Explain to me like I am an schoolchild how Israel’s strategy both militarily and diplomatically is going to achieve a safer, stronger Israel, one with stronger allies and fewer enemies.
Netanyahu says that “total victory over Hamas” is his endgame; what does that even look like? And whatever it looks like can it be achieved without a significant number of onlookers agreeing that end justified the means?
I really don’t understand how Netanyahu’s strategy would achieve peace and prosperity for my family and country if I was Israeli and I would like someone to explain to me what I am missing.
I’m so glad you asked this! For the life of me, I don’t understand what Netanyahu hopes to accomplish that will benefit Israel in the long run. You asked just the things I’ve been wondering.
It won’t. Bibi’s prime concerns are staying in office so he doesn’t get thrown in jail and appeasing the religious fanatics who will make that possible for him, and that means imposing maximum force on Gaza while also prolonging the war indefinitely so as to postpone elections for as long as he can.
Netanyahu is a bent career politician. Maybe he hopes to, personally, stay out of jail or something? Not sure it has that much to do with “Israel’s” short-, medium-, or long-term strategy. Though, it has to be said, it’s also not clear to me what his opposition’s strategy is in terms of radical plans (rapprochement with Iran or whatever?)
The current Israeli incursions into Gaza may in the end be nothing more than a massive raid. The plan is to disrupt the infrastructure that Hamas has built up for launching terrorist attacks under civilian cover (command posts and ammunition stores under hospitals, etc.). The Israelis have uncovered extensive weaponization of civilian facilities in Gaza.
In the short run, it’s simply that the attacks in October were prima facie evidence that Hamas was gaming the system and the Israelis decided that they were tired of being suckers. In the long run Israel has never counted on “winning hearts and minds” because its neighbors apparently are committed to enmity with Israel for political, ideological and religious reasons that no Israeli concession can change.
Israel’s mindset is “since everyone hates us no matter what we do, and they continually prove it, we simply can’t care about world opinion. If we went by world opinion we’d all be dead”.
People in southwestern Israel have been living with shelling since, I believe, June 2001. It drove out 25 percent of the population and it is extraordinary that others remained, despite weekly and daily sirens requiring taking cover. As an American Zionist who didn’t totally understand, I thought it wrong of Israel not to do whatever was needed to stop these and other attacks from Gaza long ago. Now I see how heartbreakingly difficult it is to defeat Hamas.
The (in)security situation that could be barely, sort-of, accepted before is no longer accepted after the national shock of October 7.
Many Israelis who lived near Gaza have returned, but that’s not true of the evacuated area near Lebanon. This is another current enormous military problem for Israel.
Think what the U.S. would do if the main towns in two U.S. states near Mexico were frequently shelled. (And Mexico has legitimate grievances against the U.S., given facts concerning the Mexican War. I thank Mexicans for not acting on them by attacking us!)
Israel hasn’t had a “strategy” since Rabin’s assassination. They’ve instead got idiot jingoistic cowboys posturing about how more hateful they can be to the PLO / Hamas / blameworthy non-Jewish peoples in their midst, in order to shore up their base of internal support and keep winning elections. (Sound vaguely familiar?)
That sad sick nation hasn’t had an ensconced leader with the capacity to look farther down the road than his own freaking hood ornament for a full generation. I mean, when you look back on Ariel Sharon as the voice of reason, something has hopped the track pretty badly. (Did I already say “sound vaguely familiar?”)
There is no strategy other than Netanyahu needs the support of hardline right wingers and can’t admit to fundamental security and intelligence failures, nor that the policies of Israel have led to domination of fundamentalist elements within the Palestinian community. The 7 October attacks were a horrific act of terrorism mostly against Israeli civilians (including abduction, sexual molestation, and torture) but were not a result of concerted support of Hamas by the residents of Gaza (which is essentially a criminal gang that has actually killed more Gazans than Israelis, and is in no way a democratic representation of the Gazan population, the majority of whom were not even born when the last elections occurred). The collective punishment, deliberate famine, destruction of medical and relief efforts, and targeted killings of noncombatants has not in any way made Israel safer, and is certainly not any kind of aspiration of “peace and prosperity”, nor will it result in the annihilation of Hamas.
Hamas is a terrorist organization that is operating out of Palestinian territory. It launched a terrorist attack against Israeli civilians last October which killed over a thousand people.
If the subsequent Israeli military attacks against Palestinian territory convince the Palestinians that they should crack down on Hamas and other terrorist organizations and not allow these organizations to use their country as a staging area, that will make Israel a safer place.
I don’t know if that will work. But it’s within the realm of possibility.
Or failing that, Israel simply resigns itself to “The Forever War”. That it will always be under attack, the best it can do is cull the terrorists sufficiently as the occasion arises.
This statement (“… convince the Palestinians that they should crack down on Hamas…”) makes it sounds as if Gazans (much less “Palestinians”, including residents of the West Bank) have some kind of electoral or regulatory control over Hamas. But they don’t; Hamas is essentially a criminal gang that controls the flow of most goods to Gaza and has an utter stranglehold of all governance. They have not permitted elections within a generation, and has responded to any opposition within Gaza by literally killing the opposition, and the absence of any external controls or support, as controlled by Israel, has strengthened the hold that Hamas has within the Gaza Strip, and of course ensured that they can recruit younger generations because there is effectively no other option.
