Geopolitical origami?
I don't have too much to go on, as I am not that motivated to analyse the dumpster fire of the Gaza conflict in tedious detail, but that doesn't mean I have to bow out of the debate and leave the field to all the lesser minds and shills out there, energetically pushing down the collective IQ level.
So, here is my two cents on what the Israeli plan is.
So, here is my two cents on what the Israeli plan is.
As you can see from the map above, the Israelis are hoping to get the Northern half of the population of Gaza (around one million people) to up sticks and move in with the Southern half. This means they intend to take over half the territory of Gaza. A reoccupation, if you wish, except they just want to occupy empty rubble.
This plan suits the Israeli government in a number of important and rather obvious ways.
First of all, it shortens the length of border the IDF will have to defend in future, freeing up troops to protect the much longer border that Israeli settlements in the West Bank have created.
First of all, it shortens the length of border the IDF will have to defend in future, freeing up troops to protect the much longer border that Israeli settlements in the West Bank have created.
Secondly, it shows hardliners in Israel that the government has done something "substantial" to hit back hard at Hamas and the entire Gazan population, whom hardliners also blame. The government needs to do this because it was caught with its pants down, and innocent Israelis paid a high price.
Thirdly, this plan keeps Israeli casualties relatively low. The Israeli army has a lot of barely-trained conscripts and reservists with relatively low fighting morale, plucked from their generally pleasant "normie" lives. The IDF is desperate to avoid street fighting in heavily-populated, built-up areas with these guys (and girls), so the solution is simply to depopulate Northern Gaza by encouraging flight, and then to "build down" the built-up areas through heavy artillery fire (with much of the ammunition diverted from US supplies to Ukraine).
Fourthly, if handled correctly, this process should avoid the horrendous civilian casualties due to direct Israeli military action that Israel's backers in the West can't stomach.
Fifthly, and most importantly, this strategy aims to push the entire Gazan population into half the space it previously occupied, along with the destruction of much of the essential infrastructure. This, the Israeli government hopes, will lead to anarchy, chaos, and multi-directional resentment that will find its focus in Hamas. In other words, by intensifying the cauldron of Gaza, the Israeli government hopes that it can induce the Gazans themselves to rise up and destroy Hamas, while much of the resultant depopulation can be blamed on anarchy, in-fighting, disease, and a lack of humanitarian aid from the West and the Arab World, rather than on the brutality of the IDF.
If it is unable to pull this off, the IDF might be forced to engage in street fighting in heavily-populated, built-up areas, leading to heavy Israeli casualties and horrendous Palestinian civilian casualties, leading to both a domestic backlash against the Netanyahu government and a massive drop in support in the West, where support is already pretty fragile. This would be highly dangerous as it would probably ensure other forces joining the fray on the Palestinian side.
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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying it here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia).
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