26
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What Israel should do now: Israel’s current approach is clearly wrong. Here’s a better way to fight Hamas — and win.
Link information
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- Title
- What Israel should do now
- Authors
- Zack Beauchamp
- Published
- Oct 20 2023
- Word count
- 4801 words
this seems like it takes as a starting assumption that the Israeli government wants to topple Hamas. which I don't think is historically accurate:
in the Times of Israel, October 8th: For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces (archive link)
and in Haaretz, October 20th: A Brief History of the Netanyahu-Hamas Alliance - for 14 years, Netanyahu's policy was to keep Hamas in power; the pogrom of October 7, 2023, helps the Israeli prime minister preserve his own rule (archive link)
does the author think that "do a counter-terrorism" has never been proposed or considered as an option inside the Israeli military? if they haven't done this, there's probably a reason why.
yep...here we have the real reason Israel will never do what he's suggesting.
they've been chipping away at annexation of the West Bank for decades. Netanyahu's right-wing coalition government is dedicated to it. just as one example, from that wiki article, June of this year:
proposing that Israel roll back its annexation of the West Bank in order to remove Hamas from power just completely misunderstands what Israel is actually doing and what its goals are.
Israel isn't a political monolith. Netanyahu mostly wins with a plurality of support at best, which has utterly collapsed since this attack. This is like saying the US is trying to eliminate abortion because one of the two major parties is.
The articles I have read recently about murders of Palestinians in the West Bank by settlers support your thesis.
West Bank Farmers and herders are being treated like we treated the indigenous Americans
Israel will not stop committing their genocide against the Palestinian people short of being stopped by America (very unlikely) or being forced to face consequences by other Arab countries (World War 3).
The most likely outcome is that Israel continues their actions until there is no Palestine left, and then they will eat themselves just as another apartheid state governed by kleptocrats did.
I'm not sure of a silver lining here. It just sucks.
Keep in mind that this is still only a limited, local conflict, and Arab countries are not exactly united about any common cause whatsoever. Palestine has been hung out to dry for years and years. Besides, the rest of the world is nowhere near invested enough in the region for this conflict to somehow become World War 3
Because of the location, it could be a huge problem for world energy markets in addition to being a humanitarian crisis and tragedy like any big war
It's well known that Israel has been indirectly supporting Hamas for years as a method to divide Palestinians and block the PA's pursuit of statehood.
It's despicable and certainly worth criticism. However, I don't think we can treat the assessments of Hamas by even this Israeli government as static here. Obviously it blew up in their faces and now they're dealing with the consequences.
This is basically clickbait than anything else because the concept of a "targeted counterterrorism operation" is hardly a new one, yet it feels like the article posits as some kind of breakthrough concept.. it would have been already done if it was so simple
It's more that the Israeli government is not actually interested in solving the problem. From the point of view of a fascist settler-colonialist government, terrorism is actually a bonus because it's justification for more settling and more colonialism. There is no positive solution to this problem with the current Israeli government, just like there is no positive solution to this problem with Hamas being the de-facto Palestinian government.
Mark my words, in a few years north Gaza will be annexed by Israel and the cycle will repeat.
I don't think the attack is a thing the government wanted. The attack makes Netanyahu and his cabinet look incompetent and weak. After the war's over, I don't think Netanyahu survives this.
I wish I had a reason to tell you that you are wrong, but the only thing I can point to off the top of my head is that Israel pulled out their settlers from Gaza - some forcibly as they refused to go. But looking at a map of especially the West Bank, the hundred Palestinian enclaves do not lie about Israel's intent. Yes, they must protect themselves and their country from terrorism, hence the massive walls. I guess I just hope that you are wrong, and that perhaps this is the last drop for Palestinian leadership to somehow work out a two state solution that could be found acceptable
I hope I'm wrong too. I just don't see a way forward short of both average Palestinians and Israelis throwing out their respective governments and holding their feet to the fire to force a real solution.
