I think whatever the merits of the kicking the can down the road bibi-ism there was, Bibi can no longer execute it. Kicking the can down the road requires you to sell the idea that you're small c conservative about changing the status quo but that you're theoretically open to changing thing in the direction your interlocuturs want.
But right now he is too dependent on Ben Gvir and Smotrich and the settler movement in general that he can't credibly sell even preserving the status quo to, say, Western allies or the Saudis. Every time he tries saying the war is against Hamas and we're not going back to settle, senior ministers in his government will say things like "this is the first step to transferring the Palestinians out of Gaza and resettling it" or "Mwa ha ha ha this new subdivision will kill the two state solution for good mwa ha ha ha" or "not a single ounce of baby formula should go into Gaza" and he can't even tell them to shut up or directly contradict them.
Interesting distinction between deterrence and deescalation. Hamas was deterred, but not deescalated, so they moved to increase their escalatory dominance.
But this is simply the reductio ad absurdum of deterrence. If you deter the enemy so effectively ever they have no choice but to constantly devise newer, more vicious, and more terrible schemes against you … wouldn't you rather they just attack you normally under the laws of war?
Could you also place a lot of blame for the current shiteness on the monomaniacal hatred of Bibi by left and center. If they had agreed to sit with Bibi he wouldn't have needed the crazies ergo no judiical reform and all the other costs of letting crazies in government
3. The surprise regarding Hezbollah’s “nature reserve” military infrastructure, and more broadly, Israel’s lack of understanding of the full situation in Lebanon in 2006.
Of course, October 7th was far more significant than the three examples above. But even the worst-case scenario of October 7th was not existential for Israel. By contrast—and this has been almost completely memory-holed because of Israel’s astounding military success in 2024—Hezbollah in 2023 posed a genuine, existential threat to Israel’s functioning. The IDF truly didn't know if they would be successful against Hezbollah.
The reason I raise this is because, when measured purely against Israel’s strategic interests, the failures in the conduct of the Gaza war have been orders of magnitude more severe than the intelligence lapses that allowed October 7th to happen in the first place.
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With all that said, your ultimate point is important and, sadly, likely true: Israel’s demographics and current insanity make it improbable for the state to have both genuinely representative government and one that is liberal and functional.
Good comment, but is it really true they lacked intelligence about the extent of the tunnel network? Isn't that the reason they didn't want to go in in the first place?
If I recall, the tunnel network was more than four to five times larger than the high-end estimate of what was possible.
This was significant for three reasons:
1. Knowledge of this would have made it clear that Hamas was heavily investing in its capabilities and was not complacent as understood.
2. The tunnel infrastructure made it much harder to track Hamas activity, as so much of it happened below ground. The IDF confused its lack of knowledge with there being nothing significant happening.
3. If it had been known about, given the threat the tunnels pose to Israel, Israel would have been much more likely to invade Gaza earlier (which would have changed the whole dynamic).
Also, the enemy's deterrence status is a humint thing. It can be fooled by kayfabe, or even by genuine dysfunction that the leadership permits in order to conceal their intelligence. Tunnels are geospacial intel.
In a world where it only takes one lunatic pressing a button to end the world, you *never* take it for granted that the enemy is deterred. Better for them to be satisfied, even complacency is only good if you have a decapitation plan.
I mean, maybe Bibi was kicking the Palestine can down the road because the only thing he believes in is bombing Iran. That's the Yossi Klein Halevi theory, right? That Bibi believes in the Rabin framing of an "inner ring" of neighbors who had been reduced below existential threat and an "outer ring" who hadn't yet. And naturally if you want to focus on neutralizing the outer ring - Iran - you want your other problems to go away. So then you ask if you make peace with the Palestinians (Rabin) or contain them (Bibi) while you deal with the existential threat.
It was tough to see that perspective in, say, summer of 2023. But it sure seems believable in summer of 2025. It also dovetails with Bibi's "Mr. Security" persona; you need to be a world-class hater to believe that nobody else hates the threat of the Ayatollahs enough to get the job done, and then spend thirty years making that case.
If you view Palestine as a part of a broader arab-israeli conflict that might include Iran ... the picture for israel gets a lot more bleak. Hamas probably needs to win a bunch of times in a row but iran really only does have to win once.
