How Israel Will Claim It Won The War
This is how I firmly believe this war will end. I think everything I’m going to say is fairly obvious, and I have believed and feared this since the beginning of the war. I believe it would take a miracle for me to be wrong. On the other hand, I do believe in miracles.
Israel has defined two war goals:
- Return the hostages.
- Defeat Hamas.
Both of those statements are vague on purpose. This is often done by those at war, so they can always define the victory by however the war ends. Honestly, Hamas is doing the same thing. No matter what happens, Israel and Hamas will both declare victory.
The Prediction
Therefore, this war will end with a group of Arabs running Gaza, which will resemble Hamas in every important way except for the name. Let’s call the new militant group Hamas – The Next Generation, H-TNG for short, for the sake of argument.
Once Hamas is too weak, Israel will install H-TNG. In the years that follow, Israel will eventually relinquish most or all of the Gaza Strip to H-TNG. We must trust H-TNG if we ever want peace. Gaza will be rebuilt with incredible largesse by the international community. Israel might claim an extra security buffer, although that will, most likely, eventually be handed over to H-TNG too. After all, H-TNG is not Hamas.
Hamas will declare victory, because even if they’re not in charge, there will be plenty of them still alive. Once Hamas is “gone”, we won’t be able to continue the war. We’ll get some hostages back, as a good will gesture by H-TNG, but will probably never get all of them. Israel will declare victory because Hamas is gone, and it turns out we never had the power to return all the hostages. Most of the yellow ribbons will come down, and we’ll get rid of the “empty chair” displays. Some will continue to say Tehillim (Psalms) for the remaining hostages, as they did for Ron Arad, the Sultan Yakoub missing 3 and, in rare cases, Avera Mengistu.
Gaza could resemble Judea and Samaria (West Bank), meaning that the army could enter at-will, not that that’s the ideal. However, seeing as we left Gaza once, there will be a lot of pressure to do it again and maybe we’ll build another fence. H-TNG will continue to teach the children to kill the Jews and “liberate” Palestine, but are we going to fight again over that? They will rearm with European money. They will learn from this round and rebuild the tunnels, since many will be left anyway. We won’t be able to destroy them all.
When H-TNG has enough strength, they’ll start attacking us in some fashion. Maybe rockets, maybe not. Israel will be reluctant to enter Gaza and fight them because of collateral damage/fear of escalation/guilt that they don’t have more wealth/fear of losing troops/international condemnation. All the reasons we didn’t deal with Gaza earlier. This is the stage where I’d say we will have come full circle; essentially the same as October 6, 2023, but not an exact duplicate.
Will the Gazans be better off with H-TNG than Hamas? Possibly, but are we waging this war to help the Gazans?
Facts on the Ground
Israel has no real control over returning the hostages, especially returning them alive. At any moment, their kidnappers can kill them and no one can stop them. Even if Israel were to remove every single Arab from the Gaza strip, they might never find the bodies. If Israel leaves some Arabs there, even with control of every millimeter of territory, it will be possible to hide live captives ad infinitum. One guy in Cleveland managed to hold 3 women for a decade. It can be done.
Israel has stressed from the beginning that our war is with Hamas, not the Gazans. That’s an odd way to put it. After October 7, Hamas split the hostages between several Islamist terror groups: Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and PFLP being the two biggest. But, apparently, we’re not at war with them. In fact, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that soldiers are not allowed to target those involved in the kidnapping, rape, torture and murder of October 7 UNLESS they are members of Hamas or are actively attacking soldiers. If PIJ were to take over because Hamas becomes too weak, criterion 2 is fulfilled and we “won”.
The heads of the Israeli army have worked to thwart any plan other than what I said above. Before October 7, they told the Bennett government that going after Sinwar would be too risky. The lack of response on October 7 was because they didn’t want Netanyahu to start a war (Ronen Bar has said this). I asked a Member of Knesset at an open house why the government announced a complete blockade at the start of the war – water, food, fuel and electricity – only to immediately reverse course and allow all those things? They had to know the Biden administration would object before they said it. He said the government expected it would be done but “internal pressure” prevented it. In other words, the army brass refused to do it. See this video: IU SPECIAL: HOW ISRAEL CAN WIN IN GAZA
Joy To The World, Abu Shabab Has Come
Enter Yasser Abu Shabab, a Gazan Bedouin who is the secular Mashiach of the Israeli left. He has formed a militia in Israeli-controlled Rafiach (Rafah) and positions himself between the new food distribution system (done by Americans) and Hamas to protect the aid from Hamas. He is neither PLO, nor Hamas, nor aligned with any of the existing terror gangs. That’s better than having been born of a virgin in the twisted plan of what is considered the “center” in this country.
Avigdor Lieberman leaked that Israel gave him the arms, which Abu Shabab denies and the government decries. Of course I believe Lieberman. Why does Abu Shabab deny it and the government decry it? It would make him a “traitor” to “his people”. How so? Abu Shabab has not stated that he has a problem with the attack of October 7, nor will he. He has not stated that he doesn’t want to wipe Israel off the map, nor will he. The problem “his people” have with Hamas is that they’re losing and they don’t want to sacrifice just to lose. They believe in removing all the Jews. They believe everything was justified. This is the opinion of the vast majority of the Gazans.
We’re giving them weapons – as we gave them to the PLO for the same reason, and with the same plan – Abu Shabab will protect us from “his people” while allowing us to say “Look! We’re not ruling them.” We can all then extol the coexistence and go back to square one.
