this post was submitted on 18 May 2025
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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If Fatah was still in power, Israel would’ve had a much more difficult time in demonizing Gaza in their propaganda outlets.
They also wouldn't need to, because the West wouldn't give a shit about Gaza without Hamas activities to put Palestine in the news. There's a reason Hamas won that election in 2006.
... Gaza was a big fucking deal back when Fatah was in power, and it was when Fatah was at the head of things that the peace process came closest to becoming reality, with significant Western interest and support.
As a humanitarian disaster?
Before I respond, are you talking about the 2005-2007 period?
Yes. Since the fucking 90s.
No, the 1990s, when it was one of the issues in US foreign policy.
Oh, you're talking about that. In that case you should know that the period of the conflict where such a thing was possible ended when Rabin was assassinated and Netanyahu took his place. See: Literally his whole career, but most relevantly:
And, well, there's a reason they call him the king of Israeli politics and it's definitely not because his policies are unpopular. Both Fatah's Oslo-era strategy and the West's strategy at the time were just never going to work with people like that.
... okay? How does that affect the fact that, demonstrably, Western and US interest was very acute and intense long before Hamas was a major force in the matter?
This is, after all, what you said and I objected to:
Yeah fair enough I went on a weird tangent there. What I was trying to say was that the Western interest and support you were talking about was the kind that needed a good faith Israeli effort to amount to anything. There was no interest in forcing peace on Israel, is the point I was trying to make. That's why when Israel put its foot down and said "nope" pretty much everyone played along, as best exemplified by the absolute shitshow that was Western reaction to the 2006 Palestinian elections. The kind of abject horror that's now making four different heads of state say "we are not exporting weapons to Israel" (with varying degrees of truthfulness) to placate their populations simply wasn't there. So to respond to your point: Western governments and people did want to being peace to Palestine, but it was viewed as just another regional conflict, not as settler colonists ethnically cleansing an indigenous population with Western support, so they were just another participant in the farce.
What reaction was it that you regard as a shitshow to the 2006 Palestinian elections?
Yes, that's taken an additional 20 years of Israeli massacres.
None of that has anything to do with the point regarding Hamas and whether its behavior has been in some way central to Western awareness of Gaza.
Is your argument that Hamas running a disproportionately conservative mafia state in Gaza, funded by Israel and American 'allies' like Qatar, and the resulting tensions between Hamas and Fatah, wherein elections have been impossible for nearly 20 years now, has been in some way pivotal towards Western awareness of Israeli crimes?
Or has it been that the past 25 years of total domination of the Israeli right over the Israeli government has resulted in a government policy by the Israeli right that is, necessarily, more naked and brutal than ever to appeal to their core constituencies and hold onto power, alienating foreign allies to shore up domestic support, and Hamas's contribution has been limited to boosting the polling numbers of Bibi et co?
Enjoy. The short of it is what you probably already expect: The Quartet (most relevantly the EU and US) imposed sanctions on the PA, Israel arrested a ton of Palestinian MPs, ministers and Hamas members, the US and Israel conspired with Fatah to overthrow the democratically elected Hamas government (either by calling new elections or by force) and the Quartet (again, most relevantly the EU and US) managed to somehow ignore all this and call on Hamas to moderate, accept Israel's right to exist and denounce violence, nonsense that stopped working in 1996. Basically Western countries spat in the face of the democratic process they promoted when it didn't produce the puppets they wanted it to produce. And to rub salt in the wound who did they want to lead after Hamas was deposed? Fucking Mahmoud Abbas, the guy who has been running Fatah (and therefore the West Bank) for 20 years.
No effective resistance was going to make it without Israeli massacres. I could list examples all the way from the 1930s, but most relevantly we have the anti-occupation resistance in Lebanon, the First Intifada (2000 dead) and the Second Intifada (3500 dead). If Palestinians intended to avoid Israeli massacres their only course of action would be to give up. Now the current genocide is clearly a whole different beast, but something like the 2008 Gaza war is very much in line with what one would expect when resisting Israeli occupation.
It does. Western "interest and support" after 1996 was a farce, and not at all something that could lead to peace, therefore for all intents and purposes yes the West didn't give a shit about the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza or elsewhere, in the same way your average white moderate didn't give a shit about the suffering of black people during the Civil Rights Movement.
