I've been reading this thread on and off, and thinking about whether or not I should say anything. Mostly I've obviously felt that it's pointless, but I guess I'll just voice my thoughts on what my view of the situation in Israel is.
Words like "war" or "cycle of violence" are incredibly poor descriptions of the situation.
Israel is a country which has enforced a violent apartheid system essentially throughout it's whole existence. The driving force behind the conflict is mostly Israel inner politics. When
extreme zionist ideas are popular, violence soon rises afterwards.
Hardline zionism, for those that don't know is a rather typical right-wing extremist movement that calls for the ethnic cleansing of Israel from non-jews. (Mostly arabs.) In other words, despite it's somewhat unusual roots, it's ultimately yet another run-of-the-mill racist ultranationalistic movement bent on destruction of those it sees as inferior human beings.
"War" is also an extremely poor description of a situation. In effect Israel is simply using it's military force against it's own citizens, namely the ethnic minority of arabs, who have been denied not only of basic democratic rights but at this point have mostly been denied ways to even make a living anymore. The "opposing forces" of the government are poorly armed guerilla forces (which enjoy only a questionable popularity in Palestine).
The closest historical reference point would be South Africa in the Apartheid era. (Nelson Mandela was a terrorist too, in case people have forgot.)
There isn't really that much of a grey area here. While many "balanced" views like to talk vaguely of a "long history of violence", when you actually start looking at the history of Israel, it really just starts to look even worse.
The situation we have now was mostly born in 1948 when jewish troops drove around 700,00 arabs out of their homes for the purpose of creating a jewish state of Israel. In the first decade after the creation of Israel thousands of refugees that attempted to either return home or get their property from their old homes were killed by the Israel army.
Today there are an estimated 2,000,000 arab refugees within Israel, a situation which blatantly points out how badly the government treats it's arab minority. Millions more live outside the countries borders without a place to go.
Israel has also been countless times convicted of human rights violations and abuses of military power by pretty much every international organization that has ever studied the area. Israel adamantly refuses to respect Geneve conventions when it comes to it's arab population, and generally even refuses to admit they have rights.
Israel has also been offered peace numerous times by every Palestinian organization and every neighbouring country.
As late as 2005 over 170 Palestinian organizations from labour unions to political parties joined forces to make demands to Israel.
The list was very simple:
1) End to the military occupation of Palestinian areas
2) Equality and democratic rights for the Palestinian population of Israel
3) Allowing the Palestinian population to return to their homes.
This proclamation gives a rather clear picture of what are the actual mainstream demands of the Palestinans. Peace, equality and a roof over their head. They made no threats of violence, only threats of boycott.
Since the 1970's the Arab countries have repeatedly and consistently offered peace and the normalization of political relationships to Israel in return if Israel would stop the occupation of West Bank. This suggestion was last repeated in 2007 by 58 countries of the
OIC.
Hamas has also numerous times offered cease-fires to Israel, which Israel has generally either refused or broken. (For example, they broke the 2012 cease-fire
over one hundred times in the first three months.)
In contrast, the government of Israel has numerous times (last time just this summer with the voice of Netanyahu) stated that it will never negotiate about ending it's military rule of the arab population, and has a long history of either refusing to come to the table (such as in refusing to talk with IOC in 2007) or effectively just saying no to everything. (Camp David.)
It's also important to remember that when the IDF attacks Gaza, it has history of specifically targeting infrastructure, through for example a "
deliberate and systematic policy to target industrial sites and water installations".
They have also openly previously admitted to deliberately attacking Palestinian police forces and government organizations for the express purpose of destroying the possibility of the Palestinians to govern themselves.
(Considering what the targets of the IDF have been, the term "human shields" is more than slighty perverse if you ask me.)
Right now they seem to have moved to targeting a disproportionate amount of schools and hospitals, which really makes sense since there really isn't much else to destroy there.
Even
basic staticistal studies clearly show that if Israel was actually interested in ending the violence in it's area, it mostly would have to just stop breaking cease-fire agreements made with Hamas or other Palestinian organizations. Or in other words, not kill Palestinians.
(
Here's another statistical study showing "it is overwhelmingly Israel, not Palestine, that kills first following a lull. Indeed, it is virtually always Israel that kills first after a lull lasting more than a week".)
The Gaza area is reaching a point where it will be inevitably ethnically cleansed. The systematic destruction of infrastructure has has lead to a situation where by UN estimates the Gaza strip will be unlivable by 2020, six years from now. The area is almost completely cut off from resources and is effectively a concentration camp or a nazi-style ghetto. At this point it's impossible to say what will happen to the 1,8 million people living in that area, but Israel has made it very clear that it has no intentions of giving those people democratic rights that they obviously should have like anyone else living in Israel, and they have no intention of allowing those people to live normal, productive lives within Israel.
Basicly, Israel is a fundamentally racist state, using military force to support a racist system. The guerilla forces fighting them
are in no way a significant threat. They have managed to kill less than 200 people in the
last decade, despite several periods of open street fights. (For a point of reference, ANC, one of three main resistance forces in South Africa, killed some 50-100 people in their 80's campaign of violence.)
In contrast, the IDF has killed more than 1500 Palestinians just
this summer, and that's not even counting the people who have died for example from lack of normal medical care. Whether or not you like the guerillas such as Hamas, in contrast they're a rather insignificant evil.
Let me repeat: There is no "war". There is an oppressive system of racism and a small and militarily insignificant resistance to it.
Statistically speaking, "the war in Gaza" is pretty much
like this.
There are many complicated conflicts in the world where it's hard to pick a side to support. While the conflict in Israel/Palestine is admittedly very complicated in all it's geopolitical and historical sidetracks, every study, statistic, statement and historical example point in the same direction:
If Israel would give the Palestinians the same rights as jews enjoy there, most of the violence would go away. (Of course that would mean they'd have to deal with other problems, such as the extreme povery of a significant part of it's population, which is a large reason why they don't want to do that.)
The only logical conclusion is that Israel needs to be put under international pressure to stop it's apartheid politics. It worked in South Africa, it can work in Israel. What is lacking is the international will.
(There are many reasons for this, but some are very simple and easy to understand. Israel for example rather blatantly plays both sides in the Russia/US power struggle. Should US put pressure on Israel, they can always turn to Putin for support, who would obviously jump at the possibility.)