasma / Reuters

Since Hamas’s atrocious attacks on October 7 left more than 1,400 Israelis dead in a single day, Israel’s response has exacted a heavy toll on the population of Gaza. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, so far more than 6,000 Gazans have been killed and more than 17,000 injured in Israel’s aerial bombardment. The casualties could quickly climb much higher if Israel goes ahead with its expected ground invasion. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Knesset member Ariel Kallner, and other prominent officials have called for a military campaign that covers the entire territory of Gaza. Israeli missiles have already destroyed around five percent of all buildings in Gaza, including in areas where Palestinians sought shelter after heeding Israeli calls to evacuate their homes. Some of Israel’s top officials, invoking Hamas’s success in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, have in effect declared that all Gazans are part of Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure and complicit in the group’s atrocities—and are therefore legitimate targets of Israeli retaliation.

The argument that the entire population of Gaza can be held responsible for Hamas’s actions is quickly discredited when one looks at the facts. Arab Barometer, a research network where we serve as co-principal investigators, conducted a survey in Gaza and the West Bank days before the Israel-Hamas war broke out. The findings, published here for the first time, reveal that rather than supporting Hamas, the vast majority of Gazans have been frustrated with the armed group’s ineffective governance as they endure extreme economic hardship. Most Gazans do not align themselves with Hamas’s ideology, either. Unlike Hamas, whose goal is to destroy the Israeli state, the majority of survey respondents favored a two-state solution with an independent Palestine and Israel existing side by side.

Continued violence will not bring the future most Gazans hope for any closer. Instead of stamping out sympathy for terrorism, past Israeli crackdowns that make life more difficult for ordinary Gazans have increased support for Hamas. If the current military campaign in Gaza has a similar effect on Palestinian public opinion, it will further set back the cause of long-term peace.

 

MOUNTING FRUSTRATION

Arab Barometer’s survey of the West Bank and Gaza, conducted in partnership with the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy, provides a snapshot of the views of ordinary citizens on the eve of the latest conflict. The longest-running and most comprehensive public opinion project in the region, Arab Barometer has run eight waves of surveys covering 16 countries in the Middle East and North Africa since 2006. All surveys are designed to be nationally representative, most of them (including the latest survey in the West Bank and Gaza) are conducted in face-to-face interviews in the respondents’ places of residence, and the collected data is made publicly available. In each country, survey questions aim to measure respondents’ attitudes and values about a variety of economic, political, and international issues.    

Our most recent interviews were carried out between September 28 and October 8, surveying 790 respondents in the West Bank and 399 in Gaza. (Interviews in Gaza were completed on October 6.) The survey’s findings reveal that Gazans had very little confidence in their Hamas-led government. Asked to identify the amount of trust they had in the Hamas authorities, a plurality of respondents (44 percent) said they had no trust at all; “not a lot of trust” was the second most common response, at 23 percent. Only 29 percent of Gazans expressed either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in their government. Furthermore, 72 percent said there was a large (34 percent) or medium (38 percent) amount of corruption in government institutions, and a minority thought the government was taking meaningful steps to address the problem.

When asked how they would vote if presidential elections were held in Gaza and the ballot featured Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and Marwan Barghouti, an imprisoned member of the central committee of Fatah, the party led by Abbas, only 24 percent of respondents said they would vote for Haniyeh. Barghouti received the largest share of support at 32 percent and Abbas received 12 percent. Thirty percent of respondents said they would not participate. Gazans’ opinions of the PA, which governs the West Bank, are not much better. A slight majority (52 percent) believe the PA is a burden on the Palestinian people, and 67 percent would like to see Abbas resign. The people of Gaza are disillusioned not only with Hamas but with the entire Palestinian leadership.

The salience of Gaza’s economic troubles also came through clearly in the survey results. According to the World Bank, the poverty rate in Gaza rose from 39 percent in 2011 to 59 percent in 2021. Many Gazans have struggled to secure basic necessities because of both scarcity and cost. Among survey respondents, 78 percent said that the availability of food was a moderate or severe problem in Gaza, whereas just five percent said it was not a problem at all. A similar proportion (75 percent) reported moderate to severe difficulty affording food even when it was available; only six percent said food affordability was not a problem.

Gazan households have felt the impact of food shortages keenly. Seventy-five percent of respondents reported that they had run out of food and lacked the money to buy more at some point during the previous 30 days. By comparison, in a 2021 Arab Barometer survey, only 51 percent said the same. This change over just two years is alarming. Gazans have been forced to adjust their habits to try to make ends meet, with 75 percent saying they had started buying less preferred or less expensive food and 69 percent saying they had reduced the size of their meals.

Most Gazans attributed the lack of food to internal problems rather than to external sanctions. Israel and Egypt have imposed a blockade on Gaza since 2005, limiting the flow of people and goods into and out of the territory. The strength of the blockade has varied, but it grew notably stricter after Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007. Nevertheless, a plurality of survey respondents (31 percent) identified government mismanagement as the primary cause of food insecurity in Gaza and 26 percent blamed inflation. Only 16 percent blamed externally imposed economic sanctions. In short, Gazans were more likely to blame their material predicament on Hamas’s leadership than on Israel’s economic blockade. Since the time of the survey, however, this perception may have changed. Israel cut off water, food, fuel, and electricity supplies to Gaza following the October 7 attacks, plunging the territory into a deep humanitarian crisis. Some international aid has entered Gaza since, but the suffering the Palestinians have experienced has likely hardened their attitudes in ways that could undermine long-term peace and stability.

NO MORE POLITICS AS USUAL

Overall, the survey responses indicate that Gazans desire political change. In an eight-point decline since 2021, just 26 percent said the government was very (three percent) or largely (23 percent) responsive to the needs of the people. When asked what is the most effective way for ordinary people to influence the government, a plurality said “nothing is effective.” The next most popular answer was to use personal connections to reach a government official. Most Gazans saw no avenue for publicly expressing their grievances with the Hamas-led government. Only 40 percent said that freedom of expression was guaranteed to a great or moderate extent, and 68 percent believed that the right to participate in a peaceful protest was not protected or was protected only to a limited extent under Hamas rule.

About half of Gazans expressed support for democracy: 48 percent affirmed that “democracy is always preferable to any other kind of government.” A smaller proportion of respondents (23 percent) indicated a lack of faith in any type of regime, agreeing with the statement, “For people like me, it doesn’t matter what kind of government we have.” Only 26 percent agreed that “under some circumstances, a non-democratic government can be preferable.” (This last finding is similar to poll results in the United States, where in a 2022 survey, one in five adults aged 41 or younger agreed with the statement, “Dictatorship could be good in certain circumstances.”)

Given the low opinion most Gazans hold of their government, it is unsurprising that their disapproval extends to Hamas as a political party. Just 27 percent of respondents selected Hamas as their preferred party, slightly less than the proportion who favored Fatah (30 percent), the party that is led by Abbas and that governs the West Bank. Hamas’s popularity in Gaza has slipped as well, falling from 34 percent support in the 2021 survey. There is notable demographic variation in the recent responses, too. Thirty-three percent of adults under 30 expressed support for Hamas, compared with 23 percent of those 30 and older. And poorer Gazans were less likely than their wealthier counterparts to support Hamas. Among those who cannot cover their basic expenses, just 25 percent favored the party in power. Among those who can, the figure rose to 33 percent. The fact that the people most affected by dire economic conditions and those who remember life before Hamas rule were more likely to reject the party underlines the limits of Gazans’ support for Hamas’s movement.

