Hamas strike on Israel

Just as you surely wouldn't argue that in the event of a ceasefire, Israel sticks to it this time and doesn't follow through on its plans to expel Palestinians from Gaza. If it does you surely will be one of the first to condemn them.

That doesn't change a single aspect of what I have said.

Time for Hamas to respond to Macron by stepping up to the plate, releasing the hostages and surrendering.

If all the hostages are released and Hamas has surrendered, Israel have nothing left to fight for.

Given Macron's position, there is no understanding the reasoning. The only reason now for holding onto the hostages is to prolong the conflict in a futile attempt to eliminate Israel. If posters are still willing to "understand" those reasons, so be it.

So you still won't condemn what Israel and the IDF are doing?

If Hamas surrender and release the hostages, the West won't allow Israel to continue, doesn't matter what some extremists in Israel say.

Israeli occupation forces detained Sheikh Mohammad Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine today following Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied Jerusalem.

Never said that they would be involved, why are you making a strawman argument?

I am discussing Macron's statement and the conditions he included for a state of Palestine. These include the demilitarization of Hamas (its surrender) and the immediate release of all the hostages. He has given time and space for these to happen before September. Are you in support of that?

You've been asked multiple times, do you condemn what Israel and the IDF are doing to the Palestinians?

Maybe stop ignoring that and answer it before demanding answers from others.

OK, these back and forths are getting silly, but i'll respond to a few points.

Yes when you're fall back routine is "the Gardai" / "strongly worded letter" it is a bit silly

Not at all. I am saying who is going to dish out that repercussion? You? Ireland? The EU?

"Ireland" and "you" falls under the "Gardai/Strongly worded letter" silliness that you need to keep rolling out.

If the IDF attack the UN; the UN then fight back as well as other possible sanctions that could be leveraged. You're skipping the obvious answers and jumping to tenuous "what if's" to avoid honesty. If you're not suggesting they face no repercussions for their well documented violations, what are you then suggesting? Back to "might is right" and shrug the shoulders?

Are we going to send troops off to war with Israel to even up the game?

We routinely send troops as part of our UN missions. If the UN cannot step in when one of it's members are committing genocidal acts and war crimes in plain view, then what's the point of calling it as an institution. We're in to 'league of nations' territory.

To enforce rules and laws you need to be willing to use force and violence if it comes to it. Is that what you are proposing? Words arent working..

"Words" haven't been tried in their fullest terms. Sanctions and restrictions are words and can have more of an affect than rolling in troops. The propensity for a violent backlash was always there after the Oct 7th attack; the open commission of war crimes shows that a third party was needed.

If you offered the 1947 UN deal to Palestinians now, they would bite the hand off, same as in 1979 when peace plans between Israel and Egypt/Jordan offered a provision for a Palestinian state. Never mind in 2000 at Camp David when Arafat rejected a pretty decent offer. All of these deals, in hindsight, were great deals.

As before; rejection of a 'bad deal' isn't automatically simplistic intransigence by one party. The devil is in the detail;

• Jews (at that time) owned, roughly, 10% of the land yet were to be given 60% in the proposal
• The land that Israel proposed they take was a 50/50 population split; by the stroke of a pen 50% of an areas population would be deemed second class citizens in their own country, that they'd owned, cultivated and seen as home for generations. In comparison those just of a ship would be overlords and deemed higher status.
• The proposed area they had planned for the Arabs was desolate and, as they were an agrarian people, the area was completely unfeasible. They would have been starving within a year of being dumped there. Israel knew this but still put it on the table as a 'legitimate' plan; and you also think they should have accepted it…
• Israel tried to sell it as they were also taking some desolate area as pert of the deal but didn't think that anyone would notice their desolate area (A) wouldn't be depended on for sustantance and (B) cruccially was a link to an ip,portant transit route.

These "great deals" were simply the fox designing the chicken house.

At the time, the Anglo-Irish Treaty was a bad deal, but we made the best of it and built on it.
The GFA was Sunningdale for slow learners. It was a good thing the Provos accepted, given 9/11 happened soon after, and they would have been forever weakened.At the end of the day, their refusal to budge and accept what was on offer has made the Palestinians weaker, not stronger. That is the fault of their corrupt leadership. They need to take that lesson on board.

The leadership has been frequently corrupt and inept I'll freely say, but hindsight is 20/20. People used the same hindsight when it came to the treatment of Jews in the 1930's; many ask why they peacefully accepted so many regressive legal acts against them; there was always the thinking of 'it couldn't get worse'.

If you're going to use NI as an example; the facts that drew an end to the trouble were the involvement of external & third parties and 'words' were what prevailed in the end. The two sides left alone were never going to magically sort it one day and the violence and prejudice was seemingly endless. Israel and Palestine require the same treatment.

So you think the Israeli government deliberately sat on these intelligence reports, let the attack happen as some part of a grand plan.

The 'Jericho Wall' document was a 40 odd page dossier on the blueprint of an impending Hamas attack. Even down to the detail of taking Israeli hostages. I don't "think" the Israeli government sat on the intelligence reports. The demonstrably did not take heed of credible evidence. You're deliberately omitting key points also;

• They had the Jericho wall document
• Egypt warned them of an impending attack
• They observed Hamas communications lighting up like a Christmas tree hours prior to the attack
• They were aware of Hamas mobilisation in the run up to the attack along the border

Israeli military findings record the "complete failure" to prevent it. Having the information they had nearly a year prior and witnessing the actions of Hamas wasn't one failure in isolation, it was a complete failure of multiple systems that, given their military strength and intelligence agency skill, was practically incredible to have happen. It also proved convenient for Bibi in relation to his legal issues.

