Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, this week announced that Israel would retain an open-ended security presence in Gaza. Israeli officials talk of imposing a buffer zone to keep Palestinians away from the Israeli border. They rule out any role for the Palestinian Authority, which was ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007 but governs semi-autonomous areas of the occupied West Bank.
The United States has laid out a much different vision. Top officials have said they will not allow Israel to reoccupy Gaza or further shrink its already small territory. They have repeatedly called for a return of the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority and the resumption of peace talks aimed at establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
These conflicting visions have set the stage for difficult discussions between Israel and the U.S.
Crazed strongman Netanyahu wants to kill all of the Palestinians, while the US wants him to kill less than that.
The US could end this quickly if they wanted to by just threatening to take away support. Where would Israel be without the iron dome?
Welcome to Israel. Where beggars CAN be choosers!
No, they couldn’t.
That would lead Israel to realign to either China or to another NATO power.
Then maybe share their US tech with them.
Well…without a reliable way to stop the rockets shooting into Israel, I guess they’d have to make sure the rockets aren’t launched in the first place.
So yeah, they’d probably step up the war, only now with the explicit objective of wiping out all of Gaza since it’s the only way they can prevent attacks.
Israel is VERY aware that support might disappear for them someday. That’s the entire point of the nation, so that Jews, who have been persecuted for over two thousand years, do not need to rely on the benevolence of others to defend them. They have their own munitions stockpiles and factories and are themselves an advanced technological nation, not dependent on the US to fight Hamas. They are perfectly capable of wiping out the Gaza strip without outside assistance.
Plus, your question is based on a false premise anyway. Iron Dome is a system invented, developed, designed, and built in Israel. The US did put some money into it, but not an amount Israel could not have. So without US aid, Israel would be somewhat worse off, but overall totally fine.
I think this is pretty close to the truth. However, Netanyahu is pragmatic and knows he can’t actually kill them all. Rather, his goal is to make conditions in Gaza so unliveable that the Palestinians will have to leave.
What will the US do? It will keep pushing the 2-state solution. Since neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are ready for that yet, it effectively means that the killing will continue until the Gazan Palestinians leave or are so beaten down that they’ll agree to almost anything, or until average Israelis cool down and push the conservative coalition government out of power. Getting to those conditions will still take months.
I don’t think that most of the rest of the world gives a shit. Sure, some people will protest Israel’s actions, but all the big countries, East and West, have more pressing problems. Putin is already at war with Ukraine. Xi frets about Taiwan and the South China Sea, slowing economic growth, and is busy with another round of internal purges. Europe is far more worried about Ukraine than Gaza. They have to spend billions ramping up their militaries again, and Germany’s economic engine is sputtering. The US is too embroiled in its own domestic political problems. The US is also, rightly, much more concerned about the serious geostrategic competition coming from China. Even the surrounding Arab countries don’t care all that much. They aren’t going to go to war against Israel again, that’s for sure.
The hard truth is that Gaza just doesn’t matter that much geo-strategically.
Yup. The hard right in Israel opposes a two state solution.
Sadly the Palestinian Authority has done the same so many times. Nutjobs on both sides are legitimizing each other with their hatred.
PA want a twostate solution though, look at the last peace talk on Obama administration.
The PA stopped that in the 80s.
2001, 2008…
You mean when Israel was literally blockading Gaza and doing a bumper business on settlements in the West Bank?
Lmao
What happened in 2001 and 2008? Because if you mean Camp David then that shit was a farce. Israel’s then-minister of foreign affairs said he wouldn’t accept the offer if he was in Mahmoud Abbas’s place. And the offer in 2008 was behind closed doors so we don’t know whose fault it was it didn’t work out, but Israel wanted to keep way too much of the West Bank.
If Netanyahu wants to fuck around he can damn well find out when America cuts off the funding faucet.
Man. I wish that were the case. But I feel like America is too deep in bed with Israel to stop now. A man can dream though, a man can dream.
That will never happen. Israel is the US’s main base of power in the Middle East. That is the US government’s number one priority here.
We could have videos of IDF forces chopping off Palestinian babies’ heads and the US would not stop supporting Israel. They would just have some strong words to say about it.
We have far more invested in Iraq these days.
Investment doesn’t equal usefulness. Israel is a relatively stable and modern country, and centrally located to boot.
The US left Iraq a mess. Not a great place for hosting your resources.
