naraburns nihil supernum
6mo ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
I've been thinking: what's the Palestinian path to victory? Ie. what's the course of action that would lead to an establishment of a from-the-river-to-the-sea Palestine? (Not focusing here on the desirability of that path etc.)
Any way one looks at it, the only way to get at this would be a war with Israel's neighbors joining in. Of course this hasn't happened since Yom Kippur War, and much of Israel's foreign and security policy has been successfully trying to make sure this doesn't happen. Egypt and Jordan have peace treaties with Israel and reasonably non-hostile governments (with their own reasons to hope that the situation stays stable), Lebanon and Syria are destabilized, Saudis are too dependent on US and too focused elsewhere to be a threat.
However, as far as I've understood, Egyptian and Jordanian populations continue to be strongly pro-Palestine, Jordan has a huge amount of Palestinian refugees, and Egypt continues to have many problems that make it a potential flash point. Would a sufficiently atrocious response by Israel have a possibility of leading to revolutions and strongly anti-Israel regimes taking power? Might Lebanon and Syria be stabilized, with Lebanon falling under Hezbollah rule? If all of Israel's neighbors started another big war, can Israel repeat the same as in 1947, 1968 and 1973? The traditional answer would be "probably", but the state of IDF currently looks like there's a lot of mythology and hot air underpinning that proposition.
I genuinely have no idea about these things, which is why I'm asking here.
I've been thinking: what's the Palestinian path to victory? Ie. what's the course of action that would lead to an establishment of a from-the-river-to-the-sea Palestine?
What was the realistic path to a Jewish state in Israel after the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt circa the 130s AD? Imagine some handful of scruffy Jewish rebels, gathered around a campfire somewhere in the hills hiding from the Romans, defeated, demoralized, but still nationalists, still wanting to continue the struggle, talking about what will happen next, what can we do now to try to reestablish the nation? What is the Jewish path to victory? The Romans have all the power, they are guarding all the doors they are holding all the keys, they have immense military might that has subjugated the known world, they have money they draw in tribute from the entire known world, they are famously vindictive and brutal and unsparing of their soldiers' lives or of any cost in their pursuit of power. What possible path to victory would be possible for those few scattered Jews?
And imagine someone at that campfire giving the answer, giving a perfect farsighted prediction of what would really, actually happen to the Jewish people between their exile from the Holy Land under Hadrian and the founding of the new Jewish state in 1948. Even the most far-sighted Jew imaginable, the very mytheme of the Elder of Zion, could not have imagined an eighteen-hundred year sojourn through Europe that finally ended after an empire based in Britannia (that backwater?) fought an empire of Germans (those barbarians?) and tried to bribe the world's Jews with the potential for a return to Judea after they defeated their enemies the Turks (literally who is that?) in cooperations with the Russians (ok now you're just making up names, that's not even a real people); ultimately they would only succeed with help from the Americans (that's not even a real place).*
That is to say, if the Palestinians continue the struggle long enough, anything could happen. In the 1950s, Moscow's intervention in any conflict seemed certain and likely to be pivotal, while Chinese intervention seemed unlikely and unimportant, today those positions are reversed. The single most important thing is that the struggle does not end. The moment Palestinians cease to be Palestinians, or cease to struggle for Palestine from the River to the Sea, all hope is lost. As long as Palestinians exist, and as long as they struggle, hope will always be there, things could change. Which is why the Abraham Accords were such a potential knife to the heart for the Palestinian cause. The loss condition for Palestine From the River to the Sea is that Palestinians are absorbed into a bigger culture, whether that is Egypt or it is Jordan or it is GloboHomo, when that happens the game is over.
To return to our defeated Jewish Rebels circa 137, huddled around their campfire, knowing that the short remainder of their lives would be spent fleeing Roman legions hunting for them, there would have been one assumption too basic to even be said out loud: to reestablish the kingdom we must remain Jewish. We must maintain our identity as Jews. As long as the Jews survived as a distinct people, there is hope, there is always "next year in Jerusalem".
Assume that your utility function was identified purely with your identity group's possession of sovereignty over a given plot of land. Not with the members of the identity group, you do not care if they live good lives, if they suffer or die horribly, only if they possess sovereignty over a given plot of land. Not with the genetics of the identity group, you do not care if everyone in the world comes to have eyes and hair that look like those of your identity group, only if those who identify as your identity group have sovereignty over that given plot of land. Assume you are mostly or completely time-neutral, that establishing sovereignty in eighteen hundred years is infinitely superior to never establishing sovereignty.
In that case, your action would always be to continue the struggle, to keep the people together, to keep the faith alive. Because who knows, maybe the horse will sing.**
In reality, that's the Palestinian strategy. They have, as of today, no realistic win condition whatsoever. There is no realistic series of events that Hamas can trigger that will lead to victory. But the future is under no constraint that it must be realistic. They're just kicking the can down the road, over and over, hoping that things will change. But it worked before in Israel, why not again?
*Seriously, just think about the geography of the First World War from the perspective of a Jew in 132AD. The Rus wouldn't come to exist for centuries yet, and Kiev was on the borders of even the broadest geographical knowledge while Moscow was further yet into the unknown. No Turkish peoples, to my scant knowledge, ever ventured sufficiently far west that Judeans would know of them, though by analogy they would probably just seem like Scythians or Sarmatians or whoever. America, a vast land on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, would seem flatly mythical. The idea of a world dominated by Christian powers would seem as absurd to them as a world dominated by, idk, Scientology or Jainism would to modern Westerners.
