Former President Barack Obama said a way forward for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only possible if people acknowledge the “complexity” of the situation.
“If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas that what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it. And … that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable,” Obama said in an interview on the podcast “Pod Save America.”
The former president’s comments come as the Israeli military focuses its offensive against Hamas in Gaza City and northern parts of the enclave.
Sadly, there is no way forward. The leaders of both sides want the complete elimination of the other.
So remove the leaders of both sides.
Unfortunately Hamas hasn’t held a single election since they were elected in 2006, and Netanyahu is looking similarly autocratic. The recent escalation is only going to make both sides more antagonistic.
In other words, this shit ain’t going away any time soon.
Exactly. I’ve been recently thinking that maybe Israel and Palestine become a new country run by the world. It becomes a neutral globally enforced and patrolled market or exchange. Almost like a U.N. country, but somehow better because the U.N seems like a fucking joke. I’m not sure exactly what I mean here, but essentially, the world removes the two and force them to be one.
Even though it is complex, there are obvious crimes, let alone war crimes happening there. Looking at you IDF with your repeated bombing of civilians and the wounded.
I think you’ve just created a tinderbox of like…well…biblical proportions.
Umm… it’s already burning.
Just saying.
The UN is a pull organization. It has to request forces & money for operations. No nation or nation collective in their right mind would want to shell out the billions required to basically occupy the region, even with Jerusalem.
Make it a global trade hub. All nations will have an interest. With global trade comes investment, and the next thing you know, this small patch of the earth is the most valuable piece on it.
So make a place a global trade hub in theory can be as simple as saying it is so and watching every country trade there, only in one’s imagination.
So now the region is going to be made into a great Singapore for the Mediterranean using billions of dollars of tax money from nations including Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, etc?
That’s not a global trade hub. That’s a globally subsidized tax haven. Whose long-term stability Congress from the whim of nations like the USA, China, Russia, the EU, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc…
With that, it would be infinitely easier and more attractive for any nearby nation to create a special economic area to handle regional trade & take the jobs, and the best part? This would be funded by the respective nation itself.
The way you describe it is a tax haven. Make it not so.
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This is almost an appealing idea in a parallel universe where religion doesn’t exist, but unfortunately that’s not the one we live in. This conflict is one that extends to nearly every avenue, but at it’s core, it’s a religious one. Unless we’re ready as a global community to finally denounce religion and call the practice of it a silly and fruitless endeavor, which to be clear, we aren’t, then we’re never going to get anywhere pretending we can ignore the religious aspect of it. And that includes your utopian suggestion, which aside from all of its other very real problems would also likely enrage an enormous religious segment of the world who would see some of their holiest lands reduced to mere merchants dens. Even if you perhaps try to protect the religious sites, now you’re effectively enforcing a concept of religious sanctity on the global community, which is no less likely to offend.
Your idea is well-intended and nice to think about, but unfortunately unrealistic for many reasons, starting on the ground floor with problem of religion.
Yes, that’s why we don’t stop trying. I might not make a difference, but maybe the next generation or the next after that. The point is I’m not going to stop trying. There is no answer that everyone is going to like, but there is an answer that will help everyone. I mean Israel IS man made.
This is the answer and is being downvoted with no better suggestions. If you don’t have solutions and only criticism, you’re part of the problem.
Criticism, constructively made, helps avoid bad ideas, and makes good ones better. But you don’t always know the better way when you see a bad one— I don’t need to know how to build a boat to know a screen door won’t float.
Part of the problem is one side having a desire for autonomy, and limited, at best sense of self-determination. Robbing them and the state they have grievance with of both their autonomies and capacities for self-determination doesn’t seem like a good answer to the problems they both have.
That’s why you remove all the sides. Corporations already act without boundaries. They actually benefit from country boundaries ie: manufactured in China for cheap and sold in America for massive profit. Corporate interest is what is against no country boundries.
I agree. But downvotes to a legitimate solution without criticism or suggestions is pointless and contributes nothing to the discussion. I don’t care if you even suggest nuking the entire area. Just own it and defend your opinion.
