Ending Hamas
What does "complete victory" look like?
Key New Developments:
NYT (“Israel is preparing to invade Gaza with the goal of eliminating Hamas’s leadership.“):
The Israeli military is preparing to invade the Gaza Strip soon with tens of thousands of soldiers ordered to capture Gaza City and destroy the enclave’s current leadership, according to three senior Israeli military officers who outlined unclassified details about the plan.
The military has announced that its ultimate goal is to wipe out the top political and military hierarchy of Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls Gaza and led last week’s terrorist attacks in Israel that killed 1,300 people.
The assault is expected to be Israel’s biggest ground operation since it invaded Lebanon in 2006. It would also be the first in which Israel has tried to capture land and at least briefly hold onto it since its invasion of Gaza in 2008, according to the three senior officers.
The operation risks locking Israel into months of bloody urban combat, both above ground and in a warren of tunnels — a fraught offensive that Israel has long avoided because it involves fighting in a narrow and tightly packed sliver of land populated by more than two million people. Israeli officials have warned that Hamas could kill Israeli hostages, use Palestinian noncombatants as human shields, and have strewn the territory with booby traps.
WaPo (“Israel vows ‘complete victory’ over Hamas as Gaza crisis deepens“):
Israel continued its military campaign in Gaza on Saturday, saying it had killed a commander who was involved in last week’s Hamas attacks, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the enclave braced for an expected Israeli ground invasion.
Israel’s national security chief, Tzachi Hanegbi, in comments to Israeli journalists, suggested the offensive was a certainty, saying that Israel could no longer accept Hamas as a “sovereign entity in the Gaza Strip.”
“Complete victory will be the only possible outcome of this battle,” he said Saturday. “We will not only collapse Hamas military and governmental capabilities, but ensure that they will not be able to revive themselves afterward.”
From the NYT live blog:
Aleppo’s international airport is closed after Israel attacked it overnight, according to Syrian state media. There was no immediate comment from Israel, but Joshua Zarka, a senior Foreign Ministry official, confirmed that Israel was seeking to preempt Iran from moving weapons to or via Syria. He did not specifically address the Syrian allegation that Israel had struck the airport.
And this map of damage Israeli strikes have already inflicted a week into the war:
BBC (“Gaza is being pushed into an abyss, says UN aid agency“):
It is not clear at this stage just how many people are moving from the north of the Gaza Strip to the south but according to the UN relief agency which operates inside the territory, it is “an exodus”.
Earlier UNRWA’s director of communications, Juliette Touma, told the BBC: “This is the worst we’ve ever seen, This is hitting rock bottom. This is Gaza being pushed into an abyss, there is tragedy unfolding as the world is watching. This is Gaza.”
She added: “According to colleagues on the ground, there is an exodus. People are leaving. Those who can, with their cars, some are walking, some are carrying mattresses.
“People are terrified,” she said. “Terrified.”
Reuters (“Israeli military says Gazans can still evacuate south, clashes at Lebanon border“):
The Israeli military said on Sunday it would continue to allow Gazans to evacuate south and hundreds of thousands had already moved, as its troops readied for a ground assault on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in retaliation for unprecedented attacks.
Israel has vowed to annihilate the militant group Hamas after its fighters rampaged through Israeli towns shooting men, women and children and seizing hostages in the worst attack on civilians in the country’s history.
[…]
The violence in Gaza has been accompanied by the deadliest clashes at Israel’s northern border with Lebanon since 2006, raising fears of war spreading to another front.
Israel’s regional foe Iran, which backs Hamas, has lauded the Hamas attack on Israel but has denied any involvement. Its UN mission said late on Saturday that if Israel’s “war crimes and genocide” were not halted immediately, “the situation could spiral out of control” and have far-reaching consequences.
Hamas said in a statement it and Iran had “agreed to continue co-operation” to achieve the group’s goals.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser on Saturday warned Lebanon’s militant group Hezbollah, also supported by Iran, not to take action that could lead to Lebanon’s “destruction“.
Clashes on Israel’s border with Lebanon, which have been limited so far, resumed on Sunday when Hezbollah fighters launched a missile at an Israeli border village, killing one person and wounding three others. The Israeli military said it was striking in Lebanon in retaliation.
Reuters (“Amid international crises, US Congress handcuffed by Republican feud“):
As the flames of war burn in the Middle East and Ukraine, the U.S. Congress is immobilized by a brawl among Republicans, a dysfunction that even some in Donald Trump’s party worry is giving comfort to the nation’s adversaries.