**Nasrudin was caught in the act and sentenced to die. Hauled up before the king, he was asked by the Royal Presence: "Is there any reason at all why I shouldn't have your head off right now?" To which he replied: "Oh, King, live forever! Know that I, the mullah Nasrudin, am the greatest teacher in your kingdom, and it would surely be a waste to kill such a great teacher. So skilled am I that I could even teach your favorite horse to sing, given a year to work on it." The king was amused, and said: "Very well then, you move into the stable immediately, and if the horse isn't singing a year from now, we'll think of something interesting to do with you."
As he was returning to his cell to pick up his spare rags, his cellmate remonstrated with him: "Now that was really stupid. You know you can't teach that horse to sing, no matter how long you try." Nasrudin's response: "Not at all. I have a year now that I didn't have before. And a lot of things can happen in a year. The king might die. The horse might die. I might die.
Palestine’s win condition is to hit hard enough that Israel collapses into Lebanon-style civil war, then carve out a niche as an established and predictable faction.
They have failed to do this at their best chance in a generation and Gaza will likely see six figure civilian casualties as its price. The mass deaths among Palestinian civilians are not a good thing, but a Lebanon-style civil war would probably have been worse.
With Russia's attack against Ukraine, the second superpower was revived
And we cheer for China as well, may they conquer Taiwan, break the noses of the Americans
And yet the war will still be a show until America joins the fight
May the world war burst into flame and bring back the memories
The gameplan is to strike at the heart of the problem. It's unwavering US support for Israel that props them up, that lets them behave so heavyhandedly, annexing, settling, bombing other countries. US tech is vital to the Israeli military. US diplomatic and soft power is very helpful for Israeli diplomacy.
Russia and China will do the heavy lifting, winning WW3. Palestine can possibly help out by motivating the rest of the Muslim world to help the Axis of Resistance, they're on the same side as Iran, Russia and China after all. Without Israel's superpower ally, they think they can win. Their position would be very much advanced if the US was out of the game, even though Israel retains its nuclear weapons.
Now they've attacked Israel semi-successfully, they've lowered the prestige of Western militaries and weapon-systems, they've diverted US attention and resources from other fronts, they're sucking up US munitions (that's what's in the US military aid boost).
A couple points around this that I don't think have been covered well enough yet:
The surrounding Arab countries never did really support Palestine or hate Israel that much, or trust each other that much. A big part of the reason Israel won their large-scale wars is that the Arab countries never did really unite. They were always scheming against each other, trying to ensure that one of the others did most of the fighting and took most of the losses. Yeah they don't like Israel, but they have not proved willing to put their own regimes at risk by committing sufficiently large forces to combat that they could be vulnerable to coups or counter-invasions if they suffered large losses.
Also, for anyone who looks at a map of the area, the surrounding Arab countries have hundreds of times more land area than Israel does. If any of them really cared about the Palestinians, they could easily offer to let them move into their countries. But none of them has ever offered that, even on a small scale. It seems they like the Palestinians more as a thorn in Israel's side and maybe as martyrs than they do as possible neighbors. (Jordan hasn't accepted any since 1967).
Given those realities, I don't think there's any way any action by Israel could lead to a united Arab world deciding to work together to raise large militaries and commit them to joint action against Israel, even leaving the nuclear angle out of the picture. If that was anywhere near being in the cards, why wouldn't they do the much cheaper and simpler option of offering the Palestinian people refuge in their countries first?
Of course, that also means I have no clue what Hamas is actually going for here besides a quick and briefly satisfying spasm of horrific violence mostly against civilians followed rapidly by an inevitable crushing by the IDF.
The surrounding Arab countries never did really support Palestine or hate Israel that much, or trust each other that much.
That depends on the country. Jordan was always a reluctant aggressor and did things like kick out the PLO and warn Israel of pending Arab attacks, but Assad blamed Israel for everything and was pissed when Jordan and Egypt signed peace treaties that foreclosed the opportunity of having another go of wiping them off the map.
The crux of the matter is that, in the Arab world, being anti-Israel is a popular sentiment, but the governments are smart enough to know that it's bad geopolitics. Egypt realized back in the 70s that a perpetual state of war was not to its advantage, but Sadat paid for that realization with his life. Jordan needed peace even sooner which makes the length of their holdout a testament to how pervasive popular sentiment can be; Hussein never came across as particularly anti-Israeli in interviews, and he was the king. The other Arab countries (aside from Syria and Lebanon) weren't directly involved in the conflict and probably never will be, so it's easy for them to withhold recognition. UAE is trying to fashion itself as an Arab state that's appealing to Westerners, so they can't afford to hold antiquated views about a country that isn't going anywhere lest people think they're just another Mideastern basket case. Morocco wanted to add some heft to its claims over Western Sahara, and they're far enough away that it doesn't cost them much. Sudan had sanctions they needed to be rid of, and they're a minor player in the whole Arab scene anyway. Bahrain is an interesting case, but it's small, dominated by US military interests, and is an absolute monarchy. But the point is generally that no Arab country will recognize Israel and normalize relations unless there's some carrot involved, and these carrots are usually the kind of thing that appeals more to the higher levels of government than to the average citizen; I doubt that the average Moroccan cares that much about the Sarahwi Arab Democratic Republic. Palestinians know this.
But the point is generally that no Arab country will recognize Israel and normalize relations unless there's some carrot involved, and these carrots are usually the kind of thing that appeals more to the higher levels of government than to the average citizen; I doubt that the average Moroccan cares that much about the Sarahwi Arab Democratic Republic.
There are plenty of countries where the local common man (at least the ones posting in the Internet) regularly works themselves up into an absolute lather over secessionist groups trying to split their country, so I'd imagine that the Moroccans would be quite similar.