Eh… I think I might care about somebody suggesting nuking the entire area. Not all ideas are created equal, and not all ideas are worth expressing.
No, we absolutely do not nuke the area. That’s what Buttholeyahu wants to do. You know the corrupt leader of Israel. What about America, yeah there’s a shitload of corruption here too and it’s still wrong.
Another thought that I had was having international governing bodies get together and force Israel to pay for the relocation, education, housing, and UBI for every single Palestinian citizen for the remainder of their lives if they would agree to peaceful relocation to another host country. This is a much less preferable idea to the previously mentioned one, but it seemed like a potentially feasible one.
Forced migration, which this would be, is a bad idea, as has been born out repeatedly through history.
- if it’s to many countries, it splinters communities.
- if it’s to just one country, few are open to taking even small numbers of people in, let alone five and a half million.
- if one was open to it, none have the infrastructure in place to receive so many people.
- people get attached to land, and the idea of it.
To that last point, that land is not interchangeable, and any assumption that it is is remaining ignorant of some of the desires of the parties involved.
I could go on, but I don’t think that would add to discourse. This is a hard problem, renewed with every moment of violence. I don’t believe we should expect any of the grievances each side has stacked up to be let go of without honouring their non-violent desires.
I’d just take Israel paying for their relocation.
If you think you can reduce the solution to this problem (or even a proper description of the problem itself) into a quick reply on a web forum, you’re part of the problem.
Honestly, everyone I’ve seen weigh in on this has fucked it up, on all sides, at all times, going all the way back.
Maybe a bunch of armchair geniuses should stay out of it, unless they’re willing to drop what they’re doing and go over there to help. Meddling from external parties is part of how this got so fucked up (over and over and over).
The problem is asshole leaders are being petty little brats. There is a solution, but both parties involved are being selfish assholes and the citizens end up dying and suffering. There are easy solutions to everything when you remove the angry assholes.
A child knows right from wrong until they are corrupted by an adult. The answer is easy. The evil ones who benefit are making it hard.
Exactly, change the leader or change the leader
It’s a never-ending organic entity. You have to keep at it The problem with the insanity analogy is that it takes a billion times to do something sometimes before even beginning to see the start of a change.
Ah. Yes. That’s the easy way to do it.
And we can stop giving them money unless they start playing nice.
It’s not the government who is settling the West Bank. Yes, it is their policy, but it’s regular Israeli citizens who are killing Palestinians, burning their homes down or taking their homes from them and driving them away.
If the entire holy land was nuked and radioactive, people would still try to occupy the wasteland so they could get back in first. Don’t think there is a solution
Flood it. God.did; worked apparently.
*Albeit briefly. So, I reckon we can shift the gulf some.
disregarding that fucked-ass comment,
God.did
is this a DJ Khaled reference?
Genesis
Honestly, this is nonsense.
They aren’t fighting over Jerusalem or Bethlehem or Jericho. This is a war over grazing lands and a beach town.
If you look away from Gaza for a moment to the other Palestinian territory – the occupied West Bank – you’ll see gangs of a hooligans in pickup trucks with ski masks smashing water wells and killing cattle in small desert towns like it’s high noon at the O.K. Corral.
The whole religious component is largely a distraction. There are people living on real estate that other people who have much bigger guns want. The solution is the same as it’s always been: give folks a fair deal.
It’s not a coincidence that this latest conflict is in Gaza. Gaza isn’t religiously significant. It’s just the densest, most brutal concentration camp in Israel. This is not over religion.
Tiktok says this is all about the Ben Gurion Canal Project. I haven’t had the time to validate the potential veracity, but it seemed like an interesting rabbit hole.
Thanks. I’m interested.
Reddit probably rotted my brain, but I’m struggling to determine how this is anything but “everyone sucks here.” On this matter, I don’t think anyone has been truly in the right in a century. Can anyone provide a convincing argument otherwise?
It’s the official policy of many of the most powerful nations of the world that only Palestine sucks here and that Israel can do no wrong and must be supported unconditionally. An “everyone sucks here” position would be much closer to the truth.
