Israel’s military has claimed it has encircled Gaza City and divided the besieged coastal strip into two, as Gaza came under its third total communications outage since the start of the war.

“Today, there is north Gaza and south Gaza,” Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters on Sunday, calling it a “significant stage” in Israel’s war against Hamas.

Israeli media reported that troops are expected to enter Gaza City within 48 hours. Strong explosions were seen in northern Gaza after nightfall.

But the “collapse in connectivity” across Gaza reported by internet access advocacy group NetBlocks.org and confirmed by the Palestinian telecom company Paltel made it even more complicated to convey details of the new stage of the military offensive.

  • Andy@slrpnk.net
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    1 year ago

    It seems to me that they’re planning on squeezing the people from the north into the south, then closing off the north from any return. This is consistent with a plan of annexing and depopulating Gaza.

    If so, this would be ethnic cleansing. This strategy appears to be genocide.

    • pingveno@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      One issue the IDF has been working with for a while is the sheer amount of tunneling by Hamas. There is dense housing right on top of the tunnels. Destroying the tunnels can lead to the above buildings collapsing, as well as the damage caused by any explosives.

      Will they annex and depopulate Gaza? I hope not. That’s just going to create another generation of fighters itching for revenge. Grievances outlast Hamas, and they will likely find a form. That said, maybe a single state solution will be the best form of government, as long as Palestinians, Jewish Israelis, and other groups are guaranteed equal rights. The half-ass “two state” attempt right now isn’t working.

      • NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        That said, maybe a single state solution will be the best form of government, as long as Palestinians, Jewish Israelis, and other groups are guaranteed equal rights. The half-ass “two state” attempt right now isn’t working.

        I guarantee, if they actually offered that nobody would complain. But they won’t, to “preserve Israel’s Jewish character”. See: Their rejection of Palestinian right of return.

        Hell, if they were willing to do that Israel wouldn’t exist and we’d just have had a unified Palestine in 1948.

        They want to keep Gaza and the West Bank under military rule until they can fully depopulate them and create Lebensraum.

        • Tavarin@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          you’re ignoring the fact that the Palestinian Arabs do not want a two state solution, and the majority of them want to genocide the Jews.

          • orrk@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            so where do you get this from exactly? because the PA has been working toward a two-state solution, while the Israeli government has been strengthening Hamas to undermine the PA’s attempt at getting a two-state solution passed, and yes, Netanyahu has said this openly, for years

            • Tavarin@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              The Palestinian’s under the PLO had a charter to completely reject any two state solution until 1994, and two state negotiations barely lasted a couple years before violence broke out again.

              So no, the Palestinian Arabs do not, and have never wanted a two state solution.

              • orrk@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                yet the PLO was dissolved and replaces by the PA in accordance with the Camp David agreements, of course Israel conveniently forgot they existed, so for about 10 years the Palestinians tried to do the whole peaceful negotiation bit, and got jack shit, until a terror group backed by Bibi won the civil war in Gaza, putting an end to the negotiations entirely.

                so I ask if the Palestinians when’t interested in a two-state solution, where is the PLO?

                • Tavarin@lemmy.ca
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                  1 year ago

                  The PA also did not want a two state solution, they wanted a one state solution that they controlled.

                  • orrk@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    what exactly are you talking about? are you just repeating stuff you heard that matches your notion of “all Muslims are evil and want to kill jews”?

              • NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                So I won’t actually respond to this moron, but if anybody else wants to know why what they’re saying is completely wrong reply to me.

                • Tavarin@lemmy.ca
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                  1 year ago

                  Because you’re a moron, I see.

                  Palestinians want to control the land, and most want to expel the Jews. That has been the case since the founding of Israel. Sorry you’re blind to that.

          • nBodyProblem@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            The onion did a bit about ten years ago on the Palestine-Israel conflict, reporting:

            “Israeli and Palestine leaders have shown they see eye to eye in nearly every facet of the proposed solution, including such provisions as: seizing all territory, watching the opposition burn in righteous fire, and building a unified nation on the corpses of their enemy. Yet, they still haven’t come any closer to putting a stop to the conflict”

            Kind of sums it up.

          • NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Uh… The PLO had a lot of national support for a hot minute there, until Netenyahu just up and shut down the Oslo accords. That’s what made terror as popular in Palestine as it is now; there’s simply no other means of resistance left to them.

            • Tavarin@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              You mean the PLO who’s second charter was:

              “Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit”

              They weren’t exactly fans of a two state solution either.

            • Tavarin@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              For most of the time Israel has existed the Palestinian stance has been a one state under Palestine without Jews. They didn’t want a secular democracy, they wanted to get rid of the Jews.

                • Tavarin@lemmy.ca
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                  1 year ago

                  Of course it had Jews, long before it had Muslims. Doesn’t change that the majority of Palestinian Arabs want to get rid of the Jews.

                  And we’re talking about the area since the formation of Israel.

                  • NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social
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                    1 year ago

                    Doesn’t change that the majority of Palestinian Arabs want to get rid of the Jews.

