[boppo1]

As a fairly emotionally disinterested party: greater specificity of strikes, focus on Hamas leadership. It seems to me that Israel (and the west more generally) will be facing a generation of motivated terrorists in about 15-20 years, as the young people who went through this come of age.

[tptacek]

People say this a lot, for obvious and fair reasons, but it's worth noting that a rational policy person in Israel could look at Hamas as a distinct and unlikely form of militant nationalism: overtly Islamist, funded and trained by the IRGC, and led (since 2017) by a messianic lunatic.

I've been saying, only kind of jokingly, that a more likely outcome than arrest or Israel-directed assassination of Sinwar is Haniya (or his successor) taking him out to a field to talk about the alfalfa they're going to plant, and how Sinwar will get to feed the rabbits. Sinwar really fucked Hamas over here. Easy to lose sight of how good a thing they had going! It had tacit Israeli government support and was making a bunch of Hamas people fairly rich.

Anyways, from that point of view: yes, killing tens of thousands of civilians is certainly going to radicalize people and drive them into militant groups. But those groups might look more like the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades than the Al-Qassam Brigades.

[Karrot_Kream]

After having signed the Abraham Accords, Israel could have gone a long way to keeping their hands clean by pursuing Hamas through a joint effort with Egypt, UAE, KSA, and other states in the region. Israel has a long history working with Egypt regarding Gaza. Several actors in the region that already receive tacit US support are opposed to perceived Islamic dictatorships due to various complicated reasons. There are complicated reasons why Israel didn't and continue not to, a lot of which comes down to having a direct line to US support, but this option was something they could have done and chose not to. Though full disclosure, I'm not an unbiased party here, but I can view this situation from a realpolitik lens as well.

[tptacek]

I mean, I agree. I'm a 2-stater. Netanyahu and his governing coalition have for a decade now been redlining "culpability" as far as I'm concerned!

(I'll say again though that Hamas in 2018 is a different entity than Hamas in 2016. They're both very bad organizations, but only one of them was literally working to bring about the end of days.)

[Karrot_Kream]

IMO Israel is digging its own grave in the region by being so unwilling to work with their neighbors. KSA and UAE are brutal to opponents and KSA's own meddling in the region shows that they'd do anything to keep militant Islamism from gaining a larger foothold in the region. All they had to do was to open up a dialogue with their neighbors, it would have stopped Muslims from unifying around this issue, probably normalized relations even further between these states, and would have given Israel significant leverage in the region as a bulwark of diplomatic stewardship. Now even though the US is doing everything they can to tow the line between supporting Israel and stopping a bloodbath, Israel itself has probably lost any and all support from its neighbors sans maybe Egypt, and the US will be hard-pressed to offer support in further instances of aggression against Israel.

[tptacek]

I'm less sure. I think the most salient conflict in MENA is between the Arab states and Iran, not Israel and Palestine (look no further than the grim track record of the surrounding states at actually helping Palestinians for evidence).

It's hard to look at October 7th and its aftermath as anything but a setback for literally every party in the region. Even Iran seems to have been caught flat footed.

[jcranmer]

In one respect, October 7th was a success for Hamas. Before then, it looked likely that most of the Arab countries would have made peace with Israel without Israel having to concede an iota on the Palestinian issue. After the attack and Israel's response, Israel probably has to make visible progress on the issue before the current holdouts would move forward, or at least wait 10, 15 years before everything is forgotten.

[Karrot_Kream]

It would end up in a proxy war, surely. Iran would back Hamas and a coalition of KSA, UAE, Egypt, and Israel would spearhead the Gaza situation from the other side. It's still a shitty outcome but IMO a better one. For one, regional actors are incentivized to deal with the situation in a way that spillover doesn't affect them (Lebanon and Egypt have both been vocal about not accepting refugees), but most importantly it wouldn't be as affected by the US political news cycle and the heart-rending imperialism that creates (essentially American domestic interests and politics affecting regional politics in the Middle East, meaning Palestinians have no say over their own politics in any meaningful way, unlike American college students.) The biggest risk would probably be Russian and Chinese interests coming into the region which would surely prompt a US reaction, but I'm not sure how much Russia or China would have to gain here if the US were not involved.

