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I am tagged so I feel like adding something. I think most Western-oriented people (including me) has had the experience of an incredibly visceral reaction yesterday to the images of gunned men of another culture violating the family homes, taking away women and leaving death and destruction behind them. We all felt this because they could be our houses and they could be our women. Israeli politicians are talking about basically genocide and the Air Force has been dropping a bomb per minute ever since. This is how the Palestinians have felt at least once a month for 4 generations at this point. Their entire culture is a coping mechanism to deal with this extreme constant humiliation. I can't begin to fathom how childish someone has to be to suggest that THIS MAN just surrender to the killers of his child in exchange for becoming their low-wage servant.
The alternative to surrendering to those killers is almost certain death. I mean, what do you say to the surviving (American) Indian in 1880 whose tribe has been mostly killed in conflict with settlers / the government? To run into the bullets?
Surviving in many cases meant the opportunity for more children, descendants, a genetic legacy, life, the things that all people intrinsically seek. But then perhaps this is a difference in kind, after all Jews lived at the mercy of others, often humiliated, for many centuries, so perhaps we cannot understand those for whom death is always better than a life on one’s knees.
Palestinians haven’t surrendered for 80+ years at this point and their genetical material is passing along quite successfully.
Israel isn’t omnipotent. It left Gaza before back when it had half the population, Hamas-Iran axis didn’t exist and the US was the absolute world hegemon, unquestionably committed to Israel. There weren’t 100 Jewish hostages in Gaza.
None of these conditions are true anymore. It’s a much richer and casualty sensitive country. Cheap drones are leading to a revolution in asymmetric warfare. US is distancing itself from Middle East.
Israel can inflict incredible casualties in Gaza. But can they really pacify the region? Or even beat hamas without leading to a much more radical faction taking over? I have serious doubts. And as long as Palestinians persist, all it takes for them is one victory at some point in the future.
Sadly, cheap drones could make wholesale violence only ever more unavoidable. You’re completely correct, as a situation it becomes ever more desperate for Israel, the strategic options narrow towards only one viable gambit.
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The way things look like from here to me, it is not Israel's military weakness that has been allowing Palestinians to persist, but the fact that turning countries into ravaged parking lots is just not done today.
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I think from a Western orientated POV it feels like a rather absurd situation in which our position of power is being couched in almost absurd levels of coddling for people from certain cultures, compared to historical norms (and what they'd do to us if in a similar position of supremacy) and that the whole thing feels like increasingly there's no coherent reason to be so utterly indulgent aside from pure bleeding-heart sympathy.
I would recommend people with such sentiment to remember this is exactly how Russians felt two years ago. Or the US multiple times in the recent memory. Sometimes your seemingly weak enemies can make some powerful friends or exploit structural imbalances to deny you your goals long enough that it turns into a defeat.
Most of those were self-inflicted issues for the superpowers in question, and it's very 'we are establishing norms of conduct which, whilst it'd be nice if everybody followed, it doesn't seem the current losers would follow if they were on top.'
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