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There is plenty of room for deception, stratagems, collateral damage and psychological warfare even in non-existential wars.
N.B. I don't believe either of the examples you listed are examples of existential wars. Russia overplays the existentiality as part of its official excuse to swing the nuke threat around (it would be bad optics to admit that it went to war for the sake of mere "sphere of influence"), America was on the other side of the ocean from the Axis (now USSR would be a much more salient example). Israel is closest to existential but it still has a buffer of overwhelming power over Gaza. If that buffer is threatened I would expect them to glass Gaza into the precambrian age faster than you can say "Zionism" because any political fallout is better than being overrun.
Yes, but to a point. There's a reason why the "little green men" tactic was seen as below the belt.
Yeah, though I think you can make the case that they were more existential to the other side of the conflict, which makes it quite apt for this analogy.
Just as a side note, there has never been any existential threat on the part of Israel towards the residents of Gaza; all they have to do is stop attacking Israel and shortly thereafter the hostilities will entirely cease. That's the situation with Jordan and Egypt. Literally all they had to do was resist the temptation to lob missiles at Israel, cross the border to murder and kidnap, etc., and that was it.
This is false, the blockade will obviously persist. A blockade is a form of hostility.
If it's that obvious, then you should be able to lay out the evidence and argument which makes it so.
Please do so.
TIA.
First of all, your entire premise is ridiculous. 'Palestinians attacking Israelis' is something that is always going to exist at some base level, just like 'Israelis attacking Palestinians' or 'Israelis attacking Israelis' or 'Israelis attacking Dutch people (and vice versa)' or whatever groups are in contact. So any claim that one will do X once Y is achieved, where Y is impossible, effectively just means that one does not actually ever intend to do X. Or in this case, that one falsely claims that one side has control over their faith, when that is not a reasonable thing to claim.
Israel has a history of refusing to work towards normalization, by demanding the impossible, and refusing to honor any deals that do not deliver the impossible. An example is the 2008 cease fire, where rockets attacks dropped to a tiny fraction of what they were before the cease fire, but Israel refused to adhere to the agreement unless Hamas was able to stop all Palestinians from using violence, which is not realistically possible. This is like demanding that the police stop all crime. A ridiculous ask that has nothing to do with reason or reality.
Secondly, the idea that if there is a brief period of no attacks at all, Israel will trust Palestinians enough to just open the borders and let everything through is absurd. The only evidence one needs to disprove this, is the Gaza peace plan which already demands that no attacks will be launched from Gaza (see point 1), yet does not promise any more than to let through specific goods. So the ending of the blockade is not part of the peace plan.
Finally, fact is that Israel perceives all kinds of fairly innocent things as attacks, so the idea that no actual attacks means that Israel won't perceive any attacks is also highly doubtful. Examples are: driving in a UN-marked convoy where Israel was notified of the route that they would take. Clearly marked ambulances riding around with alarm signals. People approaching food trucks to get food. All cases where people were considered treats and attacked with lethal force, and no evidence exist of any reasonable casus belli.
Since apparently you don't understand what I meant by "attacking," allow me to clarify for you. By your reasoning, the Swiss are "always attacking" France, in the sense there are regular attacks by Swiss people against French people. Nevertheless, there is no need for France to conduct military operations against Switzerland in the way that Israel has conducted military operations against Gaza.
With that in mind, all that the people of Gaza need to do is limit their degree of attacks towards Israel to something roughly comparable to the level of Swiss attacks against France. At that point, the Israeli hostilities will promptly cease.
I am skeptical. Would you mind providing a source for this so that I can scrutinize your claim? TIA.
Agreed. When I said "stop attacking Israel," I meant something long-lasting not something brief.
I'm a little confused by this. Are you talking about fog-of-war incidents which will inevitably take place during armed conflicts, especially since one side disguises their military activities as civilian activities as a matter of policy? Or are you talking about official Israeli policy?
Yes, and part of the process of ending conflicts is to change the perception of the remaining violence from 'our peoples are attacking each other' to something like 'criminals do bad things and they get punished.'
There is never an objective need. I have no objective need to eat. Only in the context of wishing to stay alive, does this need exist. However, if I desired death, then VSED would be an option, and then I would need to not eat. So any description of a need without a goal that supposedly has only one solution to achieve the goal, is deceptive. And if there are other options, or it is not obvious that the behavior will achieve the goal, then it is a choice, not a need. Even with the goal, there is still not automatically a need, since the goal is itself often a choice. Or would you accept a bank robber's reasoning that he had no other choice to achieve his goal of getting rich fast, so it was not a choice, but a need?
You are trapping yourself in your choice of words, to create a false narrative where Israel has no choices and Hamas/the Palestinians have the only real choices. This is just a way to rationalize your biases.
Actual reality is that Israel was happy with Hamas in control of Gaza. One month before the attack, Israel asked Qatar to increase the funding for Hamas. Israel believed that their oppression and security measures would ensure only limited resistance that they could manage by 'cutting the grass.' It is clear that this was a big mistake. However, the massive destruction and murders that followed the Oct 7 attack clearly do not solve anything.
Of course, you can argue that Israel could not react any differently due to Israeli culture, their politics, or whatever, but at that point there is no reason why Hamas or the Palestinians would not be subject to similar forces that would constrain their choices. So that makes 'just stop being violent against Israel(is), bro,' just a biased statement no different than 'just stop oppressing the Palestinians, bro.' These are statements for a war of rhetoric, to win for your side. They are not a path to peace.
Page 6
This just runs into the standard problem of one side demanding this 'long-lasting' period to be infinite, while not wanting to make any sacrifices on their own. Again, if you are not just biased but take the outside view, it is obvious that this just results in a stalemate where both sides demand that the other side make a sacrifice first.
I'm talking about institutional bias on the part of Israeli institutions like the IDF, which is caused both by intentional and unintentional causes. Refusing to actually investigate things honestly is an example of intentional bias.
Assuming that's true, so what? As I understand your argument, your position is that "stop attacking Israel" is an unreasonable condition on the cessation of hostilities, because you interpret the word "attack" as being so broad as to include any violence of any nature by any resident of Gaza against any Israeli.
And I'm telling you that's not what I meant. I used the word "attack" in a more narrow sense.
And using that definition, it is clear that your argument is wrong. For example, Jordan has stopped attacking Israel (in my sense of the word "attacking" and Israel has stopped conducting military activities against Jordan. All that Gaza needs to do is achieve the level of "non-attack" reached by Jordan.
Can you quote the relevant part of the paper for me? Are you claiming that page 6 shows that "rockets attacks dropped to a tiny fraction of what they were before the cease fire, but Israel refused to adhere to the agreement unless Hamas was able to stop all Palestinians from using violence, which is not realistically possible," because all I see is just a graph and nothing about Israel refusing to do anything.
No it doesn't. Again, just look at the case of Jordan. An infinite amount of time has NOT elapsed since the last attack by Jordan. Agreed?
Assuming for the sake of argument that this is true (and I highly doubt it) your argument proves too much. As far as I know, Israel has not been recently shooting at targets in Jordan, military, civilian or otherwise. If Israel biasedly interpreted non-hostile behavior by Jordanians as being worthy of military action, that's what one would expect.
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