It would have probably ended in a civil war type situation but at least you wouldn't have widespread famine or the bombing of hospitals or further civilian atrocities. Also forcing regional states to allocate their own resources to the conflict means there's a direct incentive to wind it down since their resources are a lot smaller than the resources of the US. Israel would eventually face domestic pushback over wartime spending and the autocratic states in the region would have to balance their funding of the proxy conflict against their own ambitions and budgets. Iran is somewhat democratic and they too could only fund Hamas so far before looking after their own affairs. A civil war would also create a generation fatigued by conflict and more open to compromise. The unilateral nature of this conflict will guarantee that Palestinians and dissidents in the region will hold this as a grudge over Israel and the US for decades and might even open the possibility of further terrorism against the US.

The US's own nation building efforts in the Middle East after 9/11 flagged due to outrageous spending that materialized in minimal results. The same effect with poorer governments would naturally circumscribe the conflict in the area.

[ignoramous]

> Easy to lose sight of how good a thing they had going!

Some millions from Qatar with no political engagement towards 2SS isn't good by any measure. It was most certainly good for the Israelis: the Abraham Accords and recognition of the Western Golan Heights + Jerusalem by the US, with practically no opposition.

Sinwar may be a lunatic, but we'd be lunatics just the same to assume Hamas were happy with the status quo. They are not PA for a reason.

[FireBeyond]

> but it's worth noting that a rational policy person in Israel could look at Hamas as a distinct and unlikely form of militant nationalism: overtly Islamist, funded and trained by the IRGC, and led (since 2017) by a messianic lunatic.

Funded and trained by Mossad and others too, at times. In fact, Netanyahu was approving tens of millions a month to Hamas to stay militant and provide a more extremist opposition to Arafat and the PLO who were calming down and more peaceable in their old age.

This is the thing that really gets frustrating.

Israel's hard right is as opposed to a two state system as Hamas is. People point to "from the river to the sea" as "proof" of Hamas' genocidal intent (and I won't pretend they haven't said other things to that end, either), ignoring that it was literally Likud's platform slogan since the 1970s.

[boppo1]

>...Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades than the Al-Qassam Brigades.

Can you tell me more about the difference here?

[tptacek]

The former is the former armed wing of Fatah, the latter of Hamas. Fatah is a (notoriously corrupt) secular nationalist organization. The story goes that Netanyahu tacitly supported and helped fund Hamas for many years as a check against Fatah consolidating power into a coherent Palestinian state.

[adw]

The first is Fatah/PLO, who are in many ways much closer to, eg, the IRA (also nominally religiously inspired) than what we understand as modern Islamist terrorist groups.

[saintkaye]

Yea,but the thing that changed was Saudi flipping more western recently. It meant that directionally the region was going have a much bigger problem with this kind of behavior in the future and it seems like (as an amateur) they saw the writing on the wall and thought the more messy the region gets the longer it would take to move toward a capitalist ideals motivated region.

[YZF]

This statement about Israel creating a new generation of terrorists is said a lot but I think we have pretty strong counterexamples. Germans didn't become motivated terrorists after WW-II despite great devastation and killing of civilians by the Allies. Neither did Japan. I'm sure there are similar WW-I examples. One might argue that not fighting this war until the enemy surrenders is a much stronger motivation for terrorism. A more recent example might be Russia's campaign against Chechnya or Sri Lanka's campaign against the Tamil Tigers, both fought until the enemy was crushed and both seemingly have for now resolved the terrorism issue.

With respect to your proposal. Can you be more specific about how Israel is supposed to target Hamas leadership when they are in tunnels underground below civilian populations and holding hostages? That Hamas leadership is not dead is not due to lack of Israel trying to target them specifically. I don't think it's possible to get at Hamas without taking over the entire Gaza strip which leads me to repeat the OP's question of what would you do. Another question is whether you're suggesting to give free pass to the Oct 7'th attackers and kidnappers (which seems to be implied by saying "focus on Hamas leadership").