VISIONS FOR THE FUTURE

Leadership style is not the only thing Gazans find objectionable about Hamas. By and large, Gazans do not share Hamas’s goal of eliminating the state of Israel. When presented with three possible solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (as well as an option to choose “other”), the majority of survey respondents (54 percent) favored the two-state solution outlined in the 1993 Oslo accords. In this scenario, the state of Palestine would sit alongside the state of Israel, their borders based on the de facto boundary that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War. The level of support for this resolution has not changed much since 2021; in that survey, 58 percent of respondents in Gaza selected the two-state solution.

It is somewhat surprising how little traction alternative political arrangements had gained among Gazans before the onset of recent hostilities, given how implausible a two-state solution now seems. The survey presented two other options: an Israeli-Palestinian confederation—in which both states are independent but remain deeply linked and permit the free movement of citizens—and a single state for both Jews and Arabs. These garnered 10 percent and nine percent support, respectively.

Overall, 73 percent of Gazans favored a peaceful settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On the eve of Hamas’s October 7 attack, just 20 percent of Gazans favored a military solution that could result in the destruction of the state of Israel. A clear majority (77 percent) of those who provided this response were also supporters of Hamas, amounting to around 15 percent of the adult population. Among the remaining respondents who favored armed action, 13 percent reported no political affiliation.

By and large, Gazans do not share Hamas’s goal of eliminating the state of Israel.

Gazans’ views on the normalization of relations between Arab states and Israel, meanwhile, have been consistently negative. Only 10 percent expressed approval of this initiative in the most recent survey—the same percentage as in 2021. Many Gazans likely recognize that Arab solidarity is key to securing a political arrangement that includes an independent Palestinian state. If Arab countries were to settle their differences with Israel without making the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a precondition for normalization, any lingering hopes for a two-state solution would evaporate.

Before Hamas’s attack on Israel, Gazans’ foreign policy views suggested both alignment with certain U.S. policy priorities and mistrust of the United States. Seventy-one percent opposed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Twenty-six percent expressed a wish for Gaza to develop stronger economic ties to the United States—slightly lower than the proportion that wanted to deepen economic relations with Iran or Russia (32 percent in both cases). Only 15 percent of Gazans, however, believed that U.S. President Joe Biden’s policies had been good or very good for the Arab world. And in the past few weeks, approval of both Biden and the United States has certainly declined, given the broad perception in Gaza, the West Bank, and in the region’s Arab countries that Washington has come to the aid of Israel at the expense of Gaza.

A final finding—now backed by countless media reports of Gazans’ anguish as escalating violence forces them to flee their homes—is the strength of people’s connection to the land on which they live. The vast majority of Gazans surveyed—69 percent—said they have never considered leaving their homeland. This is a higher proportion than residents of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia who were asked the same question. (For all of these countries, the most recent available data comes from Arab Barometer’s 2021–22 survey wave.) Gazans face a series of challenges, from a worsening economic crisis to an unresponsive government and a seemingly impossible path to independent statehood, but they are steadfast in their desire to remain in Gaza.

BREAK THE CYCLE

The results of the Arab Barometer survey paint a bleak picture of Gaza in the days before the October 7 attacks. The Hamas government, unable to address citizens’ vital concerns, had lost the public’s confidence. Few Gazans supported Hamas’s goal of destroying the state of Israel, which left Gaza’s leaders and its population divided over the future direction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The vast majority of Gazans strongly favored a peaceful solution, and they yearned for leaders who could both deliver such a solution and improve Gazans’ overall quality of life. So far, however, the policies of their own government and of the Israeli government have prevented progress on both fronts.

Living conditions for Palestinians are better in the West Bank than they are in Gaza, but the economic and political situation is still grim. Nearly half of survey respondents in the West Bank (47 percent) reported going hungry in the last month, and just 19 percent trusted the West Bank government led by Fatah—an even lower percentage than that of Gazans who trusted Hamas’s government. Yet governance failures have not driven West Bank Palestinians to back Hamas. When asked which party they feel closest to, just 17 percent of respondents in the West Bank reported support for Hamas. The amount of support for Fatah was the same as in Gaza (30 percent). With regard to individual leaders, however, the responses of West Bank residents reflected widespread disaffection—and particular dissatisfaction with Abbas. In a hypothetical presidential election, Barghouti was their top choice, as he was in Gaza, at 35 percent, while only 11 percent picked Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, and six percent chose Abbas, the incumbent leader in the West Bank. Nearly half of respondents—47 percent—said they would not participate.

In terms of attitudes toward the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, support for the two-state solution in the West Bank was slightly lower than in Gaza (49 percent versus 54 percent), and opposition to Arab-Israeli normalization was slightly higher. Only five percent of respondents in the West Bank approved of the regional rapprochement, compared with 10 percent of Gazans. Although the differences were small, these relatively hardened attitudes in the West Bank were likely a result of tensions between Palestinians and Israeli settlers and soldiers in recent months. The survey’s finding that roughly half of Palestinians still support the two-state solution may offer some hope for peace in the long term, but the results do not inspire much confidence in short-term stability. The deep unpopularity of Palestinian leadership, in the West Bank in particular, calls into question the feasibility of reestablishing the Palestinian Authority’s control over Gaza, which some media outlets have suggested as the next step in reconstruction after Israel’s military campaign against Hamas is complete.

The Israeli government must now exercise restraint.

As Israel’s operations in Gaza escalate, the war will take an unfathomable toll on civilians. But even if Israel were to “level Gaza,” as some hawkish politicians in the United States have called for, it would fail in its mission to wipe out Hamas. Our research has shown that Israeli crackdowns in Gaza most often lead to increasing support and sympathy for Hamas among ordinary Gazans. Hamas won 44.5 percent of the Palestinian vote in parliamentary elections in 2006, but support for the group plummeted after a military conflict between Hamas and Fatah in June 2007 ended in Hamas’s takeover of Gaza. In a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in December 2007, just 24 percent of Gazans expressed favorable attitudes toward Hamas. Over the next few years, as Israel tightened its blockade of Gaza and ordinary Gazans felt the effects, approval of Hamas increased, reaching about 40 percent in 2010. Israel partially eased the blockade the same year, and Hamas’s support in Gaza leveled off before declining to 35 percent in 2014. In periods when Israel cracks down on Gaza, Hamas’s hardline ideology seems to hold greater appeal for Gazans. Thus, rather than moving the Israelis and Palestinians toward a peaceful solution, Israeli policies that inflict pain on Gaza in the name of rooting out Hamas are likely to perpetuate the cycle of violence.

To break the cycle, the Israeli government must now exercise restraint. The Hamas-led government may be uninterested in peace, but it is empirically wrong for Israeli political leaders to accuse all Gazans of the same. In fact, most Gazans are open to a permanent, peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet the views of the people who live in Gaza are still often misrepresented in public discourse, even as surveys such as Arab Barometer consistently show how different these narratives are from reality.

