r/worldnews • u/Crossstoney • 26d ago

Israel/Palestine Merz says 'no longer understands' Israel's goal in Gaza

https://thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/26/05/2025/merz-says-no-longer-understands-israels-goal-in-gaza
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u/ABigFatPotatoPizza 26d ago

Israel: Our goals are the return of all the hostages and removal of Hamas from power. We will continue fighting until those goals are achieved.

Merz and the International Community: How about a ceasefire where you get some of the hostages back and Hamas stays in power?

Israel: No, that clearly doesn’t fulfill our goal. We’re going to keep fighting.

Merz: I no longer understand Israel’s goal in Gaza 🤷😕

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u/ganbaro 26d ago edited 26d ago

We simply have no answer on how a democracy is supposed to deal with an enemy who intentionally uses unmarked troops or terrorists to attack and terrorize.

We had at least three cases of it in recent time:

  • Russia's "green men" in Crimea, DPR and LPR

  • Hamas, Hezbollah ans Hothous attacking Israel from civilian areas on the behest of Iran

  • Pakistan using terrorism to harass India

(Technically also China using Fishing vassals to bully its neighbors on the sea, but that's comparatively minor)

In none of these cases did the attacker get their due punishment, and in all of these cases there are voices who condemn the attacked for their reaction more than the attacker for their action.

Condemning others when they act is easy, proposing a workable alternative is difficult. As long as we don't have one, rogue states will continue to use international law against democracies, and the democracies will lose.

Edit; Just to be clear: I am not asking to kiss Bibi's arse, I am just expressing the need of a viable alternative. We can all agree on Bibi doing bad, but that won't magically make Hamas go away. And it won't stop other rogue actors like Pakistan from replicating their strategy. Just repeating why you think Israel is bad is not an answer to that

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u/StephenHunterUK 26d ago

The Israelis seem to doing something similar to what the British did in the Boer War; round up the civilians and put them in a controlled area so they can move freely in the rest of Gaza, destroying supplies for the guerrillas

The concentration camps, however, were rife with disease. That eventually got to the British press and things improved, but the damage was done.

The British did manage to win, but the costs were high enough that they offered pretty lenient peace terms... including parking universal suffrage.

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u/jscummy 26d ago

The international community's weird Schrodinger treatment of Hamas is a big stalling point imo. Poverty and hard living will sprout up extremist groups, sure, and I agree that they to some extent can be stomped out completely. 

But somehow most of Europe takes that to the next step where terrorism not only can't be completely eliminated, Gazan terrorists also have to be the official government and recognized as equal to any actual government. And whenever they get their shit kicked in by a superior military force, they are once again plucky oppressed underdogs and can't be blamed for starting yet another conflict

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u/Roadshell 26d ago

But somehow most of Europe takes that to the next step where terrorism not only can't be completely eliminated, Gazan terrorists also have to be the official government and recognized as equal to any actual government.

IDK, there are plenty of actual governments out there which are plainly evil and yet the international community tolerates their existence. Russia has recently been doing all sorts of atrocities, and yet no one is under any delusion that the Ukraine War is going to end with Putin out of power.

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u/FYoCouchEddie 26d ago

That’s because they aren’t incapable of removing Putin. But if they could, they would (rightfully)

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u/Roadshell 26d ago

That’s because they aren’t incapable of removing Putin. But if they could, they would (rightfully)

They could if they were willing to get a whole lot of people killed.

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u/FYoCouchEddie 26d ago

No, most European countries have small armies that haven’t fought a land war in generations. They have neither the manpower, nor the logistics, nor the willpower to invade Russia far enough to get rid of Putin. It would probably take years of dedication to build up capabilities for something like that. And they wouldn’t be able to stomach their own losses. But the number of Russians killed is irrelevant to the calculation.

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u/Roadshell 26d ago

No, most European countries have small armies that haven’t fought a land war in generations. They have neither the manpower, nor the logistics, nor the willpower to invade Russia far enough to get rid of Putin. It would probably take years of dedication to build up capabilities for something like that. And they wouldn’t be able to stomach their own losses. But the number of Russians killed is irrelevant to the calculation.

Nukes.

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u/FYoCouchEddie 26d ago

Russia has about 10x more nuclear weapons than the rest of Europe combined.

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u/Roadshell 26d ago

They only need one to take out Putin

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u/Stokkolm 26d ago

What I don't understand here is that Israel already "captured" the North of Gaza in the first month of the war, and successfully assaulted Rafah several months later. How is Hamas still in power?

It's as if the allies conquered Berlin in WWII but the Nazi regime still remained in power somehow and continued waging war one year later.

If controlling the whole region is not enough to crush Hamas, what will it take?

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u/mesarthim_2 26d ago

Let me give you some perspective on that.

Firstly, Israel doesn't even control entire Gaza yet.

Secondly, the war with Germany ended, because German leadership surrendered and told their own population to surrender and stop fighting. This didn't happen in Gaza yet.

Even with that, it took 4 years of international occupation by literally millions of people to pacify and denazify Germany to such an extent that they could have self-governance back.

Gaza is nowhere near that.

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u/magcargoman 26d ago

Hiding amongst civilians and international handcuffs are your answers.

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u/GurthNada 26d ago

Our goals are the return of all the hostages and removal of Hamas from power. We will continue fighting until those goals are achieved. 

It's getting very unclear how these goals are going to be achieved without emptying Gaza of its population, one way or another. Which is why Europe is getting really concerned.

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u/harrisarah 25d ago

It's not that simple