Responding to @AJKnuppe LinkedIn misguided analysis (his analysis and a map of Egypt attached): First, invoking concern for proportionality while dismissing humanitarian safe zones as “apologetics” for Israel’s operations is not just disingenuous—it’s dangerous. The proposal for safe zones isn’t about “covering” for the IDF. It’s about preserving human life. Full stop. If you care about minimizing civilian harm, then you should want real, monitored safe zones. Egypt has both the legal obligation and the logistical capability to help facilitate them. Egypt is a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, the 1967 Protocol, and the 1969 OAU Convention. These aren’t just symbolic treaties—they’re binding. Egypt is required to offer temporary refuge, particularly in cases of mass civilian displacement due to war. Instead, Cairo has fortified its border with a massive new razor-tipped wall and deployed troops—not to protect civilians, but to keep them out. If Egypt can muster the political will and resources to wall off the Gaza border, it can help establish a temporary, internationally monitored humanitarian safe zone in the Sinai. Such a zone does not threaten Egypt’s sovereignty or suggest permanent resettlement. It creates a lifeline for those who want to flee war—not a conveyor belt for ethnic cleansing, as the original post insinuates. To imply otherwise is to weaponize history to justify inaction. Second, let’s be clear: Israel didn’t start this war. On October 7th, Hamas initiated one of the most grotesque terror campaigns in recent memory—massacring civilians, taking hostages, and attempting to annihilate an entire community. To now demand Israel, negotiate with the perpetrators of that atrocity is not diplomacy. It’s capitulation. No nation on earth—none—would tolerate that prescription. To suggest otherwise is to hold Israel to a standard no other sovereign state is held to. And no, Hamas is not some misunderstood political movement with a credible peace platform. Its founding charter—and its actions—make clear that it seeks the destruction of Israel, not a two-state solution. You can’t negotiate with a group whose strategic end state is your eradication. Third, let’s address the insinuation that any displacement plan—even temporary, humanitarian-driven relocation—amounts to ethnic cleansing. That’s a slanderous oversimplification. While extremist voices like Smotrich exist (and should be condemned), their rhetoric does not define Israeli policy or the IDF’s operational planning. Israel’s current operations, including Operation Gideon’s Chariot, are focused on eliminating a terror army embedded inside civilian areas—not on transferring populations. And finally, the idea that the only path forward is a “negotiated settlement” with Hamas—without recognizing the military and moral impossibility of doing so post-October 7—is not serious analysis. It's advocacy masquerading as peacemaking. Wars of aggression—like the one Hamas started—have consequences, including the potential loss of power and territory. That’s not genocide. That’s the legal outcome of violating the laws of war. Let’s stop creating false moral equivalencies between a democratic state responding to the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and a terrorist organization that has publicly vowed to do it again.
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