We don’t host many resources in Israel though. We use the Arabian peninsula countries and Iraq.
This is going to take time. What to do with Gaza and Palestinians is going to take a lot of commitment. The US wants to unite the West bank with Gaza, and the current power level is opposed.
That would be hard, considering the west bank exist exclusively on paper. In reality, Palestinians only have a couple dozen of hamlets surrounded and guarded by Israelis who subject them to an apartheid. The rest of the west bank is Israeli settlements.
Gaza will need a new government after Hamas.
As sad as it makes me to say it, and as much as the US says it’s against it. I suspect after this conflict there will no longer be a Gaza. Netanyahu is set on his promise to extol “an unimaginable price” for Oct 7. As soon as the Rafah doors open, by force or simply by the humanitarian collapse, Palestinians will never be allowed to return to that land, the few remaining towns in the west bank will be taken. The world will look in horror, the UN will condemn it but won’t be able to do anything due to US veto. And the the Zionists will have their final solution. When the Israelis are willing to kill anyone who looks even remotely Arab even if they’re Jewish, you know the prospect is bleak.
When the VP is the point office for objecting to Israel’s plans and the POTUS is releasing good old fashioned “they raped the white women” propaganda then you already know how it’s going to go.
The US help rebuild quite a few countries after WWII. It is not an impossible thing to do.
Sure, but the US doesn’t recognize Palestine as a country. You can’t rebuild something you don’t even acknowledge it exists.
I suppose that will happen if and when this matter is settled. Part of a two state solution is recognizing the state.
Who will be left to govern?
Both should fuck off and restore Palestine. There would be no “terrorists”, if the people were allowed to live in the first place. Are you blind or dishonest?
Israel gets its way, US sends as much aid as Israel wants.
The ideology of Hamas has deep support in Gaza; no matter how thoroughly the organization is destroyed now, it will be rebuilt unless it is kept actively suppressed. I don’t see how that’s possible without an occupation, and I suspect American leadership would privately agree, given the experience of the USA in Iraq and Afghanistan. (How much of what the USA publicly announces is the same as what it says to Israel in private?)
An occupation would be expensive, bloody, and globally unpopular - it can’t last forever and the only way I see of ending it eventually without a return to the pre-war status quo is to find some organization that is capable of both coexisting with Israel and ruling Gaza. If that’s not the Palestinian Authority, what is it? The Israelis opposed to a two-state solution haven’t offered a realistic alternative.
experience of the USA in Iraq and Afghanistan.
you mean where we tried to- and failed- to keep Iraq and Afghanistan
oppressed"suppressed"? Our experience says… it ain’t gonna happen.The hard-right Israelis have already offered their solution. it’s called “Nakba” - the translation? Genocide.
The problem is that you can’t just roll in an army, shoot anything that pokes its head out, and call it a day. Without extensive efforts to build infrastructure and create jobs to give people a sense of normalcy and belief that their lives are improving, you’ll just build up resentment. That’s what the US did for Germany and Japan post-WWII, and any other such endeavors will require at least that same amount of ongoing commitment. Admittedly, German and Japanese rehabilitation was also greatly helped by the fact that the USSR existed as a convenient external enemy to point at, and I don’t think there’s anything nearly as convenient in the Middle East, given that for most Israel would be said external enemy.
I thought Israel was building infrastructure and providing them with services, that’s why they were able to shut them off when they went to war.
The US insisted on unconditional surrender by both Germany and Japan because of the circumstances that led to world war II after world war I; lies and uncertainty and scapegoating regarding the causes for their loss, wouldn’t happen again.
Should Israel do something similar? It certainly seems like the Jews are once again being blamed for the consequences of a war they did not start, and their opponents this time refuse to lay down arms no matter how many times they are defeated. That would make the circumstances of Germany and Japan, and hopefully the outcome, be similar to that of Palestine.
The US also didn’t continuously send in armed squatters to kick the Germans and Japanese out of their homes, which is a state of affairs that works directly counter to the notion that things might get better.
It certainly seems like the Jews are once again being blamed for the consequences of a war they did not start
Hey look it’s the cudgel I mentioned in another post. No one is talking about Jews here except you when you want to wield it as a weapon to shut down discussion.
Calling everything anti-semitism when it’s only criticism of Israel makes it easier for actual anti-Semites to find cover. See: “The boy who cried wolf” or “chicken little” for reference.