All they'd need to do is diplomatically secure a route along the shiite axis with their various allied militias. And the taliban already offered to provide the conventional forces out of sheer boredom.
I mean, how can you view the Palestinian front in isolation?
Israel is currently in a shooting war with, what, half of Arab countries or major militant groups within them because of Oct 7? Add in non-Arab belligerents like Iran, and the fact that on paper there has been no peace except with Egypt and Jordan since the declarations of war against Israel as far back as 1948, and it's fair to say that the Muslim world isn't just in opposition or conflict with Israel, but at war with it.
But the extent of the Arab and broader Muslim participation in the conflict is more extensive than that. Hamas has their origin in Egypt, gets their money and theology and safety for their leaders from Qatar, their missiles and training from Iran, military assistance from Hezbollah and the Houthis, and moral support from Turkey. Oh, and Egypt tolerates Hamas's smuggling and won't let the Gazans out en mass even for humanitarian reason.
And since the days of the Arab League, the Muslim world has used the Palestinians as a weapon against Israel. There is no other situation where the descendants of refugees inherit their refugee status. By the ordinary definition, there are thousands or maybe tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees left. But the Muslim world has declared they won't resettle Palestinians - unlike Jewish refugees of this conflict, of whom there were more than Palestinian refugees, but Israel and America resettled. Meanwhile, there are millions of "refugees" - not just in Gaza and Judea and Samaria, but in Jordan, in Lebanon, and Syria, whose families have been living where they are for two, three, or four generations. It's an extraordinary situation, which the Arabs have manufactured and continue to sustain.
And I do view bleakly the prospects for long term peace. For the Gazans, they need to be deradicalized, but it will be harder to do even than deradicalizing the Axis after WWII; the Gazans' hate is deeper and has been taught for longer and does not yet view itself as defeated. Whoever comes in to re-establish order is going to lose people, and nobody has the resources and the appetite for that fight. And that's just Gaza! We haven't even talked about the Judea and Samaria! And for the broader Muslim community ... oh, we only need to solve their revanchist religious extremism that's actively peddled by Qatar via Al Jazeera in order to get recognition of the Jewish right to exist. Only that.
Incidentally, the Arabs have but "engineered" the palestinian situation. Israel has.
Israel views the pacification of the palestinian arabs as a demographic threat to their constitution. But by splitting the arab-israelis, "A/B/C" collaborationist west bankers, and gaza-hamas from each other, they've neutralized the political threat by turning it into a military one.
As long as israel can pretend that palestine is a foreign country, they don't have to give arabs civic or political rights. Human rights are easier to violate in a war. No one but israel needs this war to happen.
Arab Israelis have civic and political rights, which you can see in, for example, their political representation and participation.
The Palestinians in Judea and Samaria aren't governed by Israeli civil law for two reasons that are good for the Palestinians. First, because there's a word for applying your civil law to new territory, and that's annexation. So long as they are governed by Israeli military law it's an occupation, which is inherently temporary, and that keeps the notion of an eventual Palestinian state alive. And second, the Areas A and B and C were part of the Two State Solution peace process; not just that there might eventually be a Palestinian state but that people were seriously trying to make one in the near term. Would the Palestinians get a better deal under Israeli civil law? Maybe! But then they wouldn't be Palestinians anymore, they'd be Israelis.
Hamas and Fatah don't need Israel's help to stay apart; they split all on their own. In fact, Hamas tried to assassinate Mahmoud Abbas in 2006 in order to "solve" their deadlock since Hamas had won legislative control in 2005.
Finally, Israel would have loved if the Arabs had only presented a political threat. Arabs have been killing Jews over the idea of Israel since the 1920 Hebron Massacre. In fact, it went the other direction: Israel, by demonstrating decisive military power, turned Arab violence into politics.
I'm unimpressed by the notion that the arabs have created this master plan going back to (checks notes) 1920. The idea that the Oslo accords partitioning the west bank into A/B/C zones represents a move towards a palestinian state is similarly laughable since the C zones are literally under Israeli civil administration. You say it's annexation to apply civil law? Are you going to argue that C zone Israeli civil authorities are applying palestinian law, but under Israeli administration and, presumably, interpretation?
An honest look at the palestinian situation will reveal that they have nothing. No prospect of statehood, no ability to dictate the course of their own politics. The west bank has all but capitulsted, and gaza is a prison-city run by a prison gang without even fictitious political processes.
