The International Criminal Court prosecutor said Monday that he has requested arrest warrants for the leaders of Hamas and for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
In a statement, the prosecutor, Karim Khan, said he would seek warrants for Yahya Sinwar, Muhammad Deif and Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. He also said he was requesting warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and for Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant.
Let me get this out of the way. The ICC should have the full opportunity to try and convict Netanyahu. The genocide being committed in Gaza is horrific. The fact that he funneled money to Hamas also makes him complicit in their attack on October 7th.
Hamas has preyed on the plight of the Palestinian people for the past 30+ years, and if the power dynamic was reversed between Isreal and Hamas, the state would have been all but fully cleansed of Jewish people shortly after the conflict began. We may even be living in a world where Palestine and Isreal are two separate states if Arafat wasn’t afraid of hardliners like Hamas killing him and could have accepted the Camp David agreement. The distruction of Isreal is their ultimate goal. Hamas is the reason Egypt keeps their border closed to the Palestinian refugees, as they are considered a threat to the stability of Egyptian society and government, proving so multiple times in the past. Hamas using civilians, hospitals, schools, and so on as sheilds is by design, not logistics. They care nothing for the innocent deaths they cause of their own people. The ruling power of Hamas is not even in Gaza, being in Qatar, ruthlessly manipulating the Palestinian people in their quest to destroy Israel without any threat to themselves. There will be no possible two-state solution while Hamas remains in power.
I don’t know what the solution is for Isreal and Palestine. My heart hurts for the innocents in Gaza, but their situation is being caused by Hamas as much as Isreal. So no, be sympathetic to the Palestinian people, but save none of those feelings for Hamas. You should totally fault them, as their goals are just as evil as ISIS, The Muslim Brotherhood, and Al Qaeda.
I agree with most of your comment except this:
Just open up Google maps and look at Gaza. It might be intent, but it’s also logistics. There is hardly any space that isn’t occupied, and the majority of that is right against the border so not suitable for use by militarized group with inferior power. You don’t “play fair” when your enemy is hundreds of times stronger than you.
Also, I do want to point out that a large bit of why there’s conflict is because Europeans coming to Israel purchased farms in the region. These farms were traditionally worked by Muslims, and this continued for a while. At some point they agreed to only hire Jews, making it so the Muslim people, who had survived by working on farms, no longer could make a living. This is how they started to become displaced and also when the violence started. Hamas exists because of this, and because Jews wanted to get rid of them. Sure, Hamas wants to do the same, but they were put into the position they’re in. Israel chose their position.
Im “sympathetic” to Hamas in that I try to understand the history of it and the reasons for conflict existing. They’re goals are horrible and their methods suck, but I don’t fault the kid on the playground throwing sand in their bully’s eyes because it isn’t fair. Yeah, Hamas shouldn’t exist, and hopefully they don’t some day. They exist because of Israel’s actions and choices though. You don’t get to cause issues and then complain about the consequences without being called out. Hopefully a solution is set up where the Hamas doesn’t have power anymore, but that requires fixing the causes of the problems.