[konmok]

It's interesting that the article directly contradicts your own takeaway:

"In 2022, more people were let out of Gaza; however, their movement remained the exception rather than the rule, with the vast majority of residents, over 2 million people, virtually ‘locked in.’"

Additionally, that's 144,899 exits, not 144,899 distinct people exiting, nor is it even 144,899 exits made by Palestinians. So your interpretation is multiply incorrect.

Would you like to clarify what you mean by "Israeli prosecution wasn't really a thing"?

[richardfeynman]

Presumably, up to a few minutes ago you were unfamiliar with the accurate statistic I quoted. Noting your reaction to this new information: to double down and cast shade. Sorry you dont like it. And yes, with roughly 6.6 percent of gazans population traveling abroad each year, it's the exceptional gazans that travels abroad, much like it's the exceptional rural alabaman that travels abroad each year.

(The statistic I quoted also doesn't include the hundreds of thousands of exits from Gaza to Israel each year, or the undocumented exits through tunnels under rafah, so the exits were indeed much higher, not lower, than the official ocha figures.)

What I mean when I say that Israel persecution wasn't really a thing is that the men with guns in Gaza were Hamas, not the idf. If you were shot in the knee or thrown off a building for being queer, it was Hamas that was persecuting you, not the idf.

[konmok]

I'm not trying to cast shade, just trying to critically analyze information.

Again, could you provide a source for that figure of 6.6% of Gazans "travelling abroad" each year? As I previously mentioned, that article does not actually support that figure at all, so I'm not sure why you insist upon it. We could obtain a better estimate for the number of distinct exiting Gazans by counting the number of exit permits issued, since those are ostensibly required to leave. The article does say 18,000 permits were issued to workers and traders in 2022, but since it doesn't include permits to other civilians, nor does it mention the expiration period for these permits, I won't commit the intellectually dishonest act of trying to turn that into a percentage.

As for your claim about Israeli persecution, that's trivially false. There are too many instances of Palestinians being shot by IDF forces to list here, but there are casualty databases freely available online. Yes, Hamas persecutes Palestinians as well, I'm not defending them.

[richardfeynman]

Thanks for this comment. I'd like to acknowledge that as you point out the 6.6% figure refers to exits from Gaza via Egypt using documented means, and may include people who exited multiple times, so the actual people exiting would be slightly lower. Similarly, it'd be nice for you to acknowledge that this figure doesn't include undocumented exits via tunnels in Rafah, or the 424,000 documented exits from Gaza via Israel.

In those conditions, it's hard to pinpoint an exact figure, but whatever the precise figure is--5%, 6.6%, 10%--it's clearly higher than zero, which is what one would expect in an "open air prison," the central point I was arguing against.

Aside from the exit rate, the "open air prison" claim is a lie for many other reasons, not least of which is that the guards patrolling the so-called prison (Hamas) are also the people who were claimed to be inmates, something one doesn't see in prisons.

The claim for Israeli persecution is not false (or "trivially false" as you put it). The odds of a gazan dying from an israeli weapon in 2022 was essentially zero: hamas claims 49 were killed that year, of which 22 are verifiable. The odds of a gazan dying from Hamas on the other hand was appreciable, in the thousands. After hamas's genocidal massacre on october 7, obviously this changed.

[konmok]

Yes, it's hard to pinpoint an exact figure, but you have provided no evidence with which to obtain even a ballpark estimate. I don't think the real figure would be "slightly lower" than 6.6%, I think it would be much lower, since many of those exiting Gaza would be e.g. truck drivers who make the trip constantly. As for the "secret Gazan escape tunnels", while some Hamas tunnels may exist connecting Rafah and Egypt, I can find no evidence that these are trafficked by civilians. Of course, I don't know how much lower than 6.6% the real figure is, and neither do you, that's the point. The real problem here is that you presented that figure as an absolute certainty, without any evidence to back it up.

Secondly, when people refer to Gaza as an "open air prison" they are employing metaphor. I have never understood it to mean that literally no one leaves, and I don't think any reasonable person understands it that way.

Finally, you have provided more figures about Gazan deaths. Would you care to provide a source for those figures? Even if they are accurate (and so far, none of your figures have been accurate) they still contradict your previous post, that the "only men with guns in Gaza are Hamas". The point of my questioning was to arrive upon a common definition for the word "persecution". Your offered definition was indeed trivially false, since you just admitted that the IDF shot innocent civilians in that time frame. Perhaps you would like to amend your statement and pick a definition more suitable for your arguments, such as Amnesty International's definition. In that case, I offer this report detailing the many ways Palestinians were persecuted under Israel's rule prior to October 7: <https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/>

[richardfeynman]

We were debating whether Gaza was an open-air prison. My claim is that it wasn't because people could get in and out. I have already acknowledged that the 6.6% figure refers to documented exits via the official Rafah crossing rather than indivudual people, and that this includes people who cross multiple times. You have not yet acknowledged the >400,000 crossings from Gaza to Israel, and you put in scare quotes the "secret Gazan escape tunnels."

But these tunnels weren't secret and they did exist. "To mitigate the impact of the blockade on Gaza, a tunnel economy evolved and peaked between 2007 and 2013, with more than 1,532 underground tunnels running under the 12 km border between Gaza and Egypt. "

Source: https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/tdb62d3_en...

That's just one source and likely an underestimate on the number of tunnels. You claim you were unable to find the easily-findable stats on the birth-rate in Gaza; this should be an easy one for you as there are multiple documentaries about these tunnels you can find freely on youtube, and you can see video evidence of the tunnels.

I am glad you now say that when people refer to Gaza as an open-air prison, they don't actually mean what they say, but are instead referring to a situation where there were hundreds of thousands (indeed more than half a million) documented exits each year between Egypt and Israel; to a place where the men with guns patrolling the prison were Hamas, not the IDF; to a place where if you were going to get killed, your killers were most likely to be Hamas, not the IDF.

Likewise, I appreciate you acknowledging that this is a special kind of genocide where the population hasn't really been reduced much.

And I also appreciate your deep skepticism of everything I say, despite the many credible sources I provide, and your complete failure to provide any primary evidence for your claims of tons of nameless, faceless, odorless corpses under rubble; your evidence-free claims that people born in Gaza today have a low chance of living; and your prediction that if you give Israel 10 more years, it will eradicate the population of Gaza. I look at population charts; this will be an interesting one to watch - care to make a bet on polymarket with me?

[dttze]

You forgot the rest of the quote: “ While the tunnels prevented the complete collapse of Gaza's economy, they were unsustainable, informal, uncontrolled and unregulated by governments on either side of the border. They were closed by mid-2013.”