As Gazans Scrounge for Food and Water, Hamas Sits on a Rich Trove of Supplies

shatal@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 119 points –
As Gazans Scrounge for Food and Water, Hamas Sits on a Rich Trove of Supplies
nytimes.com
98

This reads like straight propaganda, its absolutely true Hamas as stockpiles.

Know who else has stock piles of food and water? Isreal, and the UNRWA... hell the UN stockpile is sitting in trucks ready to get to the civilians.

What is the military utility of cutting food and water, then saying ... ohh look at the besieged city, look at how evil the people in the city are not sharing food and water amongst themselves. Know who else isn't sharing Food and Water inside of Israel ? The IDF!

Will these terrible conditions drive the Palestinians to force their government to release the hostages? I think that is the question that so many people are wondering. I don’t know enough about the crisis to speculate on an answer so I pose the question, what does anyone think it will take for them to release the hostages?

killing uninvolved civilians wont force anyone to release hostages, it is Hamas plan to get more civilians killed which bolsters their mission, recruitment, and global recognition.

the UNRWA

Separating the UNRWA from Hamas is pedantic and meaningless at this point. They have been totally co-opted by Hamas.

What is the military utility of cutting food and water

They cut off their own aid. No country provides aid to the state they are actively at war with. Dozens of aid trucks are indeed entering Gaza from other countries.

Hamas controls the UN? That is a strong position

But sure, lets go with it, Then Hamas has food, water, medicine ready for the civilians in Gaza, waiting in trucks sitting in Egypt waiting to cross. Which is what Israel wants them to do, right? Supply their own citizens....

Hamas has food, water, medicine ready for the civilians in Gaza, waiting in trucks sitting in Egypt

The food, water and resources are in the Hamas tunnels in Gaza, not in Egypt.

The person I was responding to said the UNRWA was controlled by Hamas, which would make the UNRWA supply convoys stuck in Egypt part of Hamas as well, meaning that Hamas is trying to supply the civilians...

Its ludicrous, so I was demonstrating to the grandparent poster why their position was incorrect by taking it at face value and going to its logical conclusion

They can be in both places and still be a true statement...

Hamas is not the Arab League. The Arab League does have outsized influence in the UN. The Arab League doesn't so much care about Hamas (or Palestinians) as they do shitting on Israel.

Then Hamas has food, water, medicine ready for the civilians in Gaza

Israel arranged that. Those countries didn't want to provide aid because they don't actually like Hamas, because Hamas-alllied terrorists struck in their countries (and others). This is why they don't accept Palestinian refugees.

Hamas does appropriate those goods whenever it can, though.

So, regardless of what happens and what everyone is doing or not doing, it's always Israel's fault?

When you blockade supplies and infrastructure from an entire region of people, most of whom have done nothing wrong, then yes, food shortages are your fault.

You seem to forget that Hamas is the acting government of Gaza.

So the people of Gaza should just elect a new government. Why do you suppose they don't?

Assuming that it's an honest question and not just bait - at this point I would say indoctrination.

Hamas is in power in Gaza for more than 20 years.

That means that every person in Gaza under the age of 25 went to schools run by Hamas, only read books that were written or approved by Hamas, only saw television shows and movies that were made or approved by Hamas etc.

Since more than 50% of the people in Gaza are under 25, and from those that are over 25 about 50% voted for Hamas, I reckon that the current situation is that most people there only know Hamas and its ideology.

It was bait. The best organized groups in oppressed areas are extremists. We saw that when Hosni Mubarak got tossed in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood was instantly elected, because they were the most organized. Same goes for Hamas. Who was a serious oppoment to the only group capable of getting anthing actually done in Gaza? Israeli intelligence must have known they were going to get elected.

How many elections have happened since?

Are you saying that the Egyptians are oppressed?

Also Hamas won the elections by a small margin, just a few percentages more than the PLO at the time. It's not like everyone in Gaza rallied behind them (at least then).

The reason that there were no elections after that is that once they won, they Putin'ed the opposition and threw all the PLO party members from the building rooftop.

Getting kind of lazy with your talking points, you are just copying and pasting the same response to different people.

Well, you essentially said the same thing..

The food, water, energy, and medical embargo of the Gazan people are all publicly acknowledged by the Israel Government. So yes... those things are their fault. They proudly claim responsibility.

You seem to forget that Hamas is the acting government of Gaza.

While it is true Hamas is the governing body of Gaza, its irrelevant. Israel controls all inputs and outputs of Gaza, nothing gets in or out without IDF permission.

Gaza can't accept humanitarian aid from the UN, the IDF is preventing it.

Gaza can't trade with other countries for food, the IDF is preventing it.

Gaza can't released civilians to leave the war zone....

If your running a embargoed prison camp, and you don't let anyone leave, and you don't let any food or water in... that makes you responsible. If you release press statements proudly stating your cutting off all food water energy and medicine from the prison camp, it simply removes all doubt.

Not entirely accurate - the IDF has already allowed more than 70 trucks of humanitarian aid to go through, but this article is saying something else - it says that there is enough food, water, medical supply and resources inside the prison camp.

It's just that its leaders refuse to share it.

