> I actually think that Hamas’ rule would be far more democratic than FLN’s. Hamas has a wide support among the people in Palestine, and they would easily win a fair and free election. If they would engage in undemocratic activities, it would cost them more then they could gain (granting international recognition [which honestly is unlikely]). All of this would be void though if Israel would continue interfering with an independent Palestine.

I was responding to this. Its factually untrue as Hamas did win a free and fair election in Gaza (an independent state) and immediately killed all it's political enemies often in gruesome and shocking ways, which is pretty undemocratic. Since their 2005 win, they haven't held an election. They continue to kill and torture political dissidents, or anyone who does something they don't like, without any sort of trial or criminal proceeding. They apparently had a very widespread, mature secret police network that spied on their citizens. Israel only started their blockade 2 years after Hamas won their election when Hamas began attacking Israeli civilians and using Gaza as a base for terror.

There are countless examples of neighboring states that have a huge power imbalance that maintain their democracy (or some semblance thereof) even in the face of alleged aggression from the more powerful entity, which is why I said it's shocking to hear you blame Israel which isn't nearly as aggressive as China is to Taiwan, or Russia to it's neighbors, or the UK was to Ireland, etc. Look at Cuba and the US. Aggressively targeting civilians with suicide bombs, unguided rockets, mortars, etc isn't inevitable when you have a grievance with your neighbor, you can take the advice of pacifists everywhere that "The best revenge is living well". Look no further than Taiwain, Pakistan, various SA countries and the US, etc.

Basically, it's dishonest to claim that Hamas would magically become a better political entity if they were given control of the pre-war-1967 borders. They've shown and said time and again, their only aspiration is the murder of all Jews (everywhere) and control of all of the entire region from the river to the sea. That isn't controversial or flamebait, it's literally what they've said many times. I don't recall the Vietcong calling for the murder of all south Vietnamese citizenry. Nor did the FLN call for a global campaign of murder of all French people. Neither NV, nor the FLN stated that they didn't see their own citizens as worthy of protection. Hamas has called for both a global campaign of terror against Jews everywhere and has stated that the safety of the Gazan citizenry is the responsibility of the UN and not Hamas.

I think it's disingenuous to call someone flamebait for directly responding to your concluding paragraph, but then I looked at the username and realized who I was dealing with.

To respond to everything else you've said in the previous comment: Vietnam is a pretty terrible place to live if you disagree with their government, not sure why you're using it as an example. FLN too was pretty terrible to anyone who disagreed politically with the ruling party. Obviously the ruling government isn't gonna call it's own actions terrorism, but it absolutely extrajudicially attacked and killed people who it found disagreeable. Under your current definition, Hamas is in fact just as functional a government over Gaza as the FLN and Vietnam were/are over their people. To put it another way there's a giant chasm between real functioning government and despotic regime that gives the veneer of legitimacy. The Vietcong were functionally the same before an after their rise to power, so too, the FLN, they just used different labels.

That's not something to aspire to.

This will be my last communique on this thread with you, as usual you've spread a lot of misinformation with impunity, and I don't like to engage with people who don't start from a place of honesty. I wouldn't have responded to the first one either if I had seen who I was talking with.