Quote Originally Posted by Spicoli View Post
I don't know how many times we need to see mechanized armed to the teeth forces enter a territory and turn civilians into next gen recruits to know how this repeats. Again. And again.
For Israel this is a feature not a bug. As long as Hamas or somebody equally gruesome is running things in at least part of the Palestinian territories Israel can say quite correctly that they have no partner for peace and it allows them not to have to take part in any peace process. They can get on with building all over the West Bank undisturbed.

Another fantastic thing to come out of the current blowup for Israel is the raised salience of the issue in the west and in particular America. The combination of lots of Muslim immigrants swelling the numbers taking part in marches and lefties doing stupid stuff on campuses and elsewhere has created in polarised America a conservative backlash and given the right, who are also chock full of anti semites, another issue to own the libs on by supporting Israel unconditionally. What this means in practice is that should Trump win next year Israel will have carte blanche to do anything they want whether that's mass expulsion of Palestinians across the Jordan river or out through Gaza into Egypt or both. They can leave Gaza uninhabitable, cut off electricity or water or both, whatever they want.