In the immediate term, Israeli and especially U.S. leaders need to secure the safety of Gazan civilians, 1.4 million of whom have already been displaced. The United States should partner with the United Nations to create clear humanitarian corridors and protected zones, and Washington should contribute to the UN’s appeal for $300 million in aid to protect Palestinian civilians—a step dozens of U.S. senators have said they will support. Finally, Israel and the United States must recognize that the Palestinian people are essential partners in finding a lasting political settlement, not an obstacle in the way of that worthy goal. If the two countries seek only military solutions, they will likely drive Gazans into the arms of Hamas, guaranteeing renewed violence in the years ahead.

 

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2 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Here is a poll from 2023, immediately prior to Oct. 7th. Full text behind the tags, with broader discussion and details. 

 

image.thumb.png.dbcd71e9f03fd14eddbeb0fab39bc127.png

 

image.thumb.png.53c106721b4f989b34970f72ab83162f.png

 

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/what-palestinians-really-think-hamas?

What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas

Before the War, Gaza’s Leaders Were Deeply Unpopular—but an Israeli Crackdown Could Change That

By Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins

October 25, 2023

  Hide contents

Palestinians protesting in support of the people of Gaza, Hebron, West Bank, October 2023

Mussa Qawasma / Reuters

Since Hamas’s atrocious attacks on October 7 left more than 1,400 Israelis dead in a single day, Israel’s response has exacted a heavy toll on the population of Gaza. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, so far more than 6,000 Gazans have been killed and more than 17,000 injured in Israel’s aerial bombardment. The casualties could quickly climb much higher if Israel goes ahead with its expected ground invasion. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Knesset member Ariel Kallner, and other prominent officials have called for a military campaign that covers the entire territory of Gaza. Israeli missiles have already destroyed around five percent of all buildings in Gaza, including in areas where Palestinians sought shelter after heeding Israeli calls to evacuate their homes. Some of Israel’s top officials, invoking Hamas’s success in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, have in effect declared that all Gazans are part of Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure and complicit in the group’s atrocities—and are therefore legitimate targets of Israeli retaliation.

The argument that the entire population of Gaza can be held responsible for Hamas’s actions is quickly discredited when one looks at the facts. Arab Barometer, a research network where we serve as co-principal investigators, conducted a survey in Gaza and the West Bank days before the Israel-Hamas war broke out. The findings, published here for the first time, reveal that rather than supporting Hamas, the vast majority of Gazans have been frustrated with the armed group’s ineffective governance as they endure extreme economic hardship. Most Gazans do not align themselves with Hamas’s ideology, either. Unlike Hamas, whose goal is to destroy the Israeli state, the majority of survey respondents favored a two-state solution with an independent Palestine and Israel existing side by side.

Continued violence will not bring the future most Gazans hope for any closer. Instead of stamping out sympathy for terrorism, past Israeli crackdowns that make life more difficult for ordinary Gazans have increased support for Hamas. If the current military campaign in Gaza has a similar effect on Palestinian public opinion, it will further set back the cause of long-term peace.

 

MOUNTING FRUSTRATION

Arab Barometer’s survey of the West Bank and Gaza, conducted in partnership with the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy, provides a snapshot of the views of ordinary citizens on the eve of the latest conflict. The longest-running and most comprehensive public opinion project in the region, Arab Barometer has run eight waves of surveys covering 16 countries in the Middle East and North Africa since 2006. All surveys are designed to be nationally representative, most of them (including the latest survey in the West Bank and Gaza) are conducted in face-to-face interviews in the respondents’ places of residence, and the collected data is made publicly available. In each country, survey questions aim to measure respondents’ attitudes and values about a variety of economic, political, and international issues.    

Our most recent interviews were carried out between September 28 and October 8, surveying 790 respondents in the West Bank and 399 in Gaza. (Interviews in Gaza were completed on October 6.) The survey’s findings reveal that Gazans had very little confidence in their Hamas-led government. Asked to identify the amount of trust they had in the Hamas authorities, a plurality of respondents (44 percent) said they had no trust at all; “not a lot of trust” was the second most common response, at 23 percent. Only 29 percent of Gazans expressed either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in their government. Furthermore, 72 percent said there was a large (34 percent) or medium (38 percent) amount of corruption in government institutions, and a minority thought the government was taking meaningful steps to address the problem.

When asked how they would vote if presidential elections were held in Gaza and the ballot featured Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and Marwan Barghouti, an imprisoned member of the central committee of Fatah, the party led by Abbas, only 24 percent of respondents said they would vote for Haniyeh. Barghouti received the largest share of support at 32 percent and Abbas received 12 percent. Thirty percent of respondents said they would not participate. Gazans’ opinions of the PA, which governs the West Bank, are not much better. A slight majority (52 percent) believe the PA is a burden on the Palestinian people, and 67 percent would like to see Abbas resign. The people of Gaza are disillusioned not only with Hamas but with the entire Palestinian leadership.

The salience of Gaza’s economic troubles also came through clearly in the survey results. According to the World Bank, the poverty rate in Gaza rose from 39 percent in 2011 to 59 percent in 2021. Many Gazans have struggled to secure basic necessities because of both scarcity and cost. Among survey respondents, 78 percent said that the availability of food was a moderate or severe problem in Gaza, whereas just five percent said it was not a problem at all. A similar proportion (75 percent) reported moderate to severe difficulty affording food even when it was available; only six percent said food affordability was not a problem.

Gazan households have felt the impact of food shortages keenly. Seventy-five percent of respondents reported that they had run out of food and lacked the money to buy more at some point during the previous 30 days. By comparison, in a 2021 Arab Barometer survey, only 51 percent said the same. This change over just two years is alarming. Gazans have been forced to adjust their habits to try to make ends meet, with 75 percent saying they had started buying less preferred or less expensive food and 69 percent saying they had reduced the size of their meals.

Most Gazans attributed the lack of food to internal problems rather than to external sanctions. Israel and Egypt have imposed a blockade on Gaza since 2005, limiting the flow of people and goods into and out of the territory. The strength of the blockade has varied, but it grew notably stricter after Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007. Nevertheless, a plurality of survey respondents (31 percent) identified government mismanagement as the primary cause of food insecurity in Gaza and 26 percent blamed inflation. Only 16 percent blamed externally imposed economic sanctions. In short, Gazans were more likely to blame their material predicament on Hamas’s leadership than on Israel’s economic blockade. Since the time of the survey, however, this perception may have changed. Israel cut off water, food, fuel, and electricity supplies to Gaza following the October 7 attacks, plunging the territory into a deep humanitarian crisis. Some international aid has entered Gaza since, but the suffering the Palestinians have experienced has likely hardened their attitudes in ways that could undermine long-term peace and stability.

NO MORE POLITICS AS USUAL

Overall, the survey responses indicate that Gazans desire political change. In an eight-point decline since 2021, just 26 percent said the government was very (three percent) or largely (23 percent) responsive to the needs of the people. When asked what is the most effective way for ordinary people to influence the government, a plurality said “nothing is effective.” The next most popular answer was to use personal connections to reach a government official. Most Gazans saw no avenue for publicly expressing their grievances with the Hamas-led government. Only 40 percent said that freedom of expression was guaranteed to a great or moderate extent, and 68 percent believed that the right to participate in a peaceful protest was not protected or was protected only to a limited extent under Hamas rule.