Stop it, it’s gross and unhelpful.
I was drawing parallels between WWII and this conflict, not calling anyone posting here an antisemite or shutting down discussion. I posted to encourage discussion. Certainly, though, I don’t think it’s controversial to say that a force that wants to genocide Jews is antisemitic, which is what the bit you cited implies. Not, “critics of Israel.”
Well you missed the mark.
Israel is committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
Is that hard to admit?
Think of the holocaust, would you have listened to propaganda and denied it too? Imagine how longer it would have gone on if people just ate up all that Nazi propaganda for longer.
Have you ever heard of [Breaking the Silence]( And it’s not even comparable, stop equating things with holocaust, it’s really disrespectful)? It’s a Jewish organization so you can keep your tits calm.
Iraq actually showed us a way to solve it without suppression. We brought the local militias into the fold.
The ideology of Hamas has deep support in Gaza; no matter how thoroughly the organization is destroyed now, it will be rebuilt unless it is kept actively suppressed.
I think this is a mistake. Hamas’s popularity doesn’t come from the fact that their ideas are wildly popular, but because Fatah was exposed as horrendously corrupt in the late 90s and early 2000s. Hamas’s radical ideology is not a core part of Palestinian identity - it is simply a result of circumstances that were in no small part urged on by Israeli manipulation.
Their popularity also comes from how peace is just not working. Which is why even if it’s destroyed, another armed resistance organization will spring up. Hamas is the only logical answer to a situation where peace 100% won’t work, while violence only 90% won’t work.
And let’s no forget that Israel was the one who started and funded Hamas. Eventually the citizens of Gaza then elected Hamas as their governing body. All that to say, a single state is the best we can hope for. Israel is repulsed by that but after this shit show it’s the only thing that makes any sense.
Hamas was voted in 20 years ago, and ran as moderates.
They now rule Gaza through violence and fear.
They exist because Israel helped found them, but they still exist because Israel is still propping them up.
Yeah, you said it better than I did. Thank you.
AFAIK Hamas’s election platform was that peace clearly wasn’t working.
Their election platform was that Fatah was an Israeli puppet and they wanted to move towards a two state solution and stopping the settlers.
The action was to give up moderation because the entire world supported the Israeli blockade and treating Hamas as a terrorist organization.
Hamas was voted in 20 years ago
Hamas was elected in 2006 so almost 18 years ago.
and ran as moderates
Please provide verifiable support for this statement.
Open a fucking history book. This isn’t hard.
But isn’t that kind of the point? Their “experience in Iraq and Afghanistan” is what’s telling them this is a stupid idea that only creates problems and solves nothing.
I think that’s oversimplifying the American experience: occupation doesn’t generate goodwill and lay the groundwork for an occupier-friendly local government, but it does keep the area relatively quiet and secure. America wanted goodwill and a friendly local government; eventually we gave up when that didn’t happen. Israel wants to keep the area relatively quiet and secure. They can do that if they’re willing to pay the high cost indefinitely.
Gaza isn’t really comparable to Afghanistan though, since it’s so much smaller. It’s more comparable to Kabul, which relative to the rest of Afghanistan was thriving. I’m pretty sure most Kabul residents preferred life before the Taliban.
I would call it likely, but I think an occupation and nation building is way more possible in Gaza than it ever could have been in Afghanistan.
find some organization that is capable of both coexisting with Israel and ruling Gaza. If that’s not the Palestinian Authority, what is it?
- Abbas, the president of the PA, is incredibly unpopular. He only has like 20% approval rating among Palestinians
- The PA wasn’t capable of ruling Gaza, they were deposed by Hamas
The Israelis opposed to a two-state solution haven’t offered a realistic alternative.
I presume that alternative involves another Nakba and more annexation, probably slowly via settlements. Palestine’s best bet would be choosing a strong leader who is willing to abandon fruitless intifada, negotiate for peace, make realistic concessions, and enforce it.
I presume that alternative involves another Nakba and more annexation, probably slowly via settlements. Palestine’s best bet would be choosing a strong leader who is willing to abandon fruitless intifada, negotiate for peace, make realistic concessions, and enforce it.
How many times since the first nakba has that been tried already and sabotaged by outside forces or by israel directly? No really, I want you to go look it up so you will not need to repeat a silly thing like this again.