In my mind, it's entirely possible to see "palestine" as a faction of a civil war over the fate of the mandate. A war which they have obviously lost, but which Israel refuses to prosecute since this stasis avoids complicated questions like "why aren't gazans allowed to vote in the knesset" or "Why do west bsnk local governments have to report to the IDF." As if arab mizrahis and straight-up muslim israelis weren't anyway enough of a threat to the legislative balance
The Arabs have had a very simple plan: no sovereignty or dignity for Jews. It was Arab League slogan and policy, except when it sharpened into attempted genocide in pushing the Jews “into the sea”, which was for example the battle cry of the 1948 invasion by the Arab League. The slow weakening of that position - first through peace with Egypt and Jordan, and then diplomatic recognition with the Gulf States, has been won only through decades of Israeli military and economic dominance.
And, yes, the Area C areas are the ones most likely to end up in Israeli hands as the result of the negotiations to create a Two State Solution. I’ve been assuming that you know what you’re talking about, but since that’s come into doubt: there are no agreed upon borders, and the Oslo process implied that they would mostly be in Area B.
There is no civil war over the fate of the Mandate. If that’s what you’re imagining, then you’re delusional. Go read it; its explicit purpose was to create a Jewish homeland. Despite the British dragging their feet, they did eventually fulfill their obligation in 1948.
Sadly relates to most countries in normal or almost-normal terms. They're not a united pan-arab league, they don't trust each other, they claim no guardianship over the palestinian people.
The border clashes point to Israel's belligerence, but not much else. The Arab nations have too little state capacity, collaborating with mossad and Israeli diplomats is too appealing regardless of formal diplomatic recognition.
Theology, money, these things are the foundations of gangs, not states. A militia is a bargaining chip, not a player at the table.
As is, it's entirely possible to view Hamas as a political faction contending over the former mandate of Palestine. If so, they're a weak faction, and the foreign support is just not forthcoming. Considered as a sovereign entity, their position is even bleaker.
I'm sure the House of Saud and the House of Thani and the Ayatollahs would be quite surprised to learn that theology and money are not the foundation of states! You can tell them. I'll bring popcorn.
And you might disregard militias, but states don't. Especially when the militias are armed by states who have devoted billions of dollars to the mass-manufacture of all sorts of modern missiles. Israel intercepting Houthi-launched, Iranian-made ballistic missiles, for example, was the first combat interception of a missile outside the atmosphere. Sure makes the Houthis seem like a more sophisticated threat than a few guys with rifles and bad attitudes! In fact, less than a century ago making missiles like that (both offensive and defensive) was the exclusive privilege of superpowers like the US and USSR; slowly it filtered out to the great powers and eventually to medium and small nations.
One more thing: the Mandate for Palestine no longer exists to contend over. It fulfilled the purpose that the League of Nations charged Britain with; establishing a Jewish state. Only in the revanchist genocidal freak minds of Hamas is that still in play.
I would love to watch you try to overthrow a foreign country armed with nothing other than money and theology. Well ... any country that has an intelligence service, that it.
The houthis are a problem of a fundamentally different order than palestinians, though i find your victories over them equally unimpressive. They're somewhat closer to a state level actor given that they have actually won their civil war. So no, they are not "just a militia."
Would it kill you israelis to have just a little bit of self-respect? Hamas shoots primitive homemade pipe-rockets that would have embarassed werner von braun and you act like this makes them a peer?
"The league of nations" lol. Lmao. But seriously, the idea of palestine asserting an independent sovereignty remains laughable. Even in their most deluded "ricer to sea" fantasies, you have to at least credit that they're not so bold as to claim they have any chance of every being sovereign. They simply intend (to whatever degree they can be said to have coherent intentions) to take control of the existing regional sovereignty. They are, so to speak, "playing the long game" just like any other political faction would after being defeated in a civil war.
>Bibi seems to have hit on the strategy of isolating and destroying anyone in his vicinity who isn’t complete s**t, and promoting those who have nothing to offer but their loyalty, by a sort of instinct, but, bit by bit, it grew from a tactic into an ethos, and then a constitution
Agreed.
