UN warns of 'full-scale war' as Israel Gaza conflict escalates

[EnterpriseSovereign]

The recent fighting between Gaza and Israel could escalate into a "full-scale war" if tensions aren't eased soon, a top UN official has said.

The United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Mr Tor Wennesland called on both sides to "stop the fire immediately."

He said: "We’re escalating towards a full-scale war. Leaders on all sides have to take the responsibility of de-escalation. The cost of war in Gaza is devastating and is being paid by ordinary people."

Gaza's health ministry said 35 Palestinians had died, including 12 children, and more than 200 people have been wounded.

Five Israelis, including three women and a child, were killed by rocket fire on Tuesday and early on Wednesday, while dozens of others were injured.

Gaza City’s police headquarters has been destroyed after Israel launched dozens of air strikes and the death toll rose in its worsening conflict with Hamas.

The latest eruption of violence in the region began a month ago in Jerusalem, where heavy-handed police tactics during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families by Jewish settlers ignited protests and clashes with police.

A focal point was the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, a holy site sacred to Jews and Muslims.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he is “deeply concerned” about the violence in Gaza and Israel and urged both sides to de-escalate.

He tweeted: “I am urging Israel and the Palestinians to step back from the brink and for both sides to show restraint. The UK is deeply concerned by the growing violence and civilian casualties and we want to see an urgent de-escalation of tensions.”

Samah Haboub, a mother of four in Gaza, said she was thrown across her bedroom in a “moment of horror” by an airstrike on an apartment tower next door.

She and her children, aged three to 14, ran down the stairway of their apartment block along with other residents, many of them screaming and crying.

“There is almost no safe place in Gaza,” she said.

In the West Bank, meanwhile, a 26-year-old Palestinian was killed during clashes with Israeli troops that entered al-Fawar refugee camp in southern Hebron, Palestine’s health ministry said.

While the violence has been widely condemned, there is no sign that either side is willing to back down. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to expand the offensive, saying “this will take time.”

In another sign of widening unrest, demonstrations erupted in Arab communities across Israel, where protesters set dozens of vehicles on fire in confrontations with police.

In the Israeli city of Lod, a 52-year-old man and his 16-year-old daughter were killed on Wednesday when a rocket had landed in the courtyard of their one-storey home.

Their car parked outside was wrecked and the interior of the house was filled by debris.
Lod also saw heavy clashes after thousands of mourners joined a funeral for an Arab man killed by a suspected Jewish gunman the previous night.

The crowd fought with police, and set a synagogue and some 30 vehicles, including a police car, on fire, Israeli media reported.

Paramedics said a 56-year-old man was seriously hurt after his car was pelted with stones.
“An intifada erupted in Lod, you have to bring in the army,” the city’s mayor, Yair Revivo, said.

Authorities have declared a state of emergency in the city and ordered the redeployment of nine paramilitary border police companies from the occupied West Bank as reinforcements.

The UN Security Council planned to hold its second closed emergency meeting in three days on Wednesday on the escalating violence, an indication of growing international concern.

Council diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because discussions have been private, said the UN’s most powerful body did not issue a statement because of US concerns that it could escalate tensions.

The fighting between Israel and Hamas was the most intense since a 50-day war in the summer of 2014.

In just over 24 hours, the current round of violence sparked by religious tensions in the contested city of Jerusalem increasingly resembled that devastating war.

Link.

[Jub]

At the risk of violating the I-v-P moratorium, I'm going to say fuck Israel. They're a modern advanced state that is actively trying to cleanse itself of minorities to keep itself racial pure and is doing it on land stolen from other people. Israel will never be happy until Palestine is completely eradicated and Israel itself won't be destroyed as it will have the support of certain people within the US government due to their insane religious beliefs.

This is a conflict almost perfectly tailored to be eternal.

[MKSheppard]

So "Race War in Israel" wasn't on my 2021 Bingo.

Apparently in mixed population cities, both sides are having a go at each other.

