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Few Good Options as Israel Weighs a Ground Assault on the Gaza Strip
(www.bloomberg.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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Yep. It's a double edged sword. It sucks. Absolutely sucks.
It also feeds militant goals for war and chaos and hampers everyone's efforts towards peace. It's an impossible line for Israel to walk. But you all would rather blame Israel than the militants 🤦
Oh fucking hell. Anything to hang Arab militancy - which has existed since before Israel re-emerged as a modern state - on Israel, eh?
So PRECISELY how does Israel starve Hamas, PIJ, Muslim Brotherhood, and that long history of anti-Jewish militancy? Stop existing? Jump into the sea? That would do it, if the land were finally Judenrein 🙄. Gazans in general might be open to a real resolution to the conflict which accepts the existence of Israel as a Jewish state but their leadership isn't. How do we remove dictators like Hamas from power? They're not going to go of their own accord. Israel showing perceived weakness emboldens them. Israel taking steps to reduce terrorism is condemned. It's an impossible situation and Palestinian militancy thrives on it.
Don't give me meaningless platitudes that are nothing more than substance-free word play. Deal with the complexity of the reality.
Israel is militarily, technologically, and economically far superior. That means you have options that Palestinians who want to de-escalate don't have, thus the ball is in your court. Or, well, practically all of the balls that can be played towards de-escalation are in your court. That's not a special yardstick we carved just for you, it's not about "who started it" or "who did worst" but "who is in a better position to end this".
Also y'all speak English and are on the internet. I could rant to you about Fatah corruption but what good would that do.
Hamas has more than one wing, all dependent on each other, and one of them you can right-out supplant. Heck it even meshes with security concerns: Instead of saying "Gaza can't have concrete because Hamas" say "We're going to donate concrete but because of Hamas we're going to do the pouring, tell us where you want those houses"
More generally speaking: You will need to be able to take a punch while showing that you can be an asset to your region of the world meaning internally, you'll have to make sure that forces who right-out enjoy having an external enemy to fuel their eternal war have absolutely no influence. Doesn't even need much, all the civil society needs to do is to be receptive enough to understand that Kahanites and Nazis are the same shit with a different coat of paint so that the Israeli Antifa will come back out of exile -- Berlin, I know, of all places. It's an excuse for a city they could've at least chosen Hamburg but I digress.
It won't be easy and it won't be quick, trust isn't built in a fortnight. There's no quick solutions, there's only approaches which breed resentment and those who don't, and one kind is perpetuating hatred, the other isn't. I know this kind of stuff can sound like platitudes but it really isn't. Being disciplined in that regard is the only way.
More concretely, right now, don't fucking blow the Saudi Arabia deal. If you need to stop the offensive to do that, do it.
Hamas and all of the other extremist militant groups have the crucial ball though. They're the ones who are in the only position to end this. No country alone can make peace when their enemy refuses to. That refusal is the ball that Hamas holds, the ball that Palestinian militants held before Israel existed as a modern state, the ball that Arab militants held when the word "Palestinian" most often referred to Jews.
This crap about Israel holding "all the power", it's just not true.
It's something we could agree on, you know. Not sure why you wrote this? Do you think I'm unaware of it or how it contributed to the election of Hamas in 2006? I lose count of how many years into his four year term Abbas is, working on 19 years now I think. We could talk about how much current violence in the West Bank is Hamas trying to undermine Fatah there and gain power for themselves.
If only it were that simple. Hey, let's present Hamas with official Israeli workers to kidnap and kill. What could possibly go wrong? 🤦
If only it were that simple holds for the rest of your propositions. If only.
Who the fuck said anything about neglecting security and being naive?
No. That's an excuse to avoid being creative and if you'd reflect about it you'd see it. It's social conditioning saying "we're the victims, always".
What's your plan for the future? Continue the Otzma Yehudit way of "antagonising until they give up"? That's what got you into this position in the first place. It's the reason the IDF wasn't near Gaza and Hamas saw an opening because the IDF was busy in the west bank backing settlers harassing Palestinians. Realise that there's portions of the Israeli society who want this to continue, whether they admit it or not, because it is convenient for them, because a scared populace can be way more easily convinced to vote for them. Don't be complicit in that.
Of course precautions would be taken. Short of going in with significant military protection, it wouldn't be enough. Hell, going in WITH significant military protection still wouldn't be enough amongst people who believe in martyrdom and jihad. Israel going in with military protection wouldn't be seen as a safety measure, it would be seen as provocation. Folks like you would be ranting against Israel for doing so and claiming that the deaths of the construction workers was justified cause, you know, Israel.
You're the one who's naive if you hadn't thought that through.
I have reflected on this a great deal. My position is considered, informed and grounded in a very unfortunate reality I wish was different. I've not said that Israelis are the victims, always. You've not understood if you think that. Recognising the agency of Hamas, other militant groups and the infrastructure which supports them in and outside of Gaza is very different.
How little you've comprehended if you think that I am.
I don't have a plan for the future. Hamas and the other militant groups aren't going to recede any time soon. Quite the opposite now, they will be emboldened by their 'success' in brutalising Israelis. Israel can't attack Gaza hard enough to eliminate the militants. If Israel does less, it will be perceived by militants as a sign of weakness in Israel and continued evidence, not of Israel being strong or any other good quality, but of what the militants forced them to do. If Israel does less, the militants will do more.
It's an impossible situation. I don't have an answer. I do know that continuing to blame the entirety of blame and responsibility of Israel doesn't move us closer to any sort of resolution.
What about handing the cement over to Palestinians you can trust (and you know very well they do exist), or international aid organisations, and watching the whole thing with drones?
You seem to be keen on using your creativity and imagination to show how things can't work. That's not bad, that's providing security. Where it becomes a problem is when it replaces thinking of ways how it can work.
Indulge me, suspend your disbelief for a couple of minutes and apply yourself to coming up with something that can be done. Hamas is using pipe sections to build rockets? Fine, tank trucks and canisters exist. Logistically inefficient? Yes. Unviable? Hell no. Then you can say "because of Hamas you now have to carry your water", not "because Hamas you now have no water". In one of those two you come across as guarded, but friendly, in the other as heartless.
Who the fuck cares about the perception of militants. Worry about the perception of the rest. Worry about Palestinians seeing Israel as the bigger problem than Hamas, worse, as a fucking ally of Hamas.
And blaming everything on Hamas and demanding the impossible -- that fascists magically deradicalise -- is moving us closer to resolution? That's the absolutely least likely scenario, yet you declare it to be the only possibility when you say "the ball is in Hamas court".
Maybe, in this all, we're looking too far ahead. Would you oppose a Smolanim government that would not giving up on passive security, but stop all the antagonising? The settlements, the turning of PLO territory into Swiss cheese, the "fund Hamas because Fatah is too reasonable" approach? Because if anything should come out of this then it's wide understanding that the right's approach to security failed even more than the left's. Yes maybe Rabin was too naive, people were too hopeful back then (I certainly was), that doesn't mean that moving to annex the west bank will bring security.