Trump has also done this - the big difference between Trump I and Trump II is that in Trump I, Trump felt he had to accept people onto his team that were competent party establishment types, and nominate judges and officials approved by the movement. Howver, those people burned him (either by refusing to lie or commit crimes for him) and so in Trump II all of the jobs go to cranks who have no ideological common ground except for being good at defending Trump on TV (e.g.(the sheer number of Fox TV hosts and guests, and the number of his former telegenic defense attorneys who now staff the senior positions at the Department of Justice).
Are the Bibi-ists similarly skilled at defending Bibi on TV to Hebrew audiences?
Please forgive me for saying this, but i don't think Trump has particularly made the federal government weaker or more ineffective, it was already trending that way. In that it was already both ineffective and incapable of changing course. Corruption and sclerosis are distinct pathologist, though governments tend to have corruption problems when ordered to carry out policies that they don't want to carry out, or policies that they structurally cannot carry out. The one is sabotage, the other is just natural/structural/constitutional law.
Trump's supporters have viewed him as a "hand-grenade" against am unresponsive if not oppressive government since at least 2015. They want his policies, and the goverment appears to be structured in order to make those policies impossible. And if those policies violate either the structure or the ethos of the goverment, then the goverment has failed to explain to them how the continued existence of the goverment, and its ethos, is in their interest.
I doubt that anyone supports the weakening of the federal government to the point of causing interneicene strife or undermining the unity and integrity of the state. But then again there's always the south...
In any case, the central government is incredibly weak at the moment and the states are talking a lot of initiative and liberties with their innovative users of the national guard ... this is an incredibly bad sign, the states are not supposed to be this involved in military politics.
Since independence the 'nationalist' leadership has dedicated itself to dismantling the indigenous culture (Catholicism), and replacing the population with foreigners.
Yeah, I was curious what you meant by "fake and gay" precisely, but "Brits out, everyone else in" is exactly what happened, and Sinn Fein were all in favour of it. (Possibly because it was a demographic weapon against northern protestants?)
With that said, I think the provos' bombing campaign from the 90s onward was a textbook example of "do maximum damage to your opponent with minimum damage to PR", and can be instructively compared with what Hamas, the PLO etc. were doing.
>>>The centre to centre-left upper echelon of the IDF that were running things on October 7th were obviously not competent. The man to go to for a detailed rundown of just how incompetent they were is Itzhak Brik,
Itzhak Brik??? He is a guy to go to for military analysis? See here for what he predicted war with Hezbollah would be like when they were shooting missiles into Israel daily and compare it to the reality...
Sure, he's kind of a doomer, but, more importantly, he simply wasn't privy to the plans that Israel had in store. Minus those plans, he was correct, though maybe a bit excessively pessimistic.
IOW He just talks without knowing what he is talking about. He wasn't privy to how and why things were being done on October 7th either. As the old saying goes "those who have no children raise them very well..."
Hey, a post I basically almost entirely agree with. Just a small gripe, have you ever considered what Hamas could have done with slightly less %jelly brain?
Like worst case scenario October 7th where our enemy's priorities aren't kidnapping old people while burning their friends and family.
I'm curious about the meaning of whatever the word for "flood" in Arabic is because on the face of it, these seem like comically mixed metaphors:
>The Flood was a spark, but sparks must be preserved if they are to become the light of liberation.
>The Flood came like a thunderbolt, tearing down the illusion of invulnerability.
>From the dawn of the Flood, the world shook. It was not a skirmish on the border, not a passing clash; it was an earthquake.
>Among Palestinians, the Flood lit a flame.
The Flood is a spark, the flood is a thunderbolt, the flood is an earthquake, the flood lights a flame, the flood has a dawn.
I think whatever the merits of the kicking the can down the road bibi-ism there was, Bibi can no longer execute it. Kicking the can down the road requires you to sell the idea that you're small c conservative about changing the status quo but that you're theoretically open to changing thing in the direction your interlocuturs want.
But right now he is too dependent on Ben Gvir and Smotrich and the settler movement in general that he can't credibly sell even preserving the status quo to, say, Western allies or the Saudis. Every time he tries saying the war is against Hamas and we're not going back to settle, senior ministers in his government will say things like "this is the first step to transferring the Palestinians out of Gaza and resettling it" or "Mwa ha ha ha this new subdivision will kill the two state solution for good mwa ha ha ha" or "not a single ounce of baby formula should go into Gaza" and he can't even tell them to shut up or directly contradict them.