The victims. They are in the right. But they have no voice. Ironically though, as toxic as social media is, governments can’t get by with the same shit that they did 50 years ago (Sauce: US in Central America).
That’s basically the rational take here. Israel was attacked and is defending itself, but going far and beyond self defense using the extermination of terrorists as an excuse to commit genocide. Palestinian civilians are caught up in the crossfire and are innocent of any wrongdoing, but the Palestinian government knowingly harbors Hamas within their borders and refuses to cooperate with Israel at every opportunity to create a two state system. Finally, there’s Hamas, who are bad guys full stop with no redeeming qualities.
So, Obama’s take is pretty solid. Nobody has their hands clean in all of this and everybody sucks, but there are still ways to stop the bloodshed, but those solutions are complicated. Especially when nobody really wants to come to the negotiation table right now. Israeli citizens right now remind me of American citizens in the wake of 9/11 - bloodthirsty and hungry for vengeance at any cost. So long as they remain furious, Netanyahu has a clear political motivation to continue the attacks.
The government of Gaza is Hamas, elected in 2007.
Israeli civilians have also been caught in the crossfire. You know from the terrorist attack they committed 3 weeks ago that killed 1,400 and then the 200 innocent people they kidnapped and imprisoned as hostages somewhere in Gaza, which is what this is all about?
If Hamas freed the hostages, Israel would have a much harder time conducting this war in the way they are, but you can’t literally kidnap someone’s citizens and expect anything less.
What about Netanyahus relationship with the PLO before Hamas. He’s been playing both sides using the fear of Palestinian militants as a political football, just trying to stay elected and ignoring the views of the average secular Israeli.
Israel is being led by a group of religious extremists.
It’s complicated, and both sides have committed unbelievable atrocities, but Israeli leadership have overplayed their card. Their crimes over the last few weeks will echo for decades to come.
My guess it will have the opposite effect than they intended, Israel will lose out in the long term.
Time will tell.
You’re right that both sides have been awful.
While Israel may be led by a group of religious extremists, so is Palestine and Gaza specifically by extremist terrorists.
This round of tit for tat will echo like all the previous rounds over the last 70 years.
Until Hamas frees the hostages, it’s virtually impossible to overplay the hand.
This will just be another footnote of ugly killing on both sides in a long history of ugly killings.
I’m not so sure. The current geopolitical outlook leaves Israel in a tough spot. With the failure of globalisation and the declining importance of the Middle Eastern hydrocarbons, there is actually a breaking point.
I don’t necessarily think that breaking point would be reached, but if the current government does not restrain themselves and play their card correctly, it will count against them going forward.
Despite what Americans think, their previous actions have counted against them, too.
I’m the modern information age. The old tactics of statecraft and economic dominance fall apart. The opposing axis wanted Israel to respond like this. It’s a huge mistake for them to continue with this approach.
It’s a multipolar world these days.
Which are the poles you see in this multipolar world than were different from the poles over the last 50 years?
Suppose when you take the foreign policy of globalisation out of the equation, the geopolitical arena looks a lot different.
It’s hard to know how the relationships will develop. Israel geographical location has become at least 50% less important.
When you consider the possible impact of climate change and demographics over the next decade, coupled with the increasingly fragile financial outlook.
It’s not unfathomable that Israel ends up in an extremely exposed position without significant support from the West.
China and Russia are bound together by mutual interest in hydrocarbons, and Irans leaders would attempt to capitalise on every opportunity.
In a destabilised world, everyone will try to sieze the opportunity. It’s going to get very busy, Netanyahu is assuming a lot when he thinks that Israel is going to stay relevant in the long term.
Just wanted to add that it’s going to be multifaceted threats along with the multipolar geopolitical outlook. In situations like that, things get very simple. Things start to boil down to very simple decisions.
Palestinians and Israelis are overall fine, except when you have to listen to them talk about each other, it’s their governments that are so fucked.
This entire conflict is a story of overstepping state entities victimizing innocent civilians on both sides of this war nobody but them and their cronies wanted.
I think he’s trying to get around the black and white viewpoints, and bring up the idea that Israel is committing war crimes here, which is outside the Overton window on the subject currently in US politics.
