Posted on 10/14/2023 9:31:34 AM PDT by Ultra Sonic 007
War is the continuation of politics, and it's quite likely that this is precisely the intended outcome Hamas is banking on. Assumptions that Hamas are going to experience strategic surprise by Israel counterattacking (and killing lots of civilians) are questionable to my mind.
Politics is the highest level of human activity: the Americans like to remind the Vietnamese that that they won every real battle in the Vietnam war. The Vietnamese like to remind the Americans that it didn't actually matter. Both sides are correct, but only one side won.
There were 20 million Afghans when the US invaded Afghanistan. There were 40 million Afghans when the US left. The strategic calculus for the Palestinian people is going to involve ruthlessly trading a lot of lives for political gains, and that certainly includes children.
The constraint that Israel faces is that it *clearly* doesn't think it can really stage some sort of forceful ethnic cleansing of 2+ million Palestinians without suffering very serious negative consequences. People saying "just cleanse the Palestinians bro!" aren't being serious.
By comparison, the ethnic cleansing taking place against Armenians involve some 100.000 Armenians. 5% of the population of the Gaza strip, in other words. And there is a natural place for them to go: the Armenian nation-state.
Forcing the Palestinians into Egypt isn't as simple.
Does Egypt, with its own troubles, with food prices spiking, want to accept several million Palestinians? But what about Lebanon? Don't they just want to pay for them? Or how about Hungary or Poland? Surely just dumping millions of people on other countries isn't *that* bad?
Sadly, it really is "that bad". Particularly right now, in this economy. Pretending like a mass expulsion of *millions* of people is something a state can just dump on its neighbors without any second-order diplomatic consequences is just very foolish.
Moreover, humans are actually built to live under conditions of short (by modern standards) lifespans, uncertain futures, and extreme levels of human-on-human violence. That is the factory setting of humanity, as detailed in this nifty book: "War Before Civilization" (https://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful-Savage/dp/0195119126)
What this means is that a strategy of "mowing the lawn", "culling the grass" or any other euphemism for depriving Palestinians until they break and run away isn't likely to work. This has been the de-facto strategy of Israel, though: hoping that misery will get people to leave.
These attacks are a pretty good signal that the Israeli status quo strategy just isn't going to work. And again, merely increasing the pressure - killing more people through bombing - just further activates that basic human "factory setting". It's not a solution either.
Israeli society isn't going to be able to tolerate attacks like this without experiencing massive instability. But again, mass ethnic cleansing isn't actually "one weird trick" without messy second- and third order effects. The dilemma here is thus quite real.
There's two big problems for Israel in the medium term.
One: a volatile internal demographic crisis (not primarily jews versus non-jews, but haredim versus non-haredim) which recently paralyzed the country and triggered these massive, fairly unprecedented demonstrations.
Two: a shifting alliance network in the Middle East. I'm reminded a bit of the game of musical chairs in Europe during the latter half of the 19th century, with Germany being the big bugbear and France at risk of the very scary prospect of near-total diplomatic isolation.
If you think about this conflict in terms of states and their interests, the "win condition" in the medium term for Israel consists of 1) settling the Palestinian question according to its own preferences, 2) achieving some sort of stable position in terms of foreign relations.
In the good old days of US primacy, ethnically cleansing millions of Palestinians was at least theoretically achievable under point 1) without risking point 2). If the major regional players were divided, and the US had primacy, time could potentially have healed all wounds.
Today, it's an open question among many or maybe even most serious actors inside the Israeli state whether the US can actually be relied on to be on hand even 10 years from now. And if you're watching Ukraine play out, the answer is probably leaning toward a "no".
For Palestine, the "win condition" consists of upending the Israeli status quo, which in turn means frustrating Israel's attainment of goals 1) and 2) above. If Israel has to come to a negotiated settlement on the Palestinian question to achieve external stability, that's a win.
Right now, abandoning the status quo in any direction is more or less politically impossible inside Israel. But what is "possible" in politics can change remarkably quickly. France in 1890 was a republic, Russia an absolutist monarchy. Still, they managed to form an alliance.
Moreover, "the samson option" and the possession of nuclear weapons doesn't actually help Israel in particularly relevant ways. Israel's goal can't just be state survival, it has to be *stability*, and here nukes are worse than useless.
If Israel is under mortar threat, if random militants just kidnap Israeli settlers, you can't just declare that you'll nuke Beirut and Riyadh until the kidnappings stop. Nuclear weapons are good defensively against state actors. They are not good instruments of external coercion.