Sure, esoteric Bibi-ism find its exoteric form today in other avatars. Yair Golan if we get improbably lucky.
Interesting distinction between deterrence and deescalation. Hamas was deterred, but not deescalated, so they moved to increase their escalatory dominance.
But this is simply the reductio ad absurdum of deterrence. If you deter the enemy so effectively ever they have no choice but to constantly devise newer, more vicious, and more terrible schemes against you … wouldn't you rather they just attack you normally under the laws of war?
Could you also place a lot of blame for the current shiteness on the monomaniacal hatred of Bibi by left and center. If they had agreed to sit with Bibi he wouldn't have needed the crazies ergo no judiical reform and all the other costs of letting crazies in government
Yes. In the typical toxic relationship, both sides are to blame.
When discussing Gaza, I think the konzeptzia argument misses two important points.
The real failure was not simply a misunderstanding of whether Hamas was deterred, but rather:
1. A misplaced confidence in the effectiveness of the “smart fence.”
2. A complete lack of intelligence regarding the extent of Gaza’s tunnel network.
There are clear precedents of similarly dumb errors in recent Israeli military history:
1. Ansariya ambush (1997) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansariya_ambush
2. INS Hanit incident (2006) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INS_Hanit
3. The surprise regarding Hezbollah’s “nature reserve” military infrastructure, and more broadly, Israel’s lack of understanding of the full situation in Lebanon in 2006.
Of course, October 7th was far more significant than the three examples above. But even the worst-case scenario of October 7th was not existential for Israel. By contrast—and this has been almost completely memory-holed because of Israel’s astounding military success in 2024—Hezbollah in 2023 posed a genuine, existential threat to Israel’s functioning. The IDF truly didn't know if they would be successful against Hezbollah.
The reason I raise this is because, when measured purely against Israel’s strategic interests, the failures in the conduct of the Gaza war have been orders of magnitude more severe than the intelligence lapses that allowed October 7th to happen in the first place.
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With all that said, your ultimate point is important and, sadly, likely true: Israel’s demographics and current insanity make it improbable for the state to have both genuinely representative government and one that is liberal and functional.
Good comment, but is it really true they lacked intelligence about the extent of the tunnel network? Isn't that the reason they didn't want to go in in the first place?
If I recall, the tunnel network was more than four to five times larger than the high-end estimate of what was possible.
This was significant for three reasons:
1. Knowledge of this would have made it clear that Hamas was heavily investing in its capabilities and was not complacent as understood.
2. The tunnel infrastructure made it much harder to track Hamas activity, as so much of it happened below ground. The IDF confused its lack of knowledge with there being nothing significant happening.
3. If it had been known about, given the threat the tunnels pose to Israel, Israel would have been much more likely to invade Gaza earlier (which would have changed the whole dynamic).
Gaza in 2023 really was like Lebanon in 2006.
Also, the enemy's deterrence status is a humint thing. It can be fooled by kayfabe, or even by genuine dysfunction that the leadership permits in order to conceal their intelligence. Tunnels are geospacial intel.
In a world where it only takes one lunatic pressing a button to end the world, you *never* take it for granted that the enemy is deterred. Better for them to be satisfied, even complacency is only good if you have a decapitation plan.
I mean, maybe Bibi was kicking the Palestine can down the road because the only thing he believes in is bombing Iran. That's the Yossi Klein Halevi theory, right? That Bibi believes in the Rabin framing of an "inner ring" of neighbors who had been reduced below existential threat and an "outer ring" who hadn't yet. And naturally if you want to focus on neutralizing the outer ring - Iran - you want your other problems to go away. So then you ask if you make peace with the Palestinians (Rabin) or contain them (Bibi) while you deal with the existential threat.
It was tough to see that perspective in, say, summer of 2023. But it sure seems believable in summer of 2025. It also dovetails with Bibi's "Mr. Security" persona; you need to be a world-class hater to believe that nobody else hates the threat of the Ayatollahs enough to get the job done, and then spend thirty years making that case.
If you view Palestine as a part of a broader arab-israeli conflict that might include Iran ... the picture for israel gets a lot more bleak. Hamas probably needs to win a bunch of times in a row but iran really only does have to win once.
All they'd need to do is diplomatically secure a route along the shiite axis with their various allied militias. And the taliban already offered to provide the conventional forces out of sheer boredom.