The House of Representatives has drifted leaderless for 12 days since eight of its 221 Republicans ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy. That has held up any legislative action, from debating further aid to Ukraine as it battles a Russian invasion to a statement of support for ally Israel in its war with Hamas.
[…]
Some House Republicans voiced frustration and anger that they have gone so long without being able to choose a leader.
“The world is on fire. Our adversaries are watching what we do and … quite frankly, they like it,” said Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul.
Speaking to reporters as his colleagues huddled to discuss their next moves, McCaul added, “I see a lot of threats out there. One of the biggest threats I see is in that room because we can’t unify as a conference.”
The dysfunction was undermining Americans’ already weak confidence in Congress, with two-thirds of respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos survey this month saying they did not believe Washington politicians could set aside partisan differences for the good of the nation. Half said they did not believe lawmakers could carry out their most basic function of passing laws.
Some Interesting Op-Eds:
NYT Editorial Board (“Israel Can Defend Itself and Uphold Its Values“):
Israel cannot win this war just by killing all the terrorists. It is determined to break the power of Hamas, and in that effort it deserves the support of the United States and the rest of the world. But it can succeed only by upholding the rules and norms of behavior that Hamas so wantonly ignores. What Israel is fighting to defend is a society that values human life and the rule of law. To do that, the means and the ends of its military response must be consistent.
Israel’s goal is to destroy Hamas; in doing that, it should not lose sight of its commitment to safeguard those who have not taken up arms.
The Israeli Army acknowledges and espouses an obligation not to target civilians for military purposes, and to avoid actions that inflict disproportionate harm on civilians, such as destroying an entire city block to kill fighters in a specific building that could be targeted more precisely. But this war is unfolding in an atmosphere of intense emotion, notably in the recent remarks by Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who said that Israel was fighting “human animals.”
[…]
Hamas is known to hide its fighters among civilians, and an indifference to their suffering is central to its brand of terrorism. Hamas is using the people of Gaza as human shields against Israel’s bombing campaign, and as Gazans try to escape, Hamas still holds the hostages who were kidnapped last Saturday. The group has threatened to kill them one by one with every airstrike that hits Gazans in their homes.
Israeli soldiers will look to their leaders to guide their actions and decisions on the battlefield to make sure that they, unlike Hamas, make distinctions between civilians and combatants.
Protecting civilians is also the most sensible way forward. Ending Hamas’s control over Gaza is an essential step, but a military victory will not mean much if young Gazans regroup under another extremist banner. Israel and its allies — and the Palestinians and their allies — have a shared interest in setting Gaza on a path to a different future. To do that, Palestinians first need to see that their lives and their safety are taken into account by Israel in its conduct of this war.
Bret Stephens, NYT (“Hamas Bears the Blame for Every Death in This War“):
Reasonable people can criticize Israel for not allowing enough time for civilians to get out of harm’s way: There are, especially, elderly, disabled and sick Gazans — and those who help them — who may be effectively homebound.
Reasonable people can also oppose other measures that Israelis have taken in response to the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. It seems neither right nor smart for Israel to cut off water and electricity to Gaza until Hamas’s hostages are returned — not because Israel shouldn’t do whatever it takes to obtain their release but because the people who suffer most from the action are the ones who have the least say over the fate of the hostages. Hamas’s leaders, I’m sure, have amply supplied themselves and their forces with fuel, generators, potable water and other essentials.
But what reasonable people cannot debate is the cynicism with which Hamas is conducting its side of the war. It’s a cynicism the wider world should not reward with our credulity, lest we once again turn ourselves into Hamas’s useful idiots.
[…]
Murdering Jews is an end in its own right for Hamas, because it believes it fulfills a theological aim. The original Hamas covenant invokes this injunction: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’” Hamas later softened the language from “Jews” to “Zionists” and “kill” to “resisting the occupation with all means and methods,” but the meaning is the same.
Hamas also achieves practical and propagandistic goals by putting Palestinians in harm’s way. More civilians in combat zones mean more human shields for its forces. More dead and wounded Palestinians mean more sympathy for its side and more condemnation of Israel.
