Comment by flyinglizard
2 years ago
Sorry, but I don’t buy this. West Bank is both more peaceful and less radicalized than Gaza, the difference being that the Israeli military operates in the West Bank but not in Gaza. Gaza was left unchecked to be run by Hamas and we’re seeing the results today.
Long term the only solution is systematic deradicalization, but before any of that happens, Hamas needs to he destroyed and the war in Gaza needs to serve as a lesson to why peace is better than war. So far, for all Palestinian suffering, we’re not past that point.
Hamas leadership can be killed, but Israel is effectively waging a was on terror by another name. And terror is a concept you can’t blow up. By inflicting horrific damage on a civilian population Israel creates more people willing to give up their lives in military struggle.
The problem isn’t individuals with a wish to kill. They can’t do much damage. West Bank is full of those people and Israeli security apparatus deals with them just fune. The problem is institutional terrorism; an entire enclave of tunnels, rockets, special forces and a structure all designed to murder Israelis. That can, and has to be destroyed in a decisive way.
So policing the west bank has left it more peaceful so we can certainly now murder our way to peace in gaza by killing another 30,000 innocents in order to kill another 0.5% of the militants. 30,000 dead innocents can't possibly generate more than 300 soldiers among survivors.
For practical purposes the degree of force required to pacify it would kill 98%. Its possible that a better policed Gaza would be more peaceful this doesn't mean present efforts are reasonable.
Where did you take the figure of 0.5%? Consensus is over 12k Hamas militant dead and many more injured.
I'm presuming that intelligence about the exact location of targets in a ruin is going to be far less precise and starvation and privation are going to start killing faster than bombs. Ironically the armed gang will probably weather than particular challenge than the general population. Incremental improvements in number of combatants dead is going to come at the expense of a much larger contingent of dead civilians.
Hamas was I believe said to have what 50,000–60,000 fighters. By the time they get to the halfway point half the population will be dead.