But you all would rather blame Israel than the militants
Israel is militarily, technologically, and economically far superior. That means you have options that Palestinians who want to de-escalate don’t have, thus the ball is in your court. Or, well, practically all of the balls that can be played towards de-escalation are in your court. That’s not a special yardstick we carved just for you, it’s not about “who started it” or “who did worst” but “who is in a better position to end this”.
Also y’all speak English and are on the internet. I could rant to you about Fatah corruption but what good would that do.
How do we remove dictators like Hamas from power?
Hamas has more than one wing, all dependent on each other, and one of them you can right-out supplant. Heck it even meshes with security concerns: Instead of saying “Gaza can’t have concrete because Hamas” say “We’re going to donate concrete but because of Hamas we’re going to do the pouring, tell us where you want those houses”
More generally speaking: You will need to be able to take a punch while showing that you can be an asset to your region of the world meaning internally, you’ll have to make sure that forces who right-out enjoy having an external enemy to fuel their eternal war have absolutely no influence. Doesn’t even need much, all the civil society needs to do is to be receptive enough to understand that Kahanites and Nazis are the same shit with a different coat of paint so that the Israeli Antifa will come back out of exile – Berlin, I know, of all places. It’s an excuse for a city they could’ve at least chosen Hamburg but I digress.
It won’t be easy and it won’t be quick, trust isn’t built in a fortnight. There’s no quick solutions, there’s only approaches which breed resentment and those who don’t, and one kind is perpetuating hatred, the other isn’t. I know this kind of stuff can sound like platitudes but it really isn’t. Being disciplined in that regard is the only way.
More concretely, right now, don’t fucking blow the Saudi Arabia deal. If you need to stop the offensive to do that, do it.
Every restriction is an attempt to reduce violence and terrorism.
Every restriction also breeds resentment and thus increases violence and terrorism.
There’s one question I want to ask here, and it’s not an easy one, and Israel will take a long time to come to a national consensus on it: Was it just money that Israel funnelled to Hamas to weaken the PLO, or also fighters?
Once you understand how you created that monster you’ll also understand how to starve it. Minds can be changed, the mechanics of conflict and conflict resolution can’t.
“Withdrawal” can be really misleading, here, because it was very much not disengagement aka leaving Gaza alone: The moved the prison guards from inside the strip to the wall surrounding it and then closed the gate and enacted a blockade, for 16 years straight now. About 50% of Gazans are 18 or under, growing up under those conditions, 80% are reliant on humanitarian aid.
You can certainly make arguments that an arms blockade is warranted. But concrete? Starving the city of water? Yeah that’s very much not leaving people alone.
Now I can’t read body language through text but maybe she had an assumption, that got destroyed, therefore she looked confused? It doesn’t mean that she didn’t know the lyrics or the man. Also do you enjoy being needlessly cryptic.
I don’t know what to do with confused disengagement.
Engage by reassuring, or changing the topic? Cracking a joke? (“Also, I’m way too lazy to colour-match”). Whatever.
If you want to challenge them then how are b) and c) prerequisites? Where’s the challenge when it’s already there? If you want to be challenged then are you ready to be challenged in areas other than that? What if someone wants you to challenge to b) eat healthy home-made food every day and c) develop the grace and skill to tame a social situation with smalltalk, instead of insisting that every verbal utterance be a philosophical dissertation?