naraburns nihil supernum
1yr 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 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.
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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.
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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