Crazed strongman Netanyahu wants to kill all of the Palestinians, while the US wants him to kill less than that.
this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
exactly. the Zionists are unwilling to give them that normalcy... or representation or basic rights, even. Hamas needs the Zionists, and the Zionists need Hamas, because their goals are to annihilate the other; any moderates that get traction towards peace of any sort compromise their goals.
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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.
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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.
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