We are a few hours away from a likely ground incursion / invasion of Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) into Northern Gaza. For the past week I’ve been trying to figure out a more reasonable way that the world can deal with Hamas, as an alternative to what the Israeli government is considering doing. I am having trouble coming up with a rational option aside from status quo (leave the group as is) or Israel’s option (eliminate no matter the cost).
What other option exists to deal with a group with the following fact sheet (and please correct anything that is factually wrong in the statements below):
Hamas was elected democratically in 2006 and stayed in power since then.
The leaders of Hamas and their families live in relative luxury while the average Gazan lives near the poverty line.
They promote radicalized education in Gaza, half of which are under the age of 19.
They use humanitarian aid for war (for example, digging up water pipes and turning them into missiles).
They strategically place their military operations near school, hospitals, residences, and commercial areas.
They convince Gazans to stay in urban areas and not to head to places IDF is advising them to go to in order not to get bombed.
They recruit minors to their cause and send them in paragliders to murder people (and be murdered by IDF)
They have the sympathy of many, EVEN IN ISRAEL, because of the civilian death toll every time there is an IDF operation.
I really don’t know what can be done that is better than either option presented above.
I wonder if anyone has a sufficiently good model of how societies work, to predict how would Palestinians (or Israelis) react to different things. I certainly don’t. But I believe it is necessary to perceive the situation game-theoretically not as a conflict of two players, but rather as millions of independent players on each side, suffering from lack of coordination, each side tormented by their own local incarnation of Moloch.
For example, no matter what we conclude that “Israel should do” or “Palestine should do”, in real life those decisions would need to be made by specific leaders, who have their own interests, not necessary well aligned with the interests of the side they formally represent, and above all, they probably want to avoid assassination or losing the next election. That may drastically limit the choices available to them.
On the bottom of the pyramid, the same applies to e.g. an average Palestinian. In their place, would you rather do something that risks strong retaliation from the side of Israel, and let’s say 5% chance of your family getting killed by IDF? Or make an opposite choice, and face a 90% chance of your family getting killed by Hamas for “treason”? To understand the motivation, we need to notice all the predictable consequences. Then, seemingly stupid behavior may start making sense in a very sad way.
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Not sure if I can make an analogy with Europe, but I am thinking about the aftermath of WW2. The natural thing to do would be to punish the losing side in various creative ways (killing their high status people, looting and raping the average ones, burning their cities, taking parts of their territory, imposing heavy fines), and then mostly get bored and leave them alone.
But when you think about it, “taking parts of their territory, imposing heavy fines, and later leaving them alone” was the exactly the aftermath of WW1, and now in hindsight we see how that strongly contributed to WW2. One might conclude that pissing people off and then turning your back to them is actually not a smart strategy, no matter how much they may deserve it.
Seems like there are basically two ways to lasting peace: be nice to your neighbors (and hope that they understand and reciprocate), or crush them so completely that they will never pose a danger again (and hope than you did not underestimate their resilience). Or maybe, first crush the resistance and show them who is the boss… and only after they fully accept that they lost (but not sooner!), give them a second chance and perhaps a helping hand. (The important thing is to get the timing right; to make it perfectly clear that the second chance is mercy, not a combination of their successful resistance and your weakness.) This worked unbelievably well in both Germany and Japan.
(Note that Soviet Union chose the “loot and rape, take territory, and impose fines” option regardless. Today, Germany reciprocates by supplying weapons to Russia’s enemy. Probably not a coincidence.)
Note that I am not speculating on who “deserves” what. All justice in this world is at best a very crude approximation anyway. I think the lesson is to perceive the aftermath of a conflict not as an end of the old era (which would, for literary reasons, require a dramatic punishment), but rather as a beginning of the new one. The winner gets to choose what kind of neighbor will he have in future. He needs to choose wisely.