It's possible, but those are usually in places where a local minority wants to separate territory that's already a well-established part of the larger country. Western Sahara was annexed in the late-1970s, which led to a war lasting over a decade, and the dispute has never been resolved. It's closer to a colonial issue than it is to, say, Basque separatists in Spain or Kurdish nationalists in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
I've been thinking: what's the Palestinian path to victory?
Putting their mortars in schools and hospitals so that Israel is forced to blow up schools and hospitals and then doing a pity play and hoping American and European leftists buy said pity play hard enough so that we start treating it like Apartheid South Africa on steroids. Then after 50 years of Israel being trade isolated they repeat 1973 and hope for a victory that time.
I've been thinking: what's the Palestinian path to victory?
Any way one looks at it, the only way to get at this would be a war with Israel's neighbors joining in
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.
This kind of war had already been tried without success. Three times. Stop trying to be zerg, try to become protos.
Take a look at the map - and let's make some assumptions - Israel doesn't care about Gaza strip as long as it is peaceful, but views the west bank territory as existential about their survival. To me this looks close enough to the current situation. So no matter how unrealistic it is - the gaza strip should be the beginning and the heart of the new Palestine. Also it is centuries long project. Deal with it. Gaza strip is extremely low in territory, devoid of natural resources and has high population.
So the first step is to make Gaza into a city state as the likes of singapore/hong kong/dubai. This can be done if there is enough capital, government will to prioritize education and so on.
Capital is the easy part. Competent government is not.
Your goal is to bring your gdp per capita to insane levels. Then you begin massive projects of land reclamation. You will need it. Your goal is to become richer, tidier and just plain better place to be than Israel. It could be done - after all israel did the similar thing themselves.
Now here comes the tricky part - once you are there you naturally start bleeding Egypt and Israel dry - the best and brightest will try to come there - there are enough Arabs in Israel that you can intermerry - people that will give their children Israel passports and the right to own property there. So you just start buying. And voting. Eventually in a couple of generations you may be able to displace them or assimilate enough of them to not matter.
But Palestine cannot win while being a shithole, so they must asap stop being shithole at least in the gaza strip.
Do you really think that Gaza has the human capital to be the next Singapore? Dubai has oil, Hong Kong has the Chinese, Gaza has...the same kind of Arabs you find in Jordan and Lebanon.
Singapore doesn't have the human capital to become Singapore. It succeeds only because it's the one good harbour for 1000 miles on the busiest trade route in the world (and the colonial British built that harbour). "Muh human capital, muh good governance" is a PR stunt by the Singapore People's Action Party to try and make itself look good via narrative control, but it has very little factual basis.
Singapore has Chinese people. The Chinese diaspora is always successful. Whether they're in SE Asia, Australia, Europe, America, they're always smart, entrepreneurial and law-abiding. I disagree with you about the PAP, I think LKY genuinely was one of the greatest statesman in history, but regardless, when your main ethnic group has an IQ of ~110, creating a wealthy city-state is actually possible.
Human capital is not something you have, it is something you create. Lebanon was quite prosperous place before the civil war, and I think that Jordan is the only oasis of normalcy in the region. (Too much "money can buy everything vice" in Dubai for my taste, Doha is quite conservative and Muskat will eventually be awesome place, but not yet, Erbil is amazing but too militarized).
I think that there is snowball's chance in hell in competent ruler that will get this territory's shit together. But I pointed one of the few roads ahead - whatever specs of palestine that are left must develop on their own territory. It may be nigh impossible task - but is absolute must for them to get any kind of win.
I was speaking more in the HBD-sense. Hong Kong and Singapore have Chinese people, with an average IQ of ~110. Levant Arabs have average IQs in the low-80s. Maybe the Gazans would be able to carve out a niche like some of the Gulf states have, but they'd have to do it without oil and gas wealth to kickstart the process.
The problem is that Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai didn't spend decades resisting foreign (to them) military occupation before lobbing missiles at their neighbors. They were never controlled politically be separatist terrorist groups. China didn't spend years blockading Hong Kong because the international community was in agreement that they were nothing but trouble. Until Hamas loses all power in Gaza, any economic development is going to be stymied by restrictions (by both Israel and Egypt) and reluctance of foreign investors to take risks there. Hamas is more interested in sticking it to Israel now than it is signing peace accords and trying to convince everyone that the situation is okay. Even if they did, there would be a new generation of Palestinian nationalists behind them to take up where they left off; after all, Hamas was formed as a response to the PLO becoming more of a political entity and less of an active force, though their exile in Tunis probably didn't help.
Victory on Palestinian terms? Outbreed the Israelis, keep their grudges alive for as many generations as possible, and wait for a paradigm shift in international relations/Israeli politics/military technology to create an opportunity. It could take 200 years.
It is incredible how so many world shattering events seem to keep happening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over so many decades and ultimately this equation at its heart just never changes.
I don't think that a major state-on-state action is necessary to seriously destabilize Israel - intervention by Hezbollah and significant communitarian violence/obstruction by Israeli arabs could do that. I'm not even sure that any of the local states' military forces have the capacity to do much to Israel in a standard straight-up battle. The asymmetric stuff targeting civilians seems like much more of a problem.
I don't think IDF's less-than-stellar first response says anything about their strategic capabilities, and the nukes are without doubt functional, so no, I don't imagine even a more radical Egyptian regime throwing in their lot with Palestinians (in a sufficiently open way to matter).
