The justification is that civilian casualties are collateral damage. Zero isn’t possible, especially when you are fighting a terrorist organization in constant to a military with bases, ships and so on. There’s a good reasons Hamas’ tactics are declared as war crime by pretty much every treaty ever.
Hamas' tactics are a war crime, because they targeted civilians. So are Israel's, because they make no real effort to avoid civilians.
Civilians as "collateral damage" is something that is only ever justifiable on a case by case basis, and not something that you can handwave broadly as "zero civilian casualties isn't possible". When the ratio of civilian deaths to legitimate enemy kills is over 2:1, you've got some explaining to do as to why that was necessary. "But terrorist organisation" doesn't cut it, especially when you have the area blockaded and you have an overwhelming advantage in manpower, technology and materiel.
Can you provide a different method that would discriminate civilians and terrorists better and would also allow Israel to destroy Hamas, which is the stated goal of the war?
Maintain the blockade. You have control of the air, land and sea around Gaza.
Use the significant amount of offered international aid to screen civilians for Hamas members and move them out of Gaza to a safe area, especially the civilians in places like hospitals. Maybe some sort of camp would be appropriate, given the history. Now that you've made a reasonable effort to get most of the civilians out of the actual area of fighting, you can take your time and use your advantages in technology and training to slowly move through the area and identify Hamas fighters in a way that is appropriate for a modern military.
You're still trying to avoid unnecessary damage to civilian infrastructure as well as the deaths of any remaining civilians who may not have been able to evacuate, so any offensive actions should only be taken on positive identification and with the least amount of force required. Bombing civilian buildings that might contain Hamas members, for example, is right out. If an area is considered too difficult or dangerous to sweep, you can simply maintain a siege on that area.
Hamas has limited weapons and almost no manufacturing ability, in any long term conflict they lose. This rush to destroy them quickly betrays that Israel has no real interest about being precise and limiting damage to Hamas. They could if they wanted, and it would probably cost them less in munitions. But the point is to make sure that a Palestinian state cannot arise, and that means killing Palestinians and destroying their infrastructure.
How exactly did Israel create it? By leaving the Gaza Strip in 2005 and not intervening when Hamas was elected in 2007? The Palestinians could’ve turned Gaza into a successful semi state like Singapore but instead they turned it into terror city.
How far back do you want to go? Short term, by maintaining the occupation of Gaza after the 2005 withdrawal.
"Following the withdrawal, Israel continued to maintain direct control over Gaza's air and maritime space, six of Gaza's seven land crossings, maintains a no-go buffer zone within the territory, controls the Palestinian population registry, and Gaza remains dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities."
It was impossible for Gaza to turn into a successful semi-state like Singapore or anything else under those conditions. They were an occupied territory. Israel did not allow Gaza what it would have needed to form any sort of stable government, they made sure that the only reasonable course for Gazans was to rebel against the occupying power. That's how Israel created it.
If you lock someone in their house while controlling their food, water and power, you should not be surprised if they attack you instead of thriving.
The fear in Israel is that giving the West Bank to the Palestinians would turn it into a mega Gaza. Had the Palestinians proved they could run a state on Gaza, Israelis would be much more inclined to give them a state. The border of Israel with the West Bank is 700+ km. Securing it would be almost impossible against an October 7th style attack.
There it is. Why do Palestinians have to prove they can run a state? Why is it Israel that gets to decide if they should be allowed to have it or not?
The conflict ultimately exists because land was taken from Palestinians to create an Israeli state. Palestinians had a state that included Jews, but Israel decided that wasn't good enough. Palestinians quite reasonably objected to this, and decades of conflict later it's somehow become "well Palestinians just aren't capable of running a state"?
Israel has proven that it's the enemy of the Palestinian people, and you can see in things like the Hamas charter that Palestinians understand this very well. Palestinians need a state for the same reasons that Jews needed a state in 1948 - because there are people legitimately out to get them and they need a place that they can safely call theirs. Yes, at this point that state will almost certainly be in direct conflict with Israel, but again that's a situation that Israel was very careful to engineer. Tough titties.
There's no evidence that Israel would ever allow a Palestinian state voluntarily. If that was the intention, they wouldn't be flooding the West Bank with settlers against international law.
I strongly disagree with this statement. I think retaliation against Palestinian civilians shouldn’t be allowed as a response to October 7th.
Excuse me, I was unclear. Some sort of retaliation
against Hamas was expected and warranted, but this is just slaughter.
To me this looks like a campaign to destroy a terrorist organization that basically holds 2M civilians captive and radicalizes them. I don’t know of any other way to get rid of Hamas.
Does Hamas radicalise the Gazan civilians? Or does Israel do it? I don't imagine it took much to convince your average Gazan civilian that Israel was the bad guy and that violent resistance was the only way out, even before October 2023. All they had to do was look at their daily lives, look at the border of their incredibly densely populated piece of land, look at how Israel controls every necessity for life.
And now? Israel has guaranteed that everyone in Gaza will be vehemently anti-Israel for life. Even if they wipe out Hamas, so many Gazans have died that someone will just make Hamas II. This is the practical reason for avoiding civilian casualties and damage. It reinforces a never-ending cycle of hatred.
And this is where the asymmetry between the two sides comes into play. Gaza is under occupation, with little technology, power or access to diplomacy. You could say that they should stop too, but they are using the only option they have to try and change their situation. Israel is not, Israel has considerable freedom of action and could at any point choose to take this whole conflict in the direction of a resolution that might be acceptable to both sides long term. But they don't.
I'll ask again: What possible positive outcome do you think will come of this? After Hamas is wiped out, what does the situation then look like for Israel and Palestine that will avoid future conflict?
Even if Israel accepts giving the whole of Jerusalem and the entirety of the West Bank to the Palestinians, which is the minimum required of Hamas, they still want every Palestinian and their offsprings to return to mainland Israel. We are talking about millions of refugees that would offset Israeli demographic and stop it from being the state of the Jews, which is the whole idea.
I know. That's the problem. That's why we're here, because the Zionists couldn't accept going back to a pre-British Mandate Palestine with a mixed population of Jews and Islamics. They wanted a Jewish majority state, and were willing to go to war for it. Okay, that's kinda ****ed but sort of understandable in 1948. It resulted in the Nakba, which is kind of ironic given the inciting reasons for Jews wanting an independent state.
So a one state solution is off the table. That's been known for a long time, and anyone can see that's just a recipe for disaster at this point. It has value as a propaganda tool for hyping people up, as you can see from the Hamas manifesto, but it's not a viable diplomatic option. Nobody sensible thinks it is.
But then what? Some sort of two state solution would seem reasonable, and Palestinians have at times been on board with this since the 1970s. But it hasn't happened. Right of return is a problem, but again it's a problem that Israel created for itself and there are solutions if Israel is willing to compromise. However Israel continues to make the situation worse with it's creeping annexation of the West Bank and further displacement of Palestinians.
If you accept that Jews should have a state of their own, without qualifications or conditions, I don't see why you wouldn't think that the Palestinians should have the same. They're all just people, and they all deserve safety, self-determination and a place to call their own. Israel has created that for themselves, but at the cost of the Palestinians. That's not right, and getting mad at the Palestinians for pushing back against what Israel has done doesn't make it any righter.