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I don’t have a good model of how fragile civilization actually is; what kind of disasters we can overcome, and what kind leaves permanent damage. We had a pandemic recently, it changed our lives in many ways, and now it’s mostly over, and it seems like there will be few permanent consequences. (The companies are now trying to eliminate work from home, which suggests that even the positive consequences will disappear.) On the other hand, seemingly positive inventions like television or social networks can do irreparable damage to social fabric. (Deepfakes, surprisingly, did not. Yet. It seems like most people actually do not care about technical realism of evidence, only whether it supports their preexisting opinions or not. The ones you can convince by a deepfake, you could already convince by a blog post or a video game footage.)
Dictatorships seems quite resistant. Not the specific dictators, although some of them live quite long. But rather the fact that the person most likely to defeat a dictator is the future dictator. The system is more “antifragile” than the people who represent it. It is difficult to organize a democratic opposition in a dictatorship, and murdering the potential opposition leaders is easy. I don’t remember an example when a dictator was overthrown without foreign help; and all currently existing dictators are probably a proof that often even the foreign help is not enough.
Regardless how Hamas got to power, it is naive to expect that it will just go away peacefully. Not even if 90% of Palestinians started secretly hating it. (Secretly, because they do not want their entire families to get murdered.) If a few years later someone replaces Hamas, it will probably be another organization bloodthirsty enough to be a serious competitor.
(Analogically, once you elect Hitler, you cannot simply “unelect” him later. It does not work that way anymore. The rules have changed. SA can still be replaced by SS, but that is not really what you wanted.)
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It seems to me that Israel has successfully defeated the native population of Palestine, but handled the aftermath poorly. I have no idea what their options were at the moment, and how much this choice was conscious. (Remember that “Israel” is not one player, but millions of individual players following their own goals. Perhaps most of them would prefer to live in peace, but those are not necessarily the ones who make the decisions. An occasional conflict is a pretext to expand the territory. I certainly cannot be the only person who has noticed that.) From the perspective of peaceful future, this was a bad outcome.
Individual Palestinians are probably stuck in their situation, and cannot solve it without outside intervention. No matter how big threat IDF may be, Hamas is clearly worse. (Also, it’s not like opposing Hamas individually would somehow make you or your family safer from IDF. The chance to become a collateral damage remains the same. Except now you also have a more urgent problem to worry about.)
The WW2-style solution for Israel would be to own the fact that they are already deciding the future of the region anyway, conquer the entire territory of Palestine (without annexing it), remove the current leaders and put them in prisons, establish a puppet government, keep a military presence there (to stop anyone from interfering with this process), and do a massive reeducation of the Palestinian population. Keep rewarding the people who do the right things, and punishing the people who do the wrong things. Build a new police force from local people, and train them so that one day they would be able to defeat former Hamas members if they try to get their power back. Very slowly teach local people self-government. Like, first let them peacefully choose their representatives on local levels, and only allow them to choose among the “safe” options (like: here is a budget for your village, how much would you like to spend on schools, how much on playgrounds?); if they act responsibly, expand their competence.
The question is whether Israel actually has enough military power to do this. In some sense, peace is more difficult than war, because in war you just need to eliminate a few enemy centers, but in peace you need to protect every village (otherwise your enemies can establish a base there). To be a good policeman is more difficult than to be a soldier.
(Notice how USA has a great army, but their police sucks. Also, how defeating Nazi Germany and Soviet Union turned out to be an easier task than defeating Taliban.)
An important part is not to do a half-assed job. Remember, if you leave too soon, all people who joined your side will be murdered the next day. So it might be better to do this all in a part of Palestine, rather than in the entire Palestine partially. (Choose a part that would be able to defend itself from the remaining part, if necessary.)
(Maybe the word I am looking for is “protectorate”? Not sure.)
This response is not unreasonable, but the description of “WW2-style solution” seems ignorant of the fact that Israel did occupy Gaza for decades, and had something very similar to a “puppet government” there, in the form of the Fatah party in control of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005, and Hamas violently took over in 2007.
The rest of it operates under the hypothesis that Hamas is opposed to the objective interests of the Palestinians of Gaza. This ends up being tautological if objective self-interest is defined as ‘not being killed during Israeli retaliation.’ But this is a very narrow definition. There is a common saying that ‘it is better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees.’ One need not drag in religious extremism or poor education as explanatory factors for an average Gazan viewing their own death under Israeli bombardment as an acceptable alternative to living with the indignity of the perpetual Israeli blockade of Gaza, to say nothing of the evisceration of dreams of Palestinian sovereignty.
