Tag Archives: Gaza War

Puzzled.

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Are we doing too much to support our ally Israel? First, by launching and tenaciously continuing a war that Hamas cannot win, Hamas is at least as responsible as Israel for the massive death toll in Gaza. Still, have we erred by supplying Israel with so much ordnance? That’s without me knowing just how much ordnance we have supplied to Israel. Second, by attacking Iran’s key nuclear-weapons development facilities, we are entering a war whose long-term course is unknowable. (The same is true of any war, as Desmond Morton observed.) Israel is right to fear Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, given Iran’s professed desire to destroy Israel. Are we right to be concerned about the destruction of Israel to the point where we take military action?

Are we doing too little to support our friend, if not ally, Ukraine? Vladimir Putin has repeatedly professed his desire to destroy Ukraine as an independent state. So far, the United States and the Europeans have supplied a great deal of military hardware and training to support Ukraine’s self-defense effort, along with financial aid to keep the Ukrainian civil economy afloat. There is such a demographic imbalance between the opposing forces, that I wonder if armaments alone will enable Ukraine to survive. Should we be concerned about the destruction of Ukraine to the point where we take military action with our own forces?

Then there’s Taiwan.

What is the “right” amount of support to supply to an ally or friend at war? How do we tell what is the “right” level? Are Israel and Ukraine the same or are they apples and oranges?

American Public Opinion in October 2024.

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            NBC/Telemundo polls[1] revealed a shift in the political preference among Latino voters. 

            In 2016, 69 percent of Latino voters supported Hillary Clinton; 19 percent favored Donald Trump. 

            In 2020, 63 percent of Latino voters chose Joe Biden; 27 percent voted for Donald Trump. 

            In 2024, just before the election, 54 percent of Latino voters favored Kamala Harris; 40 percent favored Donald Trump. 

            That is an almost 22 percent drop for the Democratic candidate in eight years, with 60 percent of it coming in the last four years.  Why the decline? 

When she ran—briefly—in the Democratic presidential primary in 2019, Harris favored decriminalizing illegal border crossings.[2]  Subsequently, under the Biden-Harris administration, President Biden ordered an end to President Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy for those seeking asylum.  Illegal immigration tripled.  Then the failure of the Biden-Harris administration’s “Remain in Texas” policy brought home to many northern Democratic cities the realities of such huge, unregulated immigration.  Immigration control became a powerful Republican issue. 

That explains the careening U-turn taken by Kamala Harris.  She began walloping Trump for having squelched a bipartisan border bill for political reasons when Democrats had only adopted the policy recently for political reasons. 

It doesn’t automatically explain why the Latino vote shifted.  That shift may or may not be related to the immigration question.  There are 50.4 million Latinos in states on the border with Mexico.  They would have seen all the same things that drove many Anglos wild. 

Perhaps some are angry about inflation, which hits lower-income people harder than it does higher-income people.[3]  Perhaps some are running small businesses and perceive Democrats as anti-Business, and not merely anti-Big Business.  Perhaps some are socially conservative and are repelled by the Democrat embrace of non-binarity. 

Whatever the cause, it is an important chunk of the Democratic coalition to cast away. 

            In October 2024, an Economist/YouGov poll assessed the state of American opinion on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.[4] 

            Overall, 33 percent sympathized more with Israel, 19 percent more with the Palestinians, and 24 percent with both sides equally.  (Which totals 76 percent.  What about the other 24 percent?  “Don’t Know” or “A plague on both their houses”?)  Under that umbrella huddle different groups.  Only 14 percent of Democrats sympathize more with Israelis, while 33 percent sympathize more with the Palestinians.  (That’s 47 percent.  So the other 53 percent sympathize with both sides equally or Don’t Care?)  In contrast, 63 percent of Republicans express more sympathy for Israelis than for Palestinians, while a mere 5 percent sympathize more with Palestinians.  (Again, that’s 68 percent. Do the other 32 percent sympathize equally or just don’t care?)  On the issue of supplying military aid[5] to Israel, 38 percent say that it should be reduced; 18 percent support increasing it; and 25 percent say that it’s fine where it is.  (Again, the figures total 81 percent, so 19 percent probably fall into “Don’t Know.”)  Support for military assistance at or above the current level totals 43 percent, while support for cutting it is at 38 percent.  That’s close to a tipping point. 