The notion that the collective punishment of Gazans writ large is justified because they haven’t run Hamas out of town on a rail is so obtuse it is difficult to know where to begin addressing that position. The rationale that children (again, born after elections or any kind of control was even possible) or non-combatants should suffer what has been almost universally regarded as collective punishment (and widely regarded as war crimes) because a minority of extremists committed an act of terrorism is beyond rational thought. Israel has every right to ensure its own security but not at the cost of the lives of tens of thousands of civilians who had no say in the actions of Hamas.
That seems like a stunning refutation to any possibility of a “two state” solution. Why should Israel negotiate to turn over territory to Palestinian control if, as you argue, the Palestinians are demonstrating that can’t effectively govern the territory they have now?
That said, the reason I worded my post the way I did was because I feel we need to make the distinction between Palestinians and Hamas. Just as we need to make the distinction between Israel and the Netanyahu administration.
Netanyahu is a right wing populist, like trump. He lies, schemes, steals and is generally a crook- just like trump. He panders to the reactionary conservative religious right- just like trump. (and like trump, I am suspicious of his true faith)
So his “plan” is much like trumps “very good, the best plan” for supplanting Obamacare. i.e non-existent.
I support Israel vs terrorists, but as long as they let scum like Netanyahu be their leader, it’s hard to be sympathetic.
I concur. However, polls seem to show that Hamas has wide and strong support, like 70%. Do you think those polls are suspect? I wouldn’t be surprised.
Except the Palestinians do not have any control over the Gaza Strip; once Israel officially stopped occupying it and withdrew, they established a blockade that limited access and essentially assured that democratic governance and international oversight was not possible. Palestinians “can’t effectively govern” Gaza because it is run by a criminal regime that has the only access to weapons and executes all political opposition (even suspected).
I don’t mean to diminish what Hamas has done to completely undermine efforts for a two state solution, but they do not represent the majority of residents of Gaza, which only won a plurality of votes in the 2006 election (and then by rampant intimidation) and has since refused to hold elections or any kind or provide any representation in governance, and their ability to reign over the Gaza Strip has been reinforced by essentially turning the region into a ghetto in which most residents can’t even leave or seek any redress.
For certain, Netanyahu is broadly unpopular and his regime does not represent the majority of Israeli thought, either liberal or Orthodox. Israeli civilians do not deserve to be attacked because leaders on either side cannot accept a two-state solution. But while one population is suffering a horrific but singular terrorist attack,and the occasional ineffectual primitive rocket attack against which Iron Dome is a highly effective defense, the other is being pummeled daily by direct attacks against hospitals and refugee camps even after migrating to supposedly ‘safe’ locations, and subjected to deliberate famine despite the fact that most of the people suffering could not possibly be active supporters (much less participants) in any Hamas activities.
I’m not an Israeli and I don’t follow Israeli domestic policies that closely but I tend to agree. The impression I’ve been getting is that Netanyahu has been following Bush’s example. They both took a genuine national crisis and used it to further a partisan agenda. People who wanted to support their country in the aftermath of an attack found themselves being asked to agreed to a very questionable political agenda.
Let’s say tomorrow Netanyahu slips in the shower, falls and hits his head and wakes up thinking he is Nelson Mandela. He immediately orders the IDF out of Gaza and in his last act as Prime Minister recognizes a state of Palestine before turning himself over to the International Court so he can plead guilty to any and all war crimes charges they wish to apply to him. Let us also say that this passes muster in Israel and the deal goes through. So we now have a Palestine.
Well, now what? There are still those four-ish Hamas battalions in Rafah that are still presumably near full strength because the IDF keeps accidentally missing them and bombing women, children and aid workers instead. And they’re probably mad. So now they have the opportunity and the motive to re-arm themselves and pull another Oct 7th attack. And since Palestine can decide what to do with their own borders, we can assume weapons are pouring in by the truckload.
Well, does the Mossad still exist? When the intelligence agencies present warnings about “aspirational” attacks that Hamas can’t stop talking about does the government fucking listen to them this time? But even assuming there are just fundamental flows with Israeli security that can never be fixed, has the IDF lost any of its existing capability to bomb Gaza flat in a few short months? The power disparity between the IDF and even the most magical wishful thinking of Hamas is absurd. Yes, Hamas is capable of sneak attacks and yes, all things being equal they will probably try it again. But the IDF will always have the power to destroy as much military infrastructure as any theoretical Hamas-led nation of Palestine can beg, borrow or steal.
What they can’t bomb out of existence is the idea that is Hamas. That’s something they’re going to have to come up with other ways of dealing with. Fortunately, I have an idea and I am pretty sure I am not the first one to think of it. Let’s try giving Palestinians something to live for instead of something to die for.
Yes, it’s a terrible thing when civilians die because of the actions of governments and terrorist organizations.
But I doubt that negotiating with any current Palestinian authorities will stop the killings. I think you’re ignoring history to describe the most recent terrorist attack as “singular”. Israel has been the target of an ongoing campaign of terrorist attacks for pretty much its entire existence. And terrorist organizations have pledged that they will continue these attacks until Israel no longer exists.
So if Israel were to sit down and negotiate with the Palestinians, I see no reason to think any possible settlement would lead to peace. Is there any reason to doubt that Hamas or organizations like Hamas would simply take any gains they received via a settlement and use them to strengthen their future attacks? I think Israelis in general and not just Netanyahu and his allies can understandably ask why they should make their enemies stronger.
Again, I’m an outsider. But my view is that it’s the Palestinians who need to offer a fundamental change. They need to show that they are willing to accept long-term peaceful co-existence with Israel and that they are capable to controlling the people who are not. I feel that when and if the Palestinians are willing and able to negotiate from that position they will find the Israelis willing to listen.
