Gaza and Israel

Hamas fires a few badly aimed rockets into Israel and Israel responds with more powerful and precise weaponry. It's a contest Hamas cannot win, but Israel isn't making any progress either. I'm not sure whether Israel's strategy is to intimidate with terror or just to satisfy the Israeli public's demand that something be done, but it's not very effective.

It's actually likely that Hamas will gradually get better weapons and unlikely that the population will turn against Hamas.

So what alternative does Israel have? They can make peace with the Palestinians - desireable but very difficult and painful as well as impossible without a coherent Palestinian state. Alternatively, they can crush the Palestinians, occupy Gaza, and accept responsibility for governing them - difficult, expensive, and perilous.

Genocide, said the cynic, is God's way of settling territorial disputes, but slightly less drastic solutions have also been accomplished. The Roman and Islamic empires incorporated conquered peoples into their fabric rather effectively. The allies were able to domesticate Germany, Japan, and Italy after World War II.

These solutions don't work unless you have a plan for either assimilating the conquered peoples or giving them a profitable role as allies.

Can Israel continue to dominate it's neighbors for the long run? Perhaps, as long as they continue to be weak and primitive states stuck in the 13th century.

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