            So, 63 percent of Republicans and 14 percent of Democrats sympathize more with Israel than with the Palestinians.  At the same time, support for maintaining military aid at the current level or for raising it totals only 43 percent.  That is a lot lower level than the totals for feeling sympathy for Israel.  Even among their most committed American supporters, the Israelis are encountering doubts about their wars in Gaza and Lebanon.  Probably these doubts are rooted less in the necessity of war than in the manner of its conduct. 

Do Israeli care any longer if they alienate the Americans?  I haven’t seen polling on that. 

[1] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 11 October 2024, p. 17. 

[2] “Harris: A sharp turn on immigration,” The Week, 11 October 2024, p. 16. 

[3] Donald Trump is said to appeal to “low-information” voters.  The disparate impact of inflation among income groups could leave the better-educated and better-off Democrats as the “low information voters” when it comes to economic hardship.  To turn around Governor Tim Walz’s jab at the ever-obnoxious Elon Musk, “He’s a fat guy with a government job; what does he know about hardship?” 

[4] Poll Watch,” The Week, 18 October 2024

[5] You know, stuff that goes “BOOM!” and then buildings fall down. 

From the river to the sea, Zion will be free. Alas.

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            The surprise attack of 7 October 2023 on Israel by Hamas continues to send out shock waves.  However, those psychological and social shock waves strike a restricted area of world opinion.  First and foremost, there is the quarrelling within Israel.  Roughly, one might divide opinion into the “rally ‘round the government” party and the “hunt for guilty men” party. 

For the “rally” group, the most important issue right now is the defeat of Israel’s enemies.  First, this means Hamas, then it means Hezbollah in Lebanon, and ultimately Iran.  In the eyes of this group, the multiple blows rained down on Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran restore faith in Israel’s ability to defend itself.  It seems not to matter how long this mission will take or what collateral damage it inflicts.  It is a war unlike any other. 

For the “guilty men” group, Israel’s resilience as a nation rests upon Israeli “faith in the decency of our society…and trust in the integrity of our leaders.”  These elements matter at least as much as does armed force.  How is that faith and trust possible when the current leaders bear the responsibility for the security failures that made the attacks possible and who are now escalating the war?  Moreover, they are alarmed by the duration and savagery of the war.  Israeli journalist Amir Tibon has written that, in the wake of the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas, he would have expected the government to produce a radically better situation in short order.[1]  This better situation would have involved a swift recovery of the 200-plus hostages seized by Hamas and the creation of a new government for Gaza comprised of moderate Palestinians.  Instead, the war grinds on in Gaza, it has begun to extend into Lebanon, and many of the hostages are still in the hands of Hamas—or dead.  Most of all, the government has no “clear strategic endgame.”[2] 

            Second, there is the quarrelling within the United States.[3]  Elite Young Boobs (EYBs) at some leading American universities immediately sided with Hamas and the Palestinians.[4]  In September 2024, an F.B.I. report on Hate Crimes declared that more than two-thirds of reported religion-based hate crimes were anti-Semitic and the total number of such incidents were greater than any previous level.  Universities that accommodated such actions suddenly found themselves assailed by alumni, donors, and politicians.  Still, “let kids be kids.”[5]  More importantly for American politics, the attack on Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) aroused Arab Americans against Israel and against the Biden Administration which has backed Israel’s war effort.  In 2016, Joe Biden won the “battleground” state of Michigan by 154,000 votes.  The state’s 200,000 Arab-American voters are believed to have voted overwhelmingly for the Democrat.  Now, many of them are threatening to vote against Kamala Harris.  Common sense will surely reassert itself.  Putting Donald Trump into the White House will not produce a more humanitarian Gaza policy.  Trump is an admirer of Israel’s prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu. 

