It's hard to describe to people who don't have family there, but this exactly. The goal is similar to American "manifest destiny". They want to, through whatever means necessary, displace (at best) the existing Palestinian population and take their land.
From my perspective, they handed over control of the region and have had countless opportunities since the handoff to occupy the land permanently had they so chosen. Couldn't it just as easily be argued that they no longer trust sharing a border with them?
I feel like it would have been harder to get this far without international support had the Oct 7th attack not happened. I don’t know about you, but I’d be a bit more lenient if you’re trying to rescue civilian hostages.
I don’t know anything about the impetus for the Oct 7th attack was, but you have to wonder why.
Israelis voted in a government 20 years ago just to pull out from Gaza and give them their autonomy (which Gazans used to swiftly vote in Hamas, and that was the single and last time they had elections since). Saying Israel was interested in that land is disingenuous.
Israel definitely wants the West Bank (and the Golan Heights), it didn't demonstrate the same interest in Gaza. Which isn't that strange considering there's very little value in the land itself.
They were content with the Palestinians keeping to themselves in that corner of the land. At least that's what it looked like between 2005 and 2023. That isn't to say they had no designs on it further in the future, they might have had plans to annex it after fully claiming the West Bank. (Or at least certain groups within Israel)
If Israel, the state, had interest in the West Bank it'd have annexed it already. There is a group, admittedly growing as a result of the processes happening in the Israeli society, which is very interested in the West Bank. But it was never the official position of the state.
West Bank should have went to the Palestinians following the Oslo accords, and it partly did, but that all came to a halt with the deadly suicide attacks led by Hamas on Israel.
Another opportunity was in 2000 Camp David accords, but that too ended with the second Intifada.
A third opportunity came in the form of the Israeli disengagement from Gaza. Had it been a success story - the Palestinians building their own little Singapore in there, as the world was willing to pour in infinite capital - it would have pushed forward another such a move in the West Bank. But alas it ended with Hamas swiftly coming to power, years of rocket attacks on Israel, then October 7th and the rest is history.
I doubt the Israeli public will ever give the Palestinians anything, at this point; any time a concession was made, Israel found itself in a worse and worse security situation. The great Israeli-Palestinian peace attempt over the past three decades failed miserably.
These populations simply will not coexist, for great many reasons - religious, cultural, historical, tribal, and external.
This description of Israel’s interest in Gaza does not match their behavior. They have spent millions even billions of dollars terrorizing the population that lives there. They wouldn’t do that if “[t]hey were content with the Palestinians keeping to themselves in that corner of the land”. At the very least Israel saw that land valuable as a place to keep a population oppressed and terrorized, in other words, as a concentration camp or a ghetto.
Their behavior post October 7th, 2023 - the deadliest day for Jews since the holocaust - is very different than before that date. You couldn't expect Israel to keep its hands off approach, could you?
There’s a case that it was darker than that. The IDF is arguably the best army of its type in the world.
Yet the level of incompetence demonstrated when Hamas took the hostages was beyond incompetence. A retired general hopped in his car and rounded up a bunch of troops to extract his daughter. No officers were present in the area.
It seems weird that a military that had 3D mapping and monitoring of a region allowing it to detect and target concealed Hezbollah artillery in buildings somehow was caught flat footed. It’s weirder that there hasn’t been any commentary about this in an age where every decision made is analyzed to death.
There has been some commentary. For instance reports of rising levels of intense military activity on the border, sent by IDF female spotter squads on the border for months, were ignored by command centers. This was explained as “chauvinism” - crippling incompetence if true.
>It seems weird that a military that had 3D mapping and monitoring of a region allowing it to detect and target concealed Hezbollah artillery in buildings somehow was caught flat footed. It’s weirder that there hasn’t been any commentary about this in an age where every decision made is analyzed to death.
Yeah. "Weird." Kinda like how it was weird that a music festival was moved to be next to a military base that was the target of an operation that one of the greatest signals intelligence powers in the world "didn't know about" over a couple of years of planning.
Weird that the IDF moved into the crowd instead of evacuating the festival. Weird that there were photos of massive numbers of bombed out cars that were disposed of before any forensics could happen. Kinda weird that IDF copters and tanks opened fire indiscriminately (or, sometimes, targeting Israelis due to Hannibal doctrine).
Really "weird" operation all around. Seems like it really didn't have to happen the way it did.
Why did Israel unilaterally withdrew its military forces from Gaza and dismantled its settlements in 2005? It gave them what they wanted, and look what it got in return. Murderous terrorism.
I'm having trouble understanding the notion of "permanent military occupation of Gaza before 2005". Just out of interest, who occupied Gaza before 1967? And who before 1948? And who before 1920?