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The IRA wasn't the catspaw of multiple Muslim countries populated by people with a millennium-old grudge against any non-Muslim living within the boundaries of the fullest historical extent of the caliphate.
I mean--genocide either way would also be a long term solution, and it is the one to which the Palestinians have repeatedly returned despite the number of times Israel has unilaterally assumed the cost of de-escalation.
The IRA comparison is misleading at best, because Muslim extremists are a totally different kettle of fish. I simply cannot take seriously any analysis of what Israel should or should not do that does not 100% foreground the deep religious commitment of these people to the specific proposition that the Jews should die:
The IRA wanted a certain political outcome, and weren't much bothered by the idea of killing to make that happen. But "independent Palestine" is not really the goal; it is at best instrumental to the goal of removing unbelievers from holy lands by any means. Persuading them to accept a different goal means fundamentally altering their religious convictions--not something Britain really had to achieve with the IRA.
My credence on the possible success of your proposed plan is less than 20%. Pre-October, I might have given you even odds, but murdering a thousand people in a single night, raping women, kidnapping hundreds of civilian hostages, that's way past IRA shit.
The IRA was funded varyingly by the USA and the Soviets. As cats go, I think they outrank the Muslim Middle East.
And absolutely, my plan is contingent that Israel is unwilling for whatever reason to go full genocide. That would indeed be a final solution. Which is one of the reasons they almost certainly will not do that. America being their supporter is another.
And I also agree that my plan is more likely to fail than succeed. This is not an easy situation to resolve. Contingent on Israel not being willing to commit genocide, what plan do you think has the best odds for success? I can't think of many. Short of kicking the can down the road again at least.
As for the Islam thing, well while my expertise is more Pakistan than Palestine, my experience is that absent the direct pressures to increase religiosity (and again we see the same thing in NI, where both sides are more religious than the norm), that will fall away, if there are fewer trigger events for Hamas to rally them around. In other words they are not angry at Israel because they are Muslim extremists they are Muslim extremists because the conflict with Israel (and the West more broadly) is used as a recruiting tool and to reinforce the in group.
Again, I'm not saying there are high odds, but my experience with Muslims is that most of them are about as much Muslim as most of the Christians I know are Christian, i.e. not very. But the conflict with Israel is used as weapon to propagandize young Muslims. If you can de-escalate that, then you can also make that weapon less potent. This whole thing is a cycle that feeds on itself.
Islam is not really the issue here, it's a symptom not a cause. I've been in contact with extremists of all stripes (the precursor to Prevent when I worked in government) and most extremists are very similar. The cause is malleable. It is almost always some event or situation that causes their transfiguration.
That said, I would completely agree that trying to crack open the rest of the Middle East so as to try and stop some of that support and direction would also be helpful. Many of the Arab nations are willing to use Hamas as a weapon against Israel but are not exactly friends with Palestinians. Iran is also an entirely different kettle of fish, but it's probably possible to try and split their attention as well.
"But realpolitik interests have largely taken over since the late 1980s. Iran gradually came to support Palestinian armed groups as an integral part of its regional security policy to contain and preoccupy Israel which, along with the United States, it has long perceived as the greatest threat to its security and domestic stability. From this viewpoint, a group’s Islamic credentials (or lack thereof) mattered less than its willingness to confront Israel. As a result, for many decades Iran, a self-styled Islamic Shia republic, has supported a plethora of secular, leftist, and Sunni Islamist groups."
There are some wedges there, Iran cut funding to Hamas after a spat over Syria before, so it isn't impossible for this to happen again. And note how while the pretext is a shared religion, it is very much realpolitik concerns that drive Iran. Same way the US supports Saudia Arabia despite the clear cultural and religious differences.
Again to be clear I am not saying this has a huge chance for success, in fact I would say your initial pre October 7th 50-50 shot would have been very charitable even then.
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