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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   34277 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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Given events, how does an Israel act upon and within Gaza if its goal is its security and not stealing land?

Like the British in Northern Ireland who managed to diffuse the situation. It is the only realistic long term plan for Israel.

I think that’s a bit unrealistic given the size of the area in question. Israel as a whole is the size of New Jersey, so any armed action in that limited space is going to be pretty brutal simply because of the population density and the fact that everything is with missile range. There aren’t even good natural boundaries. Ireland was separated from Britain by a sea, and most of the British and Irish for that matter were well outside the zones where the fighting was happening.

They are locking them in to tiny area and bombing them. They should take in the civilians from the area they are bombing. Also there are far less destructive ways to fight than blasting a city from the air. The UK didn't blast entire districts of Belfast.

And put them where exactly? Again, this is a very small densely populated country with only deserts in between cities. And given that Israel doesn’t trust them to not try to attack their citizens when removed (unless we’re talking camps, which is probably not going to work) there’s not much to do with Gazans.

And why should they leave their homes with no guarantees that they’d ever see them again? Trust is gone here. Even before the bombings started, the dominant idea is that Israel will take their land. Even if given an order to leave, who’s leaving? Who’s going to leave Gaza and expect to take Israel at their word that once Hamas and the tunnels are gone, the Gazans will be allowed to return home?

They were pushed into Gaza by militia groups that ethnically cleansed the towns they came from. They can return to the place they were forced out of.

So the towns that got bulldozed to make room for the Jews? The ones Hamas has been shelling daily? I can’t imagine a universe where this works.

The problem here is that the Good Friday Agreement was possible because the IRA was a defined organization with specific demands that could be negotiated with. There existed a stable equilibrium where all parties got enough of what they wanted that they wouldn't break the agreement.

Both sides of this conflict have factions with maximalist goals that are large enough to veto any compromise. One that they have exercised before on numerous occasions (Rabin's assassination, for instance).

They could pretty easily have stopped october 7th by just paying attention to the border. Hamas pretended to be beaten by not responding to some Israeli provocations and Netanyahu thought they were done.

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