            Lost in all these quarrels is any recognition that Hamas could have stopped Israel’s attack by surrendering, possibly even to the International Criminal Court.  Why blame only the Jews? 

[1] “Israel: A sense of security forever shattered,” The Week, 18 October 2024, p. 15. 

[2] Oh, but it does if you would but see it.  Force out the people of Gaza, then turn to the West Bank. 

[3] “Oct. 7: How Hamas’ massacre changed the world,” The Week, 18 October 2024. 

[4] Although those are not necessarily the same thing.  Probably they should read Thucydides. 

[5] The phrase turns up all the time on my “Nextdoor” feed after adults complain about acts of petty vandalism or harassment by minor or near-minors. 

The Last War of Netanyahu.

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            In less than a week it will be the twenty-third anniversary of 9/11.  The memory of that attack by terrorists seems to be turning to empty tradition with the passage of time.  Yet, 9/11 sparked the “Forever Wars” (only recently concluded) and the “USA Patriot Act,” and some really bad country music.  One of the most remarkable things is how totally Americans have lost understanding of how a democracy may react to being blind-sided by “evil doers.” 

Writing on 2 August 2024, WSJ foreign affairs columnist Walter Russell Mead saw Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu successfully threading the needle.[1]  Mead believes that in the waning days of the Biden administration, its foreign policy team[2] hopes to prevent an expanded war in the Middle East.  Such a war would encompass a full-scale Hezbollah-Israel war and even war between Israel and Iran.  They fear that the United States would be drawn into such a conflict.  So, they are pushing hard for a cease-fire in Gaza and urging restraint on Israel. 

Mead also believes that Hamas, Turkey, and Iran hope to “bamboozle” the Biden administration into supporting a peace process that runs from a cease-fire to the creation of a Palestinian state in all but name, one in which Hamas holds the real power.  This effort might succeed because the “two-state solution” remains the goal of the Biden foreign policy team. 

            Recently, Israeli forces have killed Mohammed Deif (Hamas military commander); Fuad Shakr (Hezbollah military commander); and Ismail Haniyeh[3] (Hamas political leader).  These attacks threaten to stall efforts at a cease-fire in Gaza and to bring on the larger war with Iran.  Hence, Biden’s people are frustrated (or perhaps furious) with the actions of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  Mead sees these killings as reassuring the Israeli public, which generally hates Hamas and Hezbollah.  The killings also give notice to the Gulf states that Israel remains a tough and skillful opponent.  The Gulf states are caught between Arab solidarity and a fear of Iran.  Signs of Israel buckling at the knees might send them scurrying to make nice with Iran.  The killings may have a deterrent effect. 

            Striking enemies when they rear their head may not be enough to bring Israel security over the long run.  Kamala Harris has no long-standing ties to Israel comparable to those which have long influenced the Democratic party.  The gory war to the knife in Gaza has appalled many people.  The division between supporters and critics of Israel now runs through the Democratic party.  A President Harris might prefer to hold Israel at arm’s length going forward.  With Iran close to breaking through to making nuclear weapons, a Harris administration might want to put all its efforts into achieving a last-minute return to the Obama administration’s agreement with Iran. 

            Mead wrote all this a month before Hamas killed six Israeli prisoners to prevent their rescue by Israeli troops.  The explosion of fury in a large part of Israel’s public has challenged Netanyahu’s policy and tenuous grip on power.  He refuses—so far–to give in.  His campaign to destroy Hamas grinds forward.  It brings Israeli troops ever closer to the remaining prisoners.  There may be more executions to come.  If so, there will be more massive demonstrations in the streets of Tel Aviv.  Perhaps this will be the final crisis for Netanyahu.  But not for Israel. 

[1] Walter Russell Mead, “Israel Brings Deterrence Back to the War on Terror,” WSJ, 2 August 2024. 

[2] Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, CIA Director William Burns. 

[3] Mohammed Deif – Wikipedia; Fuad Shukr – Wikipedia;  Ismail Haniyeh – Wikipedia

Gazaedy.