That’s why Hamas turned Gaza’s central hospital into its headquarters during the 2014 conflict. It’s why it stored rockets in schools. It’s why it has used mosques to store guns. It’s why it fires rockets from Gaza’s densely populated areas. It does all this knowing that Israel, which has agreed to abide by the laws of war, tries to avoid hitting those targets — and, when it does hit them, that it will result in accusations of war crimes and diplomatic demands for restraint. Either way, Hamas gains an edge.
Rashid Khalidi, professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, NYT (“Does the U.S. Really Want a Mass Expulsion in Gaza?“):
The depopulation of Gaza would be manifestly inhumane and a violation of international law. President Biden and his advisers should ask themselves how it can be in the national interest of the United States to allow another mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. Such a cataclysm would be a second nakba, or catastrophe, as the displacement of 1948 is called. The United States would thereby be a partner with Israel in creating a future for the Palestinians that offers only periodic death, destruction and dispossession and permanent subjugation or expulsion.
[…]
Even though Israel has left Gaza to Hamas control, the area is still under de jure Israeli military occupation under international law, according to the United Nations and some humanitarian groups. It is also practically so, given that Israel can cut off access to electricity, water, fuel and food for much of the territory.
The Biden administration has offered what is effectively unconditional support to Israel as it attacks Gaza, citing the killings of approximately 900 Israeli civilians and hundreds of soldiers and police officers during the Hamas assault and the captivity of roughly 150 people.
[…]
The last time a president and his advisers allowed outrage at unimaginable loss to drive policy was after Sept. 11, when they unleashed two of the most disastrous wars in American history, which devastated two countries and resulted in the deaths of a half million or more people and brought many people around the globe to revile the United States.
We are on the brink of an equally fateful decision in Washington over which Israeli actions to condone in Gaza, one that would make the United States a full party to all that follows, whether Mr. Biden and his team realize it or not.
It is past time for the United States to cease repeating empty words about a two-state solution while providing money, weapons and diplomatic support for systematic, calculated Israeli actions that have made that solution inconceivable — as it has for roughly half a century.
It is past time for the United States to cease meekly acquiescing to Israel’s use of violence and more violence as its reflexive response to Palestinians who have lived for 56 years under a stifling military occupation.
It is past time to accept that American efforts to monopolize a tragically misnamed peace process have helped Israel to entrench what multiple international human rights groups have defined as a system of apartheid that has produced only more war and suffering.
The last time a president and his advisers allowed outrage at unimaginable loss to drive policy was after Sept. 11, when they unleashed two of the most disastrous wars in American history, which devastated two countries and resulted in the deaths of a half million or more people and brought many people around the globe to revile the United States.
We are on the brink of an equally fateful decision in Washington over which Israeli actions to condone in Gaza, one that would make the United States a full party to all that follows, whether Mr. Biden and his team realize it or not.
It is past time for the United States to cease repeating empty words about a two-state solution while providing money, weapons and diplomatic support for systematic, calculated Israeli actions that have made that solution inconceivable — as it has for roughly half a century.
It is past time for the United States to cease meekly acquiescing to Israel’s use of violence and more violence as its reflexive response to Palestinians who have lived for 56 years under a stifling military occupation.
It is past time to accept that American efforts to monopolize a tragically misnamed peace process have helped Israel to entrench what multiple international human rights groups have defined as a system of apartheid that has produced only more war and suffering.
Thomas Friedman, NYT (“Why Israel Is Acting This Way“):
With the Middle East on the cusp of a full-blown ground war, I was thinking on Friday morning about how Israel’s last two major wars have two very important things in common: They were both started by nonstate actors backed by Iran — Hezbollah from Lebanon in 2006 and Hamas from Gaza now — after Israel had withdrawn from their territories.
And they both began with bold border-crossing assaults — Hezbollah killing three and kidnapping two Israeli soldiers in 2006 and Hamas brutally killing more than 1,300 and abducting some 150 Israeli civilians, including older people, babies and toddlers, in addition to soldiers.
That similarity is not a coincidence. Both assaults were designed to challenge emerging trends in the Arab world of accepting Israel’s existence in the region.
[…]
The bigger reason it acted now, which Hamas won’t admit, is that it saw how Israel was being more accepted by the Arab world and soon possibly by the birthplace of Islam, Saudi Arabia. Iran was being cornered by President Biden’s Middle East diplomacy, and Palestinians feared being left behind.
So Hamas essentially said, “OK, Jews, we will go where we have never gone before. We will launch an all-out attack from Gaza that won’t stop with soldiers but will murder your grandparents and slaughter your babies. We know it’s crazy, but we are willing to risk it to force you to outcrazy us, with the hope that the fires will burn up all Arab-Israeli normalization in the process.”
