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We actually have very clear examples from history of how to turn an enemy into a friend: the Marshall plan and the similar levels of aid that the USA poured into post-nazi Germany, post-fascist Italy, post-imperial Japan. That turned War-torn bitter enemies into some of the staunchest US allies today.

Given Israel's position of power, they can and should be doing this. However, Israeli politicians just don't want this. Netanyahu has publicly boasted numerous times that he has personally been actively fighting to prevent a two-state solution. A one-state solution is unthinkable to even the moderates in Israel (the Supreme Court has repeatedly iterated that the government MUST protect both the Jewish and the Democratic character of Israel, so integrating the populations of Gaza and the West Bank as full Israeli citizens like this would be unconstitutional, but integrating them as second class citizens would also be unconstitutional).

So what is Israel's solution? Destroying Hamas is a pipe dream - the famine, death, and destruction they are pereptrating in Gaza today will, inevitably, create a new wave of terrorism, whether it's called "Hamas" or something else, as it always has throughout all of history.

The only real solution is massive economic investments in Gaza and the West Bank, and relying on police-like peacekeeping to prevent attacks as much as possible. This is the obvious long-term solution, anything else will worsen, not improve, Israel's security.

>We actually have very clear examples from history of how to turn an enemy into a friend: the Marshall plan

Japan, Germany, and Italy's people didn't practice a religion that required them to hate Americans. For Germany and Italy in particular, they followed (basically) the same religion as most Americans. Japan never really had much religion. And none of these WWII powers were theocratic states in any way, or governed by religious extremists.

The idea that Israel and Gaza are somehow going to become staunch allies seems like a pipe dream.

However, if you really do want to follow the WWII example, you're totally forgetting that the Allies completely flattened major cities and killed millions of civilians, intentionally, before finally getting unconditional surrenders from their enemies. Basically, one side had to hit rock-bottom before it could be built up again into an ally by the victor. Being so completely devastated and defeated in a major war caused the losing powers to collectively change, on a societal level, the way they viewed the world.

> Japan, Germany, and Italy's people didn't practice a religion that required them to hate Americans.

I'm not sure if you're equating Islam with hatred of the USA, or if you mean because so many Israelis believe Palestinians are "amalek", no better than bugs?

> Allies completely flattened major cities and killed millions of civilians, intentionally

And out of these horrors came international agreement on what actions are allowed during wartime, with the aim of ensuring such atrocities weren't repeated. Israel does not respect international law, and should be sanctioned.

>I'm not sure if you're equating Islam with hatred of the USA

I don't know where people are getting this. I'm equating Islam and Judaism with hatred of each other. It's what religions do. We have two effective countries, each one basically a theocracy (less so on the Israeli side, but the fact is, it was founded to be a Jewish state), and their religions are incompatible.

>And out of these horrors came international agreement on what actions are allowed during wartime, with the aim of ensuring such atrocities weren't repeated.

Sure, and the nation-building successes that came after those horrors have never been repeated.

> Japan, Germany, and Italy's people didn't practice a religion that required them to hate Americans.

I mean historically Jews were treated much better by Islam than they were by Christians, so I'm not sure that argument holds up.

Now, given that Israel has been occupying the land of the Palestinians for over fifty years now, there's definitely gonna be a lot of anger there. But flattening Gaza is definitely not gonna help with that.

You do know that the vast majority of Muslim people live in countries that don't have any higher hatred of the USA than the average person, right? The largest Muslim country is Indonesia, followed by Bangladesh and Pakistan. So religion has nothing to do with this.

The fact that Palestine is ruled by extremists is not a happenstance, it is a direct consequence of how the Palestinian people have been treated after the war. They lived under full military occupation until 2005, for close to 30 years. Is it any wonder that they became extremists?

What we are seeing are the exact same consequences of the Versailles agreement after WW1, with Germany becoming more and more radicalized because of the extreme economic conditions until a deranged lunatic came to power. This didn't repeat after WW2 exactly because, instead of occupying the defeated countries or imposing harsh economic penalties (both of which Israel did to Palestine after the war) we helped them build up.

Were there terrorists and radicalized groups in the Palestinian territories immediately after the war as well? Of course. But they were fringe groups, and were to be expected when so many had been displaced from their homes. They would have quieted down if the next 30 years had been full of economic growth, instead of military occupation and deprivation.

>What we are seeing are the exact same consequences of the Versailles agreement after WW1, with Germany becoming more and more radicalized because of the extreme economic conditions until a deranged lunatic came to power. This didn't repeat after WW2 exactly because, instead of occupying the defeated countries or imposing harsh economic penalties (both of which Israel did to Palestine after the war) we helped them build up.