[Broomstick]

Both sides have factions that will only be satisfied by the obliteration of the other side.

It already looks like war to me. At this point I'm just hoping it doesn't spread wider than those two areas in conflict.

Strictly speaking, Shep, I think it would be an ethno-religious war, not a race war. Arabs and Jews are a lot more closely related than either side would like to admit.

[Darth Yan]

Yeah at this point the Israelis are the bad guys.

[Broomstick]

The optics of an apartment block collapsing sure looks bad.

My understanding is that right now the Palestinians having more injuries and casualties, but that's probably because the Israelis have the "iron dome" defense system - without it, they'd be getting more damage and death. The two sides are not evenly matched.

What triggered this? I mean this current escalation, not the overall situation.

Also, will now have to deal with people making assumptions about which side I'm on. Really hate that.

[Steel]

What triggered this? I mean this current escalation, not the overall situation.

Probable the Netanyahu corruption trial that starts next week.

[Solauren]

Yeah, nothing like a war to make people ignore a corruption trial.


But, seriously, has anyone pointed out to the Israeli government, they're basically now a modernized version of a certain government that hated from the early 1930s until the mid 1940s?

[LadyTevar]

What triggered this? I mean this current escalation, not the overall situation.

Probable the Netanyahu corruption trial that starts next week.

There were Palestinians at Al Aqsa Compound (Temple Mount), protesting the current round of evictions. There were Israeli counter-protestors, or just there to celebrate "Jerusalem Day". Stones were thrown. Israeli Police responded to the "Riot".
According to the Red Crescent, 205 people were hospitalized, and seven were said to be in serious condition. Police said at least 21 officers were wounded.

THAT started the new round of missiles.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Yeah, nothing like a war to make people ignore a corruption trial.


But, seriously, has anyone pointed out to the Israeli government, they're basically now a modernized version of a certain government that hated from the early 1930s until the mid 1940s?

Would that be the same government that slaughtered among others the very people that comprise the current one?

[Solauren]

Yeah, nothing like a war to make people ignore a corruption trial.


But, seriously, has anyone pointed out to the Israeli government, they're basically now a modernized version of a certain government that hated from the early 1930s until the mid 1940s?

Would that be the same government that slaughtered among others the very people that comprise the current one?

I see no need to clarify that which is obvious by the group acting that way and the dates.

[Ralin]

Wow, it seems like you guys are talking about the Nazis!

[Darth Yan]

You just know that 19 years ago Shep, Chrostas David and the other conservatives would be cheering this kinda nonsense and saying the Palestinians brought it on themselves.

But seriously. At this point Israel's indisputably the villain.

[Broomstick]

A pox on both their houses, from where I sit.

And the same to those in the US who are cheering this development (and there are some).

[Jub]

As long as Israel is occupying land that it shouldn't be and doing everything it can to make Palestine unlivable only one side has the ability to end things. Even if they've been more wronged in this conflict, as the nation that has the higher standard of living and the most powerful international backing, Israel loses the least by simply walking away from their claims.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Yeah, nothing like a war to make people ignore a corruption trial.


But, seriously, has anyone pointed out to the Israeli government, they're basically now a modernized version of a certain government that hated from the early 1930s until the mid 1940s?

Would that be the same government that slaughtered among others the very people that comprise the current one?

I see no need to clarify that which is obvious by the group acting that way and the dates.

And the irony of a Jewish government acting like the same one that attempted to wipe them out.

But seriously. At this point Israel's indisputably the villain.

Sadly it seems Dent was onto something after all...

[Tribble]

I think some are confusing scale and firepower with intent.

The Palestinians are not just holding hands and singing kumbaya while those dirty, nasty Israelis blow them up. They actively support groups which wishes to see the total destruction of Israel and purge the “Zionists” (aka Jews) from the area. Organizations which have no problems being in/around civilians to insure maximum casualties in any strike. If they had similar firepower and/or access WMDs there is no doubt Hamas and other groups would be using them to the fullest, even if it meant their own deaths in the process.