I don't think IDF's less-than-stellar first response says anything about their strategic capabilities
It says something about a decline in intelligence capabilities. Not sure whether that's in the hands of Mossad or IDF or whatever, but it's a sad decline from "can find and exfiltrate Eichmann out of a decade of hiding ten thousand miles away" to "can't notice thousands of missiles and mobilized raiders prepping an attack 2 miles from your border, timed for the 50th anniversary of another surprise attack".
I'd agree that doesn't necessarily say there's been a similar decline in warfighting capabilities, though. Except ...
the nukes are without doubt functional
Can I press X to doubt? High explosives generally degrade within several years, so you need constant stockpile maintenance, and it's been four or five decades since an Israeli nuclear test, assuming everyone's suspicions are correct on that score. I wouldn't even bet on 0% of US warheads being duds if they were fired right now. Although I certainly wouldn't want to be one of the Philistines who tests their Samson Option, I could easily imagine some zealot talking themselves into believing that it's not really a danger. The US carrier group sitting off their coasts is a much less hypothetical threat; I don't know what Hamas was thinking by attacking civilian targets with Americans among them.
Any large number of Israeli civilian casualties will include a substantial number of American citizens because of Olim demographics (some estimates are that 1.5% of Israel is American, and they make up 6% of new immigrants as of 2022).
Can I press X to doubt? High explosives generally degrade within several years, so you need constant stockpile maintenance, and it's been four or five decades since an Israeli nuclear test, assuming everyone's suspicions are correct on that score. I wouldn't even bet on 0% of US warheads being duds if they were fired right now.
It's your keyboard, hit whatever you like.
That being said, I would rather hit cancel, because if you think Israel lacks the state capacity or competence to keep one of its strongest strategic deterrents alive, then I strongly ask you reconsider. They're no Russia, and even they likely have plenty of working nukes, no matter what NAFO claims about the condition of their silos.
The Israelis don't test theirs for the same reason pretty much nobody who isn't starting from scratch does, there's little purpose. Simulations are sufficient, as is checking that the mechanisms work, especially after you have a practical confirmation.
I don’t think there’s any plausible scenario the leads to Palestine being free from river to sea. They’re an US ally, so presumably even if they did start getting pushed back immensely the US would intervene to stabilize the IDF.
Maybe if Israel commits such atrocities in Gaza that the US feels the need to completely distance themselves from Israel, it compels all the arab neighbours to intervene against Israel, and Israel is unable to fight them off on its own like it has multiple times in the past. But that’s a lot of ifs.
I would more than happily join in on the bet on Israel single-handedly demolishing every other hostile military in F-35 range. If not overnight, a week is good historical precedent.
Iran doesn't have the ability to nuke them, at least not yet, and that's about the only way they can be wiped out at this point. Any land or naval campaign will be left with a long hike through deserts after their logistics are sent to Abrahamic Heaven.
I wouldn't bet on Israel's F35's accomplishing all that much without US arms. They'd probably be able to hold out for a year or two and then completely run out of munitions, especially bombs. Israel is vastly outnumbered and outfinanced by its neighbors without US support.
Speaking of logistics, I'm sure Israel's initial strikes would be more devastating than their enemies', but their enemies are not surrounded, and have way more land/natural resources to use.
Of course, I don't think Israel will lose US support, and even if it did there are still NGOs and other people in power who can divert large amounts of resources their way no matter what atrocities they commit.
They have plenty of other jets, and a domestic arms industry that is world-class. The F-35s will be used to ensure that less stealthy jets are able to do as they wish.
Their priority would be obviating the need for a prolonged campaign, if enemy armies made it to their borders, something went wrong along the way.
Could they hold out indefinitely if the Arabs went Berserker Mode and threw bodies high enough to climb over fences? Probably not, but if gets that bad, that's where their nukes in quantum-superposition come into play.
Well, I think Israel knows better than to do something truly unforgiveable, so entertaining the hypothetical is a bit of a waste of time. That said, I think that in that situation the Arabs definitely would go berserker mode, and then there's no guarantee even nukes would be a deterrent.
The only things I could think of that would actually break America's alliance with Israel would be crazy things like unprovoked nuclear escalation or extremely broad use of chemical/biological weapons. I'm curious, do you have something less extreme in mind, or do you think that even if Israel does commit something that extreme they still won't face retaliation in kind?
The only things I could think of that would actually break America's alliance with Israel would be crazy things like unprovoked nuclear escalation or extremely broad use of chemical/biological weapons.
That said, I think that in that situation the Arabs definitely would go berserker mode, and then there's no guarantee even nukes would be a deterrent.
Less deterrent and more a Final Solution to the Jewish Problem, in reverse. Arab armies aren't so competent they can survive nuclear decapitation.
Arabian sand is shit anyway, too coarse for construction, so an upgrade to blast glass shouldn't be sniffed at.
I'm curious, do you have something less extreme in mind, or do you think that even if Israel does commit something that extreme they still won't face retaliation in kind?
I don't claim any particular confidence in such an extremal scenario. The world will be very different from what we know today if it comes to that.
I think that measures such as kicking every Palestinian out of Gaza would be sufficient for the US to backpedal, if not cut ties, and how much lower it goes from there is anyone's guess.
We seem to have pretty different perspectives here. If Israel used enough nukes to decapitate their current enemies' armies, I'd expect other Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey to join the fight. The only way Israel wins, even temporarily, is via escalation, and escalation breeds escalation.
Before that happened though I'd expect the US, China, and Russia to step in and probably turn the whole battle into yet another proxy war, meaning no nukes allowed.
I think kicking Palestinians out of Gaza would maybe prompt some kind of response from the US, but definitely not enough to cut ties. The alliance between the US and Israel is bizzarely strong. TBH I don't even unprovoked nukes from Israel would be guaranteed to entirely cut ties between the two countries.