You're missing some stuff. In Germany, the Allies didn't just build them up economically and hope for the best, they carried out a strong de-Nazification campaign to basically brainwash everyone out of the Nazi ideology that they had brainwashed themselves into. It wasn't like the Germans suddenly all realized they were wrong and horrible and their racist ideology was bad. This is the same reason the US tried similar de-Baathification after defeating Iraq.

For something similar to happen in Gaza, Israel needs to completely and utterly defeat the ruling government there, then use military forces to occupy the land and create a military government for a while until a civilian government, completely controlled by Israel, can be set up. Meanwhile, they have to control education and teach the Gazans, forcefully (i.e., no free-speech allowed), that their ideology is wrong (along with their interpretation of their Islamic religion). Anyone who publicly supports the atrocities of Hamas get to go to prison. (In Germany, denying the Holocaust or supporting the Nazi government is a criminal offense, remember.)

Is this really what you want?

>You do know that the vast majority of Muslim people live in countries that don't have any higher hatred of the USA than the average person, right? The largest Muslim country is ... So religion has nothing to do with this.

First, this isn't about the USA, it's about Israel vs. Gaza. The people in Gaza hate Israel.

Secondly, talking about Indonesia is like equating Catholics and Protestants, when they've historically hated each other and had wars. They might all be "Muslims" to you, but they're not the same and their beliefs aren't the same. Looking at the last century, it's pretty obvious that Middle Eastern Muslims are not happy about having a Jewish-dominated country in their midst. They aren't even happy about having different kinds of Muslims living around them, which is why they've had so many Sunni vs Shia wars, or ISIS who hated everyone who wasn't as ridiculously extremist as themselves.

> Destroying Hamas is a pipe dream - the famine, death, and destruction they are pereptrating in Gaza today will, inevitably, create a new wave of terrorism, whether it's called "Hamas" or something else, as it always has throughout all of history.

I've seen it argued that is exactly what Israel want - to whip up a new frenzy of Islamophobia, both encouraging immigration to Israel and also making it easier to attack their neighbours and advance their plan for "Greater Israel".

I thought it sounded unlikely at first, but with everything going on in the UK right now... I'm inclined to believe it.

Germany, Italy and Japan unconditionally surrendered. The Marshall Plan didn't create peace, it rebuilt societies once peace had been established.

Do we imagine that Germany would have agreed to peace in 1944 or 1939 if only the Allies had given enough aid?

Palestine has been under de facto Israeli control for more than 50 years. Israel won this war a long, long time ago.

And instead of helping to build a place for Palestinians to live, they kept them under direct military occupation until 2005, then under blockade plus air raids (in retaliation for Palestinian attacks, but usually ending up with a 10:1 ratio of dead Palestinians for each killed Israeli citizen).

What they're seeing now is exactly what the French and British discovered after WW1: if you try to humiliate and subjugate a whole country, even after you have just decisively won a war against them, you'll only radicalize them, ending in a bigger war (thankfully, Palestine doesn't have the resources to become Nazi Germany even if they want to).

The only solutions to have long lasting peace are either (a) investment and openness, or (b) complete annihilation or something close to it. I'm advocating as much as I can for (a).

> And instead of helping to build a place for Palestinians to live, they kept them under direct military occupation until 2005, then under blockade plus air raids (in retaliation for Palestinian attacks, but usually ending up with a 10:1 ratio of dead Palestinians for each killed Israeli citizen).

Gaza got billions of aid since 2005. Water pipes were built, material was delivered. What happened with it? They built one of the biggest underground tunnel systems in the world (as we can see right now), they dug out the pipes to use them for rockets, same with the material. And all the time they attacked Israel and then said "we cannot live in peace, Israel blockades us", leaving the 'after we attacked them again and again' part out.

Palestinians had all the help in the world to live a peaceful life in the Gaza strip with more freedoms over time if they can show that that freedoms don't lead to more dead Israelis. Each time they chose violence instead.

Oh, wow, billions! They even got water!

Seriously speaking, what they got is subsistence level help, essentially. The Marshall plan was about building up businesses, industry, banks - everything. Not some token support to just about prevent them from dying.

And, with the 30 years of military occupation and the 20 years of blockade, no real commerce could be made, so Gaza was kept entirely dependent on foreign aid.

For the record, Germany just finished paying off war reparations from WWII. 92 years later.

-https://www.history.com/news/germany-world-war-i-debt-treaty...

> What would be useful is a historic example where another approach has worked. I don't approve of Israel's methods. I'd prefer an egalitarian solution. But, I'm all out of ideas. Find me an instance of 2 co-habiting or neighboring groups that hate each other, have huge disputes and ended up in relative peace.

Northern Ireland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Ireland_peace_process

They still hate one another, but are mostly at peace.

> What would be useful is a historic example where another approach has worked.

Sticking to quite recent examples: South Africa, Basque Country, Ireland.