[Karrot_Kream]

> Germans didn't become motivated terrorists after WW-II despite great devastation and killing of civilians by the Allies. Neither did Japan. I'm sure there are similar WW-I examples.

Heh this is funny because this was an explicit concern for the US after WWII. This is the reason behind the creation of the Marshal Plan and directly the reason why the US occupied both Germany and Japan and assisted in nation building there. The idea that losing a war leads to radicalism is as old as WWII, but probably even older, as the UK came to a similar conclusion when divesting its colonies in South Asia.

For more recent cases on how political instability and sectarian conflict leads to a rise in terrorism, look at what happened in Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the dissolution of the Baathist party.

[tptacek]

An absolutely wild video from the time about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=821R0lGUL6A

If you've never seen "Your Job In Germany", bookmark and it and make sure you do at some point. It is pretty unreal.

Of course, the counterpoint here is: the reason we worried about German terrorism but didn't see it is because we trained our forces with videos like this, and we were the nice guys about it compared to the Soviets.

[YZF]

Germans were hung from streetlamps after the war in some places. I think you're referring to after the Germans were defeated? We're not at that stage yet.

[tptacek]

See the preceding comment, "after WW-II".

[YZF]

Right. But first the Germans were defeated totally. They were forced to surrender. Imagine if the war was halted with massive German casualties but with the Nazis still in power. Which option results in more radicalization?

[tomp]

Not if they win decisively and eradicate not just the terrorists, but the terrorist indoctrination as well.

Note: there hasn't been a "generation of motivated terrorists" coming out of Japan and Germany after WWII, those populations were entirely subdued.

[rbanffy]

Having your parents, or your children, “eradicated” by someone is a powerful motivator.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Having your parents, or your children, “eradicated” by someone is a powerful motivator

But again, Japanese and Germans aren’t blowing up Americans and Indians aren’t blowing up London. Claiming this will create more terrorists is saying the Palestinians are irredeemably violent. I don’t think that’s right.

[semi-extrinsic]

Both Japan and Germany were left with their home countries and were given substantial aid to rebuild after the war. That aid was given by their former enemies.

Unfortunately I don't see it as very likely that Israel will give back all the territory in Gaza and provide aid to the Palestinians to rebuild.

[tomp]

This has been the case for the past decade - Israel has been financing Gaza and providing it with resources (e.g. electricity) as well as jobs.

Gaza was quite beautiful! And given its prime location on the mediterranean sea, I don't see why it couldn't be built up again.

https://twitter.com/InsiderWorld_1/status/178854608101537840...

But of course the massive mistake was not eradicating the evil terrorist genocidal mentality of its nominal leadership, Hamas. Israel (and the world) shouldn't make that mistake again.

[rbanffy]

Is it true that the Likud was helping to finance Hamas’ opposition to the Fatah as a way to ensure a two-state solution would remain non-viable?

[Karrot_Kream]

Israel was financing Gaza but not providing Gazan Palestinians political representation. Germans and Japanese were "given" a state where they had full rights as citizens. Political representation is an important way to defuse tensions and provide political legitimacy to a new regime. Even autocratic governments like China or Iran are beholden to the whims of their people, even if they can afford to ignore some. Israelis don't have to care about Palestinians at all. They can turn the strip into a tourist destination and no matter how much the Palestinians protest they have no representation to affect the government's course.

Gazan Palestinians don't even have limited local rule the way Chinese autonomous regions or Puerto Rico do.

Note that despite aid and the occupation, Japan had significant unrest following the war. The Communist Party of Japan's candidate Inejirou Asanuma was assassinated by an imperial revanchist on Oct 12, 1960 [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Inejir%C5%8D_...

[saintkaye]

Oh my this is not true

[rbanffy]

I’m pretty sure that, unless some time traveler really screwed up, this is how it played out on this timeline.

[xdennis]

> Israel [...] will be facing a generation of motivated terrorists in about 15-20 years

The Palestinians are taught from primary school to hate Jews[1] (books paid with western money). They couldn't possibly hate Jews more.

[1]: https://www.cfr.org/blog/teaching-palestinian-children-value...

[rusk]

Well that’s what happens when you cowardly murder people in the middle of the night and turf them out of their ancestral homeland