Narratives blaming "racist west" for not recognising Palestine are counter-factual.
Western countries don't recognize Palestine as a state because
there is no formal legal instrument to do so apart from unilateral proclamation that some countries made - former Soviet bloc, Sweden and Iceland. Proclamations are not legal in nature but political. They are not legally binding unless as consequence of the proclamation laws are passed that make it binding. And that rarely happens because most proclamations are just rhetoric to influence, deceive or deflect other political rhetoric. Poland recognizes Palestine and it has exactly zero consequence on what Poland does because there are no legal relationships between Poland and Palestine because Palestine doesn't exist as a de facto state.
On the other hand Taiwan existed as a de facto state called "Republic of China" so Taiwan has de facto legal relationship with Poland even though Poland doesn't recognise either Taiwan or Republic of China and officially recognizes "one China". That's because there are multiple entities and legal relationships that connect the two despite formal recognition.
Counter-intuitive? Yes. Self-contradictory? No. Politics is a non-euclidean space.
That's why Israel is making such effort in disrupting Palestinian territories and expanding settlements, supporting rival factions etc. It is to prevent a de facto recognition. Israel understands the legal game of recognition. Palestine doesn't.
And since there is no state of Palestine de facto there can't be one de jure as far as European legal systems are concerned and if anyone tried to recognise it formally it would likely be overturned in courts because the legal instruments that e.g. US or Israel would bring against any country recognising Palestine would be significant.
And if you don't believe me ask yourself this: how many separatist movements are there in Europe and how many are recognised by other countries?
State of Palestine is just some people claiming to be a legitimate state entity. But if they tried to put it into effect their own "people" would not agree with them. The reason why there has been no election in Palestine since 2006 is that both Hamas and Fatah disagree on fundamental systemic issues that prevent them from ever cooperating. Otherwise they'd just unilaterally declare independence for Palestine and force events.
PLO couldn't achieve independence because it wasn't supported by all of Palestine. Its actions - including terrorim - were aimed at building legitimacy in the same way that Hamas is building its own. If Palestine was united as a de facto nation history would look different. Jews united themselves as a de facto nation - despite their differences, much greater than those among the Palestinians - and that's why we have a state of Israel but not of Palestine. It's that simple and Palestinians are still refusing to fully come to terms with it.
Also trying to make this conflict into something that is fundamentally different from the many similar conflicts around the world is just blatant manipulation. It's very easy to bring Palestine and Taiwan on the same level because they are largely similar problems as far as politics and feeling is involved. Which is why we shouldn't be focusing on feelings and politics but fact and accepted rules.
Israel is a problem because
it violates the rules it imposes on others and not because it does anything to "Palestine" because no matter how much anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish crowd screams there still isn't a "Palestine" to speak of. And we don't know if it there would be a Palestine if Israel suddenly started to obey the rules. We genuinely don't.
The reason why Arab states fought "for Palestine" was because it was meant to become a part of territory of either Nasser's "United Arab Republic" or Jordan's Hashemite Kingdom. Many fight against Israel hoping for a Caliphate. If there wasn't a common enemy Gaza might prefer to split from West Bank to benefit more from offshore gas fields that would fall within its EEZ etc. West Bank would limit access to water which is an extremely scarce and strategic resource.
Palestinian statehood is as much an external problem as it is an internal one, but admitting the latter doesn't help making money on "cause" and "Palestine" is still much more of a business venture than a genuine nation. Nation-building is difficult. Look at Afghanistan if you don't believe me.
Here are the
de facto two sides of the conflict:
- State of Israel
- Civilian population of Palestinian territories
This asymmetry is precisely why the conflict exists. Otherwise it would have ended in 1948.
EOT.
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Israel’s president Isaac Herzog accused Palestinians in Gaza of being collectively responsible for the attack. “It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians [being] not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true,” he said on Friday. “They could have risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’état.”
The scary part it that exactly the same thing can be said of Israeli civilians who could have fought against their government when it violates human rights and commits war crimes. Therefore whit his statement the president of Israel justified all acts of aggression committed against Israeli civilians.
He also effectively expressed explicit or implicit support for collective punishment which is a war crime.
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Map of the area in Gaza strip that IDF wants evacuated:
Since this is urban combat here's the best illustration of the environment where the fighting will take place. This is the area that IDF wants evacuated (1200x 2000 pixels):
This is the closest analogue:
ISIL had 4k fighters against 40k of SDF.
Mosul had 1,8m in the city and the forces were approximately 100k vs 10k.
In both cases proportion of attacking to defending force is 10:1 and it is the accepted textbook "safe" threshold for successful operation in urban areas.
It's likely that IDF will deploy similar contingent to that in Mosul. Hamas forces are unknown because once IDF gets drawn into the city they may prefer to stage raids from southern parts of Gaza strip where the population is being moved.
Current situation - comparison Rybar and ISW:
At this point we can assume that the contested zone around Gaza has largely been neutralised and fighting is mostly at the boundary and in isolated spots that IDF hasn't entered yet. E.g. Sderot has been evacuated by IDF and will likely serve as a staging ground so it's unlikely that the entire area is "contested". More likely there's IDF presence but sporadic infiltrations or attacks take place.
So what's left is patience. The assault should allegedly begin in just several hours.
❗️ — Israeli Prime-Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: We will not forget, We will not pardon what happened to us, and we will not allow the world to forget this disaster by any means necessary
