When the bombing of Gaza by Israel began the aim was to crudely force Palestinians to capitulate into silence. A period of quiet they called it.
Realizing how crude that sounded, the spin has shifted to the bombing being about destroying "Hamas military capabilities"
Israelis of all people should know, from the lessons of history, that the road to removing the fighting capability of people who are already militarily over-whelmed and socially severely oppressed eventually ends at extermination.
Be it Lothar von Trotha against the Herero of Namibia or Hitler and his gas chambers, at some point the oppressor will shift to thinking that instead of just making life unbearable the only way to deal with what they perceive a "problem" is use might to wipe it off the face of the earth.
Despite all the Goebbelsque speak out there, what Israel really wants is to take Palestinian land and homes, build settlements without so much as a whimper of protest from anyone. Certainly none is forthcoming from the cowards in Riyadh, Cairo, Amman and other Arab capitals who have been co-opted into what at its core is a project to take land from Arabs.
The sustained quiet that Israel is seeking the the freedom to undermine the right of Palestinians to a homeland without a fightback of any sort. Israel wants to evict Palestinians from their homes, which is where the current round of violence started, restrict their movement and displace them some more without anyone protesting.
Israelis of all people should realize that, as long as they have breathe in their bodies and no matter how mighty the oppressor is, an oppressed people will fight back be it in Ramallah, Jericho, Gaza or the Warsaw ghetto. For centuries military might has never extinguished the ambers of hankering for freedom.
Peace can never be achieved by oppression and subjugation. All that Benjamin Netanyahu is achieving is ensuring that there will be an aggrieved population living next to Israel for generations to come.
He is playing Russian roulette with history - spin the chamber and hope that at no point in future will the aggrieved population be capable of launching an effective fightback. A man who takes such a gamble does not love his grandchildren, or simply lacks the intelligence to have a proper long term vision of the consequences of his actions.
It is a very simple wisdom to realize that Israel can never achieve peace without achieving dignity and equality for Palestinians. On a personal level, I fervently believe a two state solution is a nonsensical impracticality. Only a single state with equal rights for all human being who live in it is the ultimate solution for the former British Palestinian mandate.
A solution that hankers to the racist colonial mentality that led to the British proposal in the first place, where a superior race lords it over a perceived inferior race of Palestinians, will never ever work in the long term.
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