> MAGA
What's even in it for America? This is "Make Israel Great Again" politics.
replies(1):
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.
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.)