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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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From a strategic standpoint, they have no choice. What Hamas is doing is by the book insurgent strategy, that's been observed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to lesser extents in WW2 and Vietnam.
Commit an atrocity akin to 9/11 to provoke an enemy attack and hide your forces amongst the population. The initial victim (usa, and in this case, israel) must retaliate against such an atrocity, but their only strategic targets are civilian in nature (as all militants are using them as a meat shield).
Once civilian targets are struck Hamas makes pleas to the international community, for aid, sanctions or isolation of Israel. They pander to civilians, as they'll die whether or not they join the insurgency. This balloons their numbers and combat strength.
On top of that, all forces begin engaging in brutal urban warfare with costly casualties for the enemy.
Israel (to their voters and population) can't just "let" Hamas get away for the October attacks so they press their advance, civilians be damned. I believe Hamas are as responsible as Israel for civilian casualties and deaths.
No sides are truly right here, it's merely a brutal dilemma. Not a problem, those have answers, but a dilemma with no good solutions. Potentially be overthrown by an outraged population or slaughter a bunch of civs. You know what all regimes will do.
Interesting take, but I want to point out that Afghanistan was completely invaded in a matter of days, and only because the Taliban refused to give up OBL, who was the leader of Al-Qaeda and responsible for 9/11 (ie not the Taliban).
Point being that I don't think the Taliban's strategy was ever to force the USA to invade and then call for help. They simply did not want to back down against a foreign entity, especially since many of their ranks were former Mujaheddin who did the same against Russia.
The issue of civilian collateral only became an issue well after the USA took over and installed the new government, at which point the Taliban had been decimated and forced into hiding.
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Israel has the complete capability to completely invade Gaza right now. They have done it before and they gave the same treatment of basically running the area themselves and systematically removing enemies. However, the issue at hand is that Israel wants to expand to the border both in Gaza and the West Bank, but they do not want the Palestinians to be any part of the state.
Even comparing statistics, the rate of civilian collateral is several orders of magnitude higher than Afghanistan, despite Hamas being a smaller percentage of people than what the Taliban was. Hence why the Geneva convention is coming into question. The rate of death is so high that it indicates a level of a targeted massacre if not a genocide.
There's overwhelming evidence that the daily airstrikes on hospitals, schools, camps, etc. do not contain any Hamas militants. Similarly, there's practically zero evidence any of the aid trucks or NGOs working in the area could be confused with Hamas, yet they too have been targeted and shot at multiple times with multiple deaths.
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I think the belly of the beast is just not brought up enough. Israel has no interest with Palestinians being anywhere in their state, and they will use whatever means necessary to get rid of them, whether it be illegal land grabbing (forced displacement), refusal of citizenship, deportation, ignoring lynch mobs, running a war effort, etc.
Not to mention that Hamas was funded by Israel to keep them propped up in Gaza, which would actually make them the instigator by getting Hamas to do a massive attack to justify a strong reaction. People already forgot that Mossad was under fire for allegedly knowing all about the attack, yet doing nothing to prevent it.
Where Israel miscalculated in this plan was Hamas taking hostages and using them to prevent an instant invasion. This put pressure on the government from the civilian population, and likely caused the USA to force them to slow down. Even now, there is massive pressure on the government to enter a ceasefire simply to allow the hostages to return, regardless of what to do with Gaza afterwards.