The Saudis can't even squash a starving insurgency in Yemen*, you have far too much faith in their competence if they think they can take on Israel. And yes, I think that if they get involved, the F-35s will pay them a visit.
TBH I don't even unprovoked nukes from Israel would be guaranteed to entirely cut ties between the two countries.
Depends on how strict you are about "entirely", but I think any actual support would cease.
*And they're not nearly as shy of war crimes as the Israelis are. Hence the starvation.
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Notes -
I've been thinking: what's the Palestinian path to victory? Ie. what's the course of action that would lead to an establishment of a from-the-river-to-the-sea Palestine? (Not focusing here on the desirability of that path etc.)
Any way one looks at it, the only way to get at this would be a war with Israel's neighbors joining in. Of course this hasn't happened since Yom Kippur War, and much of Israel's foreign and security policy has been successfully trying to make sure this doesn't happen. Egypt and Jordan have peace treaties with Israel and reasonably non-hostile governments (with their own reasons to hope that the situation stays stable), Lebanon and Syria are destabilized, Saudis are too dependent on US and too focused elsewhere to be a threat.
However, as far as I've understood, Egyptian and Jordanian populations continue to be strongly pro-Palestine, Jordan has a huge amount of Palestinian refugees, and Egypt continues to have many problems that make it a potential flash point. Would a sufficiently atrocious response by Israel have a possibility of leading to revolutions and strongly anti-Israel regimes taking power? Might Lebanon and Syria be stabilized, with Lebanon falling under Hezbollah rule? If all of Israel's neighbors started another big war, can Israel repeat the same as in 1947, 1968 and 1973? The traditional answer would be "probably", but the state of IDF currently looks like there's a lot of mythology and hot air underpinning that proposition.
I genuinely have no idea about these things, which is why I'm asking here.
What was the realistic path to a Jewish state in Israel after the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt circa the 130s AD? Imagine some handful of scruffy Jewish rebels, gathered around a campfire somewhere in the hills hiding from the Romans, defeated, demoralized, but still nationalists, still wanting to continue the struggle, talking about what will happen next, what can we do now to try to reestablish the nation? What is the Jewish path to victory? The Romans have all the power, they are guarding all the doors they are holding all the keys, they have immense military might that has subjugated the known world, they have money they draw in tribute from the entire known world, they are famously vindictive and brutal and unsparing of their soldiers' lives or of any cost in their pursuit of power. What possible path to victory would be possible for those few scattered Jews?
And imagine someone at that campfire giving the answer, giving a perfect farsighted prediction of what would really, actually happen to the Jewish people between their exile from the Holy Land under Hadrian and the founding of the new Jewish state in 1948. Even the most far-sighted Jew imaginable, the very mytheme of the Elder of Zion, could not have imagined an eighteen-hundred year sojourn through Europe that finally ended after an empire based in Britannia (that backwater?) fought an empire of Germans (those barbarians?) and tried to bribe the world's Jews with the potential for a return to Judea after they defeated their enemies the Turks (literally who is that?) in cooperations with the Russians (ok now you're just making up names, that's not even a real people); ultimately they would only succeed with help from the Americans (that's not even a real place).*
That is to say, if the Palestinians continue the struggle long enough, anything could happen. In the 1950s, Moscow's intervention in any conflict seemed certain and likely to be pivotal, while Chinese intervention seemed unlikely and unimportant, today those positions are reversed. The single most important thing is that the struggle does not end. The moment Palestinians cease to be Palestinians, or cease to struggle for Palestine from the River to the Sea, all hope is lost. As long as Palestinians exist, and as long as they struggle, hope will always be there, things could change. Which is why the Abraham Accords were such a potential knife to the heart for the Palestinian cause. The loss condition for Palestine From the River to the Sea is that Palestinians are absorbed into a bigger culture, whether that is Egypt or it is Jordan or it is GloboHomo, when that happens the game is over.
To return to our defeated Jewish Rebels circa 137, huddled around their campfire, knowing that the short remainder of their lives would be spent fleeing Roman legions hunting for them, there would have been one assumption too basic to even be said out loud: to reestablish the kingdom we must remain Jewish. We must maintain our identity as Jews. As long as the Jews survived as a distinct people, there is hope, there is always "next year in Jerusalem".
Assume that your utility function was identified purely with your identity group's possession of sovereignty over a given plot of land. Not with the members of the identity group, you do not care if they live good lives, if they suffer or die horribly, only if they possess sovereignty over a given plot of land. Not with the genetics of the identity group, you do not care if everyone in the world comes to have eyes and hair that look like those of your identity group, only if those who identify as your identity group have sovereignty over that given plot of land. Assume you are mostly or completely time-neutral, that establishing sovereignty in eighteen hundred years is infinitely superior to never establishing sovereignty.
In that case, your action would always be to continue the struggle, to keep the people together, to keep the faith alive. Because who knows, maybe the horse will sing.**
In reality, that's the Palestinian strategy. They have, as of today, no realistic win condition whatsoever. There is no realistic series of events that Hamas can trigger that will lead to victory. But the future is under no constraint that it must be realistic. They're just kicking the can down the road, over and over, hoping that things will change. But it worked before in Israel, why not again?
*Seriously, just think about the geography of the First World War from the perspective of a Jew in 132AD. The Rus wouldn't come to exist for centuries yet, and Kiev was on the borders of even the broadest geographical knowledge while Moscow was further yet into the unknown. No Turkish peoples, to my scant knowledge, ever ventured sufficiently far west that Judeans would know of them, though by analogy they would probably just seem like Scythians or Sarmatians or whoever. America, a vast land on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, would seem flatly mythical. The idea of a world dominated by Christian powers would seem as absurd to them as a world dominated by, idk, Scientology or Jainism would to modern Westerners.
