But Israel hasn't actually attacked Gaza for many years. They lived in an uneasy truce. But Gazans still hate Israel. It's ideological. Most Iranians hate the USA for instance.
And how is the deaths of 19,000 Gazans, mostly civilians, many of them children, going to help reduce that hate?
The international community is not going to embargo Iran. Iran will always have support from a coterie of allies, which apparently now includes Putin's Russia.
And look at how much the international sanctions have hurt Russia. Meanwhile bring up Hamas in the UN and the conversation quickly turns to, "Sanction Israel for illegal settlements," instead. Something might get done if you eliminate that counter-argument. Nothing gets done otherwise. Isn't some chance better than no chance?
The disturbing aspect of 7 October is that it indicates a sudden new escalation in the Middle East.
Very distributing. Disturbing enough that other countries might not want to see this continue and actually do something about Iran and Lebanon if they weren't so focused on Israeli war crimes.
Every country doesn't have a terror attack every day because most countries are out of easy reach of potential terrorists and take extensive measures to prevent such attacks.
They also aren't illegally occupying land, except for Russia currently who is also getting attacked every day. Terrorists live within our borders; we are not out of reach. We could be hit any day. I realize life seems peaceful and such a thing seems unimaginable, but that's reality. There is a lot of work and resources that goes into preventing them. The CAF, CSIS, CSE, RCMP and every other major police force have counter-terrorism departments and those guys aren't just sitting around every day waiting for an attack.
Israel has these resources too, but what they don't have is a secure border or friendly nations surrounding them. And as long as the have no international support, that's always going to be true. They could completely take over Gaza and the attacks would still keep coming. So what then? Go to war with Iran? Just war after war after war until there is no antisemetic terrorist groups left?
At some point Israel's response to terrorist attacks is going to have to become one of policing and international pressure. Whether that happens before the millions of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank are killed or after, it eventually becomes the reality. I'm proposing maybe the death of millions of civilians isn't worth it if you just achieve the same end result anyway.
When was the last time you visited an airport? Israel is directly across a fence from Gaza. 7 OCtober could literally occur every day.
I literally work in aviation. So I visit an airport almost every day.
9/11 could literally occur every day. The flimsiest lock ever on the flimsiest door ever is not stopping anyone. Airline magazines have the thinnest paper you can find because the weight savings results in millions of dollars saved per year. They're certainly not putting reinforced steel on the door. However safe you are in an airplane bathroom is about how safe the pilots are in the cockpit.
What is stopping it is international support. Terrorists can only walk across our border from one place, and we're friendly with them and share intelligence. They can come by boat, but all our neighbours within reasonable boating distance of us are friendly and share intelligence. Places that have unfriendly borders and no terrorist attacks achieve it thanks to international support. Example: Golan Heights. It would be the most devastating place to launch attacks from. Crucial Israeli water supply and an elevated position make it strategically advantageous. But international support has allowed a permanent multinational peacekeeping force there.
Where's the multinational peacekeeping force in Gaza and the West Bank? Nowhere. Because there's no international appetite to help thanks to illegal occupations.
I'm not sure it's a war crime, but it's unlikely to happen in Palestine.
Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 49. You can move people only if imperative military reasons demand, but they must be kept within the borders of the occupied territory if at all possible. Regardless, they must be allowed to return home as soon as possible. Re-settlement, as you put it, is a war crime.
Feel free to comment on what Pakistan is doing to its Afghan refugee population as we speak. They must be reading my posts in this thread.
Pakistan is not occupied territory. It's not a war crime to deport illegal refugees and immigrants from your country, but it is a war crime to attack a territory, occupy it militarily, and then deport the people you don't like from it. The best example is what the Soviet Union did with the Tartars in Crimes. War crime.
Gripes that are 75 years old are no longer worth fighting about.
Then Israel should leave the occupied territory if it's no longer worth fighting about.
These "gripes" didn't end 75 years ago, they are ongoing. The West has no peace treaty with North Korea, which is why there's a heavy military presence there. Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt which is why the Sinai is no longer Israeli occupied, and lo and behold, no terrorist attacks from it either. That peace process is also credited with causing Egypt to drift and eventually leave the Soviet sphere of influence.
Israel is still at war with Syria and the unofficial state of Palestine. The 4th Arab Israeli War has never been fully settled or ended. In large part because Syria demands either the return of Golan or peace talks, and while Israel stated they were prepared to enter peace talks they never attended any of the actual talks and have never left the Golan.
Let's be very clear here: Israel does not claim to own the Gaza strip, the Golan Heights, or the West Bank. They have never made any formal claims of annexation, and they do not recognize it as annexed. They themselves say, "We do not own this land."
So you say these are "75 year old gripes not worth fighting about", but if that's the case Israel should either annex the land or end its occupation. The problem is they're aware annexation is going to cause problems and they don't want to leave it. The West Bank in particular is a huge money maker. But these doesn't change anything: it's occupied territory and therefore it's illegal for Israel to settle there.
This is actually why they are called settlers. Canadians moving to a new subdivision that was forest or prairie 5 years ago aren't called settlers because it's Canadian territory. Israelis aren't just "moving" to homes to in the West Bank or Gaza because nether place is Israel. "Settling" is illegal because it's unfair. You tell your civilians to go live in a place you don't own, and then what happens? You either have to refuse to give it back in peace talks because your people live there now or force your civilians from their homes. It's not fair to them, or the people they've displaced who are now homeless.
For your idea of just "let it go" to work, Israel needs to pick one: annex or end the occupation. Until then, these aren't 75 year old gripes, they are ongoing gripes. If Israel annexed these territories today, then in 75 more years from now you could call them 75 years old. But as of right now, they are current.
And I presume that the IDF has a plan when they go into Gaza that is more sophisticated that just blowing random buildings up. I hope at least they are going to wreck weapons stockpiles and take out command centres and military facilities.
Let's pretend they do have a plan. They kill all Hamas and eliminate all stockpiles, then return to their old routine. Nothing changes. More attacks, more criticism of Israel, more death, more war.
The status quo doesn't work. Over 21,000 people, mostly civilians, a lot of them children, have been killed on both sides with this status quo. That's a lot of death for nothing to change and everyone to keep doing the same thing. How many people need to die before something else is tried? Maybe that something else will fail too. But surely it's better than the status quo and hoping something changes.
I do not understand anyone that supports these actions. Thousands of civilians die for the save thing we had on October 6th. A bunch of death for nothing to change. Don't you get sad at the pointlessness of all those dead people? And all they have to say to justify it is that they think the terrorists should be the bigger man and be reasonable first? C'mon. Just try something, anything, different from "kill a bunch more civilians and see if that changes anything."