[edanm]

> Are there any examples of a war where an entrenched gorilla group with broad civilian support have been successfully "defeated"?

I'm not sure you can call it an entrenched guerilla group given that it is effectively the government of Gaza.

And yes, there are many examples where wars ended when one side surrendered, just to state the obvious, Japan and Germany in WW2.

[VBprogrammer]

You can't compare what was essentially conventional warfare between states of vastly similar military capabilities and a fight between a gorilla force and a conventional military.

I don't think an organisation which is internationally recognised as a terrorist organisation are a government in any real sense of the word.

[edanm]

I mean, I'm not sure why you think that. Gaza is governed by Hamas, though not very well, obviously. Israel left Gaza and doesn't (until now) didn't have forces in there, Hamas acted in all respects like a government.

I'm not sure what distinction you're making here. More importantly, I'm not sure why you think that makes the war unwinnable. Presumably there is a scenario in which Hamas surrenders, and if not, that Hamas are slowly all taken out. This is a pretty awful scenario, and would probably involve Israel having to govern Gaza for a while, but it is something that can happen.

There's a chance it won't because Hamas doesn't really care about anyone, including its own populace.

[VBprogrammer]

Because it has neither the means not the ability to act as a government. They are restricted in their ability to build structures, import or export goods, ability to import fuel, even taxes are collected by Israel on their behalf (and sometimes withheld, delayed or used to unilateral settle debts).

The distinction is that militaries typically fight wars on battle fields, even the current Russia / Ukraine war looks like this with battle lines being pushed this way and that way as one side advances or retreats.

There is nothing like that in Gaza. The difference between a Hamas militant and a civilian is simply whether they are currently holding their AK-47.

The more civilians are killed the more angry young men are drawn to the cause. Short of flattening the whole area and killing everyone I don't see an end.

It is much more aptly compared to the battles against Al-Qaida, ISIS or the Vietcong than the Nazis.

[edanm]

I think we mostly agree on this, and there's a reason the mantra "Hamas=ISIS" was so common.

Two points we disagree on:

> The difference between a Hamas militant and a civilian is simply whether they are currently holding their AK-47.

That's true in terms of what they seem like visually (which is maybe what you meant). Not true in the sense that most Gazans are not members of Hamas.

That does make it a lot harder to know who is Hamas and who isn't, but it's still possible (maybe) to effectively take out Hamas by capturing/killing all the known leaders, anyone who is actively holding hostages, anyone in tunnels, etc. I don't think Israel would need to kill literally every Hamas militant, nor should it.

> The more civilians are killed the more angry young men are drawn to the cause. Short of flattening the whole area and killing everyone I don't see an end.

I hope you're wrong, for everyone's sake.

But it really is true that the US killed a lot of Germans and Japanese, and now the Germans and Japanese are allies. It's not automatic that everyone will turn to violence. Also, if there is no organizational structure around it, then "angry young men that turned to violence" don't actually have anything to do with their anger.

[VBprogrammer]

> That's true in terms of what they seem like visually (which is maybe what you meant). Not true in the sense that most Gazans are not members of Hamas.

Yes, sorry I didn't mean to imply that everyone is Gaza is a member of Hamas. That's clearly not true. But visually they are indistinguishable, or could very easily become so.

That said, I do suspect that these organisations are much more fluid than the binary distinction we're prone to make in the west.

I was thinking about what the process was after the second world war by which people normalised relations with the German people. Unfortunately my amateur conclusion was that we just created new enemies to redirect the anger.