Even if they manage to kill most of the terrorists who are active now, new terrorists are bound to spring up. Otherwise Israel would have already solved its terrorist problems, wouldn’t it?
Israel hasn’t solved its problems because it keeps coupling smart military decisions with dumb political ones - like giving back Gaza, which infused the terrorists with a lot of hope for the future. They have to keep the pressure on them until they realize that winning this war simply isn’t possible.
Disregarding the U.N. doesn’t really strengthen the position of Israel.
Yes, but if they’d listen to everything the UN says, their position practically wouldn’t exist. See my earlier post about how the UN consistently slams Israel for absolutely everything it does. And I won’t even go into the resolution the UN made in the 1970’s (since rescinded) that equated Zionism with racism.
but don’t you wonder what the rest of the world makes of this situation? Can the Arabs themselves control the U.N.?
The entire world thought that getting rid of the Jews in the Holocaust was at best a good idea and at worst something they shouldn’t have to worry about. Believe it or not, often the entire world is dead wrong.
People of both sides removing their support from warmongers is the ultimate solution.
Tarring the Israeli side as “warmongers” is unfair. While there are some people who want this conflict to continue, they’re few and far between. Most people want peace. Sometimes that means getting rid of bad guys to get it. Again, Israel’s main goal is the security of its citizens. If they sit back and do nothing, that goal is compromised. They’ve tried diplomacy for the last fifteen years, and it hasn’t worked.
The Islamist group Hamas has reached agreement with other Palestinian factions on a statehood initiative that implictly recognises Israel’s right to exist
This sentence is being bandied about by people who never actually read the document. Practically anything can be “implicit” if you’re looking for it - but Hamas has never said it recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and has often said that it doesn’t. How exactly do you plan on having talks with someone who wants to destroy you?
The state you describe sounds like every other Arabic state in the region and Israel as well.
The difference is that no other Arabic state a) has a sizable Jewish population, or b) is right in Israel’s backyard, or c) consists of two wedges of land which straddle Israel and needs a passageway smack through the middle. Security concerns would be far more serious.
My question is, why do they destroy the facilities Palestinians use. The more miserable they get, the more likely they are to support attacks against Israel. Bombing the Gaza office of the Hamas minister for security doesn’t sound like a measure that checks in violence.
There are long-term goals and short-term ones. Think about it this way. The Palestinians currently want Israel to stop existing in any way possible. Being nice to them is not suddenly going to get them to stop thinking that way. All it’ll do is reinforce the idea that Israelis are weak and hence are easy targets. This has been proven in the past, e.g. after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon. Pressure has to be put on the Palestinian government to stop their destructive tendencies. And note that Israel is not abandoning the Palestinian people - while they’re making the job of their government more difficult, they’re also sending humanitarian aid to them. Yes, they’re sending aid to their enemies. Their faith in their government is already reduced; we have to start reducing their faith in the terrorists, and show them that their way will not result in any profits whatsoever.
for every Israeli point there’s a Palestinian one and vice versa.
The Palestinian ones are often made by people who know little about the situation, do not appreciate Israel’s position in the least, and are touting stuff that “everyone knows”. For example, the Palestinians did not live in the West Bank or Gaza before 1967. In fact, there was no such thing as a Palestinian before 1967. The “territories” are not Palestinian land; the best you can say is that both Israel and Palestine have claims to it and it’s “disputed”.
This is not an equal argument. People like saying it is because that way they get to sit on the fence. But moralistically, strategically, and ethically, the two sides are not the same at all.