**Nasrudin was caught in the act and sentenced to die. Hauled up before the king, he was asked by the Royal Presence: "Is there any reason at all why I shouldn't have your head off right now?" To which he replied: "Oh, King, live forever! Know that I, the mullah Nasrudin, am the greatest teacher in your kingdom, and it would surely be a waste to kill such a great teacher. So skilled am I that I could even teach your favorite horse to sing, given a year to work on it." The king was amused, and said: "Very well then, you move into the stable immediately, and if the horse isn't singing a year from now, we'll think of something interesting to do with you." As he was returning to his cell to pick up his spare rags, his cellmate remonstrated with him: "Now that was really stupid. You know you can't teach that horse to sing, no matter how long you try." Nasrudin's response: "Not at all. I have a year now that I didn't have before. And a lot of things can happen in a year. The king might die. The horse might die. I might die.
"And, who knows? Maybe the horse will sing."
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Palestine’s win condition is to hit hard enough that Israel collapses into Lebanon-style civil war, then carve out a niche as an established and predictable faction.
They have failed to do this at their best chance in a generation and Gaza will likely see six figure civilian casualties as its price. The mass deaths among Palestinian civilians are not a good thing, but a Lebanon-style civil war would probably have been worse.
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They've put it down in song: https://youtube.com/watch?v=RgdxKgxJyuw
The gameplan is to strike at the heart of the problem. It's unwavering US support for Israel that props them up, that lets them behave so heavyhandedly, annexing, settling, bombing other countries. US tech is vital to the Israeli military. US diplomatic and soft power is very helpful for Israeli diplomacy.
Russia and China will do the heavy lifting, winning WW3. Palestine can possibly help out by motivating the rest of the Muslim world to help the Axis of Resistance, they're on the same side as Iran, Russia and China after all. Without Israel's superpower ally, they think they can win. Their position would be very much advanced if the US was out of the game, even though Israel retains its nuclear weapons.
Now they've attacked Israel semi-successfully, they've lowered the prestige of Western militaries and weapon-systems, they've diverted US attention and resources from other fronts, they're sucking up US munitions (that's what's in the US military aid boost).
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A couple points around this that I don't think have been covered well enough yet:
The surrounding Arab countries never did really support Palestine or hate Israel that much, or trust each other that much. A big part of the reason Israel won their large-scale wars is that the Arab countries never did really unite. They were always scheming against each other, trying to ensure that one of the others did most of the fighting and took most of the losses. Yeah they don't like Israel, but they have not proved willing to put their own regimes at risk by committing sufficiently large forces to combat that they could be vulnerable to coups or counter-invasions if they suffered large losses.
Also, for anyone who looks at a map of the area, the surrounding Arab countries have hundreds of times more land area than Israel does. If any of them really cared about the Palestinians, they could easily offer to let them move into their countries. But none of them has ever offered that, even on a small scale. It seems they like the Palestinians more as a thorn in Israel's side and maybe as martyrs than they do as possible neighbors. (Jordan hasn't accepted any since 1967).
Given those realities, I don't think there's any way any action by Israel could lead to a united Arab world deciding to work together to raise large militaries and commit them to joint action against Israel, even leaving the nuclear angle out of the picture. If that was anywhere near being in the cards, why wouldn't they do the much cheaper and simpler option of offering the Palestinian people refuge in their countries first?
Of course, that also means I have no clue what Hamas is actually going for here besides a quick and briefly satisfying spasm of horrific violence mostly against civilians followed rapidly by an inevitable crushing by the IDF.
That depends on the country. Jordan was always a reluctant aggressor and did things like kick out the PLO and warn Israel of pending Arab attacks, but Assad blamed Israel for everything and was pissed when Jordan and Egypt signed peace treaties that foreclosed the opportunity of having another go of wiping them off the map.
The crux of the matter is that, in the Arab world, being anti-Israel is a popular sentiment, but the governments are smart enough to know that it's bad geopolitics. Egypt realized back in the 70s that a perpetual state of war was not to its advantage, but Sadat paid for that realization with his life. Jordan needed peace even sooner which makes the length of their holdout a testament to how pervasive popular sentiment can be; Hussein never came across as particularly anti-Israeli in interviews, and he was the king. The other Arab countries (aside from Syria and Lebanon) weren't directly involved in the conflict and probably never will be, so it's easy for them to withhold recognition. UAE is trying to fashion itself as an Arab state that's appealing to Westerners, so they can't afford to hold antiquated views about a country that isn't going anywhere lest people think they're just another Mideastern basket case. Morocco wanted to add some heft to its claims over Western Sahara, and they're far enough away that it doesn't cost them much. Sudan had sanctions they needed to be rid of, and they're a minor player in the whole Arab scene anyway. Bahrain is an interesting case, but it's small, dominated by US military interests, and is an absolute monarchy. But the point is generally that no Arab country will recognize Israel and normalize relations unless there's some carrot involved, and these carrots are usually the kind of thing that appeals more to the higher levels of government than to the average citizen; I doubt that the average Moroccan cares that much about the Sarahwi Arab Democratic Republic. Palestinians know this.
There are plenty of countries where the local common man (at least the ones posting in the Internet) regularly works themselves up into an absolute lather over secessionist groups trying to split their country, so I'd imagine that the Moroccans would be quite similar.