I mean, how can you view the Palestinian front in isolation?
Israel is currently in a shooting war with, what, half of Arab countries or major militant groups within them because of Oct 7? Add in non-Arab belligerents like Iran, and the fact that on paper there has been no peace except with Egypt and Jordan since the declarations of war against Israel as far back as 1948, and it's fair to say that the Muslim world isn't just in opposition or conflict with Israel, but at war with it.
But the extent of the Arab and broader Muslim participation in the conflict is more extensive than that. Hamas has their origin in Egypt, gets their money and theology and safety for their leaders from Qatar, their missiles and training from Iran, military assistance from Hezbollah and the Houthis, and moral support from Turkey. Oh, and Egypt tolerates Hamas's smuggling and won't let the Gazans out en mass even for humanitarian reason.
And since the days of the Arab League, the Muslim world has used the Palestinians as a weapon against Israel. There is no other situation where the descendants of refugees inherit their refugee status. By the ordinary definition, there are thousands or maybe tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees left. But the Muslim world has declared they won't resettle Palestinians - unlike Jewish refugees of this conflict, of whom there were more than Palestinian refugees, but Israel and America resettled. Meanwhile, there are millions of "refugees" - not just in Gaza and Judea and Samaria, but in Jordan, in Lebanon, and Syria, whose families have been living where they are for two, three, or four generations. It's an extraordinary situation, which the Arabs have manufactured and continue to sustain.
And I do view bleakly the prospects for long term peace. For the Gazans, they need to be deradicalized, but it will be harder to do even than deradicalizing the Axis after WWII; the Gazans' hate is deeper and has been taught for longer and does not yet view itself as defeated. Whoever comes in to re-establish order is going to lose people, and nobody has the resources and the appetite for that fight. And that's just Gaza! We haven't even talked about the Judea and Samaria! And for the broader Muslim community ... oh, we only need to solve their revanchist religious extremism that's actively peddled by Qatar via Al Jazeera in order to get recognition of the Jewish right to exist. Only that.
Incidentally, the Arabs have but "engineered" the palestinian situation. Israel has.
Israel views the pacification of the palestinian arabs as a demographic threat to their constitution. But by splitting the arab-israelis, "A/B/C" collaborationist west bankers, and gaza-hamas from each other, they've neutralized the political threat by turning it into a military one.
As long as israel can pretend that palestine is a foreign country, they don't have to give arabs civic or political rights. Human rights are easier to violate in a war. No one but israel needs this war to happen.
Bro, what are you talking about?
Arab Israelis have civic and political rights, which you can see in, for example, their political representation and participation.
The Palestinians in Judea and Samaria aren't governed by Israeli civil law for two reasons that are good for the Palestinians. First, because there's a word for applying your civil law to new territory, and that's annexation. So long as they are governed by Israeli military law it's an occupation, which is inherently temporary, and that keeps the notion of an eventual Palestinian state alive. And second, the Areas A and B and C were part of the Two State Solution peace process; not just that there might eventually be a Palestinian state but that people were seriously trying to make one in the near term. Would the Palestinians get a better deal under Israeli civil law? Maybe! But then they wouldn't be Palestinians anymore, they'd be Israelis.
Hamas and Fatah don't need Israel's help to stay apart; they split all on their own. In fact, Hamas tried to assassinate Mahmoud Abbas in 2006 in order to "solve" their deadlock since Hamas had won legislative control in 2005.
Finally, Israel would have loved if the Arabs had only presented a political threat. Arabs have been killing Jews over the idea of Israel since the 1920 Hebron Massacre. In fact, it went the other direction: Israel, by demonstrating decisive military power, turned Arab violence into politics.
I'm unimpressed by the notion that the arabs have created this master plan going back to (checks notes) 1920. The idea that the Oslo accords partitioning the west bank into A/B/C zones represents a move towards a palestinian state is similarly laughable since the C zones are literally under Israeli civil administration. You say it's annexation to apply civil law? Are you going to argue that C zone Israeli civil authorities are applying palestinian law, but under Israeli administration and, presumably, interpretation?
An honest look at the palestinian situation will reveal that they have nothing. No prospect of statehood, no ability to dictate the course of their own politics. The west bank has all but capitulsted, and gaza is a prison-city run by a prison gang without even fictitious political processes.
