I like that you are honest, and you also seem like a reasonable human being, which is admirable.

Thank you for the sentiment. Especially online I think that can get lost.

I know the situation is not black and white and that both sides are complicit to the current situation, I just think that the human cost isn’t justifiable, and achieving it at any cost , which seems to be the intent of the Israelian government, even if that means sacrificing their hostages, which makes it even harder to sympathize.

I guess I’ve just not been convinced that Israel is willing to achieve it “at any cost.” Given my knowledge of modern warfare, granted which is only an armchair level, it does seem clear that Israel is fighting with many self imposed limitation all designed to minimize the civilian casualties that must be suffered. I think that’s the core of why most are sympathetic; they see a similar self-restraint on the part of Israel’s armed forces. It’s almost been impossible to follow the last 20 years or so of these off again on again conflicts and not see the pattern of Hamas’s terrorism and war crimes; and then see them continue it because they face no international consequences for them.

At some point in this conflict every “neutral” observer will “look closer” at a particularly wild claim made by Israel or Hamas like “Hamas’s HQ is located under a Hospital and they have a torture dungeon under there”, “Hamas launches rockets from UN ran schools”, “Check out Hamas $leader’s dope crib in Quatar” or “Israel shells Hospital 500 children dead.” and time and time again they’re going to see the IDF largely didn’t do what Hamas said they did; and Hamas did what the IDF said they did. And most people can only see so many cases of Hamas recklessly committing blatant war crimes, murdering it’s own citizens, not having elections, calling for genocide etc… before they start to sympathize with Israel.

And yes, the father/child was a metaphor, but as you put it can also be a school bully (Israel) and systemically bullied kid (Palestine).

I guess the issue is that most see the metaphor reversed.

And I think tunnels were first constructed to facilitate the trade between people in Palestine and the neighboring villages and towns outside Gaza, but then were repurposed by Hamas for their war operations.

That’s definitely how the ones in the south near the Rafa crossing were originally constructed. Old fashioned smuggling. But the ones in the North are almost exclusively built by Hamas for warfare purposes. As both weapons depot and as ways to cross the border for raids into Israel without getting detected. The use of those tunnels for warfare has been a recurring theme in the series of conflicts since the disengagement.

No matter the origin, the use of those tunnels for war fighting does make them valid military targets.

So one can argue that if this Intifada didn’t occur, Hamas wouldn’t exist nowadays. It was an angry reaction of desperate people (not defending here), just giving a bit of food for thoughts.

I’d agree with that. Israel surely could have worked faster after the end of the Cold War (and the defacto end of financial and miliatary support from Russia towards Israel’s direct enemies) to establish a 2 state solution. But I do think it’s reasonable to note, that the First Intifada started in '87 8 years after Israel proved it was willing to trade land for peace with the Sinai deal with Egypt.

The only way to solve this problem is Israel to offer Palestine some concessions, cease fire and start treating them fairly in exchange of change of the leadership in the country and disarmament of the Hamas war wing

What sort of concessions would Israel need to offer Hamas and Gaza that they haven’t already offered them?