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Are either Israelis or Gazans more secure than when this war began? What has either side achieved?

by coob 2y ago

Dansvidania 2y ago
The strengthening of the "us Vs them" mentality and terror politics
ars 2y ago
Israeli's are (not that they think it was worth it), Gazan's are not. This war severely weakened Iran, Iran's proxies (Lebanon/Hezbollah, and Syria) and also interestingly Russia. Gazan's now have a ruined country with exactly nothing to show for it. Depending on how you interpret it, this war was actually a good thing for Lebanon (they have a government for the first time in years), and Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster.
- ChocolateGod 2y ago
  > Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster. Not saying Assad wasn't a sadistic monster, but do you really think an ISIS-related group running the state is going to be any better? Christians are already being persecuted.
  - codethief 2y ago
    > Christians are already being persecuted. Do you have a source for that?
    - ChocolateGod 2y ago
      BBC News - Protests in Syria over Christmas tree burning https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx27yx1y0deo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx27yx1y0deo
- hellgas00 2y ago
  [Reposting a comment from ChocolateGod that was flagged and made dead despite being a legitimate good faith question] > Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster. Not saying Assad wasn't a sadistic monster, but do you really think an ISIS-related group running the state is going to be any better? Christians are already being persecuted.
bpodgursky 2y ago
Can you concretely suggest what each side should have done at some point in time, to avoid being where we are now? I feel like you're making a rhetorical statement that's hard to map to specific actions.
- lesuorac 2y ago
  If neither side has really changed what's to prevent them from going to war again? It happened for a reason and unless that reason has changed then one should expect the same outcome.
  - bpodgursky 2y ago
    Concretely, Israel will not be caught offguard for an Oct 7-style attack for quite a while. So the macguffin (hundreds of hostages) will probably not come up again.
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    Hamas was built over a long period by Iran, through Syria. Iran is much weaker than before, Syria is no longer a route to send supplies, and Hezbollah has been gutted.
    - sudosysgen 2y ago
      Hamas was for the vast majority of its existence anti-Iran, and instead was supported by various Sunni groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. Extrapolating convenient conclusions doesn't help anyone.
      - jncfhnb 2y ago
        And that portion of its existence is not relevant to what happened in this war This was a proxy war with Iran
- nick_ 2y ago
  Oh please. Israelis could have voted in a different party/leader that would have taken another path. West Bank settlement expansions could have been halted and reversed (to a sensible degree of course). These are bread and butter suggestions that everyone who thinks honestly about this conflict sees clearly. There are of course many more suggestions I didn't state. To pretend that there was just no way to avoid this is shameful.
Supermancho 2y ago
Israel has a bunch of land that is politically and practically simpler to annex, than before. Israel is more secure by far, knowing that the US will continue to fund them even in the face of being convicted of humanitarian crimes.
- ChocolateGod 2y ago
  > being convicted of humanitarian crimes. The UN and ICC have both shown they're absolutely powerless and useless.
  - Supermancho 2y ago
    This is not in dispute. None of what I initially posted is in dispute. I would propose this "war" was relatively cheap in Israeli civilian lives lost for what was gained. Demonstrably increasing the reach of Israel action without external repercussions, makes it a security win for Israel. None of the international community will put troops in front of Israel to benefit Palestine. That's worth something to know (converting an unknown to a known).
    - ChocolateGod 2y ago
      Part of me thinks a Peacekeeping Force (e.g. UN, EU etc) should go into Gaza to control it until a government is formed and stop Hamas from taking back control but I don't see the US not blocking it.
- robertoandred 2y ago
  If Israel wanted Gaza, they wouldn’t have given it up twenty years ago.
  - malandrew 2y ago
    My understanding is that there's been renewed interest in building the Ben Gurion Canal proposed by Howard D. MacCabee in 1963. https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/453701.pdf https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/453701.pdf Google's Ngram viewer isn't working for the term "Ben Gurion Canal" for some reason, but it would show approximately when renewed interest started getting traction since the proposal was declassified in 1996. I wouldn't be surprised if the 2021 Evergreen fiasco was contributory to this renewed interest but this is pure speculation on my part.
steviedotboston 2y ago
Hamas has been considerably weakened. Their arsenal of rockets and weapons is depleted. At the beginning of the war thousands of rockets were being shot into Israel and now there are very few and the ones that are are quite crude. Hezbollah entered the war immediately and said the only way they would exit is if Hamas exists. Israel retaliated, killed their leader, decimated their forces, and negotiated a ceasefire that got Hezbollah to back off on their original terms. Lebanon just elected an anti-Hezbollah President. During all of this, Assad was deposed. Israel's main adversary is Iran. They are the ones who fund and supply Hamas and Hezbollah, and were the key ally of Assad. They attacked Israel multiple times during the war and Israel responded in kind, the assesments seem to be that Israel's responses were quite strong. So prior to October 7, Iran had strong proxies and allies all over the region. They are now either in shambles or deposed. The goal of the war for Israel is to prevent another October 7th style attack from occuring. I'd say they have made significant steps towards accomplishing that from a military perspective.