The violence hasn’t really stopped in any of those places. Some participants have changed though.

Huh? The violence in Northern Ireland has 100% stopped.

There’s still dissident republican and loyalist groups getting up to bullshit criminality and committing attacks on the regular.

The PIRA may have disbanded, but there are still active splinter groups.

I mean, they're basically gangs now, rather than terrorists. I remember growing up in the 80s/90s in the south and every single weekend there was either bombings or killings. That's almost entirely ended now.

It’s not as bad as it was, and yes they are mostly drugs gangs now, but it’s still unacceptable levels of useless violence.

>> Well, so what is 'another method' ?

Another method would be the IDF accepting their responsibility for failing to protect the kibbutzim on 7 October, and making damn sure that this doesn't happen again on their watch. Stop killing the Arabs and start defending the jews.

And I don't mean that they should make sure there's no more Palestinians left to attack them, because that is a horror that the world must never see again (but still sees all too often).

So basically let them attack Israel as much as they want, and Israel is only allowed to defend?

That's like having a sibling that's allowed to punch, prod, and poke you as much as they want. If you don't hit back your life will be hell.

Well that is a mostly self inflicted problem.

You can't rob people from their land, force them to retreat into getthos, killing them, then expect that their descendants will be friends.

You also can't possibly have your ascendancy been victim of genocide and pretend this is the solution to your own problems.

They didn't 'rob them of their land.' The word "Palestinian" used to refer to jews.

Obviously it's all a bit complicated but a lot of people seem to have the idea that Israel was created out of whole cloth. They were pushed out of literally every other country in the region - https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fh... - so they're clearly hated for reasons other than what you stated.

Jewish people take on no special moral obligations by being victims of the Holocaust. I can't tell if you were implying that they were, but just for clarity's sake.

Note that what I'm describing is essentially the status quo before 7 October, including the periodic "mowings of the lawn" by Israel to keep Gaza uprisings in check.

Alternatively of course, Israel could choose to make peace. And that's an option that is available only to Israel, who is the occupying power, and the overwhelmingly more militarily powerful party, not to the Palestinians who can only keep growing resistance groups as long as they are occupied. Israel can choose to end the atrocities and the bloodshed tomorrow. But I guess that would be too much loss of face for all the belligerent fascist assholes in its government.

Serious question: Do you think that Isreal would cease to be attacked by Palestinians tomorrow if they stopped military operations, left Palestine, lifted all blockades, and only operated a no-cross policy for the shared border?

My hypothesis is that without a blockade, external munitions would be shipped in and used to try and obliterate Isreal.

I see no evidence of a stop-and-immediate-peace outcome.

You are probably right. I think it will certainly take a very long time for the feelings of hatred and vengeance to subside, on both sides, after all the horror, death and destruction. But I think that the majority of the Palestinians, even many who have lost people in all the wars in Gaza in the last 17 years, would prefer peace to war. They have gained nothing from war and have lost way too much. Why wouldn't they want it to stop, at last?

Within Hamas itself there are moderates, that were sidelined in 2007, after the attempted coup by a US-armed Fatah faction that led to Hamas taking control of Gaza. These moderates have been severely weakened in the wars that followed, but Hamas has made a few entreaties for peace with Israel (all rebuffed) so they are still there and still have some influence. If Israel shows that it is serious about peace, these moderates will be empowered and will find support in the population, I believe.

I believe peace is possible. I'm Greek. After the Catastrophe of 1922 (you'll find information about it on Wikipedia), we have had 102 years of peace with the Turkish, our blood enemies for many centuries. A peace troubled, at times, but a peace nonetheless, that has endured. Like the Jewish, we too have lost the land where our ancestors lived for thousands of years, lost our greatest city, lost our greatest temple that was turned into a mosque by the Turkish. If we and the Turkish can make it work, the Israelis and the Palestinians can make it work. Not immediately, like you suggest. But someone has to make the first step. The Palestinians can't, because they're the weakest side and they cannot negotiate from a position of power. The Israelis must make the first move. And endure through any turbulence that follows.

>> My hypothesis is that without a blockade, external munitions would be shipped in and used to try and obliterate Isreal.

That doesn't have to happen but I think 7 October was the worst Hamas will ever be able to do. It's not like they'll suddenly grow a modern army with F-16s and armor. The IDF will always be able to deal with whatever Hamas manage to throw at them, there is no question about that in my mind.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I'm with you in that I want the same peaceful outcome to stabilize. It's just that I think Isreal is unwilling to allow even a lesser version of Oct 7 to happen in the future, and therefore I'm suspect that Isreal will let Hamas continue to exist, even if it flipped to majority-moderate led.

We will see how this plays out, but I hope Palestine can use this as an opportunity to rebuild and find some industry, such as tourism, to boost them economically and allow them to thrive.