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Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Israel has erred on the side of avoiding killing civilians to get their targets. Gaza would look very different today if it didn’t.
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You mean it would look something like this?
(The picture is from 2021.)
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But again we’re confronted with the question of what to do about a ruthless enemy that hides among civilians. How to conduct a moral war against such an enemy? There’s no country in the world that puts the safety of enemy civilians above the safety of its own.
Do you consider the Battle of Mosul, where ISIS was defeated by a coalition of Iraqis, Kurds, and an international task force, to be a failure? More than 3,000 civilians were killed.
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These are valid points, to which I have only some answers.
First, most of the mistakes are already made, so if you could go back in time, the main mistake was the overreach of the blockade. This completely backfired by radicalizing Hamas and the people of Gaza much more than what they used to be.
Yes, Hamas winning that election was bad for peace, but Israel and the international community made it so much worse by trying to force the people of Gaza into submission right when they had been promised self-governance. That promise was in effect broken immediately, and created a belief on the Palestinian side that Israel just can't be trusted. It also created a situation where the only allies Hamas had left were mostly various Islamists groups or states. Their only allies from that point forward were those who wanted Hamas to fight Israel. A turn toward extremism was just inevitable.
I would also argue that the air strikes aren't really about protecting Israeli civilians, it's to protect IDF troops from the hazards ground fighting. Which is extremely fair, but not a longterm solution. At this point there probably isn't an alternative to re-occupying Gaza. Yes it will also end up in fighting and heavy civilian casualties, but at ground level it's possible to actually do real damage to Hamas, and after re-occupation Israel could start working towards making Gaza truly livable again, which is the only long term solution to the extremism.
The Battle of Mosul also needed troops to actually go in and take over.
It would likely be an ugly process too, and not guaranteed to succeed, but at least there would be a chance.
IDF should probably try to involve/recruit as many Palestinians as possible to work for an Israel led security force / police in Gaza, to make the conflict less about jews and muslims and more about security and terrorists.
If Israel doesn't trust the Palestinians with the resources to build infrastructure, then Israel needs to do it themselves.
And they need to start working towards ending the apartheid politics.
At this point it looks like the two-state solution is dead for Gaza anyway.