Israel-Gaza : The Netanyahu plan

[Jayhawker Soule]

From The Times of Israel:

For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it's blown up in our faces​

For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.​

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The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.​

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Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.​

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Meanwhile, Israel has allowed suitcases holding millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through its crossings since 2018, in order to maintain its fragile ceasefire with the Hamas rulers of the Strip.​

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Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.​

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The terror inflicted on the civilian population in Israel is so enormous that the wounds from it will not heal for years, a challenge compounded by the dozens abducted into Gaza.​

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Judging by the way Netanyahu has managed Gaza in the last 13 years, it is not certain that there will be a clear policy going forward.​

Whether it be the coercive occupation, or the coddling of Hamas, or the carnage in Gaza, few regimes have so cynically accumulated so much blood on its hands.

 

[metis]

Yep, I think when the dust finally settles, he and the Likud coalition are likely to become "history".

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Yep, I think when the dust finally settles, he and the Likud coalition are likely to become "history".

Sadly, I do not see a citizenry traumatized by October 7th replacing it with something viable, particularly since the left in Israel has little credibility or support. The country as a whole would need to embrace the fact that they were the victims of decades of bad governance in which they were fully complicit. That's a difficult ask.

 

[metis]

Sadly, I do not see a citizenry traumatized by October 7th replacing it with something viable, particularly since the left in Israel has little credibility or support. The country as a whole would need to embrace the fact that they were the victims of decades of bad governance in which they were fully complicit. That's a difficult ask.

I agree, which is why I offered no solution. Much like here in the States, the right and left despise and demonize each other. I read a poll just a month or so ago that showed that a majority of the chasidim would prefer an authoritarian government over what's there now.