> MAGA
What's even in it for America? This is "Make Israel Great Again" politics.
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What's even in it for America? This is "Make Israel Great Again" politics.
Washington has brokered a peace deal that it’s very proud of and expects a Nobel Peace prize for if it holds. At this point, we’re dealing with one man’s ego more than any policy position of the United States.
That's true for any negotiated, i.e. conditional, armistice. If you want one side to be happy, you have to press for unconditional surrender. Palestine doesn't have the capability to force Israel to unconditionally surrender.
In any case, what we call it is irrelevant. (What the Norwegian Noble Committee calls it is irrelevant.) What matters is what the President thinks. And he thinks it's a peace deal that could make him a Nobel laureate. Which gives him an interest in not letting, as he sees it, an ICC judge mess with his deal.
> Palestinian resistance got nothing out of it
No shit. The October 7 attacks were terrorist attacks. The literature on terrorism is they extremely rarely achieve their political goals.
It's still not a peace deal. It does look more akin to surrender of fighting by the palestinian resistance, motivated by the civillian population reaching a breaking point because of the starvation and bombing. Moral of the story is that collective punishment works, I suppose.
> The October 7 attacks were terrorist attacks
There is no logically-consistent definition you can provide that would make that raid a terrorist attack without also capturing Israel's actions as terrorist attacks. The aggressive actions they took that day have been outdone 100-fold by Israel. The prisoners they took were a drop in the sea compared to the number of people Israel held in "administrative detention" alone, let alone all the people they randomly snatch with some bogus accusations. The state in which those prisoners returned compared to the state in which palestinian prisoners returned are day and night.
When their acts are compared objectively, the conclusions never go in Israel's favor.
Is every act of violent resistance against one's oppressor a "terrorist attack", what does the literature say? What distinguishes a terrorist attack from a counter-offensive?
Is it the targeting of civilians? But that didn't start on October 7th, so if that's the case, why isn't Palestine getting everything they want, and why aren't you arguing that Israel shouldn't expect to get anything out of their terrorist attacks against Palestine?
Last one is a rhetorical question, we know the answer by now. Israel and the US have all the power therefore their actions are righteous and any sort of retribution is terrorism, propped up by a million different ways to try to erase and rewrite history.
Argue what you mean. You believe those terrorist attacks are _justified_. There are lots of ways to argue that point. But one of them is ends justification. Did it work out for the people it was supposedly on behalf of?
"Palestine doesn't get what they deserve because they engaged in terrorism" is a hypocritical, useless argument.
P.S. Everyone is "justified" in doing anything they can to regain their freedom once all legal options are exhausted. If you lock a person in your basement I believe they're entirely justified in bashing your face in the first chance they get. It's absurd to imply that they aren't, and it's even more absurd to try to use "but they bashed my face in" as a moral justification to further victimize your basement prisoner.
Objectives. Targeting military infrastructure and symbols of a regime can deplete martial capacity and domestic support. Targeting civilians pretty much always results in unifying the enemy—this goes back to Hitler trying to bomb Britain into submission from afar.
> that didn't start on October 7th, so if that's the case, why isn't Palestine getting everything they want
Huh? Nobody argued that everything except terrorism is a winning strategy.
> why aren't you arguing that Israel shouldn't expect to get anything out of their terrorist attacks against Palestine?
They’re the stronger military. Absent international law or pressure, might makes right.
> Last one is a rhetorical question
Literally answered it. If you’re saying you’ve presumed an answer and don’t wish to hear others, sure.
> Israel and the US have all the power therefore their actions are righteous and any sort of retribution is terrorism
You’re getting lost in your own analogies.
We can construct convincing moral models that indict both sides of this conflict because multiple actors have behaved abhorrently. (One or two have more capability and thus can act on their impulses more fully.) If you’re writing as a historian, sure, apportion blame.
If you’re thinking as a strategist, however, outcomes are what matter. And on an outcome basis, October 7 was strategically stupid (it could has been genius, but Hamas and PJ have no discipline), while the current ceasefire saves lives.
Sure, whatever, it’s an armistice. Practically, it means Palestinians aren’t dying at hundreds or thousands a clip. And it means Trump can think he’s in line in Oslo.
> Moral of the story is that collective punishment works, I suppose
Moral is we’re in a multipolar world. America is no longer world cop, which means we’re back to 19th century great power dynamics.
> no logically-consistent definition you can provide that would make that raid a terrorist attack without also capturing Israel's actions as terrorist attacks
Granted. But Israel also waged a military campaign against Hamas infrastructure (and allegedly the Gaza population).
I’m not making a moral argument. Just a practical one. Killing a kidnapping civilians is a goading into war. Sinwar was explicit about his expectation of war with Israel.
He thought Iran and its proxies would be more capable. That’s a fair miscalculation. But after being faced with evidence of that fuckup, he didn’t sue for peace or attempt to return the hostages.
At the same time, Israel could have absolutely prosecuted this war more precisely. (They didn’t, and that has and probably will cost them a great deal until someone realises turning Netanyahu over to the ICC is a get out of jail free card.)
In the end, since October 7, the best Gaza could hope for was ceasefire and international occupation. The idea that an independent Palestine was ever on the table from anyone relevant, i.e. Israel and Palestine’s geographic neighbors and defence and trading partners, was always wishful. (I mean independent as sovereign. A demilitarized Gaza that is independent on paper but in practice bordered by the region’s most powerful military is the West Bank all over again.)
"It didn't work therefore it was stupid to even try" is one hell of a way to judge strategic decisions. When all your options have a near-0% chance of success, everything is going to look "stupid" in retrospect, by that logic.