Should two million people be removed from their homes in Gaza?

[KaiserDave]

Realistically speaking General MacArthur’s plan would lead to the needless deaths of tens of thousands of people. Very in keeping with his namesake.

[GeneralMacArthur]

By removal, you mean killed because that's what a lot of people want.

I've elaborate extensively on what I think should happen, and been very precise in the words I use.  I have been extremely clear that I wish to avoid loss of life to the greatest extent possible.  From this point on, anyone who accuses me of wanting Gazans to be killed is going to be reported.  If you actually had the moral high ground you'd be able to make a coherent argument that doesn't rely 100% on strawmen.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

I think the Reasonable discussions of mass expulsions of what are again about 50% children on this forum make sense when you realize that most people simply do not care about civilian casualties other than those in the 20 or so countries which matter (and even then, look at our callousness towards mass shootings in America).

[Horus]

By removal, you mean killed because that's what a lot of people want.

I've elaborate extensively on what I think should happen, and been very precise in the words I use.  I have been extremely clear that I wish to avoid loss of life to the greatest extent possible.  From this point on, anyone who accuses me of wanting Gazans to be killed is going to be reported.  If you actually had the moral high ground you'd be able to make a coherent argument that doesn't rely 100% on strawmen.

You have, and I don't believe you. It is easy to read been the lines and the fact is you value Israeli lives far more than Palestinian lives and wouldn't lose a wink of sleep if the entirety of Gaza was vaporized tomorrow.

[FT-02 Senator A.F.E. 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

-Snip-

Me thinks you need to touch grass for a bit longer

[Devout Centrist]

So what's your plan?  I considered all the alternatives.  I consider the arguments against those alternatives far more compelling than the arguments against my proposal.

As a start? Capture or neutralize Hamas leadership using as strategically limited a response as possible. Then conduct an operation with the United Nations or some other multilateral coalition to secure the Gaza Strip and end the Hamas dictatorship.

Once that's completed, allow in massive shipments of humanitarian aid and work with the coalition to remove weapons caches from the Strip. Transfer control to a United Nations mission and hold multiparty elections as soon as possible, with a ban on organizations or political fronts that do not recognize Israel's right to exist. Finally, rework security and Israeli intelligence to focus on identifying cells of potential terrorist activity rather than a wholesale blockade.

This is not a good solution as I reckon securing control of the Gaza Strip would be extremely bloody and result in massive casualties to both civilians and the armed forces, not to mention it would be very difficult to implement some aspects of the plan. I'd say it's still better than an infeasible and unethical plan for expelling 2 million Palestinians to Egypt.

[OSR stands with Israel]

What should happen is Israel should invade and occupy Gaza then do the equalivent of denazification there . Also every major Hamas leader should be put on trial and that trial should be televised for everyone in Gaza to see the crimes committed by Hamas

[GeneralMacArthur]

Realistically speaking General MacArthur’s plan would lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Very in keeping with his namesake.

I think the Reasonable discussions of mass expulsions of what are again about 50% children on this forum make sense when you realize that most people simply do not care about civilian casualties other than those in the 20 or so countries which matter (and even then, look at our callousness towards mass shootings in America).

In 1991, 200,000 Palestinians were forced to leave Kuwait after Palestine supported Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War.  Nobody died.  There are many such examples in the middle east even recently.

Population transfers have been associated with death because they've typically been conducted by enemy armies that see the ethnic group being moved as subhuman vermin worthy of target practice, and they want to loot and destroy their homes.  That is obviously not what I'm talking about here.

Also it's funny to see tankies acting shocked and horrified at a population transfer when China does massive population transfers every single year, and the Soviet Union under Stalin did this dozens of times.  Now, those transfers were based on ethnicity.  Kicking everyone out of Gaza would not be based on ethnicity.  It would be based on the fact that they are an enemy state, culpable in a genocide, that declared war on Israel (and presumably, quickly lost said war).  After World War 2, we did far more difficult population transfers on a far greater scale than this.  Did hundreds of thousands of people die?  Nope.

[GeneralMacArthur]

So what's your plan?  I considered all the alternatives.  I consider the arguments against those alternatives far more compelling than the arguments against my proposal.

As a start? Capture or neutralize Hamas leadership using as strategically limited a response as possible. Then conduct an operation with the United Nations or some other multilateral coalition to secure the Gaza Strip and end the Hamas dictatorship.

Once that's completed, allow in massive shipments of humanitarian aid and work with the coalition to remove weapons caches from the Strip. Transfer control to a United Nations mission and hold multiparty elections as soon as possible, with a ban on organizations or political fronts that do not recognize Israel's right to exist. Finally, rework security and Israeli intelligence to focus on identifying cells of potential terrorist activity rather than a wholesale blockade.

