-
I guess I just think the examples you give are terrible! Can you really say that Israelis or Palestinians know the impact of their policy? Israel doesn't know whether using more force on Palestine will prevent attacks from Hamas or provoke them; similarly it doesn't know if giving more freedom would lead to peaceful coexistence or mean they are more susceptible to attacks from some of those who don't think the Israeli state should exist.
Hamas don't know what the reaction will be to an attack - they can guess it will provoke a violent reaction, but how far, and what will the international reaction be?
The idea this is complicated but somehow all utterly predictable and capable of being modelled as it has direct consequences just seems wrong
andyfallsoff-
Yes, I can see that I explained myself poorly, so let me have one more go before I delete my account and never visit this website again (which would be a shame because, you know, buying and selling bits of bikes etc...)
I think another way of looking at what I was trying to say is this:
When people react to something like war in the Middle East by saying "oh but it's all so complicated isn't it?" and part of what they mean is "you're not going to get me to condemn Israel, and here's a good rhetorical shield to help me with that", they strictly meant to say "it's all so complex", i.e. It's completely impossible to untangle so (hand-wave) we can't apportion blame or reliably say that one side has the advantage of a huge asymmetry of political and military power and thus also a higher burden of responsibility for the ultimate volume of blood shed. So the situation is complicated, but that word just doesn't mean what they think it means, or justify what they think it justifies.gets coat
leaves forum -
Israel doesn't know whether using more force on Palestine will prevent attacks from Hamas or provoke them
History tells us the answer to this. Extremism thrives off violence. Hamas is arguably only extant due to discontent with previous overuse of force by Israel, and the perceived subsequent lack of action by Fatah.
Elsewhere it is evident that increased strength of resistance has been shown in face of increasing violence.
Afghanistan (Britain)
Vietnam (France, then Japan, then France, then America)
Afghanistan (USSR)
Iraq (Britain and America)
Afghanistan (Americans and British)Hamas don't know what the reaction will be to an attack - they can guess it will provoke a violent reaction, but how far, and what will the international reaction be?
They absolutely did know, and they knew the extent. They knew that Israel would retaliate, as it always has done and has made Policy, with an Iron Fist, and this would lead to substantial, unavoidable, civilian casualties of Palestinians.
This makes the already abhorrent action taken by Hamas even more abhorrent.
As to the international reaction- they don't care. They're zealots.Violence doesn't work. One of the Intifadas had a set focus of following India and Gandhi's noncooperative nonviolent, though was inevitably co-opted by other elements.
Success was made on an international stage as well as within Israel, just as with India, and this has been lost to history in favour of bloody-minded violent means.
E11_FTW
Aldosterone
Did I? Always happy to be corrected, but I was working on the basis of this sort of distinction by Rick Nason:
On this basis, the main aspects of this situation are complicated, but not inextricably complex. With apologies for a very crude example, you know that if you don't make murderous incursions into Southern Israel you won't provoke specific and calamitous reprisals, and if you don't bomb Gaza in retaliation you won't kill untold numbers of objectively innocent men, women and children. Most of the action-result pairs are predictable. And in the bigger picture, while the situation is complicated, it isn't so complex that it's impossible to see the asymmetry of it.
Again, happy to be corrected!