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So, the Israeli are blowing up most of the buildings in Gaza.  According to the Guardian, “about 65,000 residential units have been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. Another 290,000 have been damaged. That means that about half a million people have no home to return to.”  In all, “Across the whole territory, about 33% of buildings have been destroyed.”  Many others have been damaged without being “destroyed.”  Two-thirds of hospitals and 70 percent of school buildings have been put out of service.   Then there is damage to sewers, fresh water supplies, power generation, and roads.[1]  The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) aren’t done yet. 

A necessity of war in what amounts to a Stalingrad-with-sand, the IDF might say.[2]  It seems more likely that the IDF are trying to render Gaza largely uninhabitable for a long time.  

For the million currently-displaced Palestinians to return home, the rubble will have to be cleared, hopelessly compromised buildings torn down, damaged or destroyed water and electrical supply lines repaired or replaced, new roads constructed, and new buildings of all sorts constructed.  Cemeteries will have to be enlarged.  It might take a decade to repair the damage.   It also will take a lot of somebody’s money.  Recent “guesstimates” suggest that it will cost $50 billion to clear and rebuild.[3]  The usual suspects when it comes to donor conferences for Gaza are the European Union and the United States.  Both are already hard pressed on aid for Ukraine.  Saudi Arabia and the UAE might pay. Iran has $100-120 billion “frozen” abroad.[4]  Somebody could raid into those funds, given Iran’s apparent role in supporting and arming Hamas. 

What happens to the Palestinians of Gaza in the meantime? Spend an unknown number of years living under blue UNHCR tarps?  They aren’t Bedouin.  Probably, many of them will emigrate.

Where?  Would they go in dribs-and-drabs to many places, joining the already existing Palestinian diaspora?  There are more than three million in Jordan; more than 600,000 in Syria; and more than a quarter million in Egypt.  Would any of these countries agree to take in 1-2 million destitute new citizens bearing an intense grievance against neighboring Israel? 

Farther away, there are half a million Palestinians in Chile; a quarter million in Honduras; 200,000 in Guatemala; and almost 200,000 in other Central American countries, along with a quarter million in the United States.[5] 

I haven’t been following this war closely.  I’ve been pre-occupied with recent literature on positive psychology and American business practices.  That’s my excuse (such as it is) for not figuring this out earlier.  But I’d bet that the State Department and the Defense Department snapped to it real fast.  Made the White House aware too.  Although maybe not. They all may have been preoccupied with China and the war in Ukraine.  That would be their excuse (such as it is). 

Raises some questions.  Do we want our hands any dirtier than they are already? Are the Israeli hoping to provoke attacks from the West Bank so that they can do the same thing there?  What if this actually is the least-bad solution?  Hard to believe, but what’s a better one? 

[1] See: The numbers that reveal the extent of the destruction in Gaza | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian 

[2] “You know, he’s got a point.”—The Mayor of San Francisco in “Dirty Harry” (dir. Don Siegel, 1971.  Hamas could have avoided all this by surrendering right at the start of the war and turning in all their fighters to the International Criminal Court. 

[3] Israel conflict: Who will pay for Gaza reconstruction? – DW – 12/13/2023 

[4] Iranian frozen assets – Wikipedia 

[5] Palestinian diaspora – Wikipedia  Many of the immigrants surging against the southern border are fleeing poverty and misgovernment in Central America.  What share of these are Palestinians? 

Thought Experiment 1.

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Much of world opinion appears to believe that Hamas has a “right” to win.  Israel is pressed to limit or pause or end its attack on Hamas, but Hamas is not pressured to end its resistance to Israel or to surrender. 

Does Hamas have a “right” to win?  If so, on what grounds? 