This is not a good solution as I reckon securing control of the Gaza Strip would be extremely bloody and result in massive casualties to both civilians and the armed forces, not to mention it would be very difficult to implement some aspects of the plan. I'd say it's still better than an infeasible and unethical plan for expelling 2 million Palestinians to Egypt.

I would love if this was a practical solution but I simply do not believe it to be.  I think most of the people in Gaza love Hamas and will do everything in their power to protect and hide them from Israel while conducting a vicious, bloody, neverending guerilla urban warfare campaign.

I think this is the approach Israel is going to take.  So we'll see in a couple weeks if I'm right.  I hope I'm wrong.  But this isn't exactly the first time something like this has been tried in the modern era.  I think a lot of Jews will die, and a lot more Palestinians will die.  Casualties will probably be in the tens of thousands.  They're already over 1,000 and Israel hasn't even put boots on the ground yet.  And I don't think Gaza will ever reach the point where its political culture can be normalized the way we did in Germany.  I think it will just becoming a festering swamp of sleeper cells and lone wolf terrorists that enemies of Israel pour money and supplies into just like what happened to America in Iraq.  And when Israel leaves, it won't even take a decade for Hamas 2.0 to arrive.

[OSR stands with Israel]

So what's your plan?  I considered all the alternatives.  I consider the arguments against those alternatives far more compelling than the arguments against my proposal.

As a start? Capture or neutralize Hamas leadership using as strategically limited a response as possible. Then conduct an operation with the United Nations or some other multilateral coalition to secure the Gaza Strip and end the Hamas dictatorship.

Once that's completed, allow in massive shipments of humanitarian aid and work with the coalition to remove weapons caches from the Strip. Transfer control to a United Nations mission and hold multiparty elections as soon as possible, with a ban on organizations or political fronts that do not recognize Israel's right to exist. Finally, rework security and Israeli intelligence to focus on identifying cells of potential terrorist activity rather than a wholesale blockade.

This is not a good solution as I reckon securing control of the Gaza Strip would be extremely bloody and result in massive casualties to both civilians and the armed forces, not to mention it would be very difficult to implement some aspects of the plan. I'd say it's still better than an infeasible and unethical plan for expelling 2 million Palestinians to Egypt.

I would love if this was a practical solution but I simply do not believe it to be.  I think most of the people in Gaza love Hamas and will do everything in their power to protect and hide them from Israel while conducting a vicious, bloody, neverending guerilla urban warfare campaign.  We'll see in a couple weeks if I'm right.  I hope I'm wrong.  But this isn't exactly the first time something like this has been tried in the modern era.

Why not do this instead:


What should happen is Israel should invade and occupy Gaza then do the equalivent of denazification there . Also every major Hamas leader should be put on trial and that trial should be televised for everyone in Gaza to see the crimes committed by Hamas

[Mopsus]

I don’t see any reason why that would be more effective than just turning the Israeli side of the Gaza border into Korean DMZ 2.0.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Realistically speaking General MacArthur’s plan would lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Very in keeping with his namesake.

I think the Reasonable discussions of mass expulsions of what are again about 50% children on this forum make sense when you realize that most people simply do not care about civilian casualties other than those in the 20 or so countries which matter (and even then, look at our callousness towards mass shootings in America).

In 1991, 200,000 Palestinians were forced to leave Kuwait after Palestine supported Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War.  Nobody died.  There are many such examples in the middle east even recently.

Population transfers have been associated with death because they've typically been conducted by enemy armies that see the ethnic group being moved as subhuman vermin worthy of target practice, and they want to loot and destroy their homes.  That is obviously not what I'm talking about here.

That is, in fact, how Israelis view Palestinian Arabs. You can look at both polling and Hebrew-language media. I've already posted examples of glorification of violence against unarmed people, using the language of "animals" and "vermin" and calling for a "second Nakba" (despite denying that the first ever happened), but I'd invite you to do any amount of reading on the past two years or so of violence conducted by West Bank settlers against neighboring Palestinians.

Also, half a million Germans died in those mass expulsions. You're factually wrong and I don't know if you're lying or just ignorant.

[ꙮ]

Even if you completely ignore morality as a consideration and just look at your plan logistically, you cannot move the Gazans from Gaza without having a place to put them. The last thing the struggling secular-ish military dictatorship of Egypt wants right now is hundreds of thousands of poor  Palestinian islamists. They’d have to feed and house these people somewhere while they get on their feet, and they’re having enough trouble with their existing population. It would also be damaging to the social and political situation there, which no dictatorship wants.

[AncestralDemocrat.]

As a firm supporter of Israel, absolutely insane to see ethnic cleansing and mass deportations being justified by others here.

Especially as Stalinist USSR and China are being used as examples.. a civilized and democratic nation should hold itself to higher standards.