The daily needs of the Gazan people are 500 trucks, and that was before the war started, if anything those needs are larger now.

So yes, 70 trucks have been allowed through in 3 weeks? of the war.

70/10,500 < 1% of need

It's insufficient, and the the starving, people are still starving.

I'm not sure where the 500 trucks number comes from, but so far there are no reports about people in Gaza dying from dehydration or starvation.

I'm not disagreeing that it's tragic and that there are many innocent people, from both sides, that are getting caught in the crossfire. I do think that it's important to reflect the reality, that the situation there is more complex than "Israel bad Palestinian good"

Innocent people be them Palestinian, Israel, Jordanian, etc don't deserve to be bombed, starved, denied water, and medical care to make a point about which belligerent is worse.

True.

Keep in mind that throughout this war Hamas has continued to fire rockets at Israel - more than 7,000 so far, all targeting civilian population.

I don't think Israel has any choice here.

How would you react?

I'll take a stab at it. Without trying to wish away things that can't be wished for.

Transition the administration of the contested area (mandatory Palestine basically) over to a secular representative government. With peacekeeping provided by the UN. The secular government should be completely separate from any religion, but have the right to religion as part of the Constitution.

Encourage massive economic integration between the different ethnic populations. There will be civil turmoil for quite a while, but we're winning slowly, demonstrating the people the future is better together. It'll probably take two or three generations until things settle down. So we're looking at an occupying force for 40 to 60 years.

To add legitimacy to this government, they should have a truth and reconciliation panel covering and forgiving all of the crimes of the past, they should objectively, and harshly come down on any land crimes, hate crimes, religious persecution, religious exclusion, that happens inside the country.

One huge problem, is there is a large population of young men, who don't have any prospects or hope. So any form of stability is going to come from keeping those men occupied, invested in the future. Be that military service, Peace corps service, education, those men have to be occupied. Otherwise it'll become a recruiting ground for any religious fascist.

The Rwanda's Resilience solution? Are you suggesting to merge the entire region - Israel + the 4 groups of Palestinians to a single country?

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You’re going to have people that will never see any merit to the other sides position no matter what. You want to know the flat objective truth? Both parties here fucking suck. Both parties are committing war crimes and atrocities. Every retaliation by either side is vehemently defended as justified because of a prior retaliation which was in turn defended because of the retaliation before it. Over and over again.

Global politics being what it is only ensures that no matter what we are going to ride this roller coaster into oblivion and a lot of people are going to have to die for no justifiable reason. Each side is pushing hard to justify their actions and to be presented as the victim. Both sides have decades of experience working the PR front. In 15 years we will be discussing the latest violence in the region.

Pessimistic perhaps, but I’d just say it’s realistic.

Only when it is. Like now.

You seem to forget how this war started.

Every palestinian remembers the Nakba.

Let me guess, you're a "from the river to the sea" supporter

Am I wrong? Is the Nakba not how it started?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4upvoxP9-kg

It's.... complicated. There is a back and forth through out history.

I'd say the British are the most responsible for the current situation, but it really doesn't matter. People need to just be able to live, and nobody should have the right to claim land for a religion to the exclusion of anyone else.

This land is for religion X and nobody else... these people are wrong, and only create violence. (yes, that includes most of our current participants in today's war).

The thing is the morality of the issue is not that complicated.

It's as complicated as the genocide of native americans and their expulsion into "reservations" where they still lack the same access to infrastructure, healthcare, education as the rest of the country today.

As complicated as apartheid south africa or the irish republicans.

The history is complicated in the sense that it is war with many atrocities and injustices. But the root of the issue, the cause for all these atrocities that the colonialists suffer in retaliation is colonialism.

Sure, there was a wronged party, and many students will get their PhDs in analyzing guilt and documenting atrocities.

The USA is still in no hurry to give back land to the Native Americans. They are as sorry as all heck... but the practical reality is they want to continue to exist, and are not willing to give up anything strategic for historical purposes.

The key to life is, the past is informative, but not important, the future is what is important. Living in peace but wronged is better then dying right in war.

Right, but when someone asks me who I stand with on these conflicts, it's not the English, the Boers or the English (again).

The native americans, the Zulu, the IRA all committed terrible things on the colonialist civilians as well. And yet when you ask today who was in the right to fight the war that was fought, it's those parties. Never the colonialists.

Are you asking for Palestinians to accept apartheid?

Clearly not, the only solution is to work toward equal rights and shared economic development for all people living in the same area.

Religious wars, ethnocentric states, apartheid are unsustainable and only lead to violence.

The problem is that you're Americanising this conflict.

There are Israeli Arabs, Druze and Bedouin that lived in the region for centuries and are now happy to identify as Israeli (look online for Arab Israelis for Israel. Get out of the echo chambers). There are Jewish families that have been there since the Roman empire.

On the flip side there are hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that migrated to the region in the 1930's and 40's, their family names today still indicate their family origins in Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq etc.

If you really want to dive down the historical rabbit hole of the region we'll be here for hours, but trying to frame this conflict as a white colonisers vs indigenous people is historically and factually incorrect.

