Especially given the Israeli government's historical role in both initially fostering the development of Hamas and more recently continuing to work to strengthen it as a means of dividing Palestinians and having a less sympathetic enemy to, particularly, secular Western nations than the less-Islamist, more-secular-Arab-nationalist PLO and later Fatah and the Palestinian Authority to serve as a pretext to avoid pressure to make peace and accept the existence of a Palestinian state. [0]
Nothing is "generous", at best it is extremely cynical PR gestures, to be seen as generous by people who only pay attention during the fighting, and not to the broader context in which Israel has spent literal decades deliberately engineering conditions to assure a continued excuse for it.
Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.
According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
All wars Israel has been involved in were started by its enemies. You can start an argument about settlements and there is some merit to that. But no honest discussion can be started from your position.
If Israel didn't try to minimize civilian casualties, this would look very different. To say otherwise is not only cynical PR, it is actively malicious. Towards Israeli and Palestinians both.
That's completely incorrect. Every war has been the result of Israel invading Palestine in 1948 and ethnically cleansing the land. There's a reason Right of Return is the big issue here. Nakba is where the conversation about Israel's aggression needs to start:
Would you have been against granting Israeli work permits to Palestinians or allowing funding to to enter Gaza?
I read the article you shared and other than the unconfirmed paraphrasing of Netanyahu at the 2019 meeting, the actual policies come across as something that would work to improve relations. Work permits, more freedom, "turning a blind eye" to sustained rocket attacks.
You have no idea why they did it. Of course, neither do I. But I suspect they had good reason.
Rockets also continue to be fired daily from civilian areas of Gaza into Israel. When the rockets stop — whether because Hamas surrenders, runs out of weapons, or otherwise — I’ll be more inclined to think a bombing is presumptively unnecessary.
Most of these posts are from bots (at least on Reddit). There is a propaganda war going on in cyberspace and Israel is trying to not lose it.
Too bad, because every time I hear that countries name I think of screaming Palestinian children with limbs ripped off and then some guy in a fancy suit saying “of course we try to minimise civilian casualties, but under the law of war bla bla bla “.
And you can kinda see how they can never win that.
The number of people who unquestioningly believe Israel's propaganda is genuinely concerning.
We have people referring to the kindness of a military that dropped more bombs in a week than were dropped the first year of the Iraq war.
A military that openly targets children, journalists, and medical personnel.
The unquestioning acceptance that every target struck is a Hamas militant/base.
The leaders of Israel openly referring to all palestinians as non-human animals and invoking bible verses that openly call for their genocide.
The generosity of the IDF was made plain when one of the hostages revealed that they shelled their own villages, killing both Israeli hostages and Hamas indiscriminately.
Nothing is "generous", at best it is extremely cynical PR gestures, to be seen as generous by people who only pay attention during the fighting, and not to the broader context in which Israel has spent literal decades deliberately engineering conditions to assure a continued excuse for it.
[0] for the recent part see, e.g., https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.
According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.