I think the avg Israeli is more than willing to stick their head in the sand while their government commits ethnic cleansing. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe they'll have a rebellion that would make John Brown proud. I just doubt it.
Not a surprise, given that the author previously claimed there was a literal bridge connecting Gaza and the West Bank.
While I'm skeptical as to how workable the proposed solution is, I did like that the article bothered to talk to people about what an actually good response might look like rather than getting bogged down in unanswerable questions about who deserves what.
I think it's the most workable solution of all the ones I've seen. At the end of the day, I think 'destroy Hamas' is an unachievable fantasy that's destined to end in failure. A targeted counter-terrorism operation, regardless of outcome, at least more or less has the ability to declare 'mission accomplished' after some period of time.
Yeah, I guess my doubt is that any realistic and finite mission to hit Hamas leadership and infrastructure would require an Israeli invasion or Occupation of Gaza to actually work. There is the immediate military goal, but the political goal ought to be how to make ordinary Israeli citizens feel safe in their daily lives from terrorism and I don't know to what extent a limited engagement can really do that.
Hamas is basically a terrorist organization with control over a strip of land, they're completely intertwined with and part of the local government there (even if they rule through thuggishness instead of legitimacy). So there will be no cooperation, and Palestinians hate Israel intensely so they can't get people on the ground to collaborate to throw the terrorists out either.
Honestly, I don't think there is any road to peace that doesn't go through Egypt and Jordan. They potentially have more credibility, if you want to dismantle Hamas you need Arab nations on the ground providing intelligence and propping up a fledgeling government. The people there won't trust, or work with, Israelis after everything that's happened.
With how intertwined terrorists are with Gazan government, would the suggested "go in, kill all the terrorist leaders, leave" not leave a power vacuum? A power vacuum in a already precarious humanitarian situation could cost many many lives indirectly, not even speaking of any fighting over power.
That, and who knows what will fill such a power vacuum. I mean, I'm not usually worried about "what could be worse than terrorists in government", but the middle east is riddled with "what could be worse than"s that were followed by "and then it got worse".
Though I'm very convinced by your nod towards Egypt and Jordan. While domino theory is probably a bunch of bullshit, I think it makes more sense if you flip it around: Nationbuilding is much more effective if you've got a stable neighbor to the fledgling nation to lend support. At least a non-scientific look back at historical nation-building efforts suggests this, IMO. (Me using the word "Nation" is not necessarily suggesting that Palestine/Gaza should be independent nations.)
I think the political goals are much shorter term than that. I'm not Jewish but I had it explained to me that the honorific given to Jews killed in antisemitic attacks is "hashem yikom damo" or "may God avenge his blood" and that at least a plurality of Israel seemingly wants to exact revenge for the attack and worry about the fallout later.
My hope is that the Israeli government is, between the gravity of the situation and allied pressure, at least forced to exercise some foresight here and that while it's not likely to 'solve' anything tangible related to peace or stability, a counter-terrorism campaign is at least a solution in the sense of these immediate political goals of the Israeli government and one that reduces the risk and fallout of a broader war.
I swear this answer is something that Israel has actually tried before. I think it was the 2nd intifada? It didn't work, clearly.
Various parts of this have been tried multiple times before, yeah. These kinds of answers really ignore the reality of war, and the specifics of the situation.
The US tried the same thing in the middle east for YEARS. Killing an insurgent force surgically is extremely difficult, and nets questionable gains when their replacements just do the same thing. Assuming you know who's responsible, assuming you know where they are, assuming you can get there without them escaping/killing everyone, you best bet is to, once again, have a bunch of dead bodies and people saying it was an unjust state sponsored killing (because...well at least for the last part, it was). And that's also assuming you don't kill a bunch of civilians in the process.
These "well just kill the bad guys" things are so ignorant of how miserable it is to fight these kinds of forces. Their bases are wherever they can find room (civilian infrastructure or not). Their training is "point the loud end at them". They don't wear uniforms, they don't look different, and they've got the sympathies of the local population.