Unfortunately for them it turns out asymmetrical warfare isn’t very effective against an enemy with overwhelming firepower and a population that generally supports using it.

That of course does not remotely justify what the Israelis are doing, which I find rather disgusting for a supposed “democracy”. When they treat others as little more than animals that need to be physically removed, plow down their homes for “living space” and bomb the hell out of them whenever they retaliate they shouldn’t be surprised that their actions result in yet more attacks against them. It’s pretty clear at this stage that the Israelis will also not be satisfied until they have driven their hated enemies from the area, the difference being that they actually have the firepower and backing to carry that threat out.

Other countries should definitely be pulling all their support from Israel, though they may be largely self sustaining at this point. And of course they DO have WMDs and are fully prepared to use them, so an all out attack by other Middle Eastern countries is unlikely to help.

I’d rather sit this one out, these two are gonna keep killing each other for the foreseeable future.

[Jub]

I think some are confusing scale and firepower with intent.

The Palestinians are not just holding hands and singing kumbaya while those dirty, nasty Israelis blow them up. They actively support groups which wishes to see the total destruction of Israel and purge the “Zionists” (aka Jews) from the area. Organizations which have no problems being in/around civilians to insure maximum casualties in any strike. If they had similar firepower and/or access WMDs there is no doubt Hamas and other groups would be using them to the fullest, even if it meant their own deaths in the process.

If your nation was invaded in the late 1940s and was still occupied by an enemy that has never stopped killing your people and who simply won't make peace, wouldn't you want to back any force that was willing to fight them? Israel is a modern example of western colonization used to solve the Jewish problem and secure an area valued by the religious masses of the Western powers. It is a nation that the world would likely be better off without.

[MKSheppard]

You just know that 19 years ago Shep, Chrostas David and the other conservatives would be cheering this kinda nonsense and saying the Palestinians brought it on themselves.

At this point...



Nothing ever changes.

There's only so many times this script can play out before you get tired and find it repetitive.

Trump showed us the way -- don't waste your time killing low level people -- go straight to the top.

Kill Ismail Haniyeh within 60 minutes of the initiation of hostilities, instead of trumpeting how you have "decimated" HAMAS leadership by killing 87 people we never heard of, but are apparently "directors of rocket engineering units".

As I get older, I become more transactional and less "righteous", so to speak.

From a strictly transactional point of view, it makes sense to support Israel for a few reasons:

A.) Israel provides us with hard intelligence on Islamists -- recently, it appears that some of the key information that allowed us to track, and eventually kill Soleimani, came from the Israelis, who passed it to us.

B.) Their defense industry provides a nice way for "combat testing" all sorts of interesting ideas (IRON DOME, TROPHY APS, ARROW ABM) without our troops directly in the line of fire.

C.) Israeli industrial base -- pretty decent in terms of computers and biotech -- about 15 years ago, Intel Haifa saved Intel's asses with the Core series of CPUs.

With all that said, as I age, I find myself, as a conservative, reassessing the amount of energy I expend defending the State of Israel in various arenas (including online), because if we view this as a purely transactional exchange -- Reform Jews in the US have never met a Gun Control Bill they didn't like, as well as backing all sorts of things that are antiethical to what I believe in -- 600 Jewish denominations, organizations, and synagogues do a full page BLM ad in local Washington DC papers in August 2020

Meanwhile, in Israel as of now...ish, we have mobs of Jewish youths chasing Arabs around in Lod and lynching them. I guess Arab Lives Don't Matter in Israel.

If I'm going to take shit from the global community for vetoing UN resolutions against Israel (among other things), along with taking shit for shipping various military-industrial products (Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, etc) to Israel so they can go boom-boom; I expect a transactional quid-pro-quo for my efforts.

Want boom boom for the IAF? Schumer and Feinstein better shut the fuck up, etc.

But more honestly?

Israel basically lost this war 15 or so years ago when they didn't order a full out assault to take Gaza in the last missile slugging match.