About half of Gazans expressed support for democracy: 48 percent affirmed that “democracy is always preferable to any other kind of government.” A smaller proportion of respondents (23 percent) indicated a lack of faith in any type of regime, agreeing with the statement, “For people like me, it doesn’t matter what kind of government we have.” Only 26 percent agreed that “under some circumstances, a non-democratic government can be preferable.” (This last finding is similar to poll results in the United States, where in a 2022 survey, one in five adults aged 41 or younger agreed with the statement, “Dictatorship could be good in certain circumstances.”)

Given the low opinion most Gazans hold of their government, it is unsurprising that their disapproval extends to Hamas as a political party. Just 27 percent of respondents selected Hamas as their preferred party, slightly less than the proportion who favored Fatah (30 percent), the party that is led by Abbas and that governs the West Bank. Hamas’s popularity in Gaza has slipped as well, falling from 34 percent support in the 2021 survey. There is notable demographic variation in the recent responses, too. Thirty-three percent of adults under 30 expressed support for Hamas, compared with 23 percent of those 30 and older. And poorer Gazans were less likely than their wealthier counterparts to support Hamas. Among those who cannot cover their basic expenses, just 25 percent favored the party in power. Among those who can, the figure rose to 33 percent. The fact that the people most affected by dire economic conditions and those who remember life before Hamas rule were more likely to reject the party underlines the limits of Gazans’ support for Hamas’s movement.

VISIONS FOR THE FUTURE

Leadership style is not the only thing Gazans find objectionable about Hamas. By and large, Gazans do not share Hamas’s goal of eliminating the state of Israel. When presented with three possible solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (as well as an option to choose “other”), the majority of survey respondents (54 percent) favored the two-state solution outlined in the 1993 Oslo accords. In this scenario, the state of Palestine would sit alongside the state of Israel, their borders based on the de facto boundary that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War. The level of support for this resolution has not changed much since 2021; in that survey, 58 percent of respondents in Gaza selected the two-state solution.

It is somewhat surprising how little traction alternative political arrangements had gained among Gazans before the onset of recent hostilities, given how implausible a two-state solution now seems. The survey presented two other options: an Israeli-Palestinian confederation—in which both states are independent but remain deeply linked and permit the free movement of citizens—and a single state for both Jews and Arabs. These garnered 10 percent and nine percent support, respectively.

Overall, 73 percent of Gazans favored a peaceful settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On the eve of Hamas’s October 7 attack, just 20 percent of Gazans favored a military solution that could result in the destruction of the state of Israel. A clear majority (77 percent) of those who provided this response were also supporters of Hamas, amounting to around 15 percent of the adult population. Among the remaining respondents who favored armed action, 13 percent reported no political affiliation.

By and large, Gazans do not share Hamas’s goal of eliminating the state of Israel.

Gazans’ views on the normalization of relations between Arab states and Israel, meanwhile, have been consistently negative. Only 10 percent expressed approval of this initiative in the most recent survey—the same percentage as in 2021. Many Gazans likely recognize that Arab solidarity is key to securing a political arrangement that includes an independent Palestinian state. If Arab countries were to settle their differences with Israel without making the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a precondition for normalization, any lingering hopes for a two-state solution would evaporate.

Before Hamas’s attack on Israel, Gazans’ foreign policy views suggested both alignment with certain U.S. policy priorities and mistrust of the United States. Seventy-one percent opposed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Twenty-six percent expressed a wish for Gaza to develop stronger economic ties to the United States—slightly lower than the proportion that wanted to deepen economic relations with Iran or Russia (32 percent in both cases). Only 15 percent of Gazans, however, believed that U.S. President Joe Biden’s policies had been good or very good for the Arab world. And in the past few weeks, approval of both Biden and the United States has certainly declined, given the broad perception in Gaza, the West Bank, and in the region’s Arab countries that Washington has come to the aid of Israel at the expense of Gaza.

A final finding—now backed by countless media reports of Gazans’ anguish as escalating violence forces them to flee their homes—is the strength of people’s connection to the land on which they live. The vast majority of Gazans surveyed—69 percent—said they have never considered leaving their homeland. This is a higher proportion than residents of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia who were asked the same question. (For all of these countries, the most recent available data comes from Arab Barometer’s 2021–22 survey wave.) Gazans face a series of challenges, from a worsening economic crisis to an unresponsive government and a seemingly impossible path to independent statehood, but they are steadfast in their desire to remain in Gaza.

BREAK THE CYCLE

The results of the Arab Barometer survey paint a bleak picture of Gaza in the days before the October 7 attacks. The Hamas government, unable to address citizens’ vital concerns, had lost the public’s confidence. Few Gazans supported Hamas’s goal of destroying the state of Israel, which left Gaza’s leaders and its population divided over the future direction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The vast majority of Gazans strongly favored a peaceful solution, and they yearned for leaders who could both deliver such a solution and improve Gazans’ overall quality of life. So far, however, the policies of their own government and of the Israeli government have prevented progress on both fronts.

Living conditions for Palestinians are better in the West Bank than they are in Gaza, but the economic and political situation is still grim. Nearly half of survey respondents in the West Bank (47 percent) reported going hungry in the last month, and just 19 percent trusted the West Bank government led by Fatah—an even lower percentage than that of Gazans who trusted Hamas’s government. Yet governance failures have not driven West Bank Palestinians to back Hamas. When asked which party they feel closest to, just 17 percent of respondents in the West Bank reported support for Hamas. The amount of support for Fatah was the same as in Gaza (30 percent). With regard to individual leaders, however, the responses of West Bank residents reflected widespread disaffection—and particular dissatisfaction with Abbas. In a hypothetical presidential election, Barghouti was their top choice, as he was in Gaza, at 35 percent, while only 11 percent picked Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, and six percent chose Abbas, the incumbent leader in the West Bank. Nearly half of respondents—47 percent—said they would not participate.

In terms of attitudes toward the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, support for the two-state solution in the West Bank was slightly lower than in Gaza (49 percent versus 54 percent), and opposition to Arab-Israeli normalization was slightly higher. Only five percent of respondents in the West Bank approved of the regional rapprochement, compared with 10 percent of Gazans. Although the differences were small, these relatively hardened attitudes in the West Bank were likely a result of tensions between Palestinians and Israeli settlers and soldiers in recent months. The survey’s finding that roughly half of Palestinians still support the two-state solution may offer some hope for peace in the long term, but the results do not inspire much confidence in short-term stability. The deep unpopularity of Palestinian leadership, in the West Bank in particular, calls into question the feasibility of reestablishing the Palestinian Authority’s control over Gaza, which some media outlets have suggested as the next step in reconstruction after Israel’s military campaign against Hamas is complete.

The Israeli government must now exercise restraint.

As Israel’s operations in Gaza escalate, the war will take an unfathomable toll on civilians. But even if Israel were to “level Gaza,” as some hawkish politicians in the United States have called for, it would fail in its mission to wipe out Hamas. Our research has shown that Israeli crackdowns in Gaza most often lead to increasing support and sympathy for Hamas among ordinary Gazans. Hamas won 44.5 percent of the Palestinian vote in parliamentary elections in 2006, but support for the group plummeted after a military conflict between Hamas and Fatah in June 2007 ended in Hamas’s takeover of Gaza. In a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in December 2007, just 24 percent of Gazans expressed favorable attitudes toward Hamas. Over the next few years, as Israel tightened its blockade of Gaza and ordinary Gazans felt the effects, approval of Hamas increased, reaching about 40 percent in 2010. Israel partially eased the blockade the same year, and Hamas’s support in Gaza leveled off before declining to 35 percent in 2014. In periods when Israel cracks down on Gaza, Hamas’s hardline ideology seems to hold greater appeal for Gazans. Thus, rather than moving the Israelis and Palestinians toward a peaceful solution, Israeli policies that inflict pain on Gaza in the name of rooting out Hamas are likely to perpetuate the cycle of violence.