- verdverm 2y ago
  Israel has likely also created multiple generations of anger and hate against themselves. They may have reduced the likelihood of another Oct 7 in the near term, but 50 years is not something I would count on
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - flumpcakes 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - xg15 2y ago
      And yet there is the speech by Jordan's foreign minister who makes clear that the Arab states are interested in relations with Israel - as a normal state and as part of a two-state solution with mutual sovereignty, but not with a state that behaves as if they had some divine right to dominate the entire region. https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-10-02/ty-article-opinion/.premium/jordans-foreign-minister-told-israelis-and-inconvenient-truth/00000192-4dc3-d2cc-a5d7-edff907e0000 https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-10-02/ty-article-opinio...
verdverm 2y ago
There is an argument to be made that Iran and Hezbollah have been degraded, which makes the entire region safer. I'm not going to claim this, as I'm no expert, but there is a an argument to be made. For the Gazans, the next months and years will be more determinative. Will they get the support and aid they need to rebuild and keep terrorist organizations from running their country? (They should have their own country instead of being effectively an open air prison)
- hackerknew 2y ago
  Gaza has been its own country / Palestinian State since 2006 and they have been recipients of foreign aid for many years, which is how they fund these attacks.
null_deref 2y ago
Israel is definitely more secure, because of the on front confrontation with Iran and its proxies. 1. Hezbollah suffered heavy blows and lost significant political and military power in Lebanon. Didn’t retaliate nearly as heavy as feared. 2. For the first time Israel struck with its military directly in Iran and showed real abilities by destroying most of Iran’s air defenses. 3. As a result of the two points above and other reasons, there was significant shift of powers in Syria which led to Assad regime collapse (significant amount of supplies to Iran’s main proxy Hezbollah went through Syria), but the affect of the regime change in Syria is yet to be determined.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
wesselbindt 2y ago
By conservative estimates (see the 2024 Khatlib paper in the Lancet), roughly 7--9% of the population of Gaza will perish as a result of the actions of Israel on the strip. Many more will flee. According to UN, clearing the rubble in Gaza will take 15 years. That's just clearing the rubble, not rebuilding the damaged buildings, which is about 66% of the total. There are some clear indications that the intention of the Israeli government is to destroy in whole, or in part, the Palestinian people, for example by killing members of the group, or inflicting upon it conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of the group. There's a wealth of quotes from high ranking officials, going all the way up to the Knesset, stating almost exactly that. One quote I think of from time to time is "Erase them, their families, mothers and children." given in a motivational speech directed at the IDF. Given that this is their intention (and I have every reason to believe it is), I'd say that this has been a pretty successful affair for Israel. Sure, Jews worldwide (including Israel) are much less safe now than they were two years ago, but the Israeli government does not give me the impression that this is at all their goal.
- nearbuy 2y ago
  This makes no sense to me. If 8% (171,000 people) of Gaza were to perish, that would leave Gaza with the population it had in 2020. The ceasefire reportedly will have Israel pulling out from Gaza fully and a massive influx of humanitarian aid is expected to enter Gaza. If the ceasefire goes through, the death rate will drop greatly and the population will begin to grow again. As horrible as the destruction has been, this is nowhere close to eliminating the people of Gaza. If genocide was a goal of any of the Israeli leadership, they abjectly failed.
  - wesselbindt 2y ago
    > If genocide was a goal of any of the Israeli leadership, they abjectly failed This take is incredibly callous. Suppose 8% of everyone you gets killed. This is a shockingly brutal thing to happen to a population. Aside from that you're wrong on a factual level. The "in part" part of the '51 convention is there precisely so people don't say "there's still Jews left so technically the Holocaust wasn't a genocide". The holocaust was a genocide, and this is a genocide (yes, "is", they're still dropping bombs on a population half of which is under 18). There's a reason the relevant cases haven't been thrown out of the ICJ and ICC.
1024core 2y ago
That (security) was never Hamas' intention; they were worried about being forgotten, after Israel and KSA were close to normalizing relations, and now they've managed to gunk up the gears of any peace process, at the cost of 40,000 Gazan lives. So... a victory for Hamas? They've never been interested in peace anyways.
School-Cotton 2y ago
[flagged]

Are either Israelis or Gazans more secure than when this war began? What has either side achieved?

by coob 2y ago

Are either Israelis or Gazans more secure than when this war began? What has either side achieved?

