War only comes when the price of peace is too high to bear.
So here's a thought: just pay them to quit. We could spend a hundred billion dollars on bunker busters and artillery rounds, and kill thousands of people. Or we could just pay them to stop and offer blanket amnesty. This isn't an invading army, it's a group of desperate people lashing out at their condition. And we're not talking about supporting an entire huge nation here, it's just a few million people. We could end this with pocket change for the US. Pump another hundred billion into Gaza development and give every man, woman, and child a government job with benefits. Hamas wouldn't stand a chance in the face of that. The ancient rulers had no problem with this; tribute was a normal every day way of doing business. And it allows time for cooler heads to prevail. Why has this been lost?
> This isn't an invading army, it's a group of desperate people lashing out at their condition. And we're not talking about supporting an entire huge nation here, it's just a few million people.
Welcome to the perpetual Israel-Palestine conflict.
A point of contention to what you’re saying is: there is a group of terrorists, and there is the Gaza population, and they’re not disjunct.
You can’t pay Hamas to stop, and you can’t pay Gaza without paying Hamas.
This may be part of it but in the end it is a gross mischaracterisation. They want Israel removed from the face of the earth. Remember their slogan: from river to the sea Palestine will be free.
Instead of insipid reference to fable, read any kind of actual analysis of reality, such as:
[1]
> A one-state arrangement is not a future possibility; it already exists, no matter what anyone thinks. Between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, one state controls the entry and exit of people and goods, oversees security, and has the capacity to impose its decisions, laws, and policies on millions of people without their consent.
> A one-state reality could, in principle, be based on democratic rule and equal citizenship. But such an arrangement is not on offer at the moment. Forced to choose between Israel’s Jewish identity and liberal democracy, Israel has chosen the former. It has locked in a system of Jewish supremacy, wherein non-Jews are structurally discriminated against or excluded in a tiered scheme: some non-Jews have most of, but not all, the rights that Jews have, while most non-Jews live under severe segregation, separation, and domination.
[2]
> In November 2022, the United Nations warned that the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict was “again reaching a boiling point.” Amit Saar, a top
Israeli intelligence official, predicted that violence in the West Bank
(although not Gaza) will rank as Israel’s second biggest challenge in 2023,
just below the perennial threat from Iran. Saar warned not only that
violence was increasing but also that the foundations for managing it were
becoming “unstable.” The policing capacity of the Palestinian Authority,
the governing body in the West Bank, and its relationship with Israel are
eroding. No political process holds the promise of Palestinian
independence. And ordinary Palestinians are growing frustrated with
established groups and leaders that reject violence—such as Fatah, the
party that has long dominated Palestinian politics, and its head,
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the PA. In yet another foreboding
development, in December 2022, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
created a new government that put settlers, political extremists, and racists
in key positions overseeing the West Bank. All this leads to a despairing,
inescapable conclusion: the odds of a third intifada are higher than they
have been in years.
[3]
> By responding positively to the restraint and discipline manifested in the uprising, and by seizing benefits from the alterations that it represented for accession to peace and security, for decades professed as Israel's goal, Israel could have neutralized the regression to bankrupt ideologies of armed struggle and in so doing lessen the allure of the Palestinian commando units and Qassamite cells of Islamic resistance. By 1988 and with policy implications for Israel, the vocabulary of armed struggle had all but disappeared for the leaflets of the intifada. The vigorous debate on civil disobedience disclosed the fact that Israel was facing a nonviolent, political, and information-based struggle, against which military suppression would not work.
> Instead of profiting from this dramatic development, Israel gave preference to perpetuating the status quo, characterized by harsh suppression of the uprising and its protection and favored status then accorded to the Qassamite groups. Official Israel's refusal to recognize the intifada as an effort to lift the occupation through nonviolent action, not an attempt to defeat Israel with armed struggle, had the effect of weakening the very Palestinians who were working to substitute nonviolent means of contention for organized violence on a permanent basis.
> The creators and exhorters of the new political lexicon, who had been rewriting the orthodoxies of _thawra_ during the 1970s and 1980s--Radwan Abu Ayyash, Ziad Abu Zayyad, Feisel Husseini, Muhammad Jadallah, Zahira Kamal, Ghassan Khatib, and Sari Nusseibeh--were locked up, despite Israel's longstanding claim it lacked suitable negotiating partners. An unfettered intifada would have been the most potent countervailing force to the PLO, a known Israeli objective. Yet Israel compromised those who were pressing from dissociation from the PLO and expelled Mubarak Awad--among the keenest advocates for nonviolent struggle not dependent on the PLO. Old assumptions rebounded as Israeli authorities jailed the representatives on the Command one by one so that none remained whose thinking had been honed by the Committee Confronting the Iron Fist, the Arab Studies Society, the writings of activist intellectuals, or the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence. Impaired by "interference" from Tunis, and vitiated by the lack of PLO support, the Palestinians in the occupied territories were unable to sustain their increased power in the equation with Israel, which was necessary for compromise and negotiations. Meanwhile, forces on the Israeli landscape marginalized the efforts of diverse and numerous Israeli groups that wanted accommodation with the Palestinians.
>However, the current attack on Gaza is guaranteeing support for Hamas for decades to come.
It's just a matter of incentives. We could pay every adult in Gaza a salary of $40k for less than the military aid package that just passed. Imagine a world where you say something like "for every 1% reduction in Hamas attacks, you guys will get a 1% raise this year". Couple that with a forced end to the apartheid, and overwhelming foreign investment in infrastructure, and I can't see how things wouldn't work. The alternative has been tried for decades, at much greater expense.
You couldn't buy the Nazis out of invading Europe. You couldn't buy the Russians out of invading Ukraine. But you could totally buy the Palestinian people into giving up Hamas. They just need hope and a plan. It's not intractable, just a matter of will.
How about this: we support Hamas financially in order to keep Gaza and West Bank separated. Then we increase settlements on the West Bank while the international community turns a blind eye. What could go wrong?
Wait, I think Bibi already tried something like that.
What I'm trying to say here is that the Israeli would have to be incentiviced to allow for a strong and independent Palestine as well. It's certainly not in their interests.
So here's a thought: just pay them to quit. We could spend a hundred billion dollars on bunker busters and artillery rounds, and kill thousands of people. Or we could just pay them to stop and offer blanket amnesty. This isn't an invading army, it's a group of desperate people lashing out at their condition. And we're not talking about supporting an entire huge nation here, it's just a few million people. We could end this with pocket change for the US. Pump another hundred billion into Gaza development and give every man, woman, and child a government job with benefits. Hamas wouldn't stand a chance in the face of that. The ancient rulers had no problem with this; tribute was a normal every day way of doing business. And it allows time for cooler heads to prevail. Why has this been lost?