To break the cycle, the Israeli government must now exercise restraint. The Hamas-led government may be uninterested in peace, but it is empirically wrong for Israeli political leaders to accuse all Gazans of the same. In fact, most Gazans are open to a permanent, peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet the views of the people who live in Gaza are still often misrepresented in public discourse, even as surveys such as Arab Barometer consistently show how different these narratives are from reality.

In the immediate term, Israeli and especially U.S. leaders need to secure the safety of Gazan civilians, 1.4 million of whom have already been displaced. The United States should partner with the United Nations to create clear humanitarian corridors and protected zones, and Washington should contribute to the UN’s appeal for $300 million in aid to protect Palestinian civilians—a step dozens of U.S. senators have said they will support. Finally, Israel and the United States must recognize that the Palestinian people are essential partners in finding a lasting political settlement, not an obstacle in the way of that worthy goal. If the two countries seek only military solutions, they will likely drive Gazans into the arms of Hamas, guaranteeing renewed violence in the years ahead.

 

I certainly do not ascribe to "the argument that the entire population of Gaza can be held responsible for Hamas’s actions."

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15 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

Agreed. There’s no reason for that sort of thing. Even here on Surly. 

Agreed. But while we are the topic of forced sodomy in the occupied territories, this may be where MisterP learned it from.  Were you IDF MisterP? 

https://www.dci-palestine.org/jerusalem_child_threatened_with_sodomy_placed_under_house_arrest

Ramallah, March 21, 2014—A boy from East Jerusalem who signed a confession after Israeli interrogators threatened him with sodomy spent over two months under house arrest.

Othman S, 14, was summoned for interrogation by Israeli intelligence in the early hours of November 25, 2013 and accused of throwing stones and Molotov cocktails near the Israeli Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem.

In a sworn affidavit given to DCI-Palestine, Othman says he was forced to stand face to the wall with his hands tied for about two hours and strip-searched before being interrogated.

During the interrogation, an intelligence officer accused him of throwing a stone and then a Molotov cocktail at a police car and, when Othman would not confess, the officer threatened to sodomize him.

“(The interrogator) then brought a broomstick, about 1.5 meters (6 feet) long, from one of the corners and threatened to shove it up my bottom,” Othman said, adding that the interrogator said to him: “You want me to shove this stick up your ass so you’ll feel pain and tell me the truth?”

The interrogator also insulted Othman’s mother and sister and warned him that he would “demolish my home if I did not talk,” he said.

Scared and alone, Othman confessed under duress.

“I was crying. I said everything against my will. I was scared of them. I was scared they might beat me and demolish our house,” Othman told DCI-Palestine.

There were at least 31 cases of child detention in East Jerusalem in 2012. Of those, 97 percent experienced physical abuse and 90 percent were subjected to intimidation and humiliation, according to DCI-Palestine statistics.

Edited by Anastasis
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Here again to point out that there is nothing reassuring about the Foreign Affairs polling data. Over thirty percent of Palestinians respond that they most identify with either Hamas or its more extreme cousin Palestinian Islamic Jihad and that is utterly horrifying.  We need only to write “thirty percent of Americans respond they they most identify with the Ku Klux Klan or the New National Democratic Socialist Party” to contextualize how stupid it is to cite these figures as “modest support.” 
 

Likewise, expressing a low amount of trust in Hamas is not reassuring without more context as well. Plenty of American voters don’t trust the GOP or Democratic Party because they want those entities to be more uncompromising and strident and it’s safe to assume there’s a contingent of disaffected Hamas supporters who weren’t really happy with them till they walked the walk on October 7. 
 

And finally the worst part of it all is that there is simply a non-existent movement advocating for the things so many “decolonialists” in the West say they want.  Palestinian society has stubbornly refused to birth a genuinely tolerant, Liberal, secular political movement and we have to assume that the appetite for one just doesn’t exist. 

So the facts are these— a minority but extremely large and powerful bloc of Palestinian society explicitly aligns with violent, intolerant religious extremism and reports that this ideology best represents their political alignment and there is no truly humane and tolerant alternative to promote or deal with. 
 

That doesn’t justify the mass purposeful killing of civilians, even though many of those civilians really want someone to come along and mass murder you and your nation, but it should help frame the realities of what there is to work with. 

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38 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

So the facts are these— a minority but extremely large and powerful bloc of Palestinian society explicitly aligns with violent, intolerant religious extremism and reports that this ideology best represents their political alignment and there is no truly humane and tolerant alternative to promote or deal with. 

I would also offer that the same is true of Israeli society.   Which is the main fucking problem -- you have two societies where violent genocidal assholes have outsized power, and way more support than they should have.

If your "side" has a couple of assholes, you can tell them to sit down and STFU.  If your side is 1/3 assholes, then there's no way to go forward without engaging in some of that assholery.  Especially if those assholes are, well, assholes.  Assholes tend to seize disproportionate power -- it's one of the hallmarks of assholes.  So Israel may be 1/3 assholes, but it finds itself in a position where its government is now pretty much 100% asshole.  The Palestinians in Gaza?  Similar situation.

Which, by the way, is one of the reason that lots of folks right here in the old U S of A are up in arms about certain political trends here, but I won't go any further CR -- I'm just noting that it's a universal problem for any society.

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How can anyone argue in good faith that the citizens of Gaza do not support Hamas when we have reports of civilians beating children and returning escaped hostages to Hamas?  Add to it their history of fucking up every country they have been harbored in and consistently starting shit with Israel for decades.  At this point the Palestinians are just assholes.  That still doesn’t justify indiscriminately killing civilians, though I doubt that the IDF has done that.  I think the civilian death numbers are very highly inflated and that in cases where the IDF does kill civilians it it because of them being collateral damage to the Hamas targets.
 

Hopefully the IDF eradicates Hamas and can hand the Gaza Strip over to the UN to deal with.

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11 hours ago, txhorns said:

How can anyone argue in good faith that the citizens of Gaza do not support Hamas when we have reports of civilians beating children and returning escaped hostages to Hamas?  Add to it their history of fucking up every country they have been harbored in and consistently starting shit with Israel for decades.  At this point the Palestinians are just assholes.  That still doesn’t justify indiscriminately killing civilians, though I doubt that the IDF has done that.  I think the civilian death numbers are very highly inflated and that in cases where the IDF does kill civilians it it because of them being collateral damage to the Hamas targets.
 

Hopefully the IDF eradicates Hamas and can hand the Gaza Strip over to the UN to deal with.

We keep saying "eliminate Hamas" but if the Palestinian people support Hamas as much as we're saying, is there really a way to eliminate Hamas without Genocide?  Won't something else that has a different name, but the same beliefs just pop up in it's place?

