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What would you have done differently if you were elected PM of Israel on 10/8?
"Resign immediately" seems like the (morally+personally) least fraught option. It's not quite the trolley problem, because if you redirect the trolley the lone person gets to beat you up or worse before they get run over (or just elect a different switch operator).
What would you have done differently if you were elected leader of Germany at some point in the WWI/WWII interregnum, perhaps on 1932-12-03 for a maximum sense of historical inevitability? (...in 1944? ...of North Vietnam in the middle of the Vietnam war, for opposite political valence and ultimate outcome?) Nations and polities and the whole web of human interactions have enough momentum that at some point, their only available choices might indeed be surrender (wronging themselves) and villainy (wronging others). That Israel's population and Netanyahu in particular had no better options after the Hamas attack does not absolve them from moral responsibility for their actions, since decisions they (the Israeli people and their forefathers in general, and Netanyahu in particular) made before were what got them in this situation to begin with.
I don’t see resigning as a good answer here. If you resign you are personally absolved from having to make the decisions that will come up, and also unable to guide the response. It’s a cowardly way out. You know what will happen, you know what it likely means for history on both sides. You just don’t want your personal name on it.
As I meant to imply with the comment about the differences to the trolley problem, I don't want stakeholders to punish/assassinate me for what I would see to be a morally net positive choice (at this point, this would include both negotiating abode elsewhere for everyone in Israel, packing up and leaving, and going full unabashed genocide on the remaining Palestinians, trading future negative utils for present ones). Why would I be obliged to sacrifice myself for these people I have nothing to do with, just because they unilaterally put me in charge as part of a thought experiment?
What would be your answer for my Germany/NorthVN scenarios?
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Decisions such as being Jewish and alive at the same time?
Moving to/staying in Israel, not accepting a Turkey/Greece style population transfer two-state solution at the price of costlier territorial concessions earlier, and whatever miscalculation, if it in fact was one, made them not prevent the Hamas attack, among others.
Rounding that down to what you said is fairly comparable to how the US progressive coalition calls every part of the pro-trans agenda "trans people existing". Do you like that version of this argument too?
The question was about moral responsibility for having to defend themselves.
Your trans scenario would have to be something like "trans people have done things which anger cis people, such as demanding to be in the wrong bathrooms. If an angry person then attacks the trans people and gets hurt when the trans people defend themselves, the trans people are morally responsible for that". Under those circumstances, I'd agree that the trans people were defending their existence and aren't responsible.
In real life, "they just don't want trans people to exist" never means "trans people are not at fault for hurting someone in self-defense".
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-Make a two state deal with with the West Bank that implies a massive land-swap ; in exchange for giving up on any claims of rights to the Gaza Strip and allowing its full annexation by Israel, full condemnation of 10/7 and declaring Hamas to be a rouge organization, Israel will abandon all settlements that aren't Ariel, move back the Wall correspondingly, and the map will be radically redrawn in order to give the West Bank a nice chunk of the Golan Heights (if Syria wants to give the piece it claims to own too, better yet), which is decently fertile and apparently has a boatload of oil (although it's not clear if it's any good to be refined and used). Israel will abandon all military occupation of the zone, recognize the Nation of Palestine as fully sovereign and will let them be whatever they want to be. Abbas gets to make Palestine a better place for its citizens, or to turn it into another corrupt petrodollar tyranny (or both!)
-All people and descendants of who left the place due to Nakba will get right of return to the Palestinian country, as all Gazans. All Israelis currently living in the Golan Heights region and the settlements will be moved to Gaza. Cities will be created on the Golan Heights from scratch in order to accommodate the massive flow of immigrants, while the already existing towns will be expanded if it's needed to. Gazan cities will be massively redesigned from scratch to allow Israeli high quality infrastructure. Both refugee groups will get free housing for the troubles caused. All this will require money, and looots of it; so the peace deal will be executed with the financial support from the international community (The G7 and the Gulf Tigers will pull 90% of the weight, BRIC the rest)
-Having gotten the two-state solution done and over with, in exchange for recognition of Palestine as a sovereign country, Saudi Arabia and the UAE agree to push all the buttons on Qatar and do a full blockade of the country in joint with the US until all Hamas leaders are turned over to the Israeli government to do with them as they please (and this is very important; the Israelis want more than justice; they want revenge; if they want to stone Ismail Haniyeh in the streets of Tel Aviv and broadcast it on TV, let them)
-The international community agrees to consider the Gaza Strip as belonging to Israel, the IDF invades Gaza by land mostly with troops on the ground and a very few targeted non-carpet bombing campaigns, in a no-prisoners-taken approach; anyone living in Gaza who collaborates in the IDF will be rewarded (and its identity shielded in order to avoid being punished for treason), anyone who fights for Hamas will be shot on sight short of dropping their weapons inmediately, laying on the ground/rasing the white flag.
-Turn the script I just wrote.
I mean, let's be fair, from a rationality point of view, I don't see any egregious with my plan (except for Jerusalem, which I don't know what to do about it); even with the logistical costs of the relocation of millions of people and building of cities amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars, they get easily compensated by avoiding WWIII and getting long-lasting peace in the Middle East. The problem is that it implies massive sacrifices to both sides; neither is getting what they want at all; they're just giving up things in order to avoid losing even more. Israelis want the whole land. Palestinians want the whole land. Neither is going to give an inch of it. But the two state solution thought about by the mainstream is impossible to work; two pieces of non-continuous land becoming a country? Get out of here.
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Personally I would have annexed Gaza (and the West bank too for good measure) and made everyone there a citizen. Then treat any terrorists as common criminals and punish them to the full extent of the law. This would also solve the Haredim problem in one fell swoop (or at least delay it for two generations) and crush the Israeli far right because now there are an extra two million people who'll never vote for them.
In this scenario everyone wins except for the terrorists and far right nutters; both of which are groups that deserve to have a boot stamping on their face for eternity.
Now the next time you have an election the Palestinian party wins and all the Jews get expelled or killed. Game over. Thank you for playing Middle East Peace, please come back soon.
Wouldn't there still be peace?
No, the Palestinians would not only continue to fight among themselves but also fight with their neighbors.
Would the US still arm a party to the conflict?
Maybe both.
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Nothing, but do it faster. Israel lost too much time initially - if they had pacified Gaza completely with 100000 civilian casualties, but got it done before 1st of November it would have been probably forgotten by now.
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