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I think that the hostages are basically a distraction, geopolitically.
I am willing to cut the IDF some slack for hostage saving operations, if 50 civilian Palestinians and 30 Hamas die in an operation that ends up rescuing a few hostages, I will not cry foul at them for valuing the lives of their own citizens higher than that of the civilians of a territory whose government are murderous bandits. Much more slack than for accepting collateral damage for other goals such as offing yet another Hamas lieutenant. Other than that, the hostages should not make a difference.
In the meta-game, the winning response to hostage-taking is to ignore the kidnappers demands. If you roll over whenever someone takes your citizens hostage, expect to be doing a lot of rolling over.
The problem with Nethanyahu's war is that is is not actually winning. Defeating Hamas would (at least) require occupying Gaza, and the IDF seems unable to do that. Just striking here and there until all of Gaza is living in some refugee camps will not get rid of Hamas (killing half of their bandits will not accomplish anything on a decade scale), and seems like a waste of human lives.
I think Biden (or his minders) does not care too much about lives of the remaining hostages either, and mostly uses this as political leverage on Bibi.
Gaza really deserves the Germany-45 treatment (occupation and the stamping out of their government), but if nobody is willing and able to do that and if we have to suffer Hamas to live either way, then it seems strictly better to cut a deal with them where both sides refrain from bombing each other rather than fighting a war whose objective will never be fulfilled. Bringing the hostages home would make it seem less like the defeat it actually is.
That was pretty much the situation before the war. Israel was starting to let Gazans cross the border to work, there were a few rocket attacks which engendered similarly small responses from Israel, but mostly things were peaceful...
Then Hamas stormed across the border, taking hostages and killing everyone they didn't take. With the woefully optimistic plan that this attack would set off a country wide pogrom and rid the Holy Land of Jews forever.
Why would Hamas agree to return to the status quo that they chose to violate? Because Gazan civilians are dying? Hamas wants Gazan civilians to die, because it legitimises their position and delegitimises Israel.
Gaza is essentially a giant open air prison that is banned form exporting and has severely limited imports. It isn't sustainable for them to have the pre October 7 arrangement. Long term the only future for Gaza is to get a much better deal. Forcing Israel to fight a permanent insurgency is a viable strategy because Israel is going to be stuck in an unsustainable situation. Israel can't be in a constant state of crisis and war.
You have it fundamentally backwards. Israel not only already substantially opened up shortly before Oct 7, but they also hoped to open up further and Hamas put an end to it since it was against their interest. Palestinians working in Israel and normalising relationships is in Israel's interest, since it makes Hamas' obsolete and removes their biggest thorn in the side. Or at the very least they would like to just leave the Gaza strip alone, but that was unsustainable since it gave Hamas' easier access to weapons. Endless death and war on the other hand is in the Hamas' interest, since it lets them generate western and arab support and keeps them in power.
Israel was expanding the occupied terrirories on the west bank, had killed hundreds of Palestinians during 2023 and had thousands of Palestinian hostages. They were conducting a blockade against Gaza.
It isn't endless. Algeria was French for a century, now it isn't. Rhodesia was British for a century, now it isn't. They are turning Israel into the next Vietnam and making Israel fundamentally unsustainable. The US left most of Iraq and all of Afghanistan because it simply wasn't going to end. Israel minus Palestinians and ultra orthodox is about 1/60th of the US but trying to occupy a quarter as many people as the US tried to occupy with the help of Britain and several other countries in 2003.
You see how calling convicted terrorists "hostages" makes people suspicious of your point of view right? Why are we conflating the West Bank and Gaza? They will never be one nation again unless they ethnically cleanse Israel off the map. Of course there were trade controls in Gaza, it is, I don't know how many times it must be stated, run by a terrorist organization whos interest is killing Jews and using its own citizens as human shields to try and get American and European Leftists sad.
Palestinians have every right to engage in armed resistance. Israel is taking more than combatants prisoner and not providing trials.
Why aren't there trade controls on Israel then? They are bombing and occupying Israel? Fundamentally what the region needs is a situation in which Palestinians are in control of the situation and have a stable arrangement that they are satisfied with. The needs of the Israelis can't take higher priority than those that represent the bigger population. Security in the arab world is needed both for them but also since it benefits Europe. The interests of an insignificant tiny state with no natural resources has to be way down the priority list.
Well if its an armed resistance then they are POWs and not hostages. You are trying to have it both ways. In one part of your frame this is a legitimate war, so the Gazans are entitled to violence. Yet, in the other part of your frame Israel is not entitled to carry out its war in an effective manner, which, given normal rules of engagement + Hamas's tactics would ordinarily entitle Israel to a genocide. Which you would, obviously, again object to.
So a genocide of Israel is necessary? The people of Gaza have spoken and they prefer death to coexistence.
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Those comparisons would be more meaningful if Israelis could just take the suitcase or death deal. Even if we wrote off the ones of European origin, the Mizrahi Jews certainly can't/won't go back "home".
It bodes ill that the Palestinian cause seems to depend on a very narrow equilibrium where Western nations are both decadent and secure enough to just eat a loss or two, given the disanalogies.
It's not worth wondering about for Westerners but I often wonder if Palestinians actually think the Algerian deal is viable. Or if they're just lying for their audience and know deep down that, when it comes to it, Madagascar really isn't an option but they'll burn that bridge when they get to it.
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Quality of life in the Palestinian territories in general pre-war was not substantially below that of other (non-petrostate) Arab nations and communities.
Wasn't there a pretty big Gaza/west bank difference there, or am I misremembering?
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In Egypt people aren't stuck in a tiny area that is under blockade. They didn't have hundreds of their country men killed by an enemy government in the past year and they didn't have thousands being held hostage by Israel.
Daily reminder that Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza twenty years ago and were rewarded with redoubled attacks, after which they instituted the blockade.
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POWs or terrorist being held captive is not the same thing as “held hostage.” Also wonder why IDF killed hundreds of Palestinians but not Egyptians
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I’m not 100 percent sure what Hamas expected. In my mind I boil it down to three scenarios.
I suspect different participants may have had different scenarios in mind. The guys who were actually going in were probably pumped up with scenario one, while the leadership actually had in mind scenarios two or three.
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