Projected last night at the Free Palestine Encampment at Cal, Berkeley. Colonial capitalism drives the war machine that bulldozes people from Gaza, to the Congo, to the Philippines. It’s important for solarpunks to show up in solidarity with native peoples against imperialism. Sustainability depends on the knowledge and stewardship of native populations. And, most importantly, Zionist punks fuck off! -
Though the projection is about solarpunk, a side note about the situation in Gaza…
…recently, the UN demining agency (I’ve forgotten their acronym) published an estimate of war damage in Gaza. They assessed that there was “more rubble in Gaza than Ukraine”. Since that seemed unbelievable, I consulted various sources, among them a review by the Lund University Center for Middle-Eastern Studies named Monitoring Israel’s Destruction of Gaza from Space.
What I found out:
For me, journalistic photos from Gaza most remind of what happened in Grozny, the capital of Chechnia during the First Chechen War (disproportionate amounts of Russian firepower reduced it to a trash heap).
Since both sides are responsible for war crimes (Hamas at first and now Israel) and the military response has overshot any goal associated with justice, I support any action that makes the conflict stop. Hamas started this war, but Israel has gone far beyond sanity while responding. Later on, I think the leaders of both sides ought be brought before the International Criminal Court and answer charges of war crimes (which could take decades).
How to ensure another war won’t happen… much harder without structural change in both societies. Considering the way Israel currently functions and how the Palestinian Authority functioned in Gaza (Hamas militants took it over, things seem better on the West Bank), there’s a high chance that someone from either side could ignite a new conflict in future.
We need a one-state solution but Israel has stopped every attempt at peace and reconciliation since before it was even a state. They purposefully funded Hamas and have taken key parts of the West Bank to prevent Palestine from having a state. They don’t want peace. I don’t know why that’s so hard for people to understand, especially considering the violence they’ve been doing to Palestinians for years before October 7th. They put Gaza in an open air prison, cut off travel, electricity, food (they put them on a calorie limit - cruelly calling it putting them on a diet), sleep (the constant buzzing of drones made it difficult to sleep or study in Gaza and constantly traumatized them with stress and fear), Trash, water, etc. I hate the both-sidesing. Hamas is a response to horrible conditions. That’s how they recruit. Israel needs to stop being an oppressor, they need to make the move or be forced to do it. It’s not a both sides need to be nice kinda situation. One side is a response to the other side’s violence and colonialism, one side is a symptom, not the cause.
I agree that Hamas is a response to conditions. I do recall that a long while ago, Israel did fund Hamas, in hope of counterbalancing Fatah.
But, just like many other movements, Hamas seems to perpetuate the conditions which created it. Their rule is Gaza hasn’t only brought a war with Israel, but also a suppression of democracy and repression of people from competing Palestinian movements (mainly Fatah).
Israeli forces do often act like they’re a recruitment branch of Hamas, stirring up anger. I don’t doubt it the slightest that Hamas has received many recruits because the IDF again killed someone who randomly got in their way (or again made the calculation that for a junior Hamas official, 15 civilian lives are OK to take).
But, despite knowing the above-mentioned - I don’t see a way out of the long-term conflict without both sides changing.
As long as Israel behaves like it wants to destroy (or drive away) all Palestinians - there will be Palestinian politicians who call for the destruction of Israel and support terrorist tactics, with considerable support among the population, even if their rule is not democratic (the rule of Hamas in Gaza only started democratically). Meanwhile, fear of revenge and terror, fear of appearing weak and another Arab-Israeli war - this ensures that politicians in Israel who promise to deal harshly with Palestinians get votes and frequently attain power.
Since the conflict is now quite old (at least 70 years) and the fighting parties have lost a viable framework for solving it, they need either massive luck or considerable foreign assistance / advise / pressure to find a stable solution.
Re: one state solution: did you mean two state solution? Because I think - but I could be wrong - that Israel must somehow come to the point of understanding that a Palestinian state with a reasonably defined territory (not a patchwork-of-enclaves territory) can be their neighbour, but the current situation is unstable.