Yes, if you think Israel is now crazy, it is because Hamas punched it in the face, humiliated it and then poked out one eye. So now Israel believes it must restore its deterrence by proving that it can outcrazy Hamas’s latest craziness.
Israel will apply Hama Rules — a term I coined years ago to describe the strategy deployed in 1982 by Syria’s president, Hafez al-Assad, when Hamas’s political forefathers, the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria, tried to topple Assad’s secular regime by starting a rebellion in the city of Hama.
Assad pounded the Brotherhood’s neighborhoods in Hama relentlessly for days, letting no one out, and brought in bulldozers and leveled it as flat as a parking lot, killing some 20,000 of his own people in the process. I walked on that rubble weeks later. An Arab leader I know told me privately how, afterward, Assad laconically shrugged when he was asked about it: “People live. People die.”
Welcome to the Middle East. This is not like a border dispute between Norway and Sweden or a heated debate in Harvard Yard. Lord, how I wish that it were, but it’s not.
[…]
Israel has suffered a staggering blow and is now forced into a morally impossible war to outcrazy Hamas and deter Iran and Hezbollah at the same time. I weep for the terrible deaths that now await so many good Israelis and Palestinians. And I also worry deeply about the Israeli war plan. It is one thing to deter Hezbollah and deter Hamas. It is quite another to replace Hamas and leave behind something more stable and decent. But what to do?
Finally, though, just as I stand today with Israel’s new unity government in its fight against Hamas to save Israel’s body, I will stand after this war with Israel’s democracy defenders against those who tried to abduct Israel’s soul.
David French, NYT (“There Is No Way to Escape the Moral Challenge of War“):
As a former JAG (or Judge Advocate General’s Corps) officer embedded with a combat arms unit in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom, I know that you can’t simply merge law and tactics and declare that everything that is legally and tactically sound is also moral, much less wise. We veterans know that the challenge for the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza isn’t simply to win the fight with Hamas within the laws of war. There is a third imperative, one that will define the soldiers who fight and the nation they defend for years to come: Do not destroy your soul.
This is much easier said than done. To shrink from evil because the fight will be hard and complex and fraught with risk to soldiers and civilians alike is to both reward barbarism (it sends the signal that sufficient savagery will be rewarded with impunity) and to forsake the sacred duty of protecting your citizens from harm. To lean into the fight, to stretch your violent reach every bit as far as the law allows, can create both an ocean of anguish and bitterness in civilian populations and leave a “bruise on the soul” of the combatants themselves, altering their lives forever.
[…]
This is the problem Israeli soldiers and commanders face. They must protect their citizens from savagery. They must comply with the laws of war. And they must make a series of moral choices, under extreme duress, that can define them and their nation — all while they face a terrorist enemy that appears to possess no conscience at all.
We see these dilemmas unfold even now. Ordering large numbers of civilians to leave the zone of conflict risks a humanitarian catastrophe. But if they remain in the line of fire, then the options are worse still. There is a reason, for example, why Hamas wants civilians to stay. The challenge of fighting a pitched battle amid the civilian population will both render Israel’s attack more difficult and take more civilian lives. But refusing to attack and leaving Hamas in control of Gaza would create its own moral crisis.
David Ignatius, WaPo (“A war that must be waged with an eye toward what comes after“):
A paradox of war is that it can open the way, after tragic suffering, to the kind of fundamental realignment that can bring a durable peace. That was apparent to President Franklin D. Roosevelt at his January 1943 meeting in Casablanca to plan strategy for a conflict whose savage bloodletting was only beginning.
Roosevelt told British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that to eliminate the power of their adversaries, the Allies must seek their unconditional surrender. “It does not mean the destruction of the population of Germany, Italy or Japan,” Roosevelt said, “but it does mean the destruction of [their] philosophies … based on conquest and subjugation.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is at a similar moment as Israeli tanks roll toward Gaza. He has demanded, in effect, the unconditional surrender of Hamas and the end of its terrorist control of the crowded enclave. “We will crush and destroy it,” he told Israelis Wednesday night. He seeks to make it impossible for Hamas to carry out such horrors again.
