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I did not mean to imply that. I do not consider their actions in Gaza to be a war of expansion, it seems more like a punitive expedition.
However, the Netanyahu government has clearly encouraged Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including through military force, while also driving out the native Palestinians.
I doubt it. They could assassinate the leaders of their neighbors and turn their cities into Gaza, but so far they have been unable to even occupy the population of Gaza, even though that would likely be effective at breaking Hamas control. (I mean, when the Allies reached Munich, they did not encircle it with a wall and starve it, hoping that the population would eventually get tired of the Nazis. They took and occupied the city, which allowed them to fight pockets of resistance a lot more selectively than through airstrikes.)
The population of the Cairo metro area alone is 10x the population of Gaza, and more than 2x the population of Israel. Bibi might be able to glass Cairo, but while his colleagues in the neighboring states might share his lack of concern for dead Arabs, their populations do not. At the moment this does not matter, because the populations get no say in the policy, but their power has seem brittle at times, "Israel has killed a few millions of our Muslim brothers and sisters in Cairo and we will write a sternly worded letter in response" might be a policy which will get regimes toppled. And while I am sure that the IDF is much more effective per capita than their Muslim neighbors, Egypt and the Arabian peninsula have a combined population of more than 200M, having Israel come out on top of that conflict without direct support from the US is possible (it kinda happened before), but I would not call it a foregone conclusion.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, the obvious interpretation (of Israel's conduct) is that Israel is simply trying to kill everyone in Hamas that it can both for incapacitation and deterrence.
Would you mind providing two examples of this so I can understand what you are getting at here?
How do you know that Israel simply isn't trying to occupy Gaza the way the allies occupied Berlin? After all, the Battle of Berlin entailed a phenomenal amount of death and destruction. Over 100,000 civilians killed and far more soldiers. And as far as I know, the Nazis for the most part weren't hiding behind women and children. The obvious explanation is that Israel's leadership simply thinks that it's not worth the trouble to occupy Gaza in the same way as Berlin.
By the way, it might be argumentatively convenient to accuse Israel of a starvation strategy, but the actual facts tell a different story.
Anyway, let me ask you this: Can you at least agree that (1) Israel is currently occupying Southern Lebanon and could simply stay there without much risk of getting pushed out (2) Israel could pretty easily retake the Sinai just like it did in 1967 (before giving it back to the Egyptians a few years later); and (3) Israel could pretty easily push into Syria enough to set up an allied Druze state?
Edit: I will answer my own question.
The Israeli military is physically in southern Lebanon at the moment and has been in the past. There is no military force in Lebanon which is in a position to object them so they could stay indefinitely rather than withdrawing as they did in the past.
Israel entered, took control of, and annexed part of what used to be Syria -- the Golan Heights. (This area had been used as a staging ground by the Syrians to launch artillery barrages against Israelis in the North). Given the Syrian civil war, it would not be hard at all for Israel to push further. The hardest part was taking the Heights in the first place. Moreover, there is a large Druze population in this area; there is strong sentiment among the Druze that other groups in Syria pose a big threat to them while at the same time they see that their fellow Druze in Israel are being treated just fine.
With a much weaker military in 1967, Israel captured the entire Sinai in just a few days from Egypt. Rather than stay there, they left in exchange for a peace treaty with Egypt. Currently the area is largely demilitarized. It is difficult to see that Israel would have much trouble re-capturing much or all of the Sinai in a surprise attack.
Israel could do all these things, and yet it doesn't. All of this is consistent with the pro-Israel position, which is that Israel's primary military motivation is self-defense. And completely in contradiction to the claim by anti-Israel types that Israel's motivation is military expansionism. So I have to conclude that you are dead wrong. And in fact, I strongly suspect that this is yet another example of the "argumentative convenience" you cited. i.e. Israel's detractors are not stating their actual objection to Israel but rather something that's more palatable and convenient to say.
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