Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Notes -
I described it a number of times already, but basically the worldview that the war with and ultimate destruction of Israel is not the primary priority of Arab population and government in Gaza and PA, and skillfully combining mutually beneficial economic projects and very limited single-point military interventions, to suppress a small hard core of warmongers, it is possible to achieve security for Israel and long term peace, with Arab population living independently besides Israel as maybe not friends at first but not engaging in active hostilities. Moreover, most of the Israel elites were under impression that not only this strategy is possible in principle, it has been successfully implemented in Gaza and Hamas is largely pacified and contained, and its capabilities are confined to small-scale terror acts which can be easily kept at a minimum by routine intelligence/police work. This is why a lot of peace activists lived close to the borders of Gaza and why the music festival has been organized right there on the border - because, following this worldview, single one-off terror acts could strike anywhere and the danger is the same in Tel Aviv or Haifa (maybe even more, since terrorists tend to attack population centers) as on the Gaza border, and living close to the actual population helps bringing people together and strengthens the peace.
This is not a stupid concept per se - Israel has achieved similar position with Egypt, Jordan, Syria and even in PA you could argue it is moving in that direction. So in theory, without empirical adjustment, this was possible, and certainly very attractive, humanistic and optimistic. The problem is, that's not at all what Hamas and Gaza population were. Unfortunately, this things do not work by analogy or statistically - if most snakes aren't venomous, it doesn't mean that particular one about to bite you isn't. You can't rely on statistics in such cases, and you can't make hope your main strategy, ignoring empiric data that point otherwise. Unfortunately, that's what Israel had been doing for at least 18 years (in fact, even longer, pretty much since Oslo agreements). They wanted this nice peace picture so much, they ignored the reality that did not match it.
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