throwaway920333

It's not that poorly thought out if you look at it from the right perspective. Iran is the biggest enemy of Israel, and Iran has been significantly weakened. Israel was wiling to roll the dice on regime change in Iran as long as someone else was doing most of the fighting.

The U.S. was a power in decline before the Iran war, and the U.S. population was turning against Israel anyhow, so it made sense to get America to give it one last hurrah before they became useless to Israel.

I think we're in agreement then. The current, democratically elected government of Israel intends to remove the Palestinian population and annex the territories.

When you talk about "a*holes like Netanyahu", he's the Prime Minister, and has been for something like 17 of the last 30 years. He speaks for the country. If Israelis don't support his actions, they should elect someone different.

Israel does not exist around Gaza. It exists on two sides of Gaza. On the Egyptian border, Israel has made an agreement with Egypt to prevent imports and exports, and on the Mediterranean, they prevent access to the sea by force.

Israel has long prevented the import of all sorts of goods. They do not provide "everything necessary." Israel also has prevented the export of almost all goods, so that the Palestinians will have no money and be completely dependent on Israel to provide for basic needs.

I'm sure you're right that if the border were opened up that Hamas would import weapons and attack Israel, which is why Israel surrounded Gaza, as I said.

As you say, "peace requires proof", but that goes both ways, and ever since Camp David collapsed, Israel has likewise proved that it does not intend to make peace by further expanding the settlements, and generally making the lives of the Palestinians intolerable, often in capricious ways that do not enhance Israeli security.

The very obvious long-term goal of Israel is to drive the Palestinians out of the occupied territories and annex them for Israeli use.

Israel never left Gaza. They surrounded it. They controlled the entire land border and didn't let ships sail or planes take off from Gaza. It's as if, after a prison riot, all of the guards just said fuck 'em and decamped to a perimeter around the prison with machine guns with orders to shoot to kill. Gaza is way too small and densely populated to be remotely self-sufficient.

Now, just to short-circuit the reply chain, you're going to say that Hamas would have just used the borders to move in weapons. Sure, that's true. In fact, they dug a bunch of tunnels under the Israeli controlled border crossings and smuggled in a bunch of weapons. Normal stuff like food and medicine though were constantly blocked or delayed.

By the way, I don't know how to solve this problem well at this point. Both sides have done enough evil shit to each other that they will want to kill each other for generations. Israel though, has never withdrawn from Gaza, and Israel has never agreed to abide by the terms of UN Resolution 242 that obligates them to withdraw from the 1967 occupied territories. What I expect to happen based on the ground reality and statements from members of the Israeli government is that the Palestinians in Gaza will either die or have their lives be made so intolerable that they leave, and then Israel will annex the land, just as they have in Jerusalem and many areas of the West Bank.

You can call it a fallacy, but it's scientifically proven to work (see the reference in the parent comment).