1 yr. ago • 97%

White House suggests 'pauses' in Israel-Hamas conflict to get people out

www.reuters.com White House suggests 'pauses' in Israel-Hamas conflict to get people out

The White House on Thursday said it was exploring a series of pauses in the Israel-Hamas conflict to help people safely exit Gaza and allow humanitarian aid to get in, but reiterated its opposition to a full ceasefire.

National security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that such pauses should be temporary and localized, and insisted they would not stop Israel from defending itself.

"What we're trying to do is explore the idea of as many pauses as might be necessary to continue to get aid out and to continue to work to get people out safely, including hostages," he told reporters at a regular White House briefing.

48 comments

If the US helps get people out of Gaza, and Israel eventually blocks their return, then the US has directly participated in ethnic cleansing. I mean, I think we are already culpable in Israel’s multifaceted war crime factory, but this is a remarkable escalation of that policy. I suppose that I’d have more respect for the US if it didn’t try to cloak its support of apartheid and genocide in feel good bullshit rhetoric like “democracy” and “defense” and “humanitarian pause”. In reality Israel is fascist ethnostate, this is a genocide, and we are facilitating ethnic cleansing. The Biden administration is monstrous.

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- I'm genuinely curious, what course of action here could the US do that you wouldn't criticize? If the US helps citizens evacuate a war zone, you call it ethnic cleansing. If the US instead didn't do this and supported keeping them in Gaza, you'd say America is forcing them to be bombed to death.
  
  I can't help but think that you're fundamentally always going to criticize the US and then find a justification for it afterwards.
  
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  How about restraining Israel so they aren’t bombing in such a dangerous manner. How about acting as a mediator to get the hostages released? How about pushing Israel to stop its self destructive and inhuman behavior including: settlements, occupation, apartheid, and actively promoting Hamas. How about not pushing to make arms sales to Israel secret. How about securing public assurances that refugees will be able to return. I don’t understand why these things are so exotic and difficult to imagine for so many people.
  
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  I fully support the US trying to initiate peace talks and take a hard-line stance of anyone breaking the peace. The fuckers who attacked folks partying in the desert absolutely instigated a terrible conflict... yes there are historical grievances but we had like a decade and a half of relative stability even while Bibi was encouraging illegal settlements. That, however, does not earn a response of ethnic cleansing.
  
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  Any time the US (or any other major world power) does anything I'm going to question the motive, as it's likely motivated by greed. However, in a hypothetical where I could make the US do whatever I want in this one specific time and place, I would force a regime change in Israel to one that is, at the very least, less bloodthirsty. At the most, one that would initiate a peaceful retreat of Israeli settlers from all native Palestinian land.
  
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  Call for complete seize fire, get foreigner national out, negotiation for hostage release, initiate peace talk, send peace keeping troop via UN to West Bank, so on and so forth. There's a lot of thing a world leader can do to stop the war, instead he decided to be a yes man for a far right war criminal, sabotage every call for seize fire and keep emphasise on "right to defend" and "condemn hamas" like a broken clock. Do note that his decision help escalate the tension within the region.
  
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  Maybe just stay the fuck out of it and worry about the shitheap of problems we've got domestically
  
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- I agree with everything you said.
  
  And simultaneously, I’m thinking about how that’s going to be used as a bullet point for GOP activists to push their campaign next year, and there’s a decent chance it’ll be Trump. If Trump was still calling the shots, he’d be screaming at his generals to send half of our B-52s to carpet-bomb Gaza into dust.
  
  I hate that we are forced to choose between “participating in ethnic cleaning” and “enthusiastically participating in ethnic cleansing” for our national leadership.
  
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  There's three options for people.
  
  Actively vote for helping with ethnic cleansing
  
  Actively vote for even worse ethnic cleansing
  
  Actively do something else, with the end result being either ethnic cleansing or worse ethnic cleansing
  
  There's really nothing else we can do for the elections.
  
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Out to where ? mass displacement of population is called ethnic cleansing. mass murder of innocent lives is called collective punishment and genocide. I bet the US has a long track record of doing both but they only dare using those terminology with enemy states.

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- I think mass displacement is better than murder though. If it's infeasible to get Israel to hold off attacks, I would think that would be the lesser of two evils.
  
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  We could easily get Israel to hold off on attacks. It would start with not funding them.
  
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  Mass displacement is what Netanyahu and his far right political member want, agree to that is playing into his greasy pig hand.
  
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  I think mass displacement is better than murder though. If it’s infeasible to get Israel to hold off attacks
  
  Is murder a biological need of Israelis to not be able to hold off ?
  
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to help people safely exit Gaza

But there is no exit they are permitted to use. This is the worst kind of gaslighting.

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- Pretty sure it's implied that there would be a usable exit in this theoretical, never-happening pause. The fact that they specify getting hostages out implies that.
  
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  @PugJesus presumably they want to bring the hostages into Israel. They certainly don't want to bring the Palestinians into Israel.
  
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This is 100% a political statement and nothing more. The 'pause' will only work if both sides pause. Both sides have nothing but hate for each other they won't pause, innocent lives are much less important than getting their enemies.

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- "hey guys, can you stop fighting for a few days?? Mkay thanks!"
  
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A humanitarian pause... you mean like the UN resolution calling for a temporary ceasefire that the US vetoed?

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I sure hope those civillians will be allowed to return to their homes after this thing is over

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- What homes? They've been bombed into oblivion
  
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  Well, I sure hope they'll be allowed to return to whatever they have and that Israel and their allies will provide Palestine with an equivalent of the Marshall plan to help them get their lives back.
  
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- The Israel plan is to move them to a new open air prison in Egypt and/or spread the rest to Greece, Spain, Canada
  
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  Forceful displacement is a flagrant violation of international law. So "moving them" shouldn't be an option. They have the right to their own land.
  
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- Homes, what homes? After Israel is done there would be nothing left but destroyed buildings and civilian infrastructure.
  
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- wont happen. once the city is razed to the ground then non-citizens will be deported.
  
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But they don't want anyone to get out.

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- I think Israel wants to get everyone out of the gaza strip eventually.
  
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National security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that such pauses should be temporary and localized, and insisted they would not stop Israel from defending itself.

So, after Israel repeatedly telling Palestinians to evacuate to places Israel turned around and bombed anyway, how exactly do they think this is going to work?

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How about pausing it indefinitely and getting the leaders out to a warcrimes tribunal.

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

WASHINGTON, Nov 2 (Reuters) - The White House on Thursday said it was exploring a series of pauses in the Israel-Hamas conflict to help people safely exit Gaza and allow humanitarian aid to get in, but reiterated its opposition to a full ceasefire.

National security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that such pauses should be temporary and localized, and insisted they would not stop Israel from defending itself.

President Joe Biden spoke on Wednesday about the need for a pause to provide time for the release of hostages held by Hamas, but has ruled out calling for a full ceasefire.

United Nations experts are also urging a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, saying time is running out for Palestinian people there who find themselves at "grave risk of genocide."

Nearly four weeks of Israeli bombardment against the Gaza Strip in retaliation for deadly attacks by Hamas gunmen in southern Israel on Oct. 7 have killed at least 9,061 people, made up of a majority of women and children, health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave say.

Asked if the United States bore responsibility for civilian deaths if it was providing such weapons, Kirby insisted that Washington was not "making the targeting decisions."

The original article contains 541 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 63%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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