[baryphonic]

> I mean, what are the other options? Forever apartheid and occupation? War crimes like ethnic cleansing?

I reject just about all of the assertions in this post, but these straw-man questions are the most egregious.

How can anyone reasonably call the Israeli political situation "apartheid?" There are Arab parties in the Knesset, and Arab Israelis have full rights under the law. Apartheid South Africa rather famously did not allow the black population any representation at all in government. Perhaps by "apartheid," you mean that there is some sort of barrier between the Israeli side and the Gaza side. But having a border is not "apartheid," anymore than the US having a border with Mexico, or the UK having a border with the Republic of Ireland. In fact, since 2005, the Israelis have largely been absent from Gaza, only intervening to stop things like rocket attacks aimed at Israeli civilians. Or maybe you mean that Israel's blockade of Gaza constitutes "apartheid," though this is really torturing the definition beyond recognition.

I am astonished you bring up ethnic cleansing, when all of the evidence points the opposite way: that Jewish people are victims of ethnic cleansing across the Islamic world, whereas the populations within Gaza and the Judea & Samaria area have grown extensively and currently have high growth rates. If you pick any country in the Islamic Middle East & North Africa, the Jewish population is currently near zero, down from tens- to hundreds-of-thousands a few decades ago. (It's almost as bad for Christians.) Asserting that "ethnic cleansing" at the hands of Israel is happening today (or ever!) is preposterous when literally all evidence contradicts it.

I actually think the "other options" are simple, though quite difficult in practice: Hamas & Fatah could put down their weapons, accept that the State of Israel has a right to exist and agree to control the radical elements within their populations. If that happened, you'd have a two-state solution in no time. The difficulty is that there is little political appetite for this in the Judea & Samaria area, and none in Gaza, so we're stuck in a stalemate.

[Qem]

> How can anyone reasonably call the Israeli political situation "apartheid?" There are Arab parties in the Knesset, and Arab Israelis have full rights under the law.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty international have a different assessment:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-...

https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra...

[johnnyworker]

It's not a stalemate.

https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipcinfo-website/alerts-archive/issue...

And that is part of the proclaimed calculus, such as:

> "If we act strategically correctly, there will be immigration and we will live in the Gaza Strip. We will not allow a situation where 2 million people live there. If there are 100-200 thousand Arabs in Gaza, all the talk about the day after will be different. They want to leave, they have been living in the ghetto for 75 years and are in need."

-- Smotrich, https://twitter.com/GLZRadio/status/1741347524693127398

Here is a list with more, that is work in progress apparently:

https://law4palestine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Law-for...

> I am astonished you bring up ethnic cleansing, when all of the evidence points the opposite way: that Jewish people are victims of ethnic cleansing across the Islamic world

That is not the opposite of "is Israel calling for / committing ethnic cleansing". The opposite would be "it is not doing that".

And it's not dichotomy, a hot potato that only one party can ever possess. The history of persecution against Jews has exactly zero bearing on the question whether what Israel is doing right now are war crimes, ethnic cleansing or genocide. One crime doesn't prevent or legitimize the other.

> I actually think the "other options" are simple, though quite difficult in practice: Hamas & Fatah could put down their weapons

An alternative to the current actions of Israel isn't "what someone else could do differently", that's an alternative to the actions of those other parties. And things like blowing up the Supreme Court building after posing for selfies in it (= no fighters), attacking refugee camps and disrupting their water supply in the West Bank, and so on, cannot be remotely excused with Hamas.

> The Genocide Convention requires Israel, as a State party, to suppress “direct and public incitement to commit genocide,” regardless of whether genocide has actually transpired.

[..]

> Still, it does appear to us that Israel has failed – so far – to criminally investigate some specific public calls which seem to border on genocidal in their language. While Israel’s political leadership distanced itself from potentially genocidal language, it has also failed to apply meaningful political sanctions against the politicians making these comments (such as firing instead of merely suspending the junior minister responsible for the Atomic Bomb comment or launching any effort to remove the deputy chair of the Knesset after making the “burn Gaza” comment). Although there might be some mitigating circumstances, given the many challenges the country now faces, the slow and feeble response from Israel’s legal and political leadership to such extremely problematic statements, may not be compatible with its obligations under the Genocide Convention.

-- https://www.justsecurity.org/90939/selective-use-of-facts-an...

^ something the Israel Foreign Ministry retweeted, apparently before reading it carefully

> “The explicit calls to commit atrocities against millions of people have become, for the first time that we can recall, a legitimate and ordinary part of the Israeli dialogue,”

-- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/04/stakes-high-as...