Note that the preceding was not an endorsement of last week’s attack, I’m just calling out the weaknesses in the depiction of Gazans as nothing but uneducated bomb fodder to the Hamas regime.
I don’t know much about history of Israel, but Wikipedia says that Fatah fought against IDF, and was considered a terrorist organization by Israel. If that is true, it is not the kind of “puppet government” I suggested to install.
I can think of no good solution. Here’s a mediocre solution, laden with violations of human rights and prone to failure and going back to square one:
1. Israel retakes Gaza, eliminates Hamas and installs a puppet regime of Israeli Arabs. With cues from China, Orwell and post-WW2 Germany, Gaza is made into a complete panopticon—cameras, internet monitoring, a network of spies, you name it. This is very problematic, but it’s preferable to collective punishment. This is meant to be temporary.
2. Using American and European money, The homes, schools, hospitals and stores are rebuilt. Massive famine relief is performed. A UBI plan is initiated to allow the Gazan economy to get back on its feet. It is important that Gazans will feel that the post-defeat period has been a big step upwards in terms of life quality.
3. Using Saudi/Emirati money, the mosques are rebuilt. They are made to be the fanciest, most beautiful mosques in the region. Streets and institutions are named after Palestinian poets and artists (not terrorists). It is important that Gazans won’t feel like their culture is being erased.
3. A new education curriculum is developed which fuses western education, progressive values and Muslim tradition while discouraging political violence. There are lots of art, music and sports scholarships.
4. Safe spaces for LGBTQ people are established. These will cultivate a local progressive movement that will be in touch with Israeli leftist organizations, and will serve as an additional front against Islamic fundamentalist violence.
5. Using Saudi/Emirati investments, an artificial island is built in front of Gaza, and on it—hotels and gaudy tourist attractions. This is for developing the economy.
6. Gaza’s tax system is made to attract international companies and billionaires. They will have an interest in a peaceful Gaza and will pull the strings to keep it so.
7. As Gazans become deradicalized, they get more and more permits to enter Israel and visit the West Bank. This improves their economic prospects.
8. Once Gaza is no longer a threat to Israel, pressure is enacted on Israel to give Gaza independence.
Sun Tzu says that the keys to victory lie in knowing yourself and your enemy. When I got to #4, it became obvious that you know very little about Islam. There are no LGBTQ+ safe spaces in Islam. A relevant wikipedia page says “Homosexual acts were forbidden (haram) in traditional Islamic jurisprudence and therefore were subject to punishment. The types of punishment prescribed for non-heterosexual activities include flogging, stoning, and the death penalty, depending on the particular situation and the school of thought.” The major Muslim countries are signatories to a UN counter-statement opposing gay rights. See here for a consensus statement of the Australian National Imam’s Council, whom I would expect to be much more liberal than the average Palestinian, saying, “From the time of the Prophet until now, all scholars of every time and era, have agreed that the practice of homosexuality is a forbidden act and a sin in Islam.” It’s just a complete non-starter.
This hasn’t historically always been the case—there was widespread public acceptance of homosexuality in the first 500 years of Islam’s existence, with homoerotic poetry being a staple of their culture—see e.g. here.
Judaism also unequivocally rejects homosexuality, yet many modern orthodox synagogues happily have openly gay members of their congregation. So this doesn’t seem quite as impossible as you make out.
In 14 centuries of Islamic history from Spain to Indonesia, with limited travel and much regional variation for most of it, there will be many opportunities to find examples that match our own culture’s Current Thing. Some Muslims are hypocrites; some Westerners look for homosexual subtext where none was intended. Many Muslim empires have risen in vigor and fallen in decadence. Still, the orthodox position is clear—homosexuality is both sinful and illegal. I’ve seen a Jew eat pork and laugh it off; it would be a mistake to make pork a key component of an appeal to militant Jews.
More to the point, in this era gay rights are associated with the West at its most liberal, which is exactly what Islamists oppose. Activity that might have been tolerated a thousand years ago is now perceived as a Western obsession and its practitioners as enemy sympathizers.