[GMantis]

Whole lotta words to say "yes, I believe ethnic cleansing is cool and good."

Ironic that it only takes you 14 words to say "the current situation where Jews live under daily threat of rape, torture and murder is OK by me."

And it's just four words for "Palestinian lives don't matter", your true position on this subject.

[Pres Mike]

No. The 2 million people of the Gaza Strip do not war. They do not support the terrorist group of Hamas, which only won a plurity of the strip in 2006. 75% wanted peace talks.

[GeneralMacArthur]

No. The 2 million people of the Gaza Strip do not war. They do not support the terrorist group of Hamas, which only won a plurity of the strip in 2006. 75% wanted peace talks.

Keep telling yourself that.  We're about to get the opportunity to see if you're right.  If the residents of Gaza want peace, they have to turn on Hamas.

[Ferguson97]

You guys keep calling this an "ethnic cleansing" because it's the most loaded term you can think of and of course it helps your case to use as loaded of language as possible.

It is not any sort of "cleansing" since nobody would be killed.  Drop um-but-ackshually dictionary definitions all you want, you know perfectly well what images you're trying to conjure up when you say "ethnic cleansing."

Just because you're uncomfortable with the fact that your proposal meets the definition of ethnic cleansing does not mean that you get to reject that label.

And more importantly, it is not ethnic.  It is a political (in the sense of "political border") post-war population transfer, something that has happened many times throughout recent history without massive loss of life.  It is the removal from Israel of Hamas and all those who facilitate its continued existence.

Nonsensical and meaningless distinction.

Now is it necessary for the entire population of Gaza to be moved to eliminate Hamas?  No.  But how do you do it otherwise?

[....]

When faced with these bad options, is it really that unreasonable to say "everyone in Gaza should have to move out?"

[...]

Logistics?  Yes, Egypt doesn't want the Gazans.  And it would be hard to get them to leave.  And they don't want to leave.  These are difficult but not unsolvable problems.  At any rate they are more solvable than the problems inherent in the "Israel defends itself against Gaza in perpetuity" plan, or the "Israel crushes Hamas and operates Gaza as a police state forever" plan.  Or the various laughable "Israel and Hamas become best friends and we have peace and love" plans.

"It's not an ethnic cleansing, but even if it were, it would be totally justified."

Explain to me how you expel more than two million people from a region without having to kill at least some of them when they inevitably resist? Or are you just going to decide that anyone who resists their forced expulsion to be a "Hamas terrorist"?

[patzer]

I don't think anyone wants to see two million people displaced, but realistically speaking the government of Israel needs to take control of the entire Gaza Strip to fully eliminate Hamas, and given the level of popular support there for Hamas, it's quite possible that a military occupation wouldn't be viable if the majority of residents remain there. Realistically it may be the only option to offer the opportunity to remain but only for those residents who are willing to denounce Hamas and pledge to respect the law of the interim Israeli military administration (which is unlikely to be many of them).

Question for those outraged at the possibility even being mentioned- do you feel similar outrage at the knowledge of the displacement of the German population of Silesia following WW2?

[KaiserDave]

Realistically speaking General MacArthur’s plan would lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Very in keeping with his namesake.

I think the Reasonable discussions of mass expulsions of what are again about 50% children on this forum make sense when you realize that most people simply do not care about civilian casualties other than those in the 20 or so countries which matter (and even then, look at our callousness towards mass shootings in America).

In 1991, 200,000 Palestinians were forced to leave Kuwait after Palestine supported Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War.  Nobody died.  There are many such examples in the middle east even recently.

Population transfers have been associated with death because they've typically been conducted by enemy armies that see the ethnic group being moved as subhuman vermin worthy of target practice, and they want to loot and destroy their homes.  That is obviously not what I'm talking about here.

Also it's funny to see tankies acting shocked and horrified at a population transfer when China does massive population transfers every single year, and the Soviet Union under Stalin did this dozens of times.  Now, those transfers were based on ethnicity.  Kicking everyone out of Gaza would not be based on ethnicity.  It would be based on the fact that they are an enemy state, culpable in a genocide, that declared war on Israel (and presumably, quickly lost said war).  After World War 2, we did far more difficult population transfers on a far greater scale than this.  Did hundreds of thousands of people die?  Nope.

Firstly, if you're calling me a "tankie." That's hilarious. Definitely a new one.

Secondly, why are you saying that population transfer is normal and okay because various totalitarian regimes have done it? Not a great case. Also....thousands of Germans did die in Post-WWII population transfers. So.....what's your point?

I'd still like you hear how you expect to move 2 million people out of their homes into a country that will never have them without having a mass death event on your end. I know ethnic cleansing is harder then you thought.

[Saint Milei]

By removal, you mean killed because that's what a lot of people want.

