Gaza–Israel conflict

The Gaza–Israel conflict is a localized part of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict beginning in 1948, when 200,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes, settling in the Gaza Strip as refugees. Since then, Israel has fought 15 wars against the Gaza Strip. The number of Gazans reportedly killed in the most recent 2023 war — 27,000 — is higher than the death toll of all other wars of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Quotes

 * Israel never strived for a decisive victory in Gaza. While it could militarily defeat Hamas, Israel could not overthrow Hamas without risking the possibility that a more radical organization would govern Gaza. Nor did Israel want to be responsible for governing Gaza in a postconflict power vacuum.
 * "Lessons from Israel's Wars in Gaza", w:RAND Corporation (2017), cited in Fintan O'Toole "No Endgame in Gaza", The New York Review of Books (31 October 2023)


 * Nearly all the words and phrases used by the Democrats, Republicans and the talking heads on the media to describe the unrest inside Israel and the heaviest Israeli assault against the Palestinians since the 2014 attacks on Gaza, which lasted 51 days and killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children, are a lie. Israel, by employing its military machine against an occupied population that does not have mechanized units, an air force, navy, missiles, heavy artillery and command-and-control, not to mention a U.S. commitment to provide a $38 billion defense aid package for Israel over the next decade, is not exercising “the right to defend itself.” It is carrying out mass murder. It is a war crime.
 * Chris Hedges, Israel, the Big Lie Scheerpost, May 14, 2021


 * I was apprehensive from the first moment [following the 9/11 attacks] about the sort of masochistic email traffic that might start circulating from the Noam Chomsky-Howard Zinn-Norman Finkelstein quarter, and I was not to be disappointed…. It is something worse than idle to propose the very trade-offs that may have been lodged somewhere in the closed-off minds of the mass-murderers. The people of Gaza live under curfew and humiliation and expropriation. This is notorious. Very well: does anyone suppose that an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza would have forestalled the slaughter in Manhattan? It would take a moral cretin to suggest anything of the sort; the cadres of the new jihad make it very apparent that their quarrel is with Judaism and secularism on principle, not with (or not just with) Zionism… What they abominate about "the west", to put it in a phrase, is not what western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state. Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by Falwell and Robertson, and exhibits about the same intellectual content.
 * Christopher Hitchens, “Let’s not get too liberal”, The Guardian, September 21, 2001.


 * I am deeply alarmed by developments in Gaza after Israel launched a military operation this morning targeting members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement (PIJ), said Tor Wennesland the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. Persistent drivers of conflict, including school demolitions,  breed a climate of mistrust and tension between Palestinians and Israelis and undermine the prospect of achieving a political solution,  he said. ... The demolition followed an Israeli court order citing safety concerns in response to a petition by a settler organization. Currently, 58 schools, serving 6,500 children, face the threat of demolition due to a lack of building permits that are almost impossible for Palestinians to obtain, Mr. Wennesland said.   A child’s right to education must be respected,  he said, calling on Israeli authorities to cease such demolitions and evictions, which are illegal under international law
 * UN Middle East envoy condemns deadly Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, United Nations News (9 May 2023)


 * I am deeply alarmed by developments in Gaza after Israel launched a military operation this morning targeting members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement (PIJ), said Tor Wennesland the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. Persistent drivers of conflict, including school demolitions,  breed a climate of mistrust and tension between Palestinians and Israelis and undermine the prospect of achieving a political solution,  he said. ... The demolition followed an Israeli court order citing safety concerns in response to a petition by a settler organization. Currently, 58 schools, serving 6,500 children, face the threat of demolition due to a lack of building permits that are almost impossible for Palestinians to obtain, Mr. Wennesland said.   A child’s right to education must be respected,  he said, calling on Israeli authorities to cease such demolitions and evictions, which are illegal under international law
 * UN Middle East envoy condemns deadly Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, United Nations News (9 May 2023)