But is it incorrect? You have people from Staten island and California move into an arab families home today and the IDF will protect them and the family whose home just got occupied better not twitch a muscle too abruptly. You're painting this as if I have to draw from long settled history to support my argument, I don't.

But this displacement has been going on for close to a hundred years now. The establishment of the State of Israel had the zionist militias empty out villages and force the people into the desert trail of tears style. Like the establishment of any other colonial state and not just the US, but like the examples I mentioned before so I don't know where this "americanising" is coming from, South Africa, Ireland, Congo, Haiti and many many many other countries before Israel.

You're mixing Gaza and the west bank.

This is about Gaza and Hamas. The IDF had no presence in Gaza for 20 years now and Israel has not displaced anyone from there since 1967.

Unless your argument is that Hamas represents all the Palestinians everywhere?

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That really depends on how far back in history you want to go. We can even start with Muhammad and the Jewish tribes massacres (Banu Qurayza for example).

But honestly, I don't think that that's a productive approach. This is a live, dynamic and constantly changing conflict. The things that defined it 100 or even 50 years ago are no longer relevant.

The israeli people living there today have no ancestry back to mohammedan times. They're 99% converts. But really, you wanted to go back to the start. As if you are going to find some historical excuse that could justify the use of white phosphorus, bombing of hospitals, the bombing of roads that the population were told to take to move south by the very same army doing the bombardment. Some point in time where you can point to and claim "See, this is why the israeli's are justified in starving and bombing and terrorizing these people in an open-air prison".

The israeli people living there today have no ancestry back to mohammedan times

I don't understand this claim. Can you explain?

You're diverting, arguing with a straw man and pushing propaganda. Everything you said can be disproved by a quick Google search.

I'm going to pull the "no u" card here, because you're the one who brought up "how this war started" to divert from the ongoing genocide.

I was referring to the attack on 7/10.

You framed it as a battle in an ongoing war that been going since Israel was founded.

I answered that if we want to look at the history of the Jewish Arab conflict it can be traced to the early days of Islam.

Your response to that was false propaganda.

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No, just the times they have broken international law.

Edit: Oh no poor Israel being constantly accused of breaking international law after constantly breaking it ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

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So cutting of food and water doesnt even hurt Hamas it's just to be cruel to civilians?

Historically besieged armies didn't starve their own citizens, everyone starved.

Yes, but the civilians starved before the army did. That's what we're seeing here.

From the total war doctrine, it does hurt Hamas, putting pressure on the civil government will hurt the ability to conduct war.

Their used to be a theory that you could break the fighting spirit of a people with embargos and bombings, but it fell out of favor in wwii.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war

*after wwii. Goebbels most famous words are "Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg?" from his speech at the Berliner Sportpalast in 1943. But even after wwii the US bombing campaigns and massacres in Korea and Vietnam still stem from a total war doctrine. It never really went away.

When all you have is a hammer.... I'm not sure it ever worked to break the fighting spirit.

Yep.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Hamas has hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel for vehicles and rockets; caches of ammunition, explosives and materials to make more; and stockpiles of food, water and medicine, the officials said.

The Arab and Western officials who described Hamas’s supply situation all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were disclosing information gleaned from human sources, communications intercepts and other streams of intelligence.

While the blockade has left Gaza’s roughly 2 million people scraping by with what little food and water they scrounge up, it does not yet appear to have begun to degrade Hamas’s ability to fight.

Israel has so far refused to allow any fuel to be delivered to Gaza, even as other aid begins to trickle in, leaving much of the enclave without electricity to power hospitals, desalinate or pump water, fire bakers’ ovens and run internet and cellphone services.

The United Nations, which handles the bulk of humanitarian relief work in Gaza, said on Thursday that it “has almost exhausted its fuel reserves and begun to significantly reduce its operations.”

Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, a freed hostage, said that while in captivity she ate the same single meal that Hamas fighters eat every day: pita bread with two kinds of cheese and cucumber.


The original article contains 885 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

You know I somehow doubt this considering hamas didn't mount a permanent offensive of any kind

They literally raided for less than a day and than ran back with hostages. No way they're just sitting on stockpiles of fuel and resources if it couldn't be immediately used, and they were aware that everything was going to get intensely bombed anyway.

Yeah they probably do have stockpiles, but nothing substantial.

Even the article mentions the released hostage who saw them eating the same one meal a day of bread and cheese.

They literally raided for less than a day and than ran back with hostages

That's incorrect - the Israelis continued to capture and kill them inside Israel even a week after the attack. Some of the terrorists came with provisions that were meant to last for a long time, until the area calmed down, and then to launch a second attack from the inside.

Hamas released videos from the tunnels showing stockpiles of weaponry and supplies. The hostages also testified that they showered every other day, while the rest of Gaza is essentially cut from water supply. Those water had to come from somewhere.

US and European press coverage on Gaza is totally discredited. They just parrot Israeli talking points. Go to Al Jazeera English if you want to know what's going on.

Al Jazeera is a Qatar funded news outlet, and the Qatari government has tight relationship with Hamas. I would take their reports cautiously.

Reuters and AP are the most unbiased it seems, but it's always a good practice to follow multiple outlets - both pro and against each side.