I guess it would make more sense to try to emulate a more secular country, such as Turkey. A country where individual people can be religious, but the state as a whole is not. A priest can tell you that something is a sin, but cannot organize your murder.
I think these ideas are well meaning, and parts are good, but it is maybe a little bit paternalistic towards the palestinians, none of your steps seem to involve asking (although part of that is in the nature of ‘suggest a solution’ type questions). Maybe they can vote on the tax haven and gaudy tourist attractions.
I think you have pattern matched Hamas to religious fundamentalism, and are imagining them a bit like the Taliban. I dont know if this characterisation is correct. I feel like they are primarily a nationalist thing, not a religious one. Like, most people fighting for american independence were presumably christian, but that wasnt the point. And my guess is that is how Hamas see and bill themselves.
And your guess would be completely, hopelessly wrong. There is an actual document called “The Covenant of Hamas” written in 1988 and updated in 2017, which you can read here, it starts with
… so, uh, not a good start for the “not religious” thing. It continues:
In the document they really seem to want to clarify at every opportunity that yes, indeed they are religious at the most basic level, and that religion impacts every single aspect of their decision-making. I strongly recommend that everyone here read the whole thing, just to see what it really means to take your religion seriously.
The 2017 version has been cleaned up, but in the 1988 covenant you also had this gem:
> The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’ (Article 7)
>The HAMAS regards itself the spearhead and the vanguard of the circle of struggle against World Zionism… Islamic groups all over the Arab world should also do the same, since they are best equipped for their future role in the fight against the warmongering Jews.′
Yes, it is paternalistic. Part of my point was that the situation in Gaza is so dire in terms of life quality and radicalization that a dystopian colonial social engineering project would be almost humane in comparison. This is where the great challenge lies—how to ascertain that after Hamas is eliminated (and it must be; after October 7th Israel will not rest until it’s gone), Gazans won’t promptly create its sequel.
But yeah, everything past the deradicalization stage is just a suggestion, and if it’s successful, Gazans get to choose the direction of their economy.
These two things are incompatible. Their culture is the entire problem. To get a sense of the sheer vastness of the gap, consider the fact that Arabs read on average 6 pages per year. It would take a superintelligence to somehow convince the palestinians to embrace western thought and values while not feeling like their culture is being erased.
From your link: “A general lack of educational opportunities in poor Arab countries can also add to these facts. Research for the Arab League region estimates that about 100 million people ? almost one in three—struggle to read and write.” I’m at best unsure how much cultute is the Problem. Even if “not reading” was a cutural pillar for arabs, that can be changed without subverting everything else.
Which peaceful(-ish) branch of Islam would be most compatible with the current beliefs of the majority of Palestinians? Perhaps it would make sense to ask them to send their priests to convert people and to explain why Hamas were a bunch of heretics that are now rightfully punished by Allah. (The idea is to find priests who genuinely believe that.)
Trying to replace enemy leadership with more congenial leadership never works. You reliably get a corrupt puppet government and an insurgency. The only exception is after a comprehensive defeat of the enemy (i.e. post-WWII Germany and Japan), which begs the question (in the sense that this tactic would allow us to win only in cases where we’ve already won).
Egypt was controlling the territory before 1967.
A good solution would be to get Egypt to annex Gaza and rule it while forbidding Hamas.
Given that Egypt would get a lot of trouble out of doing this, we might pay them off by foreign investment to build up Gaza and the nearby other Egyptian territory.
Realistically, Israel and the west already have their plans laid and aren’t going to change them. In that sense, there are no options.
Unrealistically, Israel should relocate. To Moldova, specifically. As for the Moldovans, buy them out. Offer up enough money and choices for new citizenship that the vast majority accept and leave and Israel can accept the remainder as full citizens without having to worry about cultural dilution/losing democratic elections/etc.
In a even more unrealistically reasonable world, middle eastern countries would be willing to fund this, as they’re the main beneficiaries.
On that note, Taiwan should relocate next.