It was never clear to HAMAS and the international community that HAMAS got it's ass kicked; because the IDF high command and the Israeli political leadership were too afraid of losing thousands of troops to do what needed to be done.

They didn't want to pay the price in blood, and chose to defer it.

Well now here we are, and the political landscape is totally different 15 years later.

We have only one election cycle in the USA before AOC and her group goes MADNESS? THIS IS SPARTAAAAAAAAA and kicks the old guard of the DNC into the pit.

Meanwhile, boomer neoconservatives are being purged from the Republican party, starting with Liz Cheney.

What happens when US interference in favor of Israel (via vetoing UN resolutions etc) is no longer guaranteed due to the realignment of American party politics due to population growth?

I mean, hell; as of 2019, there were 2.7~ million Indian immigrants (vs about 5.8M adult Jews) in the US and Indians are one of the fastest growing minority groups. They also tend to be business owners and thus donate to political parties. The time is coming when the PM of India is going to be more important politically to the US President concerning internal US domestic politics than whoever replaces God Emperor Netanyahu on the Golden Throne.

Unfortunately, the Israeli political elite is stuck in boomerdom like it's 1982 and they're invading Lebanon.

They've become ossified and inflexible at both the tactical and psychological level.

The IDF Twitter touts the elimination of individual Hamas ATGM teams like it's some big deal. Bitch please, hunt the teams with a M107A1 Barrett .50 Cal Rifle instead of dropping bombs; it's cheaper; as ATGMs need to be largely line of sight with their targets for now.

Unfortunately, a lot of them seem to be boomers worshipping the Golden Idol of the IAF like it's 1960-1982 and the IAF is killing scores of MiGs and bombing Arabs with Napalm from F-4 Phantoms.

The Azerbaijanis in their recent war with Armenia showed far more flexibility and tactical innovation with their drones than what we've seen from the IDF the last 10 years or so, which is particularly ironic, given that many of the munitions the Azerbaijanis used were Israeli designed and supplied.

Like, why do we need to drop a 2,000 lb bomb on a building, when you have IAI Harpy Loitering Munitions?

You can just launch a Harpy over the Gaza strip and simply fly them into individual HAMAS assholes, kind of like how the Azerbaijanis were doing to the Armenians.

But there's no real push for innovation, just the same old tired playbook -- I mean, I can understand going to a bomb and artillery heavy solution if there was no Iron Dome and heavy spills of MRLs were hitting Israeli cities; but with (for now) casualties limited, you can step up your psychological game by hunting individual HAMAS targets across half of Gaza with loitering munitions before hitting them.

[Darth Yan]

You just know that 19 years ago Shep, Chrostas David and the other conservatives would be cheering this kinda nonsense and saying the Palestinians brought it on themselves.

At this point...



Nothing ever changes.

There's only so many times this script can play out before you get tired and find it repetitive.

Trump showed us the way -- don't waste your time killing low level people -- go straight to the top.

Kill Ismail Haniyeh within 60 minutes of the initiation of hostilities, instead of trumpeting how you have "decimated" HAMAS leadership by killing 87 people we never heard of, but are apparently "directors of rocket engineering units".

As I get older, I become more transactional and less "righteous", so to speak.

From a strictly transactional point of view, it makes sense to support Israel for a few reasons:

A.) Israel provides us with hard intelligence on Islamists -- recently, it appears that some of the key information that allowed us to track, and eventually kill Soleimani, came from the Israelis, who passed it to us.

B.) Their defense industry provides a nice way for "combat testing" all sorts of interesting ideas (IRON DOME, TROPHY APS, ARROW ABM) without our troops directly in the line of fire.

C.) Israeli industrial base -- pretty decent in terms of computers and biotech -- about 15 years ago, Intel Haifa saved Intel's asses with the Core series of CPUs.

