Israel - Hamas War October 2023

So to you, a few thousand Israelis is the same as the whole world?

Polymath, you may get your wish soon. A member of the National Unity Party, Michael Biton, said that the party would be exiting the government in a few months, and would introduce a bill to dissolve the Knesset. I don’t see Netanyahu winning again, unless he does something decisive to win the war.

1 Like

I think its a mistake (from the point of view of the Govt) to basically ignore those people.

Thats what Bibi & Co have been doing really. Telling them “we are getting the hostages back” and then turning around and behaving in a way that makes it impossible to get the hostages back (and a portion of them have now been killed by the IDF strikes).

Those people are not stupid. They can connect the dots easily enough.

The infrastructure in Gaza has effectively been destroyed. Hamas is simply not a “credible threat” anymore, so the questions these people are asking themselves is: why are we not negotiating for the hostages now?

And the answer to that is that the extremist right-wing (Smotrich, Ben-Gvir) don’t care one iota about the hostages. They want to cause as much destruction in Gaza as possible so they can then absorb some of the land for “security reasons”.

Bibi knows that the current position is not sustainable. (he is not stupid either). If you have ever studied game theory, Bibi is now very much effectively trapped inside a prisoners dilemma scenario.

Hamas was never a credible threat to Israel’s existence on its own. Unfortunately its not on its own. It has the support of the entire Iranian ME power structure.

Hamas is also, demonstrably, a credible threat to the lives and peace of Southern Israelis. If the Mexican cartels moved in and destroyed El Paso and murdered half its residents 99% of Americans would be perfectly fine with sending the military to deal with them. The demonstrations in Israel are much more about “get the hostages back any way we can” than they are about don’t destroy Hamas because its hard on Gazan civilians.

2 Likes

A major reason why Israel backed out of the deal was that Hamas changed 2 parts of the deal:

  1. They would return 33 bodies, not 33 live hostages
  2. Israel would have to agree to a ceasefire, complete withdrawal, dignified exchange, reconstruction, and lifting of the blockade.
1 Like

There will never be a permanent agreement until it includes all hostages

2 Likes

And there will never be a permanent agreement until there is a two state solution.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s dilemma: save the hostages or his government - https://on.ft.com/3WvWvW7 via @FT

There will never be a permanent agreement.

(Unfortunately. At least, it seems very unlikely that I’ll live to see it, but I really hope I’m wrong.)

I’m fine with that, though I doubt that will mean peace.

1 Like

This is the real problem, Israel usually suggests something based on the west bank and gaza while the Palestinians are weighing any potential solution against the 1948 proposal. This means that what each side thinks the 2 states should look like are vastly different. The NYT had an in depth write-up that is a long read but is interesting.

The US should have done this months ago.

One of the reasons why students are protesting is because the US has been feeding the destruction by giving Israel the munitions it uses to destroy the infrastructure. They could not have kept this going for months on end without the help of the US.

That was a mistake on Biden’s part and is likely going to cost him (both in the US for electoral reasons and abroad - US soft power has been damaged there).

And yet, surveys show that the majority of students don’t really care about the conflict in Gaza, and also that 34% blame Hamas for the situation, compared to 19% who blame Netanyahu, and 12% who blame the Israeli people.
Also, 81% of students want the protestors held accountable for what they’re doing, and 90% said it’s not ok to block pro-Israel students from parts of campus.

2 Likes

Feel free to post the source of these “surveys” and their methodology.

1 Like

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/07/poll-students-israel-hamas-protests

and half the protesting students aren’t actually students

Definitely not representative of the larger schools where the protests are occuring.

But is totally appropriate when the general narrative is “US (post-secondary) students ______”.

These two are basically the “problem”. Bibi gets the blame as well because is only slow walking the negotiations to remain in power.

Real pieces of work, these two. Negotiations will never work until these two are booted far away from any positions of power.

Ben-Gvir

Smotrich

This matters because it looks like public opinion in Israel is skewing to “negotiate the release of the hostages” first, rather than “attack Rafah to destroy Hamas (which people do not agree is completely possible anyways)”.

This letter, written by Jewish students at Columbia, is fantastic. Also, it’s noteworthy that Jewish students have no need to hide their identities - they are proud to put their names out there, unlike the cowardly people supporting Hamas.