But Netanyahu must be wise, as Roosevelt was, to wage war in a way that allows for a stable peace after his adversary’s defeat. If he waits until the conflict is over to think about “the day after,” it might be too late. And if he conducts a war that punishes Palestinian civilians, rather than Hamas, he might lose global support and undermine his mission.
My Two Cents:
As much as I deplore the policies of Netanyahu and the Likudist right, juxtaposed against Hamas they are unequivocally on the side of right. The stated war aims of destroying Hamas is not only reasonable but prudent. While, “We will not only collapse Hamas military and governmental capabilities but ensure that they will not be able to revive themselves afterward” is a huge challenge, I don’t see how Israel can accept less than that in the face of the recent atrocities.
Still, while Ignatius’s analogy with our World War II enemies and the call for their unconditional surrender resonates, Israel’s challenge is in some ways more complex. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were state actors. Once Hitler offed himself and Hirohito agreed to become a figurehead, it was relatively easy for their governments to surrender and replaced by new ones under reform constitutions. Gaza, by contrast, is a quasi-sovereign territory governed by an entity that is simultaneously a political party and a terrorist group. It’s not at all clear what its surrender would even mean, much less how Israel could replace it with a reform government and turn it back over to the Palestinians.
It may well be that the answer to Khalidi’s question is Yes. It’s not obvious that a Gaza strip governed by Palestinians, and which would almost surely eventually become the launching place for more terrorist attacks on Israel, is an acceptable end state. Alas, such ethnic cleansing is a war crime and not a small one.
While declarations that Israel is effectively an apartheid state are overblown, they are not without basis. Zionism and pluralism are, almost by definition, incompatible. Either Israel is a Jewish state, run by and for Jews, or it is not.
Which, of course, is why the so-called Two State Solution has been the goal of so many international parties for decades. Regardless of whether “the Palestinians” were a nationality group in 1948, they most certainly are now. But it’s never been obvious to me how they could become a sovereign state divided between Gaza and the West Bank. And, even if Israel abandoned its settlements in the West Bank, it’s not at all clear that a sovereign and consolidated Palestine in that territory would be an acceptable outcome for the Palestinians.
The long history of this crisis is that the extremists have a de facto veto. Even if the Palestinian leadership were united and could agree on a deal that gave up on claims to Jerusalem and other “holy” lands, it takes only a handful of terrorists to kill Israeli civilians and restart the war.
Given that half the population of Gaza is 18 or younger, the idea that in ten years there won’t be a Hamas or Hamas-equivalent seems like wishful thinking.
Kind of an aside, but the article mentions the paralysis of US response due to the Speaker crisis in the House.
My questions are, doesn’t the House have an “acting Speaker” in Rep McHenry? What are his powers and limitations? Does he have the powers of the Speakership or not? If he does, why the paralysis? If he does not, what is the sense of having an “acting Speaker” at all?
@Bruce Henry: Under current rules, his only power is to organize voters for an actual Speaker. There are Republicans and Democrats willing to give him temporary powers to deal with emergencies—especially this one—in the meantime but the usual suspects are opposed.
@Bruce Henry: I would argue that the War Powers act of 1973, which I view to be unconstitutional, nevertheless makes the Speaker situation irrelevant.
I can’t imagine any other role for the House at this point, unless they want to send aid – which they can certainly do with an interim Speaker.
Biden can get the U.S. military involved if he chooses to, thankfully he’s smarter than that.
@Bruce Henry & @James Joyner: Lawfare did a great deep dive into this question on a podcast last week. I highly recommend the discussion: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-lawfare-podcast-what-the-heck-is-a-speaker-pro-tempore
The tl;dr is what James said. I also think this might be a rare case where there will be a break in the Republican votes and centrist Republicans will join with the Democrats to increase the power of the position–especially as Jim Jordan is most likely DOA when it comes to the Speakership (and McHenry would most likely be a more palatable option for the Democrats).
I’ve tried to stay away from commenting on what’s happening because this is so out of my area of expertise. However, I cannot help but think we are seeing history rhyme, if not repeat itself. As we’ve seen Post-911 initially beating a group is easy. “Ending it” is much harder. And ensuring that a different group doesn’t emerge to fulfill the same function–that’s really, really hard.
I think there is little question that Isreal can take Gaza. But as we have seen with Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s very difficult to hold if your goal is to eventually hand it over to a new government. James’ points about the difference with WWII are spot on. There’s little chance that Israel will be able to fully eliminate Hamas. I expect as with the Taliban and ISIL we’ll see the organizations reemerge in other countries in order to direct attacks from afar.
