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It's not technically culture war, but Hamas has just attacked Israel en-masse, overwhelming the Iron Dome with 5000 rockets and even sending raiding parties into Israel. It looks like Haman and/or Shabak haven't done their job at all, and Israel has been caught with its pants down.
For the culture war angle, I think the biggest question is of retribution. On one hand, Israeli public will now demand a reaction that makes the ongoing Hamas attack pale in comparison. On the other hand, what can Israel do to a very densely populated Gaza strip that won't be branded as a war crime or ethnic cleansing?
I think this kind of desperate attack was inevitable for some time now. Big intelligence failure on Israel’s part but very high birthrates and the fact Gaza is a hellhole (partially by design) mean the requisite large numbers of angry young men are present. With the number that just walked in there will inevitably be cases of families being slaughtered, girls raped and so on to occupy the press for months.
And it explains why the Israeli population lurches to the right. Americans were unfathomably bloodthirsty after 9/11 (see infamous Coulter quote) outside of fringe far-left contrarians; in Israel, this has been going on for 70 years (and 20 in the current phase), the public is radicalizing year by year and has got a long time. Even in Europe the migrant crime wave that led to a surge in support for the AfD etc is less visceral compared to what’s happened in Israel, Swedes don’t fear an actually organized, well equipped army of young men raiding their quaint towns and slaughtering them like pillagers in the thirty years war.
As to what they’ll do, I think bellicose rhetoric is more likely than something more serious. The only real “solution” would be to slaughter the violent young men (same as it always is) to break the spirit of the population, firstborn sons to start, maybe. Or go full Xinjiang, possibly. But they can’t afford that and don’t really want to, you’re right, so instead they’ll build bigger walls, do some more bombing, talk tough and try to forget about it.
Gaza is many terrible things, but a state of slavery isn't one of them.
No, as the isolated nature of Gaza is a consequence of the Gaza-stirp Palestinians, and specifically Hamas, ability to manage their relations with Egypt (who manage a border) and even the West Bank Palestinians (who were a major political force for enabling cross-Palestinian transit concessions from Israel), not solely Israel.
The lack of willingness of Arab states to hold / give refuge / assimilate Palestinians is a broader Palestinian failure, but one that far predates Hamas.
I mean attempted coups by Palestinian refugees in their host countries (and massacring Israeli Olympic athletes by the same group) certainly didn't help.
As the saying goes, they've never missed and opportunity to miss an opportunity. And hijack a few more airliners worth of opportunities along the way.
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