With all that said, as I age, I find myself, as a conservative, reassessing the amount of energy I expend defending the State of Israel in various arenas (including online), because if we view this as a purely transactional exchange -- Reform Jews in the US have never met a Gun Control Bill they didn't like, as well as backing all sorts of things that are antiethical to what I believe in -- 600 Jewish denominations, organizations, and synagogues do a full page BLM ad in local Washington DC papers in August 2020

Meanwhile, in Israel as of now...ish, we have mobs of Jewish youths chasing Arabs around in Lod and lynching them. I guess Arab Lives Don't Matter in Israel.

If I'm going to take shit from the global community for vetoing UN resolutions against Israel (among other things), along with taking shit for shipping various military-industrial products (Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, etc) to Israel so they can go boom-boom; I expect a transactional quid-pro-quo for my efforts.

Want boom boom for the IAF? Schumer and Feinstein better shut the fuck up, etc.

But more honestly?

Israel basically lost this war 15 or so years ago when they didn't order a full out assault to take Gaza in the last missile slugging match.

It was never clear to HAMAS and the international community that HAMAS got it's ass kicked; because the IDF high command and the Israeli political leadership were too afraid of losing thousands of troops to do what needed to be done.

They didn't want to pay the price in blood, and chose to defer it.

Well now here we are, and the political landscape is totally different 15 years later.

We have only one election cycle in the USA before AOC and her group goes MADNESS? THIS IS SPARTAAAAAAAAA and kicks the old guard of the DNC into the pit.

Meanwhile, boomer neoconservatives are being purged from the Republican party, starting with Liz Cheney.

What happens when US interference in favor of Israel (via vetoing UN resolutions etc) is no longer guaranteed due to the realignment of American party politics due to population growth?

I mean, hell; as of 2019, there were 2.7~ million Indian immigrants (vs about 5.8M adult Jews) in the US and Indians are one of the fastest growing minority groups. They also tend to be business owners and thus donate to political parties. The time is coming when the PM of India is going to be more important politically to the US President concerning internal US domestic politics than whoever replaces God Emperor Netanyahu on the Golden Throne.

Unfortunately, the Israeli political elite is stuck in boomerdom like it's 1982 and they're invading Lebanon.

They've become ossified and inflexible at both the tactical and psychological level.

The IDF Twitter touts the elimination of individual Hamas ATGM teams like it's some big deal. Bitch please, hunt the teams with a M107A1 Barrett .50 Cal Rifle instead of dropping bombs; it's cheaper; as ATGMs need to be largely line of sight with their targets for now.

Unfortunately, a lot of them seem to be boomers worshipping the Golden Idol of the IAF like it's 1960-1982 and the IAF is killing scores of MiGs and bombing Arabs with Napalm from F-4 Phantoms.

The Azerbaijanis in their recent war with Armenia showed far more flexibility and tactical innovation with their drones than what we've seen from the IDF the last 10 years or so, which is particularly ironic, given that many of the munitions the Azerbaijanis used were Israeli designed and supplied.

Like, why do we need to drop a 2,000 lb bomb on a building, when you have IAI Harpy Loitering Munitions?

You can just launch a Harpy over the Gaza strip and simply fly them into individual HAMAS assholes, kind of like how the Azerbaijanis were doing to the Armenians.

But there's no real push for innovation, just the same old tired playbook -- I mean, I can understand going to a bomb and artillery heavy solution if there was no Iron Dome and heavy spills of MRLs were hitting Israeli cities; but with (for now) casualties limited, you can step up your psychological game by hunting individual HAMAS targets across half of Gaza with loitering munitions before hitting them.

You were outright genocidal and openly called Palestinians vermin. That's not righteous; that was just you being an asshole.

[Solauren]

You were outright genocidal and openly called Palestinians vermin. That's not righteous; that was just you being an asshole.

One mans asshole is another mans Martyr. At least he's admitted that keeping it up is not worth it as things stand.
It's a small step, but at least it's an step in the right direction.

[Tribble]

I think some are confusing scale and firepower with intent.