In the meantime, Israel will have to figure out what to do with a destroyed Gaza (including a wrecked infrastructure) and a population that will be living in refugee camps.
Granted those decisions are somewhat easier when this is a bordering territory versus being half-a-world away in the case of the US and Iraq and Afghanistan–but any solution to this (including ongoing occupation) is going to be a significant strain on resources (including the Israeli public’s willingness to sustain the effort).
Peter Beinart’s column in the NY Times is also worth reading:
“Palestinians are not fundamentally different from other people facing oppression: When moral resistance doesn’t work, they try something else. In 1972, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, which was modeled on the civil rights movement in the United States, organized a march to oppose imprisonment without trial. Although some organizations, most notably the Provisional Irish Republican Army, had already embraced armed resistance, they grew stronger after British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians in what became known as Bloody Sunday. By the early 1980s, the Irish Republican Army had even detonated a bomb outside Harrods, the department store in London. As Kirssa Cline Ryckman, a political scientist, observed in a 2019 paper on why certain movements turn violent, a lack of progress in peaceful protest “can encourage the use of violence by convincing demonstrators that nonviolence will fail to achieve meaningful concessions.””
@Moosebreath:
One critical difference between the IRA and Hamas was that the political work of the Republican Army’s agenda was carried out by a separate political party. I think most people will admit that the degree of “separation” was wafer-thin at best, but that still existed (or at least was acknowledged to exist).
Hamas being at once a military/terrorist and a political organization creates a very different dynamic. Likewise, the IRA’s agenda was more focused on self-rule than expansion beyond Ireland’s borders. Hamas to some degree had already achieved (undemocratic) self-rule. Yes, the Israeli government still exacted a high degree of control over Gaza via controlling check-points (and therefore the flow of people and supplies). Its still fair to say that Hamas’s expressed goals clearly went beyond autonomy over Gaza.
I agree with the underlying point–events like Bloody Sunday and the ensuing bombing are clear examples of violent escalation. It’s also true that rule applies to both sides.
The scale of the initial Hamas attack, alongside the low-tech brutality of it (to some degree if the same level of carnage had been accomplished with modern military weapons, I think the reaction would be somewhat different), begets an escalation in state violence (for the very reasons you discussed).
FWIW, based on what I’ve read from experts, to some degree Hamas may have expected this scale of a violent response and felt it was a worthwhile “sacrifice” for a victory in the long term. I still tend to believe there is no such thing as a suicidal state (or even non-state) actor.
Ultimately, Israel has to make a choice. A Palestinian state for the Palestinians with no out of control, state-supported settler communities or a Greater Israel with a secular, full citizenship based government for all peoples residing there. The current political and cultural status is unsustainable.
I don’t know how to get to either scenario.
@Scott: Particularly when there’s a sizable contingent of Palestinians for whom the very existence of a Jewish state on territory they consider rightfully theirs is anathema.
@Matt Bernius: I tend to believe that Hamas didn’t expect this level of retribution because they succeeded far beyond their wildest dreams. If the IDF had been there, manning the wall, and had been able to respond to the attack, while some number of fighters probably would have gotten through, it would have been a much, much smaller number. Maybe Hamas would have ended up with a hostage or two. Hamas could have pointed to the attempt, said “Look, we’re trying,” and proven they were still relevant. Instead, something like 3000 people were able to run rampant for up to 20 hours. And as such, the scale of the atrocity was unbearable.
While that may be true, it isn’t relevant. In both Israel and in the occupied territories the policies are being set and carried out by people absolutely intent on taking complete control over the territories. It doesn’t matter how many individual Israelis would accept a two state solution because the people who have control over the policy continue to expand existing settlements and create new ones. And even within “mainland” Israel, courts continue to find that Israelis of Arabic descent can be evicted from their multigenerational homes because they can’t produce the paperwork dictated by Israeli laws. And don’t forget that the Jude’s and Samaria assasinated a prime minister who was working towards a two state solution, because he was working to such a solution. Supporters of that assassination, however few in number, now occupy powerful positions in the government and had been given free rein to execute their preferred policies.
And of course, anyone in the occupied territories who even suggested a two state solution would be murdered by Hamas or one of the other groups.