The only reasonable response for neighboring states if Israel tries to intimate that it will start relying on "the samson option" as a solution to low-level attacks on Israeli settlers is acquiring WMDs of their own. At which point nukes truly become irrelevant as a solution.
All of this is to say that this latest military action by Hamas - like *all* military action - only really finds meaning within the context of a political calculus. And in the realm of the political, it's far from a settled issue which side will eventually win the conflict.
The Palestinians might have to eat a quarter million dead and wounded before they can shift the calculus enough that accepting some sort of viable two-state solution becomes the least bad option in Israel. But that's far from an impossible ask, given actual human nature.
And in the end, Israel engaging in full-scale ethnic cleansing might end up being the Palestinians playing the part of Samson in order to bring down the Philistines: the end result of such a course might be to make Israel's long-term position in the region completely unviable.
If you actually have to be responsible for the survival of your own state and your own people, it's that fear that should keep you up at night. To say that Israelis would blithely take such risks is worse than calling them evil: it's calling them stupid.
They're not stupid.
But boy, I'm sure glad the Bad Orange Man isn't around to throw around mean tweets. Imagine how much worse the situation would be then! /s
Serving the agenda of the one world cult - both sides.
Stop killing your brothers and
start exposing your leaders.
STOP COOPERATING.
One does not pet a rabid dog. One shoots it.
Keep backing up those 2 million “Cheering for the terrorists” Palestinians to the Egyptian border. Make life as miserable as possible and many will find a way to leave, and those remaining should get the point that if you want to live in peace, become civilized, or perish.
However, the cycle cannot easily be broken. Palestinians will return and external actors will continue to insure that those who return will continue their old ways.
Really, the only way to fix it will likely be another world war. Evil must be put down or civilization ends.
I don’t know - beheading of up to 40 babies in a kibbutz is a “very serious negative consequence,” if you ask me.
My prayer is that your passion does not lead to the palestinians coming the the USA.
“Pretending like a mass expulsion of *millions* of people is something a state can just dump on its neighbors without any second-order diplomatic consequences is just very foolish.”
It doesn’t seem to bother the south
of the border bunch much.
Second-order diplomatic consequences
are non-existant in our case.
That you can take up with our government.
No reason to continue to pussyfoot around the problem. They said no more, and if they mean it, a lot of people are going to get their nose bent out of shape.
Too bad.
They will have that in less than one month. It still will not be enough to gain the Palestinians a "two-State solution".
And the "two-State solution" is not enough for the Palestinians. What they want is the destruction of Israel and the extermination of the Jews. The "two-State solution" is merely a "compromise" along the way to an ultimate goal. Palestinians have been very clear about that for decades. We ought to believe them.
I can understand why the Israelis are not seeking a "compromise".
What the Israelis are heading for is a "Final Solution" to the Palestinian problem. That will necessarily require the expulsion or extermination of all the Palestinians in Gaza.
The Jews will impose a "Final Solution". How ironic.
I’m with you. Enough with a handful of politicians achieving political goals and leaving behind a mountain of corpses.
Iran wants to kill the Abraham Accords and ignite a regional , if not global, conflict.
This attack was designed by Iran and Hamas leadership to shock the conscience and force the Israelis to respond in kind.
Hamas is a willing pawn in a larger game being played by Iran.
Time will tell if Iran and Hamas miscalculated badly or if they succeed in drawing Israel into a much larger conflict.
I can't believe I've gone all these years w/o knowing that. The Israeli's-are-all-armed theme has been bantered around in shooter circles since I can remember.
Imagine what we'll know, tomorrow.🙄
I support Israel.
Another poster said "they're not stupid".
They're living next to several hostile, demented neighbors.
Their citizenry do not own personal firearms.
From where I'm sittin, it looks like the may be stupid about some things. 🤨
well, I’m not disagreeing with the principle of the matter as in never again.
but for example, I’m reading today that the biden administration is pledging to get more deeply involved (than its currently role of supplying munitions and hunting for US citizens.) if more regional players get into the game.
I would not put it past the biden administration to promise such intervention because the deeper the US becomes involved —the more the— you broke it you fix it — rule becomes involved.
Meaning the USA takes in hoards of palestinians. you may think that this is the USA’s problem. Not so. the more muslims and especially palestinians, the USA takes in—the more the USA will eventually side with the muslim world against Israel and the more the USA becomes an unreliable 3rd world hell hole.
What are you talking about? Islam is its own one-world cult at odds with all others. And Israel wants to survive, while the globalists hate it
Hamas is not a nationalist group, but an Islamist one. This campaign was designed to protect Iran’s nuclear weapons program and prevent Israeli-Saudi normalization.
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