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Haven't read the rest of this post yet, but this part in particular is dead wrong. Reprisals might be effective in some circumstances, but are by no means required. A good example is the US pacification of Iraq. The following post is made from someone with first-hand experience in the matter:
I'm not sure this post proves what you want it to re: the utility/necessity of reprisals. As I read it, it claims that the insurgencies in Iraq were broken by:
(1) coopting moderate factions inside the (Sunni) insurgencies and relying on them to do the dirty work themselves (does anyone want to bet that those Sunni militias didn't target civilian supporters of the radical factions as well as combatants under arms?), or (2) allowing the (Shiite) insurgencies to more-or-less achieve their objectives, which included withdrawal of US troops and ethnic cleansing of enemy civilians from insurgent-controlled areas.
Neither of those are particularly happy outcomes, and neither would be acceptable in the Israeli/Palestinian context.
What do you think ‘acceptable’ means? I’m pretty sure that Israel will ethnically cleanse Gaza and get away with it in a way that west-of-hajnal populations couldn’t. Frankly I shed few tears for the plight of the poor Palestinians despite it being horrible what happens to them.
I apologize, I think I was not clear. What I meant was that the OIF comment @Ben___Garrison cited itself does not provide convincing examples of the proposition that a partisan war can be handled without reprisal against civilians, because the methods described both explicitly involved significant intracommunal violence up to and including actual ethnic cleansing.
Personally, I think physical relocation and/or separation can be, but isn't always, a solution to intracommunal violence. More important, to my mind, is that a situation be reached whereby all parties agree that one side has conclusively triumphed, the other has conclusively lost, and that further conflict is futile to change this result. That's the only way that both parties will settle down and start funneling resources into building their own prosperity rather than attempting to destroy/displace the other.
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Gaza is already ethnically spotless.
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Iraq is a good example for why this is true, in fact. The US retreated from the first battle of Fallujah due to civilian casualties. If it had done what Israel is doing: ghettoize the population into a very small number of population centers, demolish the rest, and then deport the population into concentration camps with special treatment/scrutiny of military-aged males, then you would have actually seen a pacification of Iraq. But that is not a partisan war the US actually won, ditto for Afghanistan.
The US absolutely won the 'partisan' war in Iraq, it successfully put the Shiites in power and granted the Kurds a largely self-determined homeland and both factions remain in power in their respective parts of the country to this day. Whether that's in the strategic interests of the United States is an interesting debate, but the Sunnis no longer rule Iraq.
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Fallujah 1 was a conventional urban battle, not an anti-partisan operation, so it's not really getting at what I posted above. And yes, the US did effectively pacify Iraq in the short-term without slaughtering huge masses of the population through reprisals. It certainly didn't get long-term pacification though as ISIS spread almost as soon as US troops left, but that's a separate issue. An issue that Israel is also likely to face unless it's willing to actually genocide the Palestinians
The only way to get long-term pacification is by a hearts-and-minds victory. One possibility is getting the locals to all think your government type is great which is what the US tried in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that's almost certainly always doomed to failure. The other possibility is delegitimizing violence by snuffing out all hopes of victory, like what happened with Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Israel also won't be able to do this since Palestinians are gaining a long-term diplomatic edge by the current Israeli overreaction.
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If they had dropped more napalm on Iraq, it would have ended like Vietnam. The Soviets killed 10% of Afghanistan's population and did worse than the US. France put two million Algerians in prison camps in the 50s. Turning Iraq into a giant prison wouldn't be sustainable. There are 44.5 million Iraqis. Maintaining a police state for a population that large would be absurdly expensive and have no point. There wouldn't be an actual endgame as the regime would get toppled as soon as the vast police presence was pulled back.
There could be another endgame. Kill everyone. Every last one of them.
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