Israel-Palestine|Voices on the conflict

Netanyahu / Gaza TT 

 

Analysis: Invasion or peace - Hamas can be weakened  

 

Israel is faced with many and difficult choices about how to weaken the terror-labeled Hamas, Daniel Byman and Alexander Palmer note in an analysis in Foreign Affairs.  

 

The biggest question is how the Gaza Strip should be managed. A ground invasion could weaken Hamas, but history shows that the risks to civilian lives are great, write Byman and Palmer. 

 

"Benjamin Netanyahu has only bad options," they note.  

 

DN's Michael Winiarski also describes an Israeli ground invasion in the Gaza Strip as a "risk game".  

 

The alternative, to start a peace process, he describes as "a utopia as long as Israel has a government that believes that Palestinians have no rights at all".  

 

Aftonbladet's Wolfgang Hansson has a somewhat more hopeful view of the future, and believes that a political solution is the only way to seriously weaken Hamas. 

 

"Today's war will by all accounts be the deadliest yet between Hamas and Israel, but paradoxically, it may ultimately strengthen the forces that want peace."

 

Destruction in Gaza. Hatem Ali / AP 

 

Israel veterans: Our country is making life impossible in Gaza 

 

In Israel, government after government has maintained violence against the Palestinians under the slogans of "security" and "deterrence" - but these are only "code words for bombing the Gaza Strip to smithereens". This is written by Breaking the Silence, an organization for Israeli veterans who are critical of the occupation.  

 

Between episodes of violence, Israel makes life impossible for Gazans, and then plays surprised when it boils over, the organization writes in a series of posts on X. 

 

 Our country decided - decades ago - that it is willing to sacrifice the safety of residents in cities and villages to control an occupied civilian population of several million, all for a settler-messianic agenda."

 

Fire and smoke over Gaza. Fatima Shbair / AP

 

Uppgift: Egypt is a varnade of Israel for "något stort".  

 

Egypt, which often acts as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, repeatedly warned Israel that "something big" was afoot - but it was not heeded. This is stated by an Egyptian intelligence source for AP.

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government were focused on the West Bank, downplaying the threat from Gaza, according to the source. 

 

 - We warned them that the situation would explode very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated the warnings.

 

Netanyahu's staff calls the information "false", according to Haaretz.