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19 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Here again to point out that there is nothing reassuring about the Foreign Affairs polling data. Over thirty percent of Palestinians respond that they most identify with either Hamas or its more extreme cousin Palestinian Islamic Jihad and that is utterly horrifying.  We need only to write “thirty percent of Americans respond they they most identify with the Ku Klux Klan or the New National Democratic Socialist Party” to contextualize how stupid it is to cite these figures as “modest support.” 

That is in no way analogous. Atleast try to Steelman the thing. 

The respondees probably dont have much of a choice in their answers.

Hamas rose out of a 2-party conflict. There hasnt been elections in almost 2 decades. Supposedly, they shot and killed their “own people” trying to flee the territories. 

With that in mind, what do you think people in the Gaza strip (where they undemocratically wrestled control) would answer if asked publicly for affiliation?

How do you equate that to a hypothetical American support of a hyper-fringe extremist sect when they’re free and clear to support the popular parties. 

Further, if you read the actual source of that graphic (Arab Barometer Wave), **overwhelmingly** peoples priorities were on economic well-being, education, health care; and they showed strong preference for democratic systems. They also shared low (and declining) trust in the govt/public institutions. 

Not unlike America, its economics that truly drive their (the citizens’) politics, not military activities/policies.

In summary, an interpretation of the result is that it merely represents party prevalence — that the 2 highest answers reflect the 2 current parties — but does not imply 30% endorsement of terrorism. (any more than you can claim the US popular vote means 20% endorse the most loony/extreme idea from each party).

The 10% support for P.I.J. is much more obvious because they explicit call for total destruction of Israel. But given how much of the IL-PL conflict negatively and materially affected their lives, 10% is not a surprise at all. 

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the Performative aspect of american politics never cease to amaze. 
 

could you imagine, in the states of israel and palestine, the council of generals sitting in their war rooms, rife with tension, in eager anticipation of whether……

….the city of Oakland formally endorse or condemn their actions?

 

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33 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

the Performative aspect of american politics never cease to amaze. 
 

could you imagine, in the states of israel and palestine, the council of generals sitting in their war rooms, rife with tension, in eager anticipation of whether……

….the city of Oakland formally endorse or condemn their actions?

 

while that's true, it does at least tell us who the crazies are, and can pull some of the people on the fence into the middle when they see all the leaders are condemning this and not staying silent.

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30 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

That is in no way analogous. Atleast try to Steelman the thing. 

The respondees probably dont have much of a choice in their answers.

Hamas rose out of a 2-party conflict. There hasnt been elections in almost 2 decades. Supposedly, they shot and killed their “own people” trying to flee the territories. 

With that in mind, what do you think people in the Gaza strip (where they undemocratically wrestled control) would answer if asked publicly for affiliation?

How do you equate that to a hypothetical American support of a hyper-fringe extremist sect when they’re free and clear to support the popular parties. 

Further, if you read the actual source of that graphic (Arab Barometer Wave), **overwhelmingly** peoples priorities were on economic well-being, education, health care; and they showed strong preference for democratic systems. They also shared low (and declining) trust in the govt/public institutions. 

Not unlike America, its economics that truly drive their (the citizens’) politics, not military activities/policies.

In summary, an interpretation of the result is that it merely represents party prevalence — that the 2 highest answers reflect the 2 current parties — but does not imply 30% endorsement of terrorism. (any more than you can claim the US popular vote means 20% endorse the most loony/extreme idea from each party).

The 10% support for P.I.J. is much more obvious because they explicit call for total destruction of Israel. But given how much of the IL-PL conflict negatively and materially affected their lives, 10% is not a surprise at all. 

There’s a kernel of truth here in that people tend to back the parties in existence.  That said “no party” is certainly an option and it finishes barely above “Hamas’ more radical cousin.”  And my point stands that there appear to be no calls for anything resembling a tolerant and Liberal political movement. 
 

To your other points of “people can’t answer openly.” Ok, but in that case we just throw this shit out entirely and say we can’t really know anything.  If the data is corrupt (and it could be) then all we have is vibes. But we can’t cite the article and approvingly say “Hamas has modest support” and then argue “people can’t express their true feelings” when it’s pointed out that over a third is actually pretty gotdam high. Either these data are worth thinking about or debating or they aren’t. 
 

Economic concerns are a major aspect everywhere.  One thing that struck me while living in Pakistan and talking to real believers is this— Islamic fundamentalism is meant to work. The argument is that this system is not just meant to be righteous. It’s meant to bring a middle class, clean streets, clinics, and full supermarkets. It’s all part of the package. I don’t think you can discount the idea that Hamas and other extremists have sold their publics the promise of prosperity by way of jihad and rigorousness. 
 

And very finally, preference for democratic systems in no way a preference for tolerant and liberal democracy and in much of the world, it’s the exact opposite. The idea is that you elect people who terrorize or eliminate your enemies and not you. Often this is explicitly formulated as “true democracy” that is not thwarted by things like arbitrary human rights. Generic support for democracy is basically meaningless without definitions. 

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13 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

There’s a kernel of truth here in that people tend to back the parties in existence.  That said “no party” is certainly an option and it finishes barely above “Hamas’ more radical cousin.”  And my point stands that there appear to be no calls for anything resembling a tolerant and Liberal political movement. 
 

To your other points of “people can’t answer openly.” Ok, but in that case we just throw this shit out entirely and say we can’t really know anything.  If the data is corrupt (and it could be) then all we have is vibes. But we can’t cite the article and approvingly say “Hamas has modest support” and then argue “people can’t express their true feelings” when it’s pointed out that over a third is actually pretty gotdam high. Either these data are worth thinking about or debating or they aren’t. 
 

Economic concerns are a major aspect everywhere.  One thing that struck me while living in Pakistan and talking to real believers is this— Islamic fundamentalism is meant to work. The argument is that this system is not just meant to be righteous. It’s meant to bring a middle class, clean streets, clinics, and full supermarkets. It’s all part of the package. I don’t think you can discount the idea that Hamas and other extremists have sold their publics the promise of prosperity by way of jihad and rigorousness. 
 

And very finally, preference for democratic systems in no way a preference for tolerant and liberal democracy and in much of the world, it’s the exact opposite. The idea is that you elect people who terrorize or eliminate your enemies and not you. Often this is explicitly formulated as “true democracy” that is not thwarted by things like arbitrary human rights. Generic support for democracy is basically meaningless without definitions. 

Yeah i agree with most of that. And absolutely support for militaristic/terroristic action is significantly non-zero. Poor, uneducated, aggro, besieged is a combustible mix. 
Its sad all the stuff you mentioned is so long and deeply entwined itll never be unwound and resolved.  Of course, we already knew that conclusion last decade, and the one before that, and the one before that…

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59 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

the Performative aspect of american politics never cease to amaze. 
 

could you imagine, in the states of israel and palestine, the council of generals sitting in their war rooms, rife with tension, in eager anticipation of whether……

….the city of Oakland formally endorse or condemn their actions?

 

No CR, but Oakland is the same kinda dump that the Gaza Strip is.  They are a kindred spirit.

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I think the only answer (and it's no answer at all) is that you need standoff from Israel for the Gazans. The only real threat comes from their missiles, which they lob into Israel, aimed at civilian populations, on the reg. And they have been doing this for years. It's why all Israeli buildings are required to have bomb shelters.