The Palestinians are not just holding hands and singing kumbaya while those dirty, nasty Israelis blow them up. They actively support groups which wishes to see the total destruction of Israel and purge the “Zionists” (aka Jews) from the area. Organizations which have no problems being in/around civilians to insure maximum casualties in any strike. If they had similar firepower and/or access WMDs there is no doubt Hamas and other groups would be using them to the fullest, even if it meant their own deaths in the process.

If your nation was invaded in the late 1940s and was still occupied by an enemy that has never stopped killing your people and who simply won't make peace, wouldn't you want to back any force that was willing to fight them? Israel is a modern example of western colonization used to solve the Jewish problem and secure an area valued by the religious masses of the Western powers. It is a nation that the world would likely be better off without.

If my nation’s response to a exodus of people leaving a continent that had literally just tried to exterminate them all was “ah hell no!”, grabbing weapons and waging a decades long wars / terror campaign to try and get rid of them (especially due to though not exclusively because of their religion), I wouldn’t support it.

Nor for that matter am I willing to support said people when they turn around and start shooting. I certainly hope that the West gets it act together and starts seriously boycotting and embargoing Israel.

The only difference I see between the two is who has more weapons, which allows for that side to do proportionally more damage. Palestinians are only killing less people due to lack of support and weapons to do so.

Maybe with a full embargo the balance of power may shift enough to change things, though until both sides recognize the other as having the right to exist I don’t see any changes happening anytime soon.

Alternatively some WMDs may eventually get dropped on Israel, which would certainly deal with them, albeit at the cost of them retaliating with their own WMD stockpile. Good luck to the Palestinians at trying to survive that exchange.

[Darth Yan]

The Yishuv's founders made it pretty clear from the beginning that they were either a ok with forced expulsion or were condescending assholes at the best of times. They were scared the Yishuv were planning to force them out.....and they were right because that was their goal even if they convinced themselves otherwise.

[Jub]

If my nation’s response to a exodus of people leaving a continent that had literally just tried to exterminate them all was “ah hell no!”, grabbing weapons and waging a decades long wars / terror campaign to try and get rid of them (especially due to though not exclusively because of their religion), I wouldn’t support it.

Were the people already living in Palestine at the time consulted on this relocation? Not a fucking chance. Were the timescales for a peaceful integration realistic? No, because Israel's creation was a mess. Did the Jewish people require their own state carved out of a region that was already carved up by the western powers? Also no.

The fact is that Israel never needed to exist at all much less in the fashion that it came to exist. Its continued existence only perpetuates the continued occupation of stolen land for the convenience of the west.

[Tribble]

If my nation’s response to a exodus of people leaving a continent that had literally just tried to exterminate them all was “ah hell no!”, grabbing weapons and waging a decades long wars / terror campaign to try and get rid of them (especially due to though not exclusively because of their religion), I wouldn’t support it.

Were the people already living in Palestine at the time consulted on this relocation? Not a fucking chance. Were the timescales for a peaceful integration realistic? No, because Israel's creation was a mess. Did the Jewish people require their own state carved out of a region that was already carved up by the western powers? Also no.

The fact is that Israel never needed to exist at all much less in the fashion that it came to exist. Its continued existence only perpetuates the continued occupation of stolen land for the convenience of the west.

Were the Jewish people really given much of a choice given their “benefactors” were still trying to get rid of them, only via guarantees of going to an ancestral homeland vs mass shootings and gas chambers? Especially knowing that a good chunk of Europe still very much wanted to see them all dead? I don’t blame them for leaving, and I don’t excuse Palestinians for taking up arms and trying to kill them for decades, even though there were plenty of mistakes made. You don’t get sympathy from me when you too have no problems killing the people you don’t want around.

Again, that does not mean I support Israel either - how many times do I have to say that? You also get no sympathy from me when you act exactly like the people you were fleeing from!

You asking me to choose between a group who want to kill as many of their enemy as possible… and a group which also wants to kill as many of their enemy as possible, but dont have nearly as many weapons to do it. Not gonna support either, sorry.

Unfortunately barring WMD use burning everyone in the region into a cinder I don’t see this ending anytime soon.