The percentage of people who are willing to fight to the death in a truly hopeless cause is actually rather small - and I suspect most of them are already enrolled in the Hamas militias. Dropping bombs will push some people into this category - but it will also kill a lot of them if your aim and your intelligence is good. And of course, …
The percentage of people who are willing to fight to the death in a truly hopeless cause is actually rather small - and I suspect most of them are already enrolled in the Hamas militias. Dropping bombs will push some people into this category - but it will also kill a lot of them if your aim and your intelligence is good. And of course, leaving the fanatics in charge to propagandize the next generation will also move more people into the “fight to the death” category.
I think Israel has erred in the past in treating Hamas as a tolerable threat, a counterweight to Fatah, a nuisance that can be handled by Iron Dome and an occasional decapitating strike into Gaza to prove your point. But really they’ve run a dangerous middle ground - aggressive enough to anger Palestine and their allies, to provide propaganda fodder, but not decisive enough to actually end Hamas. I think that has flipped now, and the utter destruction of Hamas is the objective. How many Gazan civilians die is largely tied to how many Hamas prevents from leaving the combat zone.
The percentage of people who are willing to fight to the death in a truly hopeless cause is actually rather small - and I suspect most of them are already enrolled in the Hamas militias. Dropping bombs will push some people into this category - but it will also kill a lot of them if your aim and your intelligence is good. And of course, leaving the fanatics in charge to propagandize the next generation will also move more people into the “fight to the death” category.
I think Israel has erred in the past in treating Hamas as a tolerable threat, a counterweight to Fatah, a nuisance that can be handled by Iron Dome and an occasional decapitating strike into Gaza to prove your point. But really they’ve run a dangerous middle ground - aggressive enough to anger Palestine and their allies, to provide propaganda fodder, but not decisive enough to actually end Hamas. I think that has flipped now, and the utter destruction of Hamas is the objective. How many Gazan civilians die is largely tied to how many Hamas prevents from leaving the combat zone.