> PA has to ask Israel to do anything of substance in the WB, because the WB is a mix of Israeli and PA controlled areas, with Israel controlling internal boundaries even between adjacent PA-controlled areas.
It's much more than just that, the PA/Fatah is considered to be very weak and are extremely unpopular in the West Bank. If Israel didn't intervene Hamas would likely oust Fatah in the West Bank similar to what happened in Gaza.
> the only reason is that Israel has refused to cooperate with all-Palestine elections negotiated and agreed to between Fatah (the party in control of the PA government) and Hamas
Fatah knows they would lose an election in the West Bank to Hamas, this is something neither Israel or Fatah wants, hence no elections.
> Most likely because the divide between the Fatah-led PA and Hamas, and the ability to portray both as undemocratic, serves Israeli's propaganda and other interests.
They tried all-Palestine elections in 2006[0], that backfired spectacularly. Hamas was elected in what were generally considered free and fair elections, pretty hard to get a good election outcome if a majority or at least a plurality of the population wants to elect terrorists.
> Fatah knows they would lose an election in the West Bank to Hamas, this is something neither Israel or Fatah wants, hence no elections.
Nice story, but Fatah actually negotiated and agreed to details for all-Palestine elections with Hamas; Israel declined to allow them to occur.
> They tried all-Palestine elections in 2006[0], that backfired spectacularly. Hamas was elected in what were generally considered free and fair elections, pretty hard to get a good election outcome if a majority or at least a plurality of the population wants to elect terrorists.
The US and Israel call all resistance to Israeli occupation terrorism; the PLO (not the Fatah faction but the whole umbrella organization), which is organizationally coextensive with the Palestinian Authority, is a Congressionally-designated foreign terrorist organization which has had Presidential waivers allowing certain interactions since 1993.
> Nice story, but Fatah actually negotiated and agreed to details for all-Palestine elections with Hamas; Israel declined to allow them to occur.
Was this like a case of them agreeing to something they knew Israel would never allow(letting Hamas officials run in Palestinian elections)?
> The US and Israel call all resistance to Israeli occupation terrorism;
I don't think this is true, it's generally the violent resistance that is called terrorism, probably because there's quite a lot of that going on.
> the PLO (not the Fatah faction but the whole umbrella organization), which is organizationally coextensive with the Palestinian Authority, is a Congressionally-designated foreign terrorist organization which has had Presidential waivers allowing certain interactions since 1993.
Presumably that would be due to the PLO having engaged in and supported terrorism[0]. The Martyrs Fund is not exactly small:
> These payments, total more than $300 million annually, representing approximately 7 percent of the PA's annual budget.
The Palestinians have a right to resist occupation under international law. In so far as the resistance is confined to military targets it's entirely lawful. The same sort of Westerner who immediately understands Ukrainian resistance struggles to understand the Palestinian perspective.
Israeli settlers have murdered upwards of a thousand Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7th. They're never held accountable and have significant support from the right-wing members of the coalition government - cabinet minister Ben-Gvir was the lawyer for the settlers who burnt a Palestinian baby alive. Numerous Palestinian communities have been ethnically cleansed in a systematic campaign. The ultimate motivation for these actions is the ethnic supremacist cult of Zionism.
The Palestinians could turn into a bunch of Scandinavian vegans tomorrow and it would not change a thing because it is the Zionist ideology that creates and maintains the conflict as part of its intrinsic nature.
You have spammed this discussion with enough misleading "facts" to paint a picture of a throwback Bush Jr era American bloviator. Please give it a rest now.
> The Palestinians have a right to resist occupation under international law.
Doesn't give them a right to commit war crimes though.
> In so far as the resistance is confined to military targets it's entirely lawful.
Palestinian "resistance" tends to not confine themselves to military targets in general.
> The same sort of Westerner who immediately understands Ukrainian resistance struggles to understand the Palestinian perspective.
I don't recall Ukrainian resistance targeting civilians in general.
> They're never held accountable and have significant support from the right-wing members of the coalition government - cabinet minister Ben-Gvir was the lawyer for the settlers who burnt a Palestinian baby alive.
Ben-Gvir was convicted of supporting a terrorist organization by Israeli courts and has very little support amongst the Israeli public, Israel just tends to get more extremists in the Knesset due to the proportional voting system than say in a country with a two party system.
> The ultimate motivation for these actions is the ethnic supremacist cult of Zionism.
Jews have a pretty bad history when it comes to living as ethnic minorities in other countries, it's not surprising that they would want at least 1 state in which they are an ethnic majority amongst the many Muslim majority states.
> Doesn't give them a right to commit war crimes though.
Kinda ironic for someone defending the right of Israel to commit war crimes against civilians. Can we talk about the massive Israeli protests on the noble topic of "we should be allowed to r+p3 prisoners"?
> Kinda ironic for someone defending the right of Israel to commit war crimes against civilians.
I don't recall defending anyone deliberately committing war crimes against civilians, I should note that collateral damage by itself is not a war crime of course.
> Can we talk about the massive Israeli protests on the noble topic of "we should be allowed to r+p3 prisoners"?
I'm not defending them, Israel has some issues with extremists for sure, although it's far from being as bad as Palestinian extremism which sadly tends to have surprisingly high levels of support amongst Palestinians. Most Israelis don't support these sort of things and just want to live in peace.
What is the point where "collateral damage" and "killing civilians" aren't different? We saw well in Gaza how the Israeli government didn't care at all about civilians and just razed entire cities.
It's not "just this time": Israelis have been involved in terrorist killings against civilians since even before the existence of Israel, and continued the atrocities against civilians after[1], with the goal to displace them.
> "Most Israelis want to live in peace"
Yet support colonization and elect far-right governments which openly defend an imperialistic "Great Israel" agenda.[2]
> What is the point where "collateral damage" and "killing civilians" aren't different?
Essentially "collateral damage" is not intentional targeting of civilians. The laws of war allow for "collateral damage" as they were written in a way so as not to encourage the use of human shields.
> We saw well in Gaza how the Israeli government didn't care at all about civilians and just razed entire cities.
They made efforts to move civilians out of the way, deaths compared to the amount of damage is quite low. Not a lot of options when Hamas built tunnels under most of the cities.
> Yet support colonization and elect far-right governments which openly defend an imperialistic "Great Israel" agenda.[2]
It's generally not even clear what "Greater Israel" means in general. In any case the best option for those concerned about "Greater Israel" would be to negotiate peace agreements that solidify borders.
It's much more than just that, the PA/Fatah is considered to be very weak and are extremely unpopular in the West Bank. If Israel didn't intervene Hamas would likely oust Fatah in the West Bank similar to what happened in Gaza.
> the only reason is that Israel has refused to cooperate with all-Palestine elections negotiated and agreed to between Fatah (the party in control of the PA government) and Hamas
Fatah knows they would lose an election in the West Bank to Hamas, this is something neither Israel or Fatah wants, hence no elections.
> Most likely because the divide between the Fatah-led PA and Hamas, and the ability to portray both as undemocratic, serves Israeli's propaganda and other interests.
They tried all-Palestine elections in 2006[0], that backfired spectacularly. Hamas was elected in what were generally considered free and fair elections, pretty hard to get a good election outcome if a majority or at least a plurality of the population wants to elect terrorists.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...