I've elaborate extensively on what I think should happen, and been very precise in the words I use.  I have been extremely clear that I wish to avoid loss of life to the greatest extent possible.  From this point on, anyone who accuses me of wanting Gazans to be killed is going to be reported.  If you actually had the moral high ground you'd be able to make a coherent argument that doesn't rely 100% on strawmen.

I do have the moral high ground in this discussion because I'm not a Zionist and I'm not a Hamas sympathizer.


Removal means kill. It doesn't matter what YOU want. The rhetoric is already out there and that is what will happen. You're a random dude online. If you want to advocate for something, use different words.

[GMantis]

I don't think anyone wants to see two million people displaced, but realistically speaking the government of Israel needs to take control of the entire Gaza Strip to fully eliminate Hamas, and given the level of popular support there for Hamas, it's quite possible that a military occupation wouldn't be viable if the majority of residents remain there. Realistically it may be the only option to offer the opportunity to remain but only for those residents who are willing to denounce Hamas and pledge to respect the law of the interim Israeli military administration (which is unlikely to be many of them).

Question for those outraged at the possibility even being mentioned- do you feel similar outrage at the knowledge of the displacement of the German population of Silesia following WW2?

I'm not outraged at the possibility being mentioned (since unfortunately it's a very realistic outcome of this war), I'm outraged it at being supported, especially by the sanctimonious manner of portraying it as the "realistic option". It's not even remotely realistic, it's just the most easy option if one assumes that Palestinian lives simply don't matter.

As for the comparison with Silesia following WWII, the least that can be said is that it's ridiculous and offensive. Israel is not remotely similar to Poland in 1945 (for one their country was already created on the basis of massive ethnic cleansing), when the expulsion of the Germans was completely understandable, even if it was a crime against humanity.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I don't think anyone wants to see two million people displaced, but realistically speaking the government of Israel needs to take control of the entire Gaza Strip to fully eliminate Hamas, and given the level of popular support there for Hamas, it's quite possible that a military occupation wouldn't be viable if the majority of residents remain there. Realistically it may be the only option to offer the opportunity to remain but only for those residents who are willing to denounce Hamas and pledge to respect the law of the interim Israeli military administration (which is unlikely to be many of them).

Question for those outraged at the possibility even being mentioned- do you feel similar outrage at the knowledge of the displacement of the German population of Silesia following WW2?

One big difference (and you don't have to go that far back: see the recent outcome of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict) is that germans had a place to go to, even under duress. This will be more like the Rohingya: people shunted out to a border that does not want them either.

[patzer]

I don't think anyone wants to see two million people displaced, but realistically speaking the government of Israel needs to take control of the entire Gaza Strip to fully eliminate Hamas, and given the level of popular support there for Hamas, it's quite possible that a military occupation wouldn't be viable if the majority of residents remain there. Realistically it may be the only option to offer the opportunity to remain but only for those residents who are willing to denounce Hamas and pledge to respect the law of the interim Israeli military administration (which is unlikely to be many of them).

Question for those outraged at the possibility even being mentioned- do you feel similar outrage at the knowledge of the displacement of the German population of Silesia following WW2?

One big difference (and you don't have to go that far back: see the recent outcome of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict) is that germans had a place to go to, even under duress. This will be more like the Rohingya: people shunted out to a border that does not want them either.

The big difference from both of those situations is of course that neither Artsakh nor the Rohingya initiated any aggression. Hamas on the other hand initiated this wave of brazen mass murder and it's obvious from the videos of celebrations everywhere that most Palestinians are supportive of the actions, or at least neutral and certainly not opposing Hamas.

This will affect the Israeli government's strategizing in Gaza. It's clear that the full occupation of Gaza and destruction of Hamas is inevitable and non-negotiable; if there were 100k Israeli soldiers administering a population of 2 million people, a significant fraction of whom are so hostile that they would lynch any Jew they happen to come across whether civilian or military, it's quite obvious why that wouldn't be sustainable. For that reason, the IDF may well come to the conclusion of only allowing those Gazans to stay in the region who are willing to explicitly show willingness to recognize/not rebel against an Israeli military interim government (which would be likely to be a fairly small portion of all Gazans).

It's by no means a pleasant situation but I think there needs to be some nuance in recognizing that if the victim (Israel) does feel the need to relocate some of the Gazan population then there is probably a very good reason for it and we shouldn't be the ones to judge.

[Virginiá]

No, Gaza should not be subject to ethnic cleansing. People, if this is your view on the situation, I don't think this forum is for you. This wasn't initially envisioned as a space to engage in serious discussion of the pros and cons of forced deportations of millions of people, and I don't wish for it to be either. This is fair warning now - please hold on to your humanity when talking about this conflict. If you can't do that much, or feel your opinions on the virtues of ethnic cleansing are too important to hold in, don't expect to continue posting in these threads.