26m video interview. Blurb:
“Netanyahu is history, he’s done,” Ehud Olmert told DW. He called the current Israeli leaders “violent, messianic thugs” and said that long term, Palestinians must be able to “exercise their right to self-determination.” The center-right politician and former prime minister added that there was no alternative to the two-state solution with the Palestinians. On the issue of the scores of Israelis taken hostage by Hamas, Olmert said there was “no basis for negotiation” with Hamas — since, in his view, the Islamist militant group was not interested in negotiations. Olmert also told host Tim Sebastian that he thought there was little likelihood of direct military action against Iran, even though Tehran had “coordinated” the attacks and that a derailment of a US-sponsored diplomatic and security accord between Israel and Saudi Arabia would serve Iran’s interests.
Not sure whether this counts as “news” in the strict sense but I think it does in the loose sense also I wouldn’t know where else to post it.
You won’t get rid of Hamas, or organizations like it, until you get rid of Netanyahu and people like him. Their control and influence is what drives recruitment for terrorist groups.
And you won’t get rid of Netanyahu until you get rid of Hamas and groups like them.
The reason the conflict hasn’t been resolved after decades isn’t a lack of hot takes, it’s because it’s stalemates the whole way down.
Except there’s more the Israeli populace can do to get rid of Netanyahu than the Palestinians can do to get rid of Hamas. There’s at least a framework of democracy for the former.
I don’t disagree that they feed off each other… but the apathy or hostility of the Israeli populace is a major factor in their government.
On paper. The war in Iraq involved the largest anti-war protests the world had ever seen, across multiple democratic countries.
They pushed forward with the war regardless, a policy that was continued by subsequent governments, regardless of party.
The Iraq war made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
Hamas came into power when Bibi wasn’t PM. And when Israel was planning their withdrawal, Bibi actually fought against it saying exactly this would happen.
While I’m a big supporter of Israel (so I know I’m biased), I can’t stand Bibi and especially don’t like this current coalition. But Bibi isn’t the maker of this current situation.
Netanyahu and people like him
Emphasis mine. You’re not wrong that it’s more than just one person that’s the cause of these issues. That doesn’t mean that keeping them in power will fix the issue, though. In fact, it makes it worse.
Look up what was offered during the camp David accords. They could’ve had 98% of the land they wanted. And a path connecting the two areas. It was Arafat who refused.
Then when Gaza was demobilized, the people backed Hamas and left the PA. Hamas promised violence. Blockade then began.
Hamas must be removed before peace can happen. Perhaps this ends with an agreement that certain countries in the Arab league will take over government and security in Gaza to stabilize it. Let the PA and Israel negotiate again. But obviously the requirements for security and peace will be much stronger demands now.
I found quite interesting the claim that Netanyahu decided to funnel Qatari money into Gaza, including directly to Hamas. I cross checked that and it looks like this apparently is well reported public knowledge. The more speculative part is that he supposedly thought this would make Hamas independent of PA’s funding. This happened at the time when the PA was using their own funding to Hamas as leverage to coerce them into dropping some of the terrorist shit from the agenda in an effort to allow for a unified government for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Anyone know more about this?
Here are some more pieces to the puzzle. Still trying to figure this one out exactly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7grSsuFSS0
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https://www.piped.video/watch?v=o7grSsuFSS0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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Yeah, I read a bit about that too.
I’ve heard this crap before.
Edit: I’m sorry, was I too real? This shitbag has been kicked out of government, then dropped right back in once the opportunity was presented. Then proceeded to hijack the rest of the government.
Him being corrupt and a sleazebag (is there a Likud politician who isn’t both?) is one thing, dismissing what he said as crap without any elaboration another. Also, unlike Netanyahu Olmert actually served the prison time he deserved.
That wasn’t a dismissal. That was an expression of disgust.
Disgusted by what he said? If this is about the person you’d presumably have said “I’ve seen this asshole before” or such.
We need much more nuance on the internet than the weak and overly general punctuation marks of English allow.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=Uar3I_LUSyM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Not sure why these are mutually exclusive.
Booting the head of state during wartime leads to some transitional difficulties
Maybe. Hamas isn’t really an existential threat to Israel, it only appears so because of how horrifically Israeli security bungled this. The main activity of the military right now seems to be getting revenge by blowing up random buildings. Since it’s not clear how this makes Israel safer nor how Netanyahu is needed for that process anyway, I see no reason to delay his extremely long overdue removal from power.
It’s not really about Hamas being a real threat, I think it’s primarily PR. Changing the head of state like that causes uncertainty and chaos. Plus they’d probably want him to absorb maximum bad press that could otherwise be directed towards a successor.
For the people in power, keeping him there for now is ideal. Forcibly removing a head of state during wartime would cause obscene concern from how unusual it is, and some of them probably don’t even want him gone at all. Now if I was a potential successor I’d worry that he would somehow stay in power if the bad PR blew over, but pushing for his removal now is probably bad for your chances of seizing the seat.
This is of course from the perspective of opportunists in power. It’s rare for the people to override their wishes, especially in wartime where people typically rally around the head of state, so this is my thinking on why he’ll stay there. That said a handful of people really taking a stand could probably boot him.
Unlike scenarios aside I believe this time is better used establishing the narrative that he will be gone soon, with a definite end date or event. It’s almost impossible to get him out now, but it is possible to lay the groundwork that makes near-certain he’ll leave later.
There’s about 520k people in uniform right now (360k of those reservists), they’re not all sitting around at the Gaza wall but reinforcing all over the place so that e.g. Hezbollah doesn’t get any funny ideas.
In short: Everyone’s primary attention is to the outside right now. Once it’s clear that they won’t have to fight anyone else but Hamas and can relax a bit and can afford some internal sparks flying Netanyahu will be disposed of which could be in a couple of days. If they do have to fight it’s going to take a bit longer as politicians first negotiate some kind of national unity replacement government.
If people want to wait a few days until things are a little calmer then sure. But it’s going to take a lot longer than that to get rid of Hamas, if such a thing is even possible, so that’s what I’m responding to.
Personally I doubt he’ll be removed at all. Probably depends on how the media narrative evolves and how obvious security failures were.