Dansvidania 2y ago

The strengthening of the "us Vs them" mentality and terror politics

ars 2y ago

Israeli's are (not that they think it was worth it), Gazan's are not. This war severely weakened Iran, Iran's proxies (Lebanon/Hezbollah, and Syria) and also interestingly Russia. Gazan's now have a ruined country with exactly nothing to show for it. Depending on how you interpret it, this war was actually a good thing for Lebanon (they have a government for the first time in years), and Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster.

ChocolateGod 2y ago
> Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster. Not saying Assad wasn't a sadistic monster, but do you really think an ISIS-related group running the state is going to be any better? Christians are already being persecuted.
- codethief 2y ago
  > Christians are already being persecuted. Do you have a source for that?
  - ChocolateGod 2y ago
    BBC News - Protests in Syria over Christmas tree burning https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx27yx1y0deo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx27yx1y0deo
hellgas00 2y ago
[Reposting a comment from ChocolateGod that was flagged and made dead despite being a legitimate good faith question] > Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster. Not saying Assad wasn't a sadistic monster, but do you really think an ISIS-related group running the state is going to be any better? Christians are already being persecuted.

bpodgursky 2y ago

Can you concretely suggest what each side should have done at some point in time, to avoid being where we are now? I feel like you're making a rhetorical statement that's hard to map to specific actions.

lesuorac 2y ago
If neither side has really changed what's to prevent them from going to war again? It happened for a reason and unless that reason has changed then one should expect the same outcome.
- bpodgursky 2y ago
  Concretely, Israel will not be caught offguard for an Oct 7-style attack for quite a while. So the macguffin (hundreds of hostages) will probably not come up again.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  Hamas was built over a long period by Iran, through Syria. Iran is much weaker than before, Syria is no longer a route to send supplies, and Hezbollah has been gutted.
  - sudosysgen 2y ago
    Hamas was for the vast majority of its existence anti-Iran, and instead was supported by various Sunni groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. Extrapolating convenient conclusions doesn't help anyone.
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
      And that portion of its existence is not relevant to what happened in this war This was a proxy war with Iran
nick_ 2y ago
Oh please. Israelis could have voted in a different party/leader that would have taken another path. West Bank settlement expansions could have been halted and reversed (to a sensible degree of course). These are bread and butter suggestions that everyone who thinks honestly about this conflict sees clearly. There are of course many more suggestions I didn't state. To pretend that there was just no way to avoid this is shameful.

Supermancho 2y ago

Israel has a bunch of land that is politically and practically simpler to annex, than before. Israel is more secure by far, knowing that the US will continue to fund them even in the face of being convicted of humanitarian crimes.

ChocolateGod 2y ago
> being convicted of humanitarian crimes. The UN and ICC have both shown they're absolutely powerless and useless.
- Supermancho 2y ago
  This is not in dispute. None of what I initially posted is in dispute. I would propose this "war" was relatively cheap in Israeli civilian lives lost for what was gained. Demonstrably increasing the reach of Israel action without external repercussions, makes it a security win for Israel. None of the international community will put troops in front of Israel to benefit Palestine. That's worth something to know (converting an unknown to a known).
  - ChocolateGod 2y ago
    Part of me thinks a Peacekeeping Force (e.g. UN, EU etc) should go into Gaza to control it until a government is formed and stop Hamas from taking back control but I don't see the US not blocking it.
robertoandred 2y ago
If Israel wanted Gaza, they wouldn’t have given it up twenty years ago.
- malandrew 2y ago
  My understanding is that there's been renewed interest in building the Ben Gurion Canal proposed by Howard D. MacCabee in 1963. https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/453701.pdf https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/453701.pdf Google's Ngram viewer isn't working for the term "Ben Gurion Canal" for some reason, but it would show approximately when renewed interest started getting traction since the proposal was declassified in 1996. I wouldn't be surprised if the 2021 Evergreen fiasco was contributory to this renewed interest but this is pure speculation on my part.

steviedotboston 2y ago

Hamas has been considerably weakened. Their arsenal of rockets and weapons is depleted. At the beginning of the war thousands of rockets were being shot into Israel and now there are very few and the ones that are are quite crude. Hezbollah entered the war immediately and said the only way they would exit is if Hamas exists. Israel retaliated, killed their leader, decimated their forces, and negotiated a ceasefire that got Hezbollah to back off on their original terms. Lebanon just elected an anti-Hezbollah President. During all of this, Assad was deposed. Israel's main adversary is Iran. They are the ones who fund and supply Hamas and Hezbollah, and were the key ally of Assad. They attacked Israel multiple times during the war and Israel responded in kind, the assesments seem to be that Israel's responses were quite strong. So prior to October 7, Iran had strong proxies and allies all over the region. They are now either in shambles or deposed. The goal of the war for Israel is to prevent another October 7th style attack from occuring. I'd say they have made significant steps towards accomplishing that from a military perspective.