First, Israel is powerful and Hamas is weak.  Many “right-thinking people” reject the judgement of Thucydides on this matter as immoral.  Whoever is “stronger” is reflexively assumed to have the worse cause.[1] 

Second, at its founding, Israel committed a great crime against the Palestinians.  The Arabs in general were resolutely anti-Zionist; the Palestinians mostly emphatically so.  Israel fought for its survival.  In the process, many Palestinians fled the fighting or were driven out.  Israel conquered territory not assigned to it in the League of Nations partition plan.[2]  The refugees were not allowed to return.  Israel has continued to commit the same crime against Palestinians on the West Bank.  The settlements on the West Bank are progressively expanding.  They seem to be intended to make it impossible for the Palestinians to remain.  As one Israeli politician said years ago: “The Palestinians already have a country; it’s called Jordan.” 

Third, it doesn’t matter to many Palestinians (or foreigners) that the West Bank is under a totally different government than is Gaza.  Hamas is a Palestinian nationalist organization, not just the “de facto” governing power in Gaza. 

To understand all is NOT to forgive all.  Still, understanding is widely accepted as a good thing.  In the wake of the Holocaust, many Jewish survivors did not want to remain in Europe, especially in Eastern Europe.  In Eastern Europe, various national governments combined anti-Semitism with Stalinism.  The gates of Western countries were partially closed to Jewish immigrants.  Jews huddled in camps for Displaced Persons or wandered around in search of surviving family members.  Going to Palestine and helping to found a Jewish state offered an alternative.  A Jewish state would never turn away Jews in any future surge of anti-Semitism. 

The ending of the Second World War unleashed massive forced-movements of populations across Europe.  Poles were kicked westward to fit within the boundaries of a redefined Poland.  People of German ancestry fled the revenge of the people Germany had abused during the war.  Slave laborers and Prisoners of War held in Germany headed either homeward or westward.  Over time, all were absorbed or re-absorbed into countries struggling to recover from war.  From a callous Zionist point of view, displaced Palestinians would naturally be absorbed by neighboring Arab countries.  Too often ignored is the corresponding expulsion (and depredation) of perhaps as many as a million Jews living in Arab countries after the foundation of Israel. 

            Finally, a two-state solution was possible from 1948 to 1967, but Egypt and Jordan wanted the West Bank and Gaza—and all Palestine–for themselves. 

[1] Perhaps this feeling is a projection onto international relations of popular judgements about domestic politics.  Perhaps it is the Marxist influence.  However, it is very unhistorical.  It conveniently leaves aside the examples of the American Civil War, the Second World War, and the Cold War.  In all those cases, Right and Might were one. 

[2] Yes, I know: “it’s called the United Nations.”  You really think that there is any significant difference, aside from the huge number of nations created after 1945 who batten on the organization like flies? 

Just my opinion and I come in peace.

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            The creation of the state of Israel probably was a mistake. 

Between the two World Wars, emigration from rabidly anti-Semitic Eastern European countries[1] had a great (though not universal appeal) among Eastern European Jews.  Zionism[2] had NOT had a great appeal among the same groups.[3]  During the First World War, a desperate Britain did announce that it favored a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, so long as it didn’t harm the Arab peoples already living there.  Once Britain got Palestine away from the Ottoman Empire (1918), Jewish immigration became possible.  Not many people went.  The arrival in power of Adolf Hitler in the midst of a global economic disaster turned many non-Zionists into Zionists because getting to Palestine looked like the only chance to survive. 

The state of Israel came into being in the aftermath of the Holocaust.  Hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors of anti-Semitic Nazi barbarism had no desire to remain in Europe.  Many, perhaps most, of these survivors still had no particular desire to go to Palestine. 

Given their ‘druthers, they would have followed a long-standing pattern and gone to the United States.  After the Second World War, the United States did not want to admit up to a million East European Jews.  The United States clung then, as it does today, to a legally regulated and limited immigration.  To admit many Jews would require rejecting an equivalent number of Italians, Irish, and Poles.  These were important established political constituencies.  So, it served American domestic political interests to have the Jews go somewhere else.  America’s loss became Israel’s gain.  Zionists organized the movement of large numbers of Holocaust survivors to British-ruled Palestine. 