@Moosebreath:
Groups representing the Palestinian people have been engaged in violence for decades. Who do you think killed the Israeli athletes at the 72 Olympics? Or hijacked a multitude of planes in Europe in the 70s and 80s (including the Air France A300 that wound up in Uganda). Not to mention the spate of suicide bombings all over Israel more recently. Or why Arafat famously renounced terrorism in the 90s?
@Scott:
Israel needs to abandon the settlers. Wither pay them off to move out, or tell them they’ll be on their own as residents of a Palestinian state led by Mahmoud Abbas and subject to local laws and practices.
It goes without saying Bibi would never even think to consider this idea. the problem is neither would anyone else, as that would kill their political career, and might kill their life as well. Remember Yitzhak Rabin.
Once again: Netanyahu and the Likudist right argued that Hamas should be funded and boosted. I don’t get why this inconvenient fact keeps being dismissed and ignored.
Hamas and Likud are on same side: undermining secularists and moderates within Israel and Palestine to prevent peaceful, negotiated solutions.
The people who caused the problem can’t fix the problem.
@Moosebreath:
They never tried moral resistance. Their position in the beginning was simple: kill all Jews. That is still Hamas’s position, unchanged. The WestBank Palestinians walked that back over the course of decades and instead of saying ‘kill all Jews’ they just demanded the state of Israel cease to exist. . . so that they could get on with killing all Jews.
Translate this to Indians and White folk terms and it’s the Lanape demanding the death of all White people on the island of Manhattan, then softening over time to simply demand that all of Manhattan be handed back to the Indians. Frankly, the Indians would have a pretty good case. But they’d be idiots to try and pursue it. Much as the Mexican government would be insane to demand the return of California or Arizona. (Texas? That we could discuss.)
The Palestinians are demanding the Israelis give everything back. Ain’t happening. The core of the problem is the failure of Palestinians to read the room, to aim for achievable goals. But as usual, they failed to adapt. They live in a fantasy world, egged on by Arab states for decades, then finally abandoned by Arab states because even the Saudis can eventually figure out which way the wind is blowing.
@Kathy:
Netanyahu remembers him. He incited Rabin’s assassination.
Netanyahu is a liar, a crook, a murderer, a war criminal, an enemy of democracy, and an enabler of terrorism. Obama and Biden personally despise him, for good reason.
Why the rest of us are supposed to blindly support his government is a mystery. One might as well ask Americans to support Putin’s Russia.
I can’t remember who said it, but I am once again reminded of a pundit’s comment when we invaded Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban. He said that’s like invading Georgia to destroy the rednecks. Being Taliban is more a lifestyle than an organization. And who do you get to sign a surrender binding on the rest of them?
Hamas is more of an organization than the Taliban, and there may no longer be an overt organization called Hamas, but Israel is creating more militants than they’ll kill.
@MarkedMan:
What does Netanyahu intend to do with the people already there? Maybe a repeat of the 1948 genocides?
Obviously victory will involve the Israeli army being viewed as liberators after a cakewalk. Every member of Hamas will lie dead, and the people of Gaza will be dancing in the streets, and showering the Israeli army with flower petals. A new, moderate leadership will emerge that will see Israeli occupation and control as a parent protecting their children.
Either that or just a lot of destruction and dead bodies, with a terrorist organization embedded within an ever increasingly radicalized population, and new assaults roughly daily.
One or other. Hard to tell. Both equally likely.
@Gustopher:
George W Bush? That you? Lol
@Gustopher: “… see Israeli occupation and control as a parent protecting their (red-headed step) children.”
Fixed that for you.
@Michael Reynolds:
“They never tried moral resistance. Their position in the beginning was simple: kill all Jews.”
Killing all Jews is Hamas’s position (and it among many reasons why they deserve to be destroyed). It is neither the position of all Palestinians, nor is your statement that Palestinians never tried moral resistance accurate (and they do not deserve the treatment they received in response).
The Palestinians have tried to organize boycotts of Israel. And in response, the majority of US states sanction anyone who tries to do so.
The Palestinians have tried to bring cases involving their treatment to the International Criminal Court. The US (among other nations) has prevents the court from hearing the cases.
The Palestinians have tried largely peaceful marches. In response, hundreds of Palestinians were shot dead, and over 10,000 wounded.
The Palestinians have tried general strikes. In response Israel shot and arrested strikers.
@DK:
Netanyahu is done.
He’ll stay as PM until the current war operations are over.
After that, he’ll be out.
And the entire Likud/”right block” look like getting hammered at the next elections.