In my mind, it's entirely possible to see "palestine" as a faction of a civil war over the fate of the mandate. A war which they have obviously lost, but which Israel refuses to prosecute since this stasis avoids complicated questions like "why aren't gazans allowed to vote in the knesset" or "Why do west bsnk local governments have to report to the IDF." As if arab mizrahis and straight-up muslim israelis weren't anyway enough of a threat to the legislative balance
The Arabs have had a very simple plan: no sovereignty or dignity for Jews. It was Arab League slogan and policy, except when it sharpened into attempted genocide in pushing the Jews “into the sea”, which was for example the battle cry of the 1948 invasion by the Arab League. The slow weakening of that position - first through peace with Egypt and Jordan, and then diplomatic recognition with the Gulf States, has been won only through decades of Israeli military and economic dominance.
And, yes, the Area C areas are the ones most likely to end up in Israeli hands as the result of the negotiations to create a Two State Solution. I’ve been assuming that you know what you’re talking about, but since that’s come into doubt: there are no agreed upon borders, and the Oslo process implied that they would mostly be in Area B.
There is no civil war over the fate of the Mandate. If that’s what you’re imagining, then you’re delusional. Go read it; its explicit purpose was to create a Jewish homeland. Despite the British dragging their feet, they did eventually fulfill their obligation in 1948.
The palestinian people wish that was true.
Sadly relates to most countries in normal or almost-normal terms. They're not a united pan-arab league, they don't trust each other, they claim no guardianship over the palestinian people.
The border clashes point to Israel's belligerence, but not much else. The Arab nations have too little state capacity, collaborating with mossad and Israeli diplomats is too appealing regardless of formal diplomatic recognition.
Theology, money, these things are the foundations of gangs, not states. A militia is a bargaining chip, not a player at the table.
As is, it's entirely possible to view Hamas as a political faction contending over the former mandate of Palestine. If so, they're a weak faction, and the foreign support is just not forthcoming. Considered as a sovereign entity, their position is even bleaker.
I'm sure the House of Saud and the House of Thani and the Ayatollahs would be quite surprised to learn that theology and money are not the foundation of states! You can tell them. I'll bring popcorn.
And you might disregard militias, but states don't. Especially when the militias are armed by states who have devoted billions of dollars to the mass-manufacture of all sorts of modern missiles. Israel intercepting Houthi-launched, Iranian-made ballistic missiles, for example, was the first combat interception of a missile outside the atmosphere. Sure makes the Houthis seem like a more sophisticated threat than a few guys with rifles and bad attitudes! In fact, less than a century ago making missiles like that (both offensive and defensive) was the exclusive privilege of superpowers like the US and USSR; slowly it filtered out to the great powers and eventually to medium and small nations.
One more thing: the Mandate for Palestine no longer exists to contend over. It fulfilled the purpose that the League of Nations charged Britain with; establishing a Jewish state. Only in the revanchist genocidal freak minds of Hamas is that still in play.
I would love to watch you try to overthrow a foreign country armed with nothing other than money and theology. Well ... any country that has an intelligence service, that it.
The houthis are a problem of a fundamentally different order than palestinians, though i find your victories over them equally unimpressive. They're somewhat closer to a state level actor given that they have actually won their civil war. So no, they are not "just a militia."
Would it kill you israelis to have just a little bit of self-respect? Hamas shoots primitive homemade pipe-rockets that would have embarassed werner von braun and you act like this makes them a peer?
"The league of nations" lol. Lmao. But seriously, the idea of palestine asserting an independent sovereignty remains laughable. Even in their most deluded "ricer to sea" fantasies, you have to at least credit that they're not so bold as to claim they have any chance of every being sovereign. They simply intend (to whatever degree they can be said to have coherent intentions) to take control of the existing regional sovereignty. They are, so to speak, "playing the long game" just like any other political faction would after being defeated in a civil war.
I don’t know what sort of child you are who disparages revolutions, missiles, and history, but I wish you well in growing out of it.
>Bibi seems to have hit on the strategy of isolating and destroying anyone in his vicinity who isn’t complete s**t, and promoting those who have nothing to offer but their loyalty, by a sort of instinct, but, bit by bit, it grew from a tactic into an ethos, and then a constitution
Agreed.
