Beware of False Historical Comparisons

Friendship from without and unity within are both necessary and important, but ultimately Israel’s future hinges on military and diplomatic victory. In discussing whether and how those can be achieved, analysts have turned to a handful of comparisons from recent history. Robert Satloff cautions against pushing those analogies too far. For instance:

The disbelief prevalent in U.S. policy circles that Israel can achieve its war aims—the dismantling of Hamas military infrastructure and the end of Hamas political control of Gaza—emerges largely from the American experience in Iraq and Syria and the sense that Israel will not have the time it took the U.S.-led forces to do the job there. While it is certainly true that the battlefield experience may compel Israel to scale back its objectives, the differences between the Gaza situation and what U.S.-led forces faced in Syria/Iraq are substantial—the latter may inform the former but it doesn’t determine it.

Then there is the parallel to the Israeli campaign 40 years ago to drive the PLO out of Lebanon:

The similarity between Beirut 1982 and Gaza 2023 will likely lead to prognostication that the Hamas war may end like the former—not with a definitive outcome but an inconclusive, “live to fight another day” non-ending, akin to the U.S.-negotiated seaborne evacuation of Yasir Arafat and his battered band of PLO fighters from Beirut to Tunis. Perhaps that is how this chapter ends, with Hamas’s leaders in the tunnels of Gaza cashing in their bargaining chips of hostages in exchange for safe passage to some Arab city. But on close inspection, the analogy breaks down.

In this environment, evacuation by Hamas to some faraway capital—Doha, Algiers, or with delicious irony, to Qais Saied’s Tunis or Beirut itself—would be a dramatic step backward.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: First Lebanon War, Gaza War 2023, Hamas, Iraq war

The Mass Expulsion of Palestinians Is No Solution. Neither Are Any of the Usual Plans for Gaza

Examining the Trump administration’s proposals for the people of Gaza, Danielle Pletka writes:

I do not believe that the forced cleansing of Gaza—a repetition of what every Arab country did to the hundreds of thousands of Arab Jews in 1948— is a “solution.” I don’t think Donald Trump views that as a permanent solution either (read his statement), though I could be wrong. My take is that he believes Gaza must be rebuilt under new management, with only those who wish to live there resettling the land.

The time has long since come for us to recognize that the establishment doesn’t have the faintest clue what to do about Gaza. Egypt doesn’t want it. Jordan doesn’t want it. Iran wants it, but only as cannon fodder. The UN wants it, but only to further its anti-Semitic agenda and continue milking cash from the West. Jordanians, Lebanese, and Syrians blame Palestinians for destroying their countries.

Negotiations with Hamas have not worked. Efforts to subsume Gaza under the Palestinian Authority have not worked. Rebuilding has not worked. Destruction will not work. A “two-state solution” has not arrived, and will not work.

So what’s to be done? If you live in Washington, New York, London, Paris, or Berlin, your view is that the same answers should definitely be tried again, but this time we mean it. This time will be different. . . . What could possibly make you believe this other than ideological laziness?

Read more at What the Hell Is Going On?

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Palestinians