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That’s fair to an extent. I think it hews much more closely to the history of the West Bank though. Also, how much has Israel tried to do anything real with the PA in recent decades, let’s be honest, not much at all. My understanding of the timeline is the nation-building was decent for the first five years or so but the Second Intifada, Camp David failure, and re-occupation in 2002ish wiped it almost all out, both trust and infrastructure, to fitfully restart a bit again for a few years, until Bibi 2.0 around 2009. Basically as soon as he showed up it went into a permanent stall/holding pattern at best, and Bibi’s preference was deliberately for a weak PA, so if anything state unofficial policy has been to undermine the PA where possible. That’s been the status ever since, for 15 years or so now. I should also note that the few years immediately before 10/7, this was especially noticeable (eg the PA was ignored in the Abraham accords). For fairness we should note 2009 is also when Abbas began clinging to power undemocratically.
The Gaza situation is a bit harder to parse. We follow a similar trajectory but with more radicalism and less autonomy and more violence on both sides (not equipped to discern scale but I think in this time some assassinations took place). Until the increasing violence, withdrawal, and 2006 elections with Hamas getting a plurality followed by a swift 2007 civil war overthrow. I think with respect to the analogy, for Gaza the clock on the analogy basically restarts there: a failed and violent state with religious extremist terrorists in charge, a total war of annihilation, occupation, all the things I compared.
So for West Bank you’d be fairly accurate in saying nation-building was tried (and the relative stability of West Bank is probably owed to this!) but for Gaza I think the Israelis need to seriously consider a similar game plan as the US.
Well in Gaza Israel pulled out their own settlers and things only got worse. I'm not sure I understand what the American Afghan informed model really looks like. They did try to have the PA control Gaza, the Gazans voted for Hamas and then Hamas ended elections. The US was able to drive the Taliban into the mountains separate from the main population where they could try their nation building. You could describe what Israel is doing now as the part where America drove the Taliban out but rather than separate mountains the Hamas compounds are endless miles of tunnels under Gaza itself so you can't actually achieve this separation. I'm basically at a point of pessimism on the topic, even in the more favorable Afghan situation the Americans with even more security failed to do what you're suggesting Israel should do, this just isn't going to work any way you slice it.
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