Trump has also done this - the big difference between Trump I and Trump II is that in Trump I, Trump felt he had to accept people onto his team that were competent party establishment types, and nominate judges and officials approved by the movement. Howver, those people burned him (either by refusing to lie or commit crimes for him) and so in Trump II all of the jobs go to cranks who have no ideological common ground except for being good at defending Trump on TV (e.g.(the sheer number of Fox TV hosts and guests, and the number of his former telegenic defense attorneys who now staff the senior positions at the Department of Justice).
Are the Bibi-ists similarly skilled at defending Bibi on TV to Hebrew audiences?
I don't think so, but most of the media I see is to Bibi's right.
Please forgive me for saying this, but i don't think Trump has particularly made the federal government weaker or more ineffective, it was already trending that way. In that it was already both ineffective and incapable of changing course. Corruption and sclerosis are distinct pathologist, though governments tend to have corruption problems when ordered to carry out policies that they don't want to carry out, or policies that they structurally cannot carry out. The one is sabotage, the other is just natural/structural/constitutional law.
Trump's supporters have viewed him as a "hand-grenade" against am unresponsive if not oppressive government since at least 2015. They want his policies, and the goverment appears to be structured in order to make those policies impossible. And if those policies violate either the structure or the ethos of the goverment, then the goverment has failed to explain to them how the continued existence of the goverment, and its ethos, is in their interest.
I doubt that anyone supports the weakening of the federal government to the point of causing interneicene strife or undermining the unity and integrity of the state. But then again there's always the south...
In any case, the central government is incredibly weak at the moment and the states are talking a lot of initiative and liberties with their innovative users of the national guard ... this is an incredibly bad sign, the states are not supposed to be this involved in military politics.
As a general question to what extent is Irish nationalism fake and gay in a way different from any other nationalism?
Since independence the 'nationalist' leadership has dedicated itself to dismantling the indigenous culture (Catholicism), and replacing the population with foreigners.
That's fair, but I'm talking about the IRA in 1984.
Why not? Sinn Fein were enthusiastic supporters of replacement immigration until they u-turned in 2024.
Yeah, I was curious what you meant by "fake and gay" precisely, but "Brits out, everyone else in" is exactly what happened, and Sinn Fein were all in favour of it. (Possibly because it was a demographic weapon against northern protestants?)
With that said, I think the provos' bombing campaign from the 90s onward was a textbook example of "do maximum damage to your opponent with minimum damage to PR", and can be instructively compared with what Hamas, the PLO etc. were doing.
https://www.amazon.com/TRUE-REVOLUTION-ESCAPING-RECLAIMING-WORLD-ebook/dp/B0FLW9757R/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3QSQHY3LC8Z4F&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.S57e0fJ5IrTD54sWRl9p_A.qVwdDkyrdr-gdLEFQbMXQqutQ1YOzVf7k1aWJlzsjwY&dib_tag=se&keywords=Joshua+Shalet&qid=1755682248&sprefix=joshua+shalet+%2Caps%2C1149&sr=8-1
> Attack by a Hamas mujahadin
'Mujahadin' is plural. The singular is 'mujahid.'
No judgement, of course. You already said:
>I speak absolutely no Arabic at all
The word is found in a famous later hadith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdF5ANBSjpI.
I do actually know enough Arabic to know *in* is a plural ending. Just careless. Or maybe I'm lying.
>>>The centre to centre-left upper echelon of the IDF that were running things on October 7th were obviously not competent. The man to go to for a detailed rundown of just how incompetent they were is Itzhak Brik,
Itzhak Brik??? He is a guy to go to for military analysis? See here for what he predicted war with Hezbollah would be like when they were shooting missiles into Israel daily and compare it to the reality...
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-807326
Sure, he's kind of a doomer, but, more importantly, he simply wasn't privy to the plans that Israel had in store. Minus those plans, he was correct, though maybe a bit excessively pessimistic.
IOW He just talks without knowing what he is talking about. He wasn't privy to how and why things were being done on October 7th either. As the old saying goes "those who have no children raise them very well..."
Alex Stein’s blog? Are we suddenly back in the 2000s?!?
Hey, a post I basically almost entirely agree with. Just a small gripe, have you ever considered what Hamas could have done with slightly less %jelly brain?
Like worst case scenario October 7th where our enemy's priorities aren't kidnapping old people while burning their friends and family.