verdverm 2y ago
Israel has likely also created multiple generations of anger and hate against themselves. They may have reduced the likelihood of another Oct 7 in the near term, but 50 years is not something I would count on
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  [flagged]
- flumpcakes 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - xg15 2y ago
    And yet there is the speech by Jordan's foreign minister who makes clear that the Arab states are interested in relations with Israel - as a normal state and as part of a two-state solution with mutual sovereignty, but not with a state that behaves as if they had some divine right to dominate the entire region. https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-10-02/ty-article-opinion/.premium/jordans-foreign-minister-told-israelis-and-inconvenient-truth/00000192-4dc3-d2cc-a5d7-edff907e0000 https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-10-02/ty-article-opinio...

verdverm 2y ago

There is an argument to be made that Iran and Hezbollah have been degraded, which makes the entire region safer. I'm not going to claim this, as I'm no expert, but there is a an argument to be made. For the Gazans, the next months and years will be more determinative. Will they get the support and aid they need to rebuild and keep terrorist organizations from running their country? (They should have their own country instead of being effectively an open air prison)

hackerknew 2y ago
Gaza has been its own country / Palestinian State since 2006 and they have been recipients of foreign aid for many years, which is how they fund these attacks.

null_deref 2y ago

Israel is definitely more secure, because of the on front confrontation with Iran and its proxies. 1. Hezbollah suffered heavy blows and lost significant political and military power in Lebanon. Didn’t retaliate nearly as heavy as feared. 2. For the first time Israel struck with its military directly in Iran and showed real abilities by destroying most of Iran’s air defenses. 3. As a result of the two points above and other reasons, there was significant shift of powers in Syria which led to Assad regime collapse (significant amount of supplies to Iran’s main proxy Hezbollah went through Syria), but the affect of the regime change in Syria is yet to be determined.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

wesselbindt 2y ago

By conservative estimates (see the 2024 Khatlib paper in the Lancet), roughly 7--9% of the population of Gaza will perish as a result of the actions of Israel on the strip. Many more will flee. According to UN, clearing the rubble in Gaza will take 15 years. That's just clearing the rubble, not rebuilding the damaged buildings, which is about 66% of the total. There are some clear indications that the intention of the Israeli government is to destroy in whole, or in part, the Palestinian people, for example by killing members of the group, or inflicting upon it conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of the group. There's a wealth of quotes from high ranking officials, going all the way up to the Knesset, stating almost exactly that. One quote I think of from time to time is "Erase them, their families, mothers and children." given in a motivational speech directed at the IDF. Given that this is their intention (and I have every reason to believe it is), I'd say that this has been a pretty successful affair for Israel. Sure, Jews worldwide (including Israel) are much less safe now than they were two years ago, but the Israeli government does not give me the impression that this is at all their goal.

nearbuy 2y ago
This makes no sense to me. If 8% (171,000 people) of Gaza were to perish, that would leave Gaza with the population it had in 2020. The ceasefire reportedly will have Israel pulling out from Gaza fully and a massive influx of humanitarian aid is expected to enter Gaza. If the ceasefire goes through, the death rate will drop greatly and the population will begin to grow again. As horrible as the destruction has been, this is nowhere close to eliminating the people of Gaza. If genocide was a goal of any of the Israeli leadership, they abjectly failed.
- wesselbindt 2y ago
  > If genocide was a goal of any of the Israeli leadership, they abjectly failed This take is incredibly callous. Suppose 8% of everyone you gets killed. This is a shockingly brutal thing to happen to a population. Aside from that you're wrong on a factual level. The "in part" part of the '51 convention is there precisely so people don't say "there's still Jews left so technically the Holocaust wasn't a genocide". The holocaust was a genocide, and this is a genocide (yes, "is", they're still dropping bombs on a population half of which is under 18). There's a reason the relevant cases haven't been thrown out of the ICJ and ICC.

1024core 2y ago

That (security) was never Hamas' intention; they were worried about being forgotten, after Israel and KSA were close to normalizing relations, and now they've managed to gunk up the gears of any peace process, at the cost of 40,000 Gazan lives. So... a victory for Hamas? They've never been interested in peace anyways.

School-Cotton 2y ago

[flagged]