            Nationalism came late to the Arabs, but it did begin to take hold during the inter-war years.  Arabs had not liked being ruled by the Turks and they didn’t like being ruled by the British and French any better.  Egypt, in particular, had been under the British thumb since the 1880s.  A nationalist movement there wanted the British out of the country and out of the Suez Canal Zone.  The League of Nation’s “Mandates” granted to Britain and France became the basis for the countries of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.  The British were content to hold Iraq and Jordan under indirect rule, but the French ruled with a heavier hand.  Nobody consulted the Arabs about Zionist settlement.  Arab nationalists seethed. 

            In this context, any plan to settle European immigrants in Arab lands had to look like ONE of the things that it was: European settler colonialism.[4]  The exclusion of so many Palestinian Arabs as a result of the war of 1948, like the ongoing “settlements,” amounts to a huge land grab. 

            It was a mistake made 75 years ago.  Egypt and Jordan could have created a Palestinian state when they ruled Gaza and the West Bank.  They preferred to cling to a grievance.  Bad mistake.  Israel isn’t going away.  Nor should the Palestinians.  Time to think anew and act anew. 

[1] The Soviet Union, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, and Rumania. 

[2] Nationalism is the belief that people who share a history and culture, oftentimes expressed in speaking a single language, should be grouped together in an independent, self-governing state.  Zionism is the application of this idea to Jews.  Moreover, Zionism came to focus its aspirations on a specific physical place centered on the city of Jerusalem.  Until 1918, this territory lay under the control of the decrepit Ottoman Empire.    

[3] “You want me to leave my job as a violinist in Berlin to become a melon-farmer in the middle of nowhere?” 

[4] Another thing it was: an idealistic attempt to create a democratic safe-haven for a much oppressed people. 

Laws of War.

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            “The laws of war offer a guide to what matters most, and to what should happen next.”[1]  First, the “why” and the “how” of war are different, separate things.  Opponents may have a just or unjust cause, but nothing allows either side to wage war in an unjust way.  Second, “civilians are entitled to protection.”  However, “protection” does not mean that civilians must escape unscathed from a conflict.  It means that military forces can neither specifically target civilians nor inflict disproportionate harm on them when harm cannot be avoided. 

            “There is no question” that Hamas has committed “war crimes and crimes against humanity,…  Those are not close calls.”[2]  In addition to targeting mostly civilians for death, Hamas soldiers seized at least 150 hostages whom it has threatened to execute.  According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, this is not allowed under international law. 

            On the other hand, according to the U.N. High Commissioner, the “imposition of sieges that endanger the lives of civilians by depriving them of goods essential for their survival is prohibited under international humanitarian law.”  In the view of one expert, Israel’s siege of Gaza is both “a crime against humanity and a war crime.”  On top of the siege, Israel has been raining down bombs on buildings in Gaza.  Israel asserts that they are striking military targets hidden among the civilian population.  Citing another expert on international law, the NYT reports that “even attacks on legitimate military targets are illegal if they disproportionately harm civilians.”  Claiming that some act of violence will reduce future violence is not an acceptable rationale.  Admittedly, deciding what is proportional is not an exact science. 

            All this seems admirable in theory[3] and with deep historical roots.[4] 

It is also wildly out of touch with reality.   

First, Hamas is a government in control of a micro-state, not a finite outlaw gang.  This guarantees Hamas an existential continuity which insures that its policies will continue.  Hamas is committed to destroying the state of Israel, rather than to co-existing with it.  Hamas has repeatedly attacked Israel.  The people of Gaza are either captives of that government or supporters of it.  International law–and lawyers–offer no solution to this problem. 

Second, Hamas forces hide their soldiers and offensive weaponry among civilians.  They do so for two purposes.  One is to camouflage them from Israel’s observation.  “The better to eat you with, my dear.”[5]  The other is to use the civilians as human shields to limit pre-emptive or counter-attacks by Israel.  Israel has now warned the civilians to evacuate north Gaza; Hamas has ordered them to remain.  Israel is seeking to spare the lives of civilians it hates; Hamas to sacrifice lives of civilians it claims to represent and to love. 

