I’ve seen this described as a terrorist attack. It’s not. Hamas is the de facto ruling party of Gaza - this was a war crime. If you want a two state solution, these guys will be one of the states. These guys who just kidnapped, murdered, and did who knows what else to a 30 year old peace protester, stripped her, and paraded her through the street shouting “God is great”.
I’ve seen this described as a terrorist attack. It’s not. Hamas is the de facto ruling party of Gaza - this was a war crime. If you want a two state solution, these guys will be one of the states. These guys who just kidnapped, murdered, and did who knows what else to a 30 year old peace protester, stripped her, and paraded her through the street shouting “God is great”.
Yes that’s true. It’s much harder to claim “Palestinians just want peace and human rights” when they overwhelmingly support a group that engages in open warfare against Israel and fundamentally believes in eliminating it as a nation.
To play devil's advocate on behalf of the idiots who believe it, it's almost been more than a decade since Hamas won that election, so it's *possible* that Hamas would not be elected today.
I mean, they would, because the party running the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, Fatah, is so corrupt and so reliant on Israeli security cooperation to stay in power, that they (Fatah) would almost certainly be wiped out in new elections, mostly to Hamas' benefit.
Polling does seem to indicate that Gazans are kinda fed up with Hamas too, but more because of their own corruption, lack of elections, etc than due to a fundamental disagreement with their goals.
I saw a set of polls from mid 2022 that indicated that a strong majority of Gazans believe that long term Palestine should be the entire “river to the sea” area (i.e. no more Israel) but short term there views were at least somewhat more pragmatic.
I’ve seen this described as a terrorist attack. It’s not. Hamas is the de facto ruling party of Gaza - this was a war crime. If you want a two state solution, these guys will be one of the states. These guys who just kidnapped, murdered, and did who knows what else to a 30 year old peace protester, stripped her, and paraded her through the street shouting “God is great”.
Hamas is also de jure the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority. They won the last elections, however long ago those were.
Yes that’s true. It’s much harder to claim “Palestinians just want peace and human rights” when they overwhelmingly support a group that engages in open warfare against Israel and fundamentally believes in eliminating it as a nation.
To play devil's advocate on behalf of the idiots who believe it, it's almost been more than a decade since Hamas won that election, so it's *possible* that Hamas would not be elected today.
I mean, they would, because the party running the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, Fatah, is so corrupt and so reliant on Israeli security cooperation to stay in power, that they (Fatah) would almost certainly be wiped out in new elections, mostly to Hamas' benefit.
Polling does seem to indicate that Gazans are kinda fed up with Hamas too, but more because of their own corruption, lack of elections, etc than due to a fundamental disagreement with their goals.
I saw a set of polls from mid 2022 that indicated that a strong majority of Gazans believe that long term Palestine should be the entire “river to the sea” area (i.e. no more Israel) but short term there views were at least somewhat more pragmatic.
They did win the election in Gaza. I believe Mahmoud Abbas actually dissolved the parliament and elections haven't been held since.
Hamas' official governing role of Gaza has about the same half-life right now as Paulie the chauffer did in _The Godfather_