Oddbean

Palestinians _actually_ being powerless keeps Israelis alive. If anything the fact that Israel was attacked from Gaza, where Israel deoccupied and allowed Gazans to build a reasonably wealthy state (GDP/capital is only a little less than Egypt and Ukraine), tells the more ruthless Israelis that settlers had the right idea in illegally and immorally ooppressing the West Bank. Anyway, militarily Israel is absolutely crushing Northern Gaza right now. All Israel has to do is repeat the process in Southern Gaza, and prevent Gaza from being rebuilt tol be safe from Hamas attacks indefinitely. The fact that Gaza was allowed to import billions of dollars of supplies, especially concrete and fertilizer, is what got 1000+ Israeli civilians killed. Other Arab states mostly hate Palestinians, so crushing Gaza isn't going to cause Israel any real problems with their neighbors. Even Hezbollah has said a lot of angry things... and failed to follow up. Powerless people can hate you all they want. They can't hurt you. Speaking of, so do you think Ukraine should be negotiating? Or wiping out Russia? Same situation, just with different levels of relative military strength.

None of that addressed my point in the slightest: Israel is helping Hamas achieve its goals. I did not advocate for any specific immediate action, which you seem to have assumed, rather I only pointed out that Hamas is getting exactly what it wants.

To think Hamas had the ability to predict the future, speaks too highly of human intelligence. Everyone is shooting in the dark, especially Hamas. We don't know what will occur from this 10 years down the road. Hamas has reached some of their objectives but failed with many others. Acting like anything Israel does or doesn't do plays right into their hands is indicative of some strange pathology.

They are getting what they want from a fairly narrow view of things. 1) Israel have tried the generous approach; Hamas proliferate regardless. 2) Hamas have said that they thought the Oct 7 attack would lead to an explosion of attacks from Lebanon and elsewhere once word got out. Didn’t happen. That may have been their main goal. 3) The geopolitical landscape has changed with Saudi Arabia very interested (still) in normalizing relations. That will be a huge factor in the coming years. And with this line crossed, let’s see what happens with Qatar.

#2 is the big deal. Hamas (quite reasonably) thought they'd get more support. Other than thr Jew-hating Western left, they really haven't so far. It was rational for Hamas to launch this war, as Israel was getting close to normalizing relations with many Arab states. Hamas will succeed in stopping that temporarily. But if Israel continues to use violence against them the cost will likely be the destruction of Hamas. The most important thing for Israel to do is to not succumb to ceasefire pressure and actually finish the job. Tens of thousands of Hamas and Hamas supporters need to be killed, and the infrastructure of Gaza needs to be destroyed. And all this needs to happen with minimal IDF casualties, which means they should not risk IDF lives for Gazan lives.

It was probably the worst massacre of Jews since Hitler. Unlike the Holocaust, it was documented extremely well while it was happening. And on top of all that, lots of the left wing west is straight up celebrating it, even though they most likely know what actually happened. Under those conditions, it's reasonable to believe that most of the people pushing for a ceasefire would murder you if they had the chance.

Do you check the news? There's a long history of Arab states refusing to help Palestinians. There's also a long history of Palestinians causing problems in other Arab states, eg assassinations. This war was probably kicked off by Israel getting very close to normalizing relations with a bunch of Arab states.