[1] Amanda Taub, “Binding Laws of War Already Being Broken,” NYT, 13 October 2023. 

[2] Professor Tom Dannenbaum, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, “an expert on humanitarian law” quoted by Taub. 

[3] Most Americans should repent the decision by the George W. Bush administration to treat captured al Qaeda fighters as “unlawful combatants” not subject to the Geneva Conventions.  Better they had been considered P.O.W.s protected by those international agreements and held until the conclusion of a peace treaty with al Qaeda. 

[4] In the Early Middle Ages, the Latin Church sought to limit the overwhelming violence by declaring “The Peace of God” (banning attacks on clergy, Church property, and holy days) and “The Truce of God” (banning war on some days of the week and during an expansive number of parts of the year).  The truces were backed by the threat of excommunication.  This was rather more effective power than is now possessed by the U.N. or international law. 

[5] The Brothers Grimm, “Little Red Riding Hood.” 

Eliminating Hamas,

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            As a practical matter, how would Israel eliminate Hamas? 

            First, what does “eliminate” mean?  Does it mean forcing all Hamas fighters to leave Gaza for somewhere else more distant from Israel?  Israel has tried this before.  In 1972, the government of Jordan got fed up with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which used Jordan as a base for attacks on Israel and which threatened to take over Jordan.  Under military pressure, the PLO evacuated to Lebanon.  South Lebanon and Beirut became the PLO’s bases going forward.  In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and drove on Beirut.  The goal was to force the PLO to leave Lebanon.  This part of the operation proved successful.[1]  Popular support for the PLO declined substantially during this exile.  The 1993 Oslo Accords allowed the PLO to return to Gaza and the West Bank. 

Where would the Hamas fighters go?  It is hard to imagine.  Most Arab states have made some sort of peace—formal or informal–with Israel, so the old sympathy for the Palestinian cause may have shrunk.  Many of these countries have their own plates full of problems.  Whose situation would be improved by taking in thousands of Iran-related militants?  Also, it would have to be a country without a shared border with Israel.  Otherwise, it would just recreate the current Gaza situation or maybe something even worse for Israel’s security.  It would need to be at a remove from most of the Palestinian population.  Iran might be the ideal choice. 

Or does it mean killing or capturing most or all Hamas fighters?  This would be hard to choke down, even for a justifiably enraged Israel.[2]  Foreign countries, even the United States but especially the other Arab countries, would gag on what would soon be called Israel’s “final solution to the Hamas problem.”  There is much to be lost, as well as gained from this approach. 

            Second, regardless of what “eliminate” means, how would Israel bring about this goal?  One answer would be to besiege Gaza until it surrenders on Israel’s terms.  This seems to be where Israel is headed at the moment.  Cut off food, water, electricity, and fuel.  Bomb the place until the rubble bounces.  One problem is that this is already creating a highly public humanitarian catastrophe.  Furthermore, it is indiscriminate in punishing all Gazans.  It will generate enormous pressure on Israel from abroad to compromise.  Compromise would leave Hamas able to claim a form of victory.  No doubt worthless international “guarantees” of Israel’s security would be offered. 

            Another answer would be to invade Gaza.  There is the potential for an Arab Stalingrad, but with huge numbers of civilians present.  As is the case with the United States, Israel doesn’t like to take high casualties.  Rather than engaging in door-to-door fighting, Israel might prefer air strikes and artillery fire.  One goal might be to herd everyone toward the beaches.  Israeli soldiers advancing across the rubble could identify, disarm, and capture surviving Hamas fighters.  It might bring Israel a form of victory faster. 

            “Sympathy has a short half-life,” so Israel needs to move quickly. 

[1] On “Operation Peace for Galilee, see 1982 Lebanon War – Wikipedia  On one awful related incident, see Sabra and Shatila massacre – Wikipedia 

[2] The population of the United States is about 330 million people; the population of Israel is about 10 million people.  The current estimated Israel death toll is about 1,200 people.  The equivalent death toll in the United States would be something like 35,000 people.  There were 2,977 victims on 9/11.