Before 7 OCT, the only thing the Israeli's controlled was Gaza's border, they had no presence in Gaza at all. Any Israeli who went there would be killed. When I was in Israel last year, our tour guide told us as we were passing Jericho "If I try and go there, I will be killed for being Jewish".

So to protect Israel, you have to get the missiles out of range. Otherwise you are engaged in a constant low-level war. Unless you move the Gazans onto the Sinai or further into Egypt, there is no chance of an actual, stable peace. Just keep mowing the grass.

The hope that Gazans are going to stop hating jews is not realistic. I mean, if life handed me a beach, I would build a beach resort, but they chose poorly I guess.

 

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Three people murdered at a bus stop and many more shot. The perps are allegedly two brothers who were at one time in Israeli custody. 
 

A good reminder of the non-proportionality of these “exchanges” as the Israeli hostages are innocent people who will go live their lives and the Palestinian prisoners are nearly all already in the terror infrastructure and many will go on to be terrorists again.  Literally exchanging Israeli lives now for lives later. 
 

 

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12 hours ago, Thetexashammer said:

I think the only answer (and it's no answer at all) is that you need standoff from Israel for the Gazans.

There's a saying in Occitania -- I know its in Roma, probably in Occitania -- Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.

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I don’t put too much stock in the Gaza polling. There is a range of political choices from Fatah to Hamas. They don’t get to hear stump speeches from Christian Democrats, or Tories, or Labour, or Reagan Republicans. Hamas has been in charge for over 15 years, and Hamas executes Palestinian dissidents. 
 
Yes, Hamas is truly awful. So were the Nazis (Godwin’s Law!), and they were elected and supported, and then suppressed dissidence lethally. Ten years after WWII, with mandated exposure to liberal democracy, the FRG was a pretty solid state citizen again. 
 
The trick is getting from there to here (Duh). It may be impossible for it to happen organically. You can say that they need a Jesus, a Ghandi, a MLK, but all three were killed while promoting non-violent social transformation. 
 
But, yeah, I’m not ready to write off the Palestinian people just because the group in charge are monsters. 

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2 hours ago, statsman said:

I don’t put too much stock in the Gaza polling. There is a range of political choices from Fatah to Hamas. They don’t get to hear stump speeches from Christian Democrats, or Tories, or Labour, or Reagan Republicans. Hamas has been in charge for over 15 years, and Hamas executes Palestinian dissidents. 
 
Yes, Hamas is truly awful. So were the Nazis (Godwin’s Law!), and they were elected and supported, and then suppressed dissidence lethally. Ten years after WWII, with mandated exposure to liberal democracy, the FRG was a pretty solid state citizen again. 
 
The trick is getting from there to here (Duh). It may be impossible for it to happen organically. You can say that they need a Jesus, a Ghandi, a MLK, but all three were killed while promoting non-violent social transformation. 
 
But, yeah, I’m not ready to write off the Palestinian people just because the group in charge are monsters. 

If Hamas has killed off all dissent doesn't that mean that there are just Hamas supporters left?

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44 minutes ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

If Hamas has killed off all dissent doesn't that mean that there are just Hamas supporters left?

I actually believe that if a Palestinian were to clearly explain to his countrymen that an impassioned and logical appeal to the professed principles of the people of Israel, and the world, arguing their case, and eschewing violence, were the best approach, and that their leaders should be selected by the people, freely and regularly, a lot of Palestinians would have different views. 
 
The problem is that Hamas, or its like, would put a bullet in that guy’s head tout suite. 

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Douglas Murray: Wartime Diary

https://www.thefp.com/p/douglas-murray-diary-israel-hamas-hostages-war

Spoiler

“What is life?” a child asks Oriana Fallaci at the beginning of her great 1969 book Nothing and Amen. As Fallaci wrote, the next morning she flew to the Vietnam War to find out.

I have thought about that question a lot in recent weeks, since arriving in Israel earlier this month to cover the war. I have seen plenty of wars before and they always throw up that question: “What is life?” To understand life you have to understand death, and to understand death you have to try to understand the worst thing that humans can do to each other: war.

Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 has left 1,200 dead. Nearly 240 hostages—children, women, grandmothers—were taken to Gaza. Over the past few days, about 81 hostages have been returned to their loved ones during the cease-fire.

I was at the children’s hospital in Tel Aviv when the first children and their parents were released. When the helicopters landed and the hostages got out, IDF soldiers blocked their faces with screens to protect them from the glare of the cameras. But I’d already been sent a single photo taken by the Arab press that showed some of the mothers with their children inside a bus when they were still in Gaza.

The terror on their faces. They looked as though they’d aged by decades.

But at this moment, there was joy. As the helicopters landed, traffic stopped, and people got out of their cars and broke into song. They clapped and their voices rang out as they welcomed back the hostages with songs like “Hevenu Shalom Alechem.” (“We brought you peace.”)

As it happened, 12 of the 13 returnees that night were from Kibbutz Nir Oz, the first place I visited on my trip to Israel. But for every returnee, you remember those still in Gaza. I thought especially of the grandsons of the man who showed me around the kibbutz during my visit. On the morning of October 7, the teenage boys were alone in the house. Their grandfather was on the phone with them trying to tell them how to hold the safe room door shut while avoiding being shot from the other side. The two boys struggled with a wound-up sheet, and held out a while, but they couldn’t fight back against two grown men, members of Hamas. They were taken into Gaza.

So was Kfir Bibas, a baby of ten months. So was his brother. So was their mother. Yesterday, Hamas said that they would not be released because they died in captivity. 

Who knows if Hamas killed them, as they killed so many others, or if they are lying in order to torture those waiting for their return. 

So the hostage releases are happening, but each day brings disappointment and hope. The process that has begun is a hell of its own. For almost two months, every billboard across the country has shown us the faces of the stolen. We have gotten to know them. Nobody pulls these posters down here. They are family, friends. 

Every returned hostage is a blessing. But what makes reporting on their release hard is that Hamas has strategically made sure that nearly all those freed still have a family member held captive inside Gaza. So almost every released hostage is compromised. 

Everybody knows that Hamas is eking out the deal—and reneging on it—in order to slow down the Israeli war plan. Possibly indefinitely. 

Rumors spill out everywhere. Some people believe that only half the hostages are still alive. But this fear is put to the back of people’s minds as they dream of everyone returning home.

 

https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.ama

 

Last week I went to the Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv to speak with the people still trying to identify bodies being brought in. Many of the bodies are so burned or destroyed that they arrive in a bag smaller than a normal body bag. Sometimes they are just bones; sometimes the remains are accompanied with a bit of a cell phone. All possible clues in order to give something back to the families to bury.

One of the reasons to see things with your own eyes is to steel yourself against those who refuse to believe what is happening. Holocaust denial about October 7 is happening in real time.

We went downstairs to the morgue where they showed me some of the bodies they were still trying to identify. The reek is terrible, as are the sights. But these dedicated professionals and volunteers go about their painful work with great dedication as well as dignity.

On one table was the body of what they could identify only as a young man. They had extracted a tooth to try to make an identification. This is a relatively lucky case. Next door were some of the trays of charred objects that used to be people. These trays were human jigsaw puzzles, the bodies too burned to remove DNA. On one tray, a skull had been pieced back together, and I asked the lead pathologist if this was surely not the skull of a child.

