[Uh-Oh]Israel and Gaza on the brink of all out WAR

There a lot of misconceptions about the conflict in general and this one in particular. It's not just on the board. I want to smash my TV at least 12 times a day. Whether it's a Fox News "expert," or a columnist from the New York Times, or a BBC panel, it's incredibly irritating.

The only media that seems to get it is Al-Jazeera and the Israeli press. It has nothing to do with left or right or being Muslim or being Western or or being a Holocaust survivor or whatever. Those world views are largely irrelevant to the conflict and as I said before, people project their own world views into the matter and often unwittingly become useful idiots for either side.

So I'll detail my stress points

1. No one likes Gaza and no one wants Gaza. They are hard to love. It's a hotbed of fanatics that hate any authority. They have little to no education and it's hard to imagine anything getting better for the people that live there, no matter what happens externally. Egypt could have taken the Gaza Strip back any time it wanted. It doesn't want to. Israel could capture it or pave it over in a day. It doesn't want to do that either.

Egyptian border patrol still clubs the crap out of Gazans trying to run across the border. They don't want them in their country. They are seen as troublemakers and often use Egyptian territory to launch attacks into Israel, which really really hurts tourism in Egypt. Gazans don't like the PA, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, the UN, the EU, the US or anyone else.

Abbas might one day want Gaza again, but he can't exactly take it by force and he'd never let himself be seen as Israel's puppet. They are not people that want to be governed by anyone and no one wants the headache of imposing themselves.

2. Israel wants the US to say that Israel has a right to "defend itself." Gaza wants humanitarian aid from the EU and weapons from whomever wants to give them. Other than that, they absolutely don't give a rat's ass what the rest of the world thinks. At all.

3. Gaza and the West Bank are very different. They don't like each other. The PA and the places like Jenin and Ramallah are fairly secular and the leadership is Western educated. If the PA declared statehood and got 67 borders, etc, it has a reasonable chance of succeeding as a state and being a place worth visiting or living in. Gaza doesn't, other than having a really awesome beach ruined by religious police that fine men for swimming shirtless.

Just a personal rant...the one cool thing Gazans have and they can't enjoy it. I sympathize for the people there very much and no human being deserves to experience what they do.

4. What MORSI thinks is way more important to Israel and Gaza than what Obama or any other world leader or body thinks. Egypt has always been the party to broker cease-fires. The US and EU have never accomplished anything there other than sending aid. Morsi is religious, but he's trying to establish himself as The Man in the Arab world. No other leader has any clout (or a pulse, see Saddam Hussein, Kaddafi, etc), and Egypt wants to be seen as the sane middle ground and the undisputed leader of the region.

5. Gazans might be uneducated, but Hamas is every bit as shrewd as the Israelis. There is nothing random about the fighting. It's extremely calculated and measured. War is how they communicate. It's not like the cold war where leaders pick up the hotline and talk about de-escalation.

Hamas uncovers a few missiles at a time, launch them from a distance underground, and Israel bombs the launch sites, almost immediately. They are careful not to launch too much at once (1-2 missiles a day at Tel Aviv) and they go round-robin with the the nearby cities with their short range arsenal to spread the fear evenly. They want to kill a few people, but not enough to ignite a firestorm. Once they score a major hit, they usually back off to see the response.

Israelis do the same thing, they'll bomb for 30 minutes, then stop. Believe it or not, this game has rules, very clear political rules, and it is played very carefully by both sides. They aren't going to change the rules because of what Thomas Friedman thinks (who is especially guilty of being totally clueless, often).

6. This cycle has two resolutions. The preferable one is that Egypt negotiates a cease-fire. But for it to work, each party needs to "win." They have to say to their own constituents that they gained something from it. Egypt always wins because they can say they helped the Palestinians, which is something most people everywhere cares about, especially in Egypt. They also get to look like grownups and responsible actors. For Bibi, he scores points at home and by election time, everyone will forget the whole thing, as they usually do.

7. The other is escalation. When it gets to the point where Israel sends in ground forces, it means the death toll will spike, and won't end quickly. For Bibi that means a war that will safely last until the next election. From an Israeli point of view, it's deciding which benefits them the most politically.