                    Bruh Jews and Muslims have lived together for 1400 years what are you even on about?

      • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
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        1 year ago

        The half-ass “two state” attempt right now isn’t working.

        It’s because it’s half-assed, by Netanyahu. He won’t allow Palestine state to be formed, as well as will not return the West Bank and evict the illegal settlement, but instead either allow the settler to stay or carve that land for himself. He also want Palestine to demilitarised. A country without military is a sitting duck, so it’s understandable no one wanted that.

        • NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social
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          No, he doesn’t want Palestine. More moderate/leftist Israelis want a demilitarized Palestine. The Israeli far right just wants them off the map for their lebensraum.

          • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
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            He doesn’t want the state Palestine to exists and the people who identified as Palestinian. If he doesn’t want Palestine(the land) he will retreat from West Bank. Instead, he continue to occupy it and illegally build more settler there.

      • Andy@slrpnk.net
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        1 year ago

        I agree with this 100%. I think it needs to get said more, and more: Palestinians deserve full civil rights including the freedom of movement throughout a single state covering all of historic Palestine.

      • orrk@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        considering that Israel hasn’t been interested in the two-state solution and has been working hard to undermine it, of course it didn’t work

    • BabyWah@lemmy.world
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      No, they’re just going to kill everyone in the north then turn around and attack the south, pressuring Egypt into opening its borders and displacing the rest of the population into the Sinai Peninsula. The blackout is back, so they can kill indiscriminately now.

      Then use Gaza as a neutral zone, something like North and South Korea have to cut off all ties.

      Then it’s just a matter of time to do the same to the West Bank.

      They’re already lobbying the EU and US to put pressure on Egypt to give up the Sinai peninsula (like it’s so normal to give up an entire fucking peninsula). That’s why Sisi said Europe should take in Gazans themselves if they care so much about human rights.

      You know about Netanyahu’s plans we heard about a few days ago and everybody shrugged it off as a 'theory/study? This is exactly what’s happening.

      This also explains why they don’t care about civilian casualties. There will be no Gaza anymore, and the more Palestinians they kill right now, the less future terrorists for them (their opinion).

    • spirinolas@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Israel doesn’t give a shit about Gaza. Gaza is a distraction. The real deal is the West Bank were the settlers/militia are being armed by Israel. There are already videos of Ben Gvir giving assault weapons to the settlers and riling them up. They are the ones who will commit the genocide in Israel’s behalf. Shit is already going down. The militia is depopulating villages, commuting murder and arson, all while the IDF just stands and watches. But the media only shows Gaza. Even Biden already realized what happened and is shitting his britches realizing he supported what is about to happen. This are the first stages of a genocide.

      • orrk@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        they want both Gaza AND Palestine, that’s why Netanyahu was supporting Hamas, to use them against the PA in the west bank

      • Andy@slrpnk.net
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        I agree with you. I’m not sure where we’re in disagreement.

        I don’t know the precise planning. I’m guessing Israel would prefer to focus on depopulating Gaza first, and let the Settlers terrorize the West Bank until they’re ready to reallocate troops. Then I think that once they’ve got secure control of Gaza, they’ll wait for an opportunistic terror attack in the West Bank as pretense to redirect the troops. But I think they want to fully conquer Gaza first to avoid dividing their forces.

        Like I said, though, I think we all agree on the overall plan, we just don’t know the exact battle plan. But Genocide is the intent.

        • spirinolas@lemmy.world
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          I don’t think we’ll see the army blooding their hands in the West Bank. We’re going to see major atrocities there (executions, mass graves, etc) but it will be by the armed militia (aka settlers). The army will just observe to keep plausible deniability.

      • dx1@lemmy.world
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        Ben-Gvir, a settler in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has faced charges of hate speech against Arabs and was known to have a portrait in his living room of Israeli-American terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounded 125 others in Hebron, in the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. He removed the portrait after he entered politics.[5] He was also previously convicted of supporting a terrorist group known as Kach, which espoused Kahanism, an extremist religious Zionist ideology.[6]

        Under his leadership, the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), a party which espouses Kahanism and anti-Arabism, won six seats in the 2022 Israeli legislative election, and is represented in what has been called the most right-wing and hardline government in Israel’s history.[7][8][9][10] He has called for the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel who are not loyal to Israel.[10] Ben Gvir is “widely known for his openly racist, anti-Arab views and activities”.[11] Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz has said Ben Gvir represents “Jewish fascism”.[12]

        […] In the 1990s, he was active in protests against the Oslo Accords. In 1995, Ben-Gvir came to public attention for the first time, when he appeared on television brandishing a Cadillac hood ornament that had been stolen from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s car, and declared: “We got to his car, and we’ll get to him too.” Several weeks later, Rabin was assassinated by right-wing extremist Yigal Amir.[14][24]

    • Patrick S@lemmy.world
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      This was my thought as well. No one will ever be allowed back in that city. It will either be a military base or a wasteland for decades.

    • roo@lemmy.one
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      It does make sense in terms of working in a box for military awareness of enemy combatants. No expert, but that is something we’ve seen before.