I though that the Palestinians were largely confined in Gaza with entry and exit tightly controlled by the IDF. How are the civilians supposed to leave Gaza?
You have my sympathy. We in the US have also had odious and vile leaders.
Why do people become suicide bombers? Or volunteer to fly airliners into large buildings? Or any other suicidal thing in the name of a cause?
I know both Israelis and Palestinians and wish harm to none of them. Please, regardless of personal views on the situations, everyone affected by this stay safe.
Why would Hamas do this? Because it’s a Hell of a lot easier to kill Israeli soldiers in Gaza than it is in Israel. Hamas won’t be destroyed, no matter how vicious the retaliation is. They have a 2 million+ population to hide among. If it was that easy, Israel would have done it during one of its previous incursions.
No one told them to leave Gaza. They were told to leave the buildings Hamas is using to attack Israel.
I’m Israeli but live in the US. I have had the misfortune of being subjected to both Bibi and Trump.
It’s possible that this is a suicide attack on an organizational scale. But as I mentioned earlier, this kind of blaze of glory attack followed by retaliation by Israel is the perfect recruiting strategy for a group like Hamas.
Gaza has a population density of 6,500 per sq km or 16,000+ per sq mile. 2.5 million people living in just 365 sq km or 141 sq miles. In comparison, the city of Chicago is 231 sq miles or 607 sq km. Gaza has less area and more concentrated people. I am curious how that works out when missiles start flying and buildings start falling all over the Strip. Where do you go? How do you get there?
This sounds like an utter nightmare for anyone in Gaza.
A lot of people are going to die in the next 24 hours.
Gee! I wonder why Israel might have been concerned about what was getting smuggled into Gaza! Apparently MANPADS, drones, and of course mountains of rockets.
Seemed to work out for Dubya when he got caught flat-footed on 9/11, and Bibi seems to have considerably more enduring popularity with as many political comebacks as he’s made.
This article (link below) offers a little more speculation. People will likely blame leadership for intelligence failures, but defer action in the short to medium term until things stabilize.
Excerpt
I, [Martin Indyk] can only speculate—I’m still in shock, quite honestly. But I think you have to consider the context at this moment. The Arab world is coming to terms with Israel. Saudi Arabia is talking about normalizing relations with Israel. As part of that potential deal, the United States is pressing Israel to make concessions to the Palestinian Authority—Hamas’s enemy. So this was an opportunity for Hamas and its Iranian backers to disrupt the whole process, which I think in retrospect was deeply threatening to both of them. I don’t think that Hamas follows dictation from Iran, but I do think they act in coordination, and they had a common interest in disrupting the progress that was underway and that was gaining a lot of support among Arab populations. The idea was to embarrass those Arab leaders who have made peace with Israel, or who might do so, and to prove that Hamas and Iran are the ones who are able to inflict military defeat on Israel.
There are talks going on regarding a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and conversations about U.S. security guarantees for Saudi Arabia. In all likelihood, a primary motivation for Hamas and Iran was a desire to disrupt that deal, because it threatened to isolate them. And this was a very good way to destroy its prospects, at least in the near term. Once the Palestinian issue returns to front and center, and Arabs around the Middle East are watching American weapons in Israeli hands killing large numbers of Palestinians, that will ignite a very strong reaction. And leaders such as [Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince] Mohammad bin Salman will be very reluctant to stand up to that kind of opposition. Doing so would require him to stand up and tell his people, “This is not the way. My way will get the Palestinians much more than the way of Hamas, which only brings misery.” That kind of courage is, I think, too much to expect of any Arab leader in this kind of crisis.
You’d think that if Israel learned one lesson from the Yom Kippur War it would’ve been “don’t short-staff your defenses on holidays”. They’re going to have to correct that blind spot in the future.
One thing for sure, Israel’s government cannot and will not let this war end in anything other than a resounding Hamas defeat. Anything else sends the wrong message.
But it’ll involve tens of thousands of deaths, unfortunately - many of them innocent.
Unfortunately Hamas isn’t a simple criminal organization like the Mafia that is distinguishable from an innocent civilian population. By its own design and intent it’s a political entity that claims with varying degrees of legitimacy to be a government. They’ve taken to heart Mao Zedong’s maxim that “The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea”; and they’ve succeeded in regimenting the population they control far more effectively than the Irish Republican Army ever controlled Ulster. Seriously, can anyone in Gaza actually voice opposition to Hamas without being summarily killed?
The USA learned (or should have) the naïve futility of thinking that a people are merely the helpless hostages of whatever evil regime rules them. I don’t think Israel is going to make the same mistake.
It’s impossible to talk about a war without some hint of politics, but if you want to delve into the political issues, please go to P&C, or yes, the pit.
So that’s a great discussion to have, but this is not the best thread for it.