This stuff has been wildly successful since at LEAST Vietnam in recent history, and arguably much much longer if you go outside of the US and modern times. Their main resource is simply being funded externally and enough circulating hate to know that no matter how many of their people die, they can always recruit more. It's why suicide bombings were such a popular tactic, and their "military doctrine" is much the same. Who cares if you kill 5000 of us? You'll probably kill at least 1000 civilians in the process and we'll have 10,000 more next year.
Counterinsurgencies are not won by military might alone. It's called hearts and minds for a reason, no matter how brutal the occupation if the people there hate you enough they will fight to the last man.
If Israel actually wanted to solve the problem there are so many ways to make the Palestinians hate them less. Treat them like fucking human beings. Give them their basic rights. Maybe negotiate in good faith instead of undermining them at every turn and stealing their land.
The problem is not with the military tactics Israel is using. It's with their core strategy. If they really wanted a lasting peace they could make any attempt at peace and reconciliation with the average Palestinians who are not actually well represented by Hamas, remember that the Israelis harassed the more moderate parts of the Palestinian authority into exile or locked them up.
There's only one kind of war that's won on the battlefield rather than at the negotiating table. Total war. And that is genuinely what I believe Israel is engaged in.
The whole premise of the article, and the author’s credentials just make this a naive fluff piece.
So 0 background in anything relevant to crafting policy to tackle any of even the most obvious issues.
Idk man this low effort stuff is not really the spirit of Tildes, especially on such a hot world news topic that’s incredibly sensitive and has proved intractable for literally the brightest policy makers in the world for over half a century.
But sure, “how we win”, whatever that means, is buried in a Vox article. Come on.
So this is one of the most well-informed resources I've found on the recent history of Gaza, and why it's nearly impossible to conceive of any successful ground operation that doesn't involve myriad deaths. Read the whole thing, particularly the part about just how thoroughly the region has been webbed with fortified tunnels as a matter of survival, and how that tunnel network has cemented Hamas' power.
How are you supposed to “win” against an ideology? You can kill all Hamas fighters and leaders currently alive but new ones will pop up in the future.
Yeah, that's what this article doesn't really get into too much. You win against an ideology by making it unappealing to potential new recruits. Hearts and minds, policing, development aid, all that tedious and boring stuff. But you can't really mount any of those campaigns off the back of a relatively surgical, spec-opsy anti-terror op. Sadly, I think that'd require boots on the ground, which is what this article is arguing against.
Far as I can tell, the options for Israel are "lie down and take it" (which is domestically unviable), "go on a revenge killing spree" (which will likely suppress Hamas activities for a while, but come and haunt them later) or "go big": Secure support from neighboring muslim countries, then go in to eradicate Hamas' ideological foundation. Maybe a campaign where Israel would fight against Hamas and occupy the strip, while Egypt oversees that effort would be more palatable to Gazans? Egypt, perhaps as UN peacekeepers, could basically guarantee that Israel protects civilians, secures food, water, housing for civilians, provides sufficient help in rebuilding, etc.; maybe under such constraints, an occupation can be pulled off for long enough to affect meaningful change... But I can't pretend I know enough about e.g. Gazan-Egyptian-Israeli relations to know if this might work. I imagine even getting Israel and Egypt to cooperate here would be a near-insurmountable obstacle, nevermind securing tolerance from the Gazan population. Without support from nearby Muslim countries, I can't see an occupation working out well.
This is an interesting argument for a 'Plan A'. Having good intelligence and pairing it with surgical air strikes and special operation raids sounds very difficult; if they can pull it off then they would undoubtedly have fewer casualties than a full scale invasion. But they still need to win the peace. If regime change isn't the objective, then they need a way to transition towards a more benign and accountable Palestinian state; but I would say that having a political problem is still preferable to having a military problem, so maybe this is possible.
I’ll say!
Hmmm what could that be?