 

https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.ama

 

Pieces of bones arranged on a tray, collected samples of charred remains, recovered from the communities near the Gaza border. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

“It could be,” he said, but it was also possible that it was the skull of a teenager and that the skull had simply shrunk in the intense flames that enveloped him or her when Hamas set their house on fire. 

Some of the sights made me nauseated. Others filled me with pity. A tray of almost nothing. A femur bone, perhaps. The remnants of a barbecue. Yet this was a man. Or a woman. Another bag comes in.

Early on I did an interview from the eerily empty town of Sderot. I had been there, and in its bomb shelters, before. But never did I—or any of the residents—imagine that Hamas would come down these streets in trucks firing RPGs and other heavy weaponry. This was a place that tried to hold out. 

Later, in the hospital in Tel Aviv, I met one brave young policeman who resisted for hours in his station that morning. He was shot in his arms and his legs, and a bullet had even grazed his scalp. He saw most of his comrades die. But he held out and was saved just before bleeding out. 

“What was it like that morning?” I asked him. 

“I saw hell,” he said, as he rocked himself back and forth.

 

https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.ama

 

Nir Oz, one of the kibbutzim in the south, suffered some of the greatest devastation on October 7. Over half of the community’s 400 residents were either murdered or kidnapped that day. 

This community, like many other kibbutzim, was populated by peaceniks, left-wingers, and people who actively tried to encourage coexistence with their Palestinian neighbors. 

Among the debris of their burned-out houses, you can still make out peace stickers. None of that made any difference to Hamas. Nor to the Palestinian workers who were given jobs in these places and ended up acting as scouts for Hamas, passing on information about the families so the terrorist group would know who to kill when they broke through the fence. The terrorists knew, by every single door, who would be home and when. They killed the head of security first and then moved on, house by house.

 

https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.ama

 

A house in Kibbutz Nir Oz that was destroyed in the October 7 attack. (Photo by Israel Fuguemann/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

This is an ongoing crime scene, and so there are trails of blood still on the ground, which tell much of the story on their own. The room where a group of Thai agricultural workers were massacred is still caked in blood from wall to wall and ceiling to floor. I could only make out just a couple of bullet holes in that room. Which means the workers were hacked to death mostly by machete.

Nobody I have spoken to in Israel still believes they can live beside Hamas. The idea that a peaceful Palestinian state will be built in Gaza is dead. The idea that a state can be built in the West Bank under an authority that also celebrated the atrocities of October 7 is past life support. 

“I have been a left-winger all my life,” one man told me from his hospital bed. “I want nothing but potato fields from here to the Mediterranean.”

He told me his October 7 story. His wife and two children were hiding in a safe room in their house when Hamas set fire to the home. As smoke rose, terrorists found a window in the safe room and threw grenades through it. Then a Kalashnikov rifle appeared. His wife was killed by a grenade; two bullets pierced the chest of his 14-year-old son, a young surfer.

As his son bled out, he asked his father, “Will you bury me with my surfboard?” 

Days later, when authorities found the man in the hospital and asked if he wanted anything from his home, he gave a simple reply: “I want nothing from my house but my son’s surfboard.”

His son was buried with his surfboard.

 

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Gaza itself is a blown-out wasteland. I was there within the first week, embedded with the IDF and traveling in Israeli vehicles through the border opening that the terrorists had broken through. As well as a feeling of trepidation, there is a sense of victory in going through that crossing. Hamas had come for the Israelis. And now the IDF was coming back for the people who’d done this.

In Gaza itself, anything can happen. The Israelis were still bombing the north, where I was, and up from the al-Shifa hospital I watched the streams of Palestinians making their journey south. It was a pitiful sight, and a reminder of what Hamas has wrought on the people under its control.

While I was there, the IDF found a Hamas tunnel and blew it up in front of me. The earth shook. But the earth shook a lot that day. Machine-gun fire kept breaking out, as well as the rockets and air strikes. People often ask what it’s like in a live conflict zone. The truth is, absolutely anything can happen. You just have to hope that it doesn’t.

At one point, right in the middle of Gaza, I spoke to a senior IDF commander and asked if he had been here before. 

“Yes,” he replied. 

“When were you last here?” I asked. 

“In 2005,” he said, “when I pulled family friends out of their houses. Now eighteen years later, here I am, back again.”

It is a reminder of the insolubility of the Gaza situation. Nobody has an answer to it. But why has this impossible problem been given to the Israelis to solve? Get someone else to resolve it. If the outside world thinks it knows what to do with a whole generation Hamas has indoctrinated into hate, then be my guest. Any takers? Any?

 

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For now, the war is still on hold. The IDF is trained to go. But currently they sit around, like everyone, waiting and watching and wondering how long this suspension can continue. The pause strengthens Hamas and weakens Israel. Some people say that Israelis should be less sentimental. But when you see footage of a child running back into his father’s arms, you think again. And then you have to think of both these things at once.

 

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Douglas Murray surveys the wreckage in Gaza. (Photo courtesy of the author)

The jihadists say they will win because they love death more than we love life. I think they are wrong. Israel will win precisely because they—we—love life. The Jews are ordered by God to “choose life” and even in the face of death, they do. The enemy can’t stop the great surge for life that comes up everywhere here in Israel, even in these days. The units I visit have unity and morale of a kind you would barely think possible. Because everybody now knows what the alternative to war is. The alternative is constant massacre.

Watching the sun go down tonight I think of Fallaci again, and when she returned from Vietnam, how she answered the little girl’s question, “What is life?”

What did Fallaci say to her? 

“Life is something you’ve got to fill up well, without wasting any time. Even if you break it by filling it too full.”

 

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A little bit more about how the hostage Mia ended up with the dog

 

there's also been a lot of disgusting tweets from hamas supporters (and russian paid influencers) claiming everything from the hostages were grateful to hamas for treating them so well to claiming they were in love with their hamas captors. This person is a former hostage and explains the dynamic. This is all beyond the fact that there are videos of the handovers where hamas can be heard ordering the hostages how to act to the cameras.

 

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3 hours ago, statsman said:

The 10 month old hostage is dead. Hamas says the death was caused by IDF bombing. I suspect they (Hamas) just can’t help themselves when they have a chance to kill Jews. 

maybe they killed them, but I'm not sure it matters and it's really the wrong thing to argue about. Whether they died because hamas shot/stabbed them or whether because of Israeli bombings, it's hamas' fault either way.

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5 hours ago, Viper said:

A little bit more about how the hostage Mia ended up with the dog

 

there's also been a lot of disgusting tweets from hamas supporters (and russian paid influencers) claiming everything from the hostages were grateful to hamas for treating them so well to claiming they were in love with their hamas captors. This person is a former hostage and explains the dynamic. This is all beyond the fact that there are videos of the handovers where hamas can be heard ordering the hostages how to act to the cameras.

 

The dog is worth more to the world than any individual wearing one of those green headbands. 

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Someone in the chain of Israeli military command really messed up.

Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago
A blueprint reviewed by The Times laid out the attack in detail. Israeli officials dismissed it as aspirational and ignored specific warnings.

Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.

Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7.

The plan also included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment.

The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.

Full article/no paywall: https://archive.is/7C0id

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