naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #3
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
I've seen the document bounced around, in some cases by people that consider it alone sign of IDF illegitimacy and possible (charitable) motivation for a lot of the heavier resistance by Biden et EU. I'll caveat that the Israel Intelligence Ministry looks like one of many Likud sinecures, rather than a group with power or even particular competence.
That doesn't prevent it from being a trial balloon, but this document is definitely not a 'plan' in the wargames-invading-Canada sense. I've seen more serious analysis done on cocktail napkins.
The paper's "Option C" might be persuasive if you squint, but only under the assumption you can do five impossible things before breakfast. You just have to pressure Egypt (1) and Europe (2) to intake millions of refuges, without massive loss of life (3), get the new refuges to move (4) somehow filtering out at least a large portion of those with terrorist interests (5). The point where it's trying to send an advertising campaign(!) to tell Gazan residents that they're going to permanently lose their land (!!) because "Allah made sure you lose this land because of Hamas’ leadership"(!!!) is the most word game of word games possible.
But there are deeper issues, even presuming it could be done. Hamas-in-Sinai will not stop hating Jews. They will not, as Lebanon has shown, stop lobbing rockets into Israel. The goal is that it'll be harder for them to do worse, but the tradeoff is that after that point kinetic action becomes a possible act of war. The closest relevant city is Arish in northern Sinai: note that <200k population. Northern Sinai isn't as mountainously untraversable as the middle and south, but it's still a desert. Maintaining a million-plus population tent city might be possible (if at a massive financial and humanitarian cost), and people have successfully built cities-in-deserts before, but there's no real honest way to expect it to happen here.
That doesn't put it off the table -- I don't have any good ideas myself! But I don't think these three options are the only available choices, nor that this paper evaluates them honestly.
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Notes -
I've seen the document bounced around, in some cases by people that consider it alone sign of IDF illegitimacy and possible (charitable) motivation for a lot of the heavier resistance by Biden et EU. I'll caveat that the Israel Intelligence Ministry looks like one of many Likud sinecures, rather than a group with power or even particular competence.
That doesn't prevent it from being a trial balloon, but this document is definitely not a 'plan' in the wargames-invading-Canada sense. I've seen more serious analysis done on cocktail napkins.
The paper's "Option C" might be persuasive if you squint, but only under the assumption you can do five impossible things before breakfast. You just have to pressure Egypt (1) and Europe (2) to intake millions of refuges, without massive loss of life (3), get the new refuges to move (4) somehow filtering out at least a large portion of those with terrorist interests (5). The point where it's trying to send an advertising campaign(!) to tell Gazan residents that they're going to permanently lose their land (!!) because "Allah made sure you lose this land because of Hamas’ leadership"(!!!) is the most word game of word games possible.
But there are deeper issues, even presuming it could be done. Hamas-in-Sinai will not stop hating Jews. They will not, as Lebanon has shown, stop lobbing rockets into Israel. The goal is that it'll be harder for them to do worse, but the tradeoff is that after that point kinetic action becomes a possible act of war. The closest relevant city is Arish in northern Sinai: note that <200k population. Northern Sinai isn't as mountainously untraversable as the middle and south, but it's still a desert. Maintaining a million-plus population tent city might be possible (if at a massive financial and humanitarian cost), and people have successfully built cities-in-deserts before, but there's no real honest way to expect it to happen here.
That doesn't put it off the table -- I don't have any good ideas myself! But I don't think these three options are the only available choices, nor that this paper evaluates them honestly.
More options
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