It's possible, but those are usually in places where a local minority wants to separate territory that's already a well-established part of the larger country. Western Sahara was annexed in the late-1970s, which led to a war lasting over a decade, and the dispute has never been resolved. It's closer to a colonial issue than it is to, say, Basque separatists in Spain or Kurdish nationalists in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
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Putting their mortars in schools and hospitals so that Israel is forced to blow up schools and hospitals and then doing a pity play and hoping American and European leftists buy said pity play hard enough so that we start treating it like Apartheid South Africa on steroids. Then after 50 years of Israel being trade isolated they repeat 1973 and hope for a victory that time.
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Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. This kind of war had already been tried without success. Three times. Stop trying to be zerg, try to become protos.
Take a look at the map - and let's make some assumptions - Israel doesn't care about Gaza strip as long as it is peaceful, but views the west bank territory as existential about their survival. To me this looks close enough to the current situation. So no matter how unrealistic it is - the gaza strip should be the beginning and the heart of the new Palestine. Also it is centuries long project. Deal with it. Gaza strip is extremely low in territory, devoid of natural resources and has high population.
So the first step is to make Gaza into a city state as the likes of singapore/hong kong/dubai. This can be done if there is enough capital, government will to prioritize education and so on.
Capital is the easy part. Competent government is not.
Your goal is to bring your gdp per capita to insane levels. Then you begin massive projects of land reclamation. You will need it. Your goal is to become richer, tidier and just plain better place to be than Israel. It could be done - after all israel did the similar thing themselves.
Now here comes the tricky part - once you are there you naturally start bleeding Egypt and Israel dry - the best and brightest will try to come there - there are enough Arabs in Israel that you can intermerry - people that will give their children Israel passports and the right to own property there. So you just start buying. And voting. Eventually in a couple of generations you may be able to displace them or assimilate enough of them to not matter.
But Palestine cannot win while being a shithole, so they must asap stop being shithole at least in the gaza strip.
Do you really think that Gaza has the human capital to be the next Singapore? Dubai has oil, Hong Kong has the Chinese, Gaza has...the same kind of Arabs you find in Jordan and Lebanon.
Singapore doesn't have the human capital to become Singapore. It succeeds only because it's the one good harbour for 1000 miles on the busiest trade route in the world (and the colonial British built that harbour). "Muh human capital, muh good governance" is a PR stunt by the Singapore People's Action Party to try and make itself look good via narrative control, but it has very little factual basis.
Singapore has Chinese people. The Chinese diaspora is always successful. Whether they're in SE Asia, Australia, Europe, America, they're always smart, entrepreneurial and law-abiding. I disagree with you about the PAP, I think LKY genuinely was one of the greatest statesman in history, but regardless, when your main ethnic group has an IQ of ~110, creating a wealthy city-state is actually possible.
Triads are a thing.
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Human capital is not something you have, it is something you create. Lebanon was quite prosperous place before the civil war, and I think that Jordan is the only oasis of normalcy in the region. (Too much "money can buy everything vice" in Dubai for my taste, Doha is quite conservative and Muskat will eventually be awesome place, but not yet, Erbil is amazing but too militarized).
I think that there is snowball's chance in hell in competent ruler that will get this territory's shit together. But I pointed one of the few roads ahead - whatever specs of palestine that are left must develop on their own territory. It may be nigh impossible task - but is absolute must for them to get any kind of win.
I was speaking more in the HBD-sense. Hong Kong and Singapore have Chinese people, with an average IQ of ~110. Levant Arabs have average IQs in the low-80s. Maybe the Gazans would be able to carve out a niche like some of the Gulf states have, but they'd have to do it without oil and gas wealth to kickstart the process.
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The problem is that Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai didn't spend decades resisting foreign (to them) military occupation before lobbing missiles at their neighbors. They were never controlled politically be separatist terrorist groups. China didn't spend years blockading Hong Kong because the international community was in agreement that they were nothing but trouble. Until Hamas loses all power in Gaza, any economic development is going to be stymied by restrictions (by both Israel and Egypt) and reluctance of foreign investors to take risks there. Hamas is more interested in sticking it to Israel now than it is signing peace accords and trying to convince everyone that the situation is okay. Even if they did, there would be a new generation of Palestinian nationalists behind them to take up where they left off; after all, Hamas was formed as a response to the PLO becoming more of a political entity and less of an active force, though their exile in Tunis probably didn't help.
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100 years ago very few Westerners would have thought that places like South Korea and Singapore had the human capital to become what they are today.
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Victory on Palestinian terms? Outbreed the Israelis, keep their grudges alive for as many generations as possible, and wait for a paradigm shift in international relations/Israeli politics/military technology to create an opportunity. It could take 200 years.
It is incredible how so many world shattering events seem to keep happening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over so many decades and ultimately this equation at its heart just never changes.
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I don't think that a major state-on-state action is necessary to seriously destabilize Israel - intervention by Hezbollah and significant communitarian violence/obstruction by Israeli arabs could do that. I'm not even sure that any of the local states' military forces have the capacity to do much to Israel in a standard straight-up battle. The asymmetric stuff targeting civilians seems like much more of a problem.
Destabilize, sure, but that would only be the first step.
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I don't think IDF's less-than-stellar first response says anything about their strategic capabilities, and the nukes are without doubt functional, so no, I don't imagine even a more radical Egyptian regime throwing in their lot with Palestinians (in a sufficiently open way to matter).
It says something about a decline in intelligence capabilities. Not sure whether that's in the hands of Mossad or IDF or whatever, but it's a sad decline from "can find and exfiltrate Eichmann out of a decade of hiding ten thousand miles away" to "can't notice thousands of missiles and mobilized raiders prepping an attack 2 miles from your border, timed for the 50th anniversary of another surprise attack".