Not at all. Might is right when it comes to NATO, don't you agree? Tell me, what alliances and friends do the Palestinians have in the Arab world? Next to none. Jordan and Egypt at best dont like them, and at worst hate them. Iran just wants to use them in their grand regional game. Hezbollah the same, which are now weakened.

"might is right" is not a statement I'd agree with. In relation to Palestinians having 'no allies' that still doesn't justify their treatment before or after October 7th. The Palestrina people are seen as problematic across the region, I've opnely said this before, but what do you expect of a poor people that have been effectively imprisoned and restricted for multiple generations. They've had little voice and been used as proxies/bargaining chips for other power brokers. This will continue under different guises until a grown up conversation is had; not just "keep them locked in there". Giving a people little to live for breeds the kind of contempt and fanaticism that people like you moan about them predictably adopting.

How did the West defeat Nazi Germany? Was it through strongly worded letters or by assembling an army to destroy National Socialism?

More WW2 analogy's that simply do not apply. For the umpteenth time; there were (basically) two sides actively fighting each other in WW2. The same situation is patently not applicable to Gaza/Israel. It couldn't been more different but you keep wheeling out WW2 as if it is relevant.

Via who? The EU? The US?

What if they take a different view? What then? More strongly worded letters?

Back to your increasingly weak "strongly worded letters" line…..

How do you think sanctions, restrictions and punishments on economies & states are articulated?

This can be done view the EU and we've taken some actions on our own. The US and trump have shown they are acting in bad faith in relation to Israel and the world as a whole. They will do little.

Because while Israel will go beyond many Liberal Democracies in their attempt to destroy Hamas with the resultant collateral damage, they won't go out and kill 2 million people. The Israeli voter won't have it.

"They aren't fighting Hamas; they are a ttacking civilians; thats the key point you're happy to keep ignoring. Calling it "collateral damage" is simply denial of reality.

No, they need to accept that they have lost this conflict and war. They need to turn away from violence, accept certain hard truths, and strive to nation-build, where the next generation of Palestinians and Israelis can finally get on and have peace. Or they can keep doing what they have been doing for the last few decades, sure, what could go wrong?

Again conflating Hamas with the rest of the population.

East to sit back and say "turn away from violence" when Israel have pre/post Oct 7th implemented an in built systemic violent method of dealing with those they saw as lesser people. Why should Israel not be forced to forget violence and seek peace - because you rely on your "might is right" mantra.

I have no idea what you mean. Putin is getting a lesson in hard power via NATO arm supplies to Ukraine and the brave Ukrainians fighting for their nation. THAT is hard power in action. Something I presume you support.

Putins "hard power" lesson isn't simply coming from supply of weapons to Ukraine; that's your simplistic singular view of what "hard power" represents. There are sanctions and restrictions that are affecting their ability to feed their own war, those can and should be increased. The same could and should be done to Israel.

The Palestinians dont have that power, anymore anyway.

And there in lies the problem; never had a say in their own destiny and nver will….and you think a populace will peacefully agree and accept their lot. Hasn't happened before in similar instances and will result in further violence.

You said yourself the conflict is one-sided, but you want them to continue to fight on… you want them to die for some idealism.

I said it was one sided.

I never once said they should "fight on" and "die for an ideology". You made that up.

How do you know?

They haven't stopped it so far.

Why not call for a complete end to the war, and absolutely concrete unequivocal terms put in place by Israel for the absolute protection of Gazans as a prelude for hostages to be released?

Gazan civilians are in the most extreme of peril and you are arguing for people to believe a government and military already undertaking a genocide won't ramp it up once it's last stumbling block has been removed.

Why do you feel so sure about risking millions of lives?

I don't think you understand what you are writing.

He should've called up IDF reservists as soon as hostilities in Gaza resumed in March this year. 

The correct wording is "When 'He' (Bibi) broke the ceasefire prior to stage 2 of the hostage release being actioned"

That worked out well for Bibi; the Israeli finance minister threatened to quit if Israel moved to phase 2, that would have brought down the government and Bibi could have lost his throne…..Was some one suggesting that hostage return was Israel's priority……?

those governments are more used to carrying out Blitzkrieg-type invasions in the past 25 years, i.e. Afghanistan, Iraq. 

Your WW2 analogies fail continuously and this is no different. Do you realise how long Iraq/Afghanistan "invasions" were bogged down for fighting the same repetitive fights and issues? There was no Blitzing about and they relied on local bribery and splinter groups to gain a lot of footholds. The US left Afghanistan in a well documented withdrawal that was worthy of a benny hill melody to it.

Both Blair and Bush were also widely criticised for the wars and recognised for the conjured evidence used to justify it.

And let's not forget, Israel aren't "fighting" a war; they are deliberately targeting the weakest populace with no place to hide; collateral damage as some refer to it. Israeli's have viewing points they can go watch the shelling of Gaza for entertainment.