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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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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.