I'd agree that doesn't necessarily say there's been a similar decline in warfighting capabilities, though. Except ...
Can I press X to doubt? High explosives generally degrade within several years, so you need constant stockpile maintenance, and it's been four or five decades since an Israeli nuclear test, assuming everyone's suspicions are correct on that score. I wouldn't even bet on 0% of US warheads being duds if they were fired right now. Although I certainly wouldn't want to be one of the Philistines who tests their Samson Option, I could easily imagine some zealot talking themselves into believing that it's not really a danger. The US carrier group sitting off their coasts is a much less hypothetical threat; I don't know what Hamas was thinking by attacking civilian targets with Americans among them.
Any large number of Israeli civilian casualties will include a substantial number of American citizens because of Olim demographics (some estimates are that 1.5% of Israel is American, and they make up 6% of new immigrants as of 2022).
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It's your keyboard, hit whatever you like.
That being said, I would rather hit cancel, because if you think Israel lacks the state capacity or competence to keep one of its strongest strategic deterrents alive, then I strongly ask you reconsider. They're no Russia, and even they likely have plenty of working nukes, no matter what NAFO claims about the condition of their silos.
The Israelis don't test theirs for the same reason pretty much nobody who isn't starting from scratch does, there's little purpose. Simulations are sufficient, as is checking that the mechanisms work, especially after you have a practical confirmation.
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That would presumably certainly demonstrate what the actual value of a nuke in a war would be.
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I don’t think there’s any plausible scenario the leads to Palestine being free from river to sea. They’re an US ally, so presumably even if they did start getting pushed back immensely the US would intervene to stabilize the IDF.
Maybe if Israel commits such atrocities in Gaza that the US feels the need to completely distance themselves from Israel, it compels all the arab neighbours to intervene against Israel, and Israel is unable to fight them off on its own like it has multiple times in the past. But that’s a lot of ifs.
I would more than happily join in on the bet on Israel single-handedly demolishing every other hostile military in F-35 range. If not overnight, a week is good historical precedent.
Iran doesn't have the ability to nuke them, at least not yet, and that's about the only way they can be wiped out at this point. Any land or naval campaign will be left with a long hike through deserts after their logistics are sent to Abrahamic Heaven.
I wouldn't bet on Israel's F35's accomplishing all that much without US arms. They'd probably be able to hold out for a year or two and then completely run out of munitions, especially bombs. Israel is vastly outnumbered and outfinanced by its neighbors without US support.
Speaking of logistics, I'm sure Israel's initial strikes would be more devastating than their enemies', but their enemies are not surrounded, and have way more land/natural resources to use.
Of course, I don't think Israel will lose US support, and even if it did there are still NGOs and other people in power who can divert large amounts of resources their way no matter what atrocities they commit.
They have plenty of other jets, and a domestic arms industry that is world-class. The F-35s will be used to ensure that less stealthy jets are able to do as they wish.
Their priority would be obviating the need for a prolonged campaign, if enemy armies made it to their borders, something went wrong along the way.
Could they hold out indefinitely if the Arabs went Berserker Mode and threw bodies high enough to climb over fences? Probably not, but if gets that bad, that's where their nukes in quantum-superposition come into play.
Well, I think Israel knows better than to do something truly unforgiveable, so entertaining the hypothetical is a bit of a waste of time. That said, I think that in that situation the Arabs definitely would go berserker mode, and then there's no guarantee even nukes would be a deterrent.
The only things I could think of that would actually break America's alliance with Israel would be crazy things like unprovoked nuclear escalation or extremely broad use of chemical/biological weapons. I'm curious, do you have something less extreme in mind, or do you think that even if Israel does commit something that extreme they still won't face retaliation in kind?
Or murdering all 2 000 000+ people in Gaza Strip.
Which is not plausible at all.
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Less deterrent and more a Final Solution to the Jewish Problem, in reverse. Arab armies aren't so competent they can survive nuclear decapitation.
Arabian sand is shit anyway, too coarse for construction, so an upgrade to blast glass shouldn't be sniffed at.
I don't claim any particular confidence in such an extremal scenario. The world will be very different from what we know today if it comes to that.
I think that measures such as kicking every Palestinian out of Gaza would be sufficient for the US to backpedal, if not cut ties, and how much lower it goes from there is anyone's guess.
We seem to have pretty different perspectives here. If Israel used enough nukes to decapitate their current enemies' armies, I'd expect other Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey to join the fight. The only way Israel wins, even temporarily, is via escalation, and escalation breeds escalation.
Before that happened though I'd expect the US, China, and Russia to step in and probably turn the whole battle into yet another proxy war, meaning no nukes allowed.
I think kicking Palestinians out of Gaza would maybe prompt some kind of response from the US, but definitely not enough to cut ties. The alliance between the US and Israel is bizzarely strong. TBH I don't even unprovoked nukes from Israel would be guaranteed to entirely cut ties between the two countries.
The Saudis can't even squash a starving insurgency in Yemen*, you have far too much faith in their competence if they think they can take on Israel. And yes, I think that if they get involved, the F-35s will pay them a visit.
Depends on how strict you are about "entirely", but I think any actual support would cease.
*And they're not nearly as shy of war crimes as the Israelis are. Hence the starvation.
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Isn't it the other way around, that it's too smooth due to aeolic erosion and thus doesn't bind well?
Ah. Memory fails me, and Google confirms you're correct.
Either way, what's one form of quartz over another? Dubai will sparkle from glass either way.
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Unlikely. To the extent that we know anything in political science, we know that that is not the type of thing that causes revolutions
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