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Defense minister announces ‘complete siege’ of Gaza: No power, food or fuel (www.timesofisrael.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by CollisionResistance@lemm.ee to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says he has ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, as Israel fights the Hamas terror group.

“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba.

“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he adds.

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[-] guitarsarereal@sh.itjust.works 54 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

KInda blows me away how people don't acknowledge the overt genocidality of Israel's position towards Palestine. Just call them rats, Yoav Gallant, we all know that's what you mean. People all over social media are celebrating the actual ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

And after everything since the Nakba, we're supposed to be surprised that the political situation in Gaza has deteriorated to the point where the government is just a pack of terrorists. We're supposed to be confused as to how that could happen.

The attack by Hamas is chilling, but punishing all Gazans for what their government has done is collective punishment, and also presupposes a lot of things (ie, "they voted for Hamas" -- 44% of the electorate voted for Hamas, which means 56%, the actual majority, voted against Hamas, and they voted once, 17 years ago, so really, less than half of the electorate ever approved Hamas, but also, collective punishment is a war crime)

It seems likely Israel will succeed in clearing Gaza, because they've had the upper hand here and have since they stole the entire country at gunpoint with UN backing. This is depressing, but I don't see how massacres will help anything. If anything, further violence just seems to play into Israel's hand.

EDIT: it's been 17 years, not 13, since the last elections in Gaza

EDIT: Corrected typo, this was early in the day for me sorry everybody, also fixed slightly incorrect info re elections, admittedly not the most up to date on the current situation over there, but at this point I believe the info in my post is at least overall correct

[-] Tatar_Nobility@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago

Where did you get your info from?

Mahmoud Abbas, president of Palestine and head of Fatah, was the one to suspend both legislative and presidential elections and not Hamas. In fact, the latter “strongly opposed the decision to call off elections” (npr.org).

Abbas' party has been working closely with the Israeli authorities. His excuse was that “Israel refused to commit to allowing Palestinians to vote in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem” (npr.org).

Some (quite convincingly) hypothesise that the suspension of the elections was aimed at preserving his presidency and salvage “his fractured Fatah party [which] was expected to suffer another embarrassing defeat to Hamas.” (apnews.com).

How can one expect the people to not fight if democracy can't be exercised freely?

[-] guitarsarereal@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks for the updates, I wasn't aware there had been scotched election plans in the last few years. I follow various global situations but Israel-Palestine is so hopeless it's honestly hard to keep up with. It's worth noting Hamas has also scotched attempts to hold elections since 2006. Interesting to note they called for municipal elections 10 days ago and apparently intended to discuss with the PA such elections at the same time as they were planning an actual massacre whose only strategic merits I have even heard suggested are "Israel's response will galvanize Gaza against Israel," except I'm not sure what iron resolve does against a military with IDF's resources and lack of restraint.

Anyways, they can fight if they think it will help, but given how more or less every single armed conflict has panned out ultimately in Israel's favor, I'd question if in their case going even harder and massacring civilians even harder is really going to help anything.

Since legislative/presidential elections haven't actually been held since 2006, we can't really know if the 44% of the vote (in a vote which had 76% turnout, so really, about 33% of all eligible voters, similar democratic mandates as GW Bush or Trump) would even still support Hamas today, so it's a little generous to say Hamas massacring civilians is the same as "The Palestinian people fighting"