Thanks. People want to pretend this started a month ago and not understand the history.
Because the truth is that Israel is WAY worse than Palestine. They’re openly calling for genocide. Resistance to oppression is good, actually, and so basically whatever Palestine does while still being oppressed is morally fine, while Israel continuing to oppress them is not. Anything anybody says criticizing palestine’s reaction to oppression is whataboutism, because they’re literally the victims of genocide.
Hamas is openly calling for genocide too, and they’ve been doing it longer than Israel.
Also, funny story, Israel is also literally the victims of genocide, (the Holocaust?), which is why their motto is “never again”.
There is no “way worse”, just ignorant keyboard warriors, and a shitty situation made worse by shitty people.
Do you think the Holocaust means that the descendents of it’s victims can’t be genociders themselves? It altyally makes more sense, when you consider the cycle of abuse. Israel has been genociding Palestine for longer than Hamas has even existed, so no, that’s false.
Israel is way worse than Palestine, and you are the ignorant one if you disagree based entirely on the US/Israeli propaganda you’ve seen. You should research this yourself if you don’t believe me. Would you rather be right, or correct?
Israel are the beneficiaries of the Holocaust.
Literally, the major bump in population they experienced as a result of WWII was Jews who were able to go through a Nazi/Israel visa program to transfer them and their money. Like Hitler was planning to send them to Madagascar after he seized France, and then Israel reached out to him and negotiated a deal for him to send them settlers.
This agreement was seen as such a “success” the Roma (who unfortunately had a bit of a fascist sympathizing streak at the time) wanted to strike a similar agreement with Mussolini when he invaded Egypt to get their own “Israel” along the Red Sea coast.
The actual place most of the post war victims went to was to America where Jews had found success developing community safety via integration with surrounding communities.
High school never ends [for now]. Remember that, people.
And when you distill complex conduct into easy bites about said high schoolers, the other high schoolers of the world will take high schooler level actions.
Perhaps we need a more educated world to move forward…
Education isn’t the problem. It’s self control. People think they prioritize rational decisions but if that were true, cigarettes would be long gone and global warming would be solved. We prioritize feelings which is why GOP loves to fear monger and push religion. Nothing scarier than a eternal suffering, especially since eternity lasts a long time.
In this case, we have two countries that have held a religious divide for decades based on who believes they’re actually worshipping the correct people so they don’t get sent to eternal suffering. Except, they’re willing to kill for their religious text because they feel so deeply that theirs is superior.
How can we as outsiders possibly take the right actions when the irrational people are willing to commit genocide over their feelings brains?
A more educated world, or a less educated one. If there is nobody around to teach the tradition of violence in the region, nobody would have any interest in perpetuating it.
There are complex issues to solve, sure, but there’s nothing complicated about the fact that we need to let humanitarian aid in and stop killing children, right this fucking minute. There are no excuses for what is happening right now.
I’m not saying the details of it are not complicated.
History is always complicated
Present events are always complicated
But the way this is reported in the western media is as though one needs a PhD in Middle Eastern studies to understand the basic morality of holding a people in a situation in which they don’t have basic rights including the right that we treasure most the franchise the right to vote and then declaring that state a democracy
is actually not that hard to understand.
I’m actually not sure which country you are talking about now. I don’t know of anyone who calls Palestine a democracy. I think the reason people call Israel a democracy is that Israeli citizens have free elections and are not oppressed. I don’t think they factor in oppression of other countries when they call something a democracy. If they did, the US and UK wouldn’t count as democracies either.
holding a people in a situation in which they don’t have basic rights
I’m actually not sure which country you are talking about now.
If the options are Palestine and Israel, which country do you think it is?
Come on, use your brain.
Well there are 240 hostages that are held captive in an underground lair by some psychopaths. The PM of Israel may not want to keep those people there any longer than necessary.
Perhaps Hamas should release the hostages so there’s no longer a reason for Israel to deny calls for a ceasefire?
