You say his life's work is to prevent a Palestinian state but he's doing this to keep himself out of jail, which is it cause the first seems most likely.

At any rate, whatever the reasons we are in the shit now and Iran needs a good wallop and me getting some air won't change my stance on that. Scare them now and get them to put their head back in the the sand. 

It's both. Attacking Iran does not prevent a Palestinian state, yet more war will keep him in power. He's still furthering Israeli settlements in the West Bank as well, which makes a Palestinian state harder to achieve day by day. Fallen out the news now, yet that's also still ongoing.

We've already seen what happens when you scare Iran. They fire back.

I have to ask you... you do believe that Hezzbollah and Hamas are terrorists right. Whether the want a state or not, will get it or not or have a right to it or not. I'm fairly sure 95% of the ME outside of isreal would care less about Palestine if it meant an end to war. That number is probably reducing quickly as Isreal continue to radicalise the youth.

I believe it to be worth the cost. Hit em hard... or maybe not. I'm mixed. Perhaps I'm not thinking clearly. 

The only reason for a world war would be for a shift in who controls the oil supplies. Thats what caused the first two wars. US gained control of the worlds oil supply and it looks like they are holding onto to it. I don’t see that changing.

There are many, many reasons and paths to world war or a renewed Cold war. Yeah it's usually oil but things like an AI arms race could lead to Cold War 2.0 and severe economic depression causing people to elect strong men like Hitler as an example of a route to a hot war. But yeah, as established in this thread, WW3 won't look like the first two world wars, things are too interconnected now for that type of global war with massive theaters all over the place. A lot of domino's would have to fall for it to be full scale global war.

I do believe they use terrorist attacks to further their goals. I also believe both Hamas and Hezbollah arose as resistance groups, supported by the people who saw no one else standing up for them. Hamas and Hezbollah both have civil and political divisions. They are more like a government with armed brigades that use terrorist strategies.

They're really not all that different from what the IDF is doing now, at a much much larger scale. (Except the IDF does have precision weapons, superior intelligence and doesn't need to use terror tactics) So do you believe Israel are terrorists? Or can you see the difference there between the warmongers and the caretakers.

It's all in the eye of the beholder. USA sees Hezbollah as Iran's proxy. Iran sees them as their ally. Lebanese see them as their defender after Israel invaded and occupied Lebanon for 18 years in the 80s. (When Hezbollah was founded)

I don't believe Hamas, Hezbollah are the same as Al Qaeda, ISIS, PIJ, Hilltop Youth. Their tactics though are deplorable. Just like the IDF. It would help a lot if Hamas (and PIJ) and Hezbollah would stop lobbing rockets into Israel. The Iron dome is kinda self defeating. It has encouraged firing rockets more instead of deterred. And now we're back to deadly terrorist attacks like yesterday in Tel Aviv. Violence only begets more violence until there is no one left to fight.

If 95% of the ME didn't care about Palestinians, then why are the Abraham accords falling apart... Saudi-Arabia for example won't normalize ties with Israel now until a Palestinian state.

Oh c'mon. They are nothing more than the IRA and we Irish didn't put up with them but we couldn't get rid of them. The vast majority of us, like 95% wanted the violence to stop nor did carw too much about a united Ireland and I bet this is the case in the middle East. When you start playing devil's advocate for terrorists (every terrorist is a freedom fighter to their own cause) then you need to reevaluate your position cause somethings not right. Infact they are worse than the IRA, the tactics they use and disregard for human life is as bad as Isreals which I'm starting to believe is another terrorist organisation, I really well equipped one at that. 

Was the IRA the second largest employer in Northern Ireland? (Hamas is/was after UNWRA)
Did the IRA have health units, TV stations, seats in parliament
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollah-allies-win-62-seats-lebanon-parliament-losing-2018-majority-reuters-2022-05-17/

Why did the IRA lose power. Imo because people had more to lose from them than to gain. People rather left the violence behind and enjoy living peacefully in comfort rather than die for the ideologies of unifying Ireland.

This can happen in the ME as well, but not the way Israel is going at it. Don't you think the IRA would have gotten more support if the UK had instituted apartheid, displaced people, randomly destroyed homes, nightly raids to harass the population while taking more and more land in the process. Then indiscriminately bomb Northern Ireland every couple of years to "mow the lawn".

No Hamas represents a lot more than the IRA. Not comparable. Hence why they (still) get so much support from the population. However opinions are divided, both over the tactics used and the mess Hamas has put them in. Meanwhile support for armed struggle is only rising in Gaza and the West Bank.

https://themedialine.org/top-stories/shikaki-to-tml-most-palestinians-support-west-bank-armed-group-but-dont-back-hamas/

When asked about Palestinian support for Hamas 10 months into the conflict, Shikaki explained that while a certain percentage of Palestinians support Hamas, it has never been a majority. He stated that “it has always been a minority” in both Gaza and the West Bank, with roughly 40% of Gazans consistently supporting Hamas over the past decade due to shared values. In the West Bank, support was much lower, around 20%, but has surged to 40% since October 7, not because more people share Hamas’ values, but because they now support Hamas’ policies. This shift is driven by the perception that Hamas’ attack on October 7 has brought international attention to the Palestinian cause and increased the urgency of finding a resolution.

... (lot more interesting observations in the article)

Valente shifted the discussion to Palestinian support for terrorism versus peace, particularly in the West Bank. Shikaki shared that his surveys show that “the overwhelming majority” of Palestinians in the West Bank support the formation of armed groups. For most Palestinians, these groups symbolize a rejection of the current situation—ongoing occupation, the collapse of the two-state solution, and the failure of diplomatic efforts by the Palestinian Authority. This support for armed resistance has grown, especially since the formation of the current Israeli government, with a majority of West Bank Palestinians now favoring armed struggle.

Also

https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/why-palestinians-engage-in-armed-struggle/

As a result of key historical developments and the restriction of fronts along which to organize, Palestinians have no other option than to engage in armed resistance. This resistance is currently preventing total genocide and is a necessary component of national liberation. The other plausible tactics, nonviolent resistance and electoral organizing, are not on their own viable strategies for liberating Palestine at the current political conjuncture.

Nonviolent resistance historically relies on two sources of power: leverage at the point of production (structural power) and leverage through massive numbers of people blocking the day-to-day function of urban society (associational power). In South Africa, strikes at metal and chemical plants in Durban were combined with the Defiance Campaign of nonviolent occupations and civil disobedience to ultimately bring down apartheid.

In Palestine, these sources of power have been largely eliminated because of the total exclusion of Palestinians from Israeli society and institutions. The first process of stripping away this leverage was the construction of the Histadrut, the Zionist labor management federation that displaced Palestinian workers from points of strategic leverage.


Totally different situation from Northern Ireland and the IRA.


Back to the first article, there is some hope

Friedson asked if Dr. Shikaki had any hopes for a resolution to the conflict and whether he had new polling data to share. Acknowledging the “very, very grim situation,” Shikaki expressed cautious optimism. He observed that despite the ongoing “dehumanization and lack of trust” between Palestinians and Israeli Jews, both groups are weighing the choice between regional war and peace. He stressed that, when given the option, “a majority of Israeli Jews and a majority of Palestinians” favor a comprehensive peace agreement over war. Shikaki mentioned that his team was working on a joint Israeli-Palestinian survey, to be released in the coming few weeks, that would explore this dynamic further, with the hope that leadership, possibly from the US, could help bring about such peace.


The way to defeat terrorists is to take their reason for being away.

Probably not. We made it through over 40 years of the cold-war without it escalating into another world war, and the most critical events during that period were arguably more severe than the situation we're in right now.