In a world where Jews have so little cultural identity that they’re happy to relocate Israel to Moldova, Palestinians and Israelis might as well have so little national identity that they’re happy to live together in a one state solution.
Cultural identity, in any reasonable world, is about the people around you and your way of life, not where you are on a map.
I don’t know about Moldova, but it seems obvious that the creation of modern Israel depended on the idea that the Palestinians could be managed and equally obvious that it hasn’t worked out that way. The only real endgames are genocide or leaving and personally I’d vote for leaving.
Moldova isn’t the only plausible option or anything, my reasoning is just, it has good land, the population is low enough that they could be bought out a price that isn’t too absurd, they’re relatively poor and could use the money, it’s a relatively new country with a culture similar to a number of other countries and it’s squarely in western territory and thus shouldn’t be much of a source of conflict.
One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the food supply in the Middle East and North Africa used to come from Russia and Ukraine (link). Actions targeted at increasing food security in the region won’t solve the political issues, but probably would turn down the temperature of the region. It would also help with the immigration crisis in Europe. It’s not an easy or quick solution (growing food takes time, and the scale of the problem is staggering), but it’s hard to see how peace would come without food.
I don’t think taking sides or assuming one side is more justified than the other, is constructive. Both sides are doing horrible things to each other: It’s the collective insanity of war.
Of course people have to protect themselves, and something has to be done to resolve the situation. But I don’t think the current methods are the best solution.
What can other countries do?
Many are sending weapons to the side they support—this doesn’t sound like a good way of reducing bloodshed.
Turkey is offering a neural place to hold negotiations—that seems like a good start.
Lebanon is joining in with some of the fighting—this is bizarre, as they’ve previously enjoyed 20+ years of peace, and were busy promoting tourism as central to their economy.
The Israeli state is encouraging Palestinian civilians to leave before their bombardment commences—that’s a helpful concession, but it’s mixed as they still intend violence.
It seems likely there will be a refugee crisis, both before and after the bombardment. So other countries preparing refugee camps, and the Red Crescent, UN, etc helping distribute aid, seems likely.
The root causes are a refusal to share the land, and violent actions promoting retaliation. I’ve heard it said that this is also a war for fresh water. Even without further conflict, Palestinian civilians are dependent upon foreign aid for food, water, fuel, and electricity. They must also be dependent upon outside services for communications, as the Israeli state managed to cut that off.
The logical conclusion would be to share the land, to stop killing each other, and to set up desalination plants, to supply arid inland areas from coastal regions.
But people there don’t want to behave rationally at this time—for whatever reason, so they have to get in a peaceful & cooperative frame of mind first, ie they have to rebuild trust.
I think it would help to compare to a similar impasse in Northern Ireland. While I don’t think it would be representative to say the NI conflict is over, it’s certainly calmer.
Two main things changed in NI: Negotiation leading to powersharing, and an amnesty ie forgiveness for past incursions.
Powersharing, in the form of collective decision-making, would take power away from the advocates of violence. So it would effectively be a combined government for both states, effectively turning it into one state. The first consequence would be allowing civilians from either side to settle where they chose. This would also defeat the point of violence, because either side would be shooting their own people in an exchange of fire. The second consequence would be land-sharing without moving any borders.
In NI, the British government removed its towers and fortifications along the border, so that sort of thing could be a third consequence. They didn’t wait until things had completely calmed down: They did it early, as a visible gesture of trust, and of change. It was, and is, of course reversible, so it wasn’t entirely magnanimous.
Negotiations started in NI as a series of small concessions by both sides. Things moved slowly at first, but eventually small steps turned into big ones, and then visible changes started happening. Once civilians saw changes happening, attitudes changed as well. It’s not perfect; I would say peace has been fumbled rather than planned. But it is constructive change, which is what we all want, right?
The alternative is further bloodshed, probably eventually resulting in the wiping out and occupation of the Gaza Strip, a diaspora of Palestinian civilians in neighbouring countries, and retaliations continuing along the new border, probably with support from some neighbouring countries.
I’m interested in opinions about these points, and corrections to anything I’ve got wrong, as some of the history is from my own memory, which is turn is based upon news sources which are undoubtedly biased.