I suspect that this time, if it comes to a full ground war, it will end with a buffer zone around Gaza (well, within Gaza of course) with concentrated force, sort of like what they did in Lebanon in the 80s and 90s. The world will complain, but the problem is, it tends to work. Politicians in Israel like to point to how pulling out of Lebanon created a Hizbollah mini-state and actually made things more dangerous than less for the average Israeli and that that "mistake" can't happen again.

8. If this all sounds cold, mechanical, and steeped in realpoltik, then I thank you for paying attention. Like all good mangers...every party involved is simply using their "assets" for maximum advantage and to keep their jobs.

 

^ Thanks, interesting read.

 

Agreed. Good read. Not full of left/right blameshifting.

 

The amount of support for the terrorists in Gaza on this board is sickening. You can't just fire rockets at innocent people without expecting to get popped back in the mouth. The Gazans are very clever in using the Arabic world's sympathy for the Palestinians to their benefit, despite the fact that the Gazans are a bunch of uneducated terrorists. Their marketing machine is effective to dupe many around the world.

 

Great post Deji. I honestly don't understand this situation nearly as well as I should, does anybody have a link to a non-biased summary? Everything I come across is extremely skewed.

 

Maybe he's referring to some of these ladies being detained for "breaking rules" related to prayer equality.

http://womenofthewall.org.il/

 

The rocket firing wasn't the first thing that happened in the conflict.

 

You will always side with crazies as long as that is what a leftist is supposed to do.

 

What a great post with an abundance of evidence that really makes your point. Great job.

 

It's hard not to feel bad for the parents of dead children. Those children weren't firing rockets at anyone any more than me or my dog are the ones dropping bombs. As Mathloom posted earlier, the distinction between who and who isn't a terrorist is a matter of perspective. I'd argue that Hamas isn't terrorist but only because they are officially in charge and have a quasi-state, even if it isn't recognized. I always thought terrorism was defined as something done by non-state actors.

EVERYONE has sympathy for Gaza, not just the Arab world and I'd wager a majority of the world has sympathy for Israelis, at least civilians. Both sides use that sympathy to take people's eyes off the realpolitik. If any of us were in charge we'd be fools not to do the same.

My Facebook account is littered with images and infographs covering the whole spectrum of the conflict, and most of them are very emotional and selective with facts.

 

This is pretty much dead on:

 

http://www.timesofisrael.com/women-arrested-at-kotel-while-praying-for-peace-in-the-south/

stop lying, man- you are in way over your head

 

mgraye2969's posts have certainly been far more eloquent, informative and truthful than your mindless drivel.

 

long post but doesn't address the fact that both sides are launching rockets at each other like it's the 4th of July; With civilians either directly targeted or unavoidable due to proximity.

 

If your posts on this forum are any indication, you obviously hate the Palestinians because they're poor.

 

Thanks again for your informative posts Deji. I have heard the same thing about Gaza and Gazans before and there are a couple of things I am wondering about. First the Gazan mindset, how much might that due to it being so dense and so long under economic blockade? My understanding was that after the Oslo peace accords a lot of development was taking place including building an air port and developing a resort. Since then though Gaza has dropped to having one of the worst economies in the world with health and other problems rivaling places like Congo and Haiti.

The second is you mentioned that the most likely solution will be to create a buffer zone in Gaza. Isn't Gaza about the size of Manhattan so how would a buffer zone be set up that is big enough to prevent rockets from being launched into Israel?

 

You do realize...that ..had...nothing ...to do with anything. The reason its impossible to have a decent discussion with you is because your brain is so convoluted you can't discern the difference between a correlation and a causation.

Let me lay it out for you. This is analogous to the argument you are making ok. Tell me if you think I am making a sound one.

Since the Germans were the culprits in the Holocaust, any crime committed today is a clear indication that the Germans are evil and always will be.

 

Maybe you should read it, then. I did address it. They aren't launching like it's "the 4th of July." It's careful, methodical, measured and by design. So is the Israeli response. So are the way both sides use pictures of injured children to score PR points. The goal of any war is to "win." When a ceasefire happens, both will claim victory, but Israel will have done a better job of protecting it's civilians and infrastructure.

Although since I wrote it, 3 more Fajrs exploded nearby, making it 5 on Tel Aviv today, which would indicate this is getting worse, not better.

The Tel Aviv Stock Market is still up for the day. How's that for cynicism?