Odd that no one is calling on Hamas to do this, isn’t it? It’s almost like everyone knows Hamas is evil and will continue to keep those people imprisoned. But if we’re demanding Israel to do things we know they won’t do, why not also demand Hamas to do things we know they won’t do?
yes no one is calling for the return of hostages
that is a reasonable thing to say
Jesus man, open your eyes and ears. Nobody is saying Hamas should do that. Listen to what Obama is saying in the video, for the love of God.
The complexity is that Israel (specifically Netanyahu has gone rouge, saying nothing will stop what they are doing) and that is starting to have consequences for Democrats, and the US world image. This, along with Blinkens recent statements, are a subtle way of telling them to stop, without Biden going back on his full support of Israel.
It is the foundations of deniability, so that if the critiques of war crime and genocide come fully to light in the public eye, the US has ground to shift to. Those drones capturing footage over Gaza can quickly be used to support whatever narrative shift the US deems most advantageous. Can the Dems lose support of Arab Americans and their allies? Can/will they lose Jewish support at home if crimes are unmasked and is that number more or less than being on the “right side” of things?
These are likely the questions that are swirling around the White House and State Department as we speak. Time is of the essence, as 2.5 million people are on the verge of succumbing to dehydration and starvation. If those distributions are equal, a heart breaking cataclysm, in the form of a mass casualty event, could occur at any time. 10,000. 100,000. Who knows how many won’t be able to be saved even once aid comes through. Medical capacity is needed to reverse these things and none exists any longer. The UN is warning of this.
If it happens, blame will need to be swift to maintain appearances and Israel is running the risk of becoming the “Voldemort” of the Middle East overnight.
He wouldn’t be the first powerful guy supported or even brought up by the US going rogue.
We don’t talk about what happened with Sadam…
I agree, but Netanyahu is one of the least rogue in office. He’s been sidelined by the hard-liners. Ben-Gvir denied his request to have the Heritage Minister removed after he called nuking Gaza a viable option.
More breaking news. Obama says breathing is good for your health.
Fuck Israel. They get a free pass every time.
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How about Hamas? You seem to be willing to give them a free pass while they still have 200 hostages somewhere in a bunker or tunnel?
Hamas are rotten fucking scumbags. Yet, it’s crystal clear that Israel has been able to do whatever they want for as long as I remember. Which is decades. Fuck Israel.
“Genocide is bad and we should halt donated weapons to countries committing genocide” - very easy policy most people will agree on.
but they won’t agree on what constitutes genocide
“We should halt all aid to terrorists and terrorist states.” - very easy policy most people will agree on.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Former President Barack Obama said a way forward for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only possible if people acknowledge the “complexity” of the situation.
“If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas that what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it.
And … that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable,” Obama said in an interview on the podcast “Pod Save America.”
The former president’s comments come as the Israeli military focuses its offensive against Hamas in Gaza City and northern parts of the enclave.
Behind the scenes, American officials also believe there is limited time for Israel to try to accomplish its stated objective of taking out Hamas in its current operation before uproar over the humanitarian suffering and civilian casualties reaches a tipping point.
If you genuinely want to change this … you’ve got to figure out how to speak to somebody on the other side and listen to them and understand what they are talking about and not dismiss it,” Obama said.
The original article contains 268 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 32%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Nuance? What’s that? Just say horrific fuckin things to the people who disagree with you! Much more fun that way!
The problem is that no American has any credibility: historically fucking over poor and indigenous communities has been an average Tuesday for the US. There is no path out of this that makes anyone happy. Killing people is never okay and trying to justify it based upon “complexity” is insulting. Fuck religious zealots.
If he is talking about the complexity of the human, tribal brain, I agree.
They’ve had 2500 years to work this shit out. The past is dead men’s baggage. Stop carrying it.
It’s actually pretty easy if you stop requiring support for settler colonialism. The rest of the world left that behind 70 years ago. Israel doesn’t get to be special they can either give Palestinians voting rights (which would obliterate the idea of a Jewish state) or submit to a UN peacekeeping force between them and the Palestinians on the 1949 borders.
The only reason this is hard is because we keep bending over backwards to support their Apartheid. We know these answers. They’ve been done before.
