site banner

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.

20
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Here's my proposal for how to solve this, with a plan I am shamelessly stealing from Greg Abbot and Camp of the Saints.

Step 1, just start rounding up Palestinians and putting them on boats. Let them grab their possessions if they want to cooperate. These are nice, safe, clean boats with cameras everywhere to film all the food/medicine/clean water being provided. Maybe also Gaza is 100% blockaded and no food goes in, giving people an incentive to leave.

Step 2: the boats set sail to Iran. Egypt allows them to traverse Suez because...well keep reading.

Step 3: the unarmed boats full of refugees and cameras go directly to shore in Iran. They ignore warnings to stop. They let the Iranians inspect them for weapons. They land, tell everyone to get off, and repeat.

This puts Iran in the unenviable position of either a) having to martyr thousands of unarmed Palestinian refugees on camera or b) live with Palestinians. If Egypt doesn't let them through Suez, then Egypt can have the Palestinians.

What you guys think of this plan?

You'd need 1000 boats with 1000 person capacity to move a million refugees. Among the refugees would almost certainly be terrorists and crypto-militants. Obviously no weapons would be allowed on board, despite a small chance of smuggling efforts succeeding. So you will need a sizeable police force. And can you trust all of the police to maintain control of their weapons and populace, and not support some kind of mutiny?

Food and water could probably be handled.

Who is paying for this, and in charge? Israel? The UN? Someone will have to take responsibility for the Iran destination, and that will prove quite contentious. Iran can reasonably blockade and/or refuse port. Eventually conditions onboard deteriorate. Maybe the crew abandons ship? Iran could commandeer the ships and park them at the Port Authority of NY/NJ.

It's whimsical but seems quite unrealistic to me.

We just gifted like $100 Billion dollars to Ukraine. I think we can probably buy a few cruise ships to facilitate this.

As of December 2021, there were 323 cruise ships operating worldwide, with a combined capacity of 581,200 passengers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_ship

To put it into context: if we are talking about moving 1 million Gazans, then in Ukraine equivalent spending this is about $100k per person to cover the logistics of it.