Okay if you believe what you're saying and are trying to have an honest conversation then ignoring everything that's relevant from the other side's argument and treating that as a gotcha is really not a good look. Hamas's conservative mafia state hasn't been pivotal towards Western awareness of Israeli crimes, but them picking fights with Israel politically and militarily in ways that despite Israel's best efforts end up in global news in very unflattering ways. At least, that's the argument you're supposed to be arguing against, not that Hamas banning dog walking and cracking down on dissent is the peak of Palestinian resistance.
Here's the thing: You need something to highlight the nakedness and brutality (which I'd argue is the same as ever, just with a brief stint with sanity in the early 1990s, but that's not relevant here), because Israeli settlements just don't make global news. I mean how many non-Hamas related events in Palestine have gotten global outrage since 2007? The West Bank is almost completely under the rule of the deeply compromised Fatah, and that's why it's always playing second fiddle to Gaza in global discourse.
I have a lot I could say on this, but for now, I'll keep it at "This is what I understood the reaction to be and I disagree with your characterization", since this conversation is already covering a whole lot of shit.
That's not my point. My point is that Hamas is not what has raised awareness, but the increasing intensity of the Israeli state in massacring the Palestinian people for the aforementioned domestic political reasons.
Ah, no TRUE interest and support. Got it. Just had to narrow and redefine the criteria once the initial claim was disproven.
By the way, how is the Western "interest and support" now, with Hamas's heroic efforts, going to lead to peace?
Are we counting the total genocide of the Palestinian people as peace?
Or is it fingerwagging as effective action?
... do you think Israel would be refraining from these crimes were it not for Hamas?
That's not at all fucking true. Jesus Christ. It was a major issue in the US, poster child for "I only know geography because of war", during Bush Jr's term, even despite the other much more major foreign policy issues taking up air in American electoral politics at the time.
"Israel is focused on genociding Gaza, therefore, whoever is in charge there is the TRUE hero of The Resistance(tm) and Making A Difference(tm), unlike whoever is in the West Bank!"
Love that Fatah is 'deeply compromised' while the literal Mossad plant is lionized.
Israel giving them money?
I'm pretty sure that was after 2006. Leading up to the 2006 elections Hamas highlighted the success of violent resistance in ejecting Israel from Gaza compared to the abject failure of peaceful resistance by Fatah. My point here is that despite their many flaws, they actually get things done, and their getting things done is a large part of why the Palestinian cause has gotten as far as it has.
Holy delusion. There has been no worse time for the Palestinian cause than now. They've been losing for 80 years again and again, and you call it success.
Uh... enjoy. The Palestinian cause is doing pretty well... other than the genocide, anyway.
First of all, it's incredibly telling that you care so much more about the Palestinian cause than the Palestinian people who are dying.
Secondly, if you seriously think that BDS is going to bring down a nuclear armed nation state, you're in for a rough awakening.
Who said that? I obviously don't want Palestinian people to die, but that's one thing and the geopolitical long-term view that Palestinians have a pretty good shot at achieving national liberation if they can survive this genocide is another.
Well as it turns out, nukes don't mean much if you don't have the weapons to arm your soldiers, the money to pay them or the diplomatic cover to prevent Syrians and Lebanese from invading after you bomb them for the umpteenth time.
Hamas has been receiving Israeli support since the late 80s when it was founded.
What? Speeding up the genocide by being the Israeli right's perfect foil in this grotesque kayfabe?
... Gaza is on the verge of total genocide, and the West Bank is looking to be next. Is that progress for the Palestinian cause?
I just checked and yeah that's true fair enough.
Any effective (or not so effective) act of resistance was going to be met with massive Israeli reprisal, so the only way to not be a foil for the Israeli right is to literally do nothing. See: Fatah.
If somehow Gaza survives this it'll be very much a hotly debated "at what cost" kind of deal, because October 7th did start the countdown for the end of Israel's current existence, but at present no, because of course there need to be Palestinians before there's a Palestinian cause. That said that's not my point; I was responding to the idea that Hamas has been just a parasite passively profiting off Palestinians' suffering when in real life they've been an active contributer to the Palestinian cause while also profiting off Palestinians' suffering. Whether you like their contribution or not (prior to October 7th anyway) is one thing, but they are and were an active resistance organization without which prospects for peace in Palestine would be completely different. I mean there probably wouldn't be a genocide either, but again that's beside the point.
Ultimately and unfortunately Hamas has enabled the Israeli goal of splitting the West Bank and Gaza in the concept of Palestine.
The West Bank may soon be the only place of Palestine left, neither because of nor in spite of Hamas.