[eapressoandcats]

Israel doesn’t have a plan to clean up the mess. What is the end goal here? Seriously. They’ve invaded and now what?

Options are: 1. Regime change, which I have seen no effort to attempt to effectuate 2. Withdrawal, which seems unlikely at this point. 3. Permanent occupation, which seems like the default. It may end up falling short of full genocide but it’s definitely violently upheld apartheid at a minimum.

If the third option is “cleaning up a mess” then that’s uh… pretty bad.

[throw310822]

Israel's plan is, and has always been, to settle the whole of ethnically cleansed Palestine. Their strategy in Gaza was to promote the mess (propping up Hamas, imposing life conditions calculated to fuel anger, dismissing any long-term truce offer from Hamas) in order to have the excuse to "clean it up". Now they're in the last phase of the clean up, they just have to resist the (weak) indignation of the EU and US leaders.

[dlubarov]

If that was always the goal, how do you explain Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and removal of Jews living there?

[throw310822]

From Wikipedia:

In October 2004, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's senior adviser, Dov Weissglass, explained the meaning of Sharon's statement further:

"The significance of the disengagement plan [from Gaza] is the freezing of the peace process, and when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress. That is exactly what happened. You know, the term 'peace process' is a bundle of concepts and commitments. The peace process is the establishment of a Palestinian state with all the security risks that entails. The peace process is the evacuation of settlements, it's the return of refugees, it's the partition of Jerusalem. And all that has now been frozen.... what I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. That is the significance of what we did."

Addendum: In 2005, Israel evacuated approximately 8,000 to 9,000 Israeli settlers from Gaza. Since then, there was an increase of approximately 250,000 settlers in the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) since 2005 - or roughly 28 times more than the number evacuated from Gaza.

[dlubarov]

This seems a bit besides the point; I think the point stands that if Israel always wanted Gaza, its unilateral withdraw wouldn't have made sense.

[throw310822]

No, I think you should reflect a bit more. If they have to sacrifice a few settlements in Gaza today to be able to create 30 times more in the West Bank tomorrow, it makes perfect sense. And, it doesn't mean at all giving up Gaza for good: in fact, soon after that, they closed Gaza under a total siege that lasted 20 years, until they found a good excuse to retake that one too.

In chess you sacrifice pieces. Only a really naive player would think "well, if he sacrificed that piece, that proves he doesn't want to win the game".

[dlubarov]

Israel’s disengagement plan was a huge topic of internal debate before being approved by the Knesset. Arguments for it were about demographics and security. I don’t recall any proponents of the plan saying that it was a temporary measure (though some argued Israel could easily regain control if required, as a backup), so that seems like a farfetched explanation.

[jjcob]

What they mean by "cleaning up the mess" is killing, starving or displacing all Palestinians in the Gaza strip and developing Israeli settlements while simultaneously expanding into the west bank as well.

[mvdtnz]

Israel has been open with their goal - the complete and total annihilation of Hamas. So yes, option 1, regime change.