Thread by @yashkaf

To the three westerners who are interested in what's actual happening in Israel/Gaza and not just in moral grandstanding and tribal signaling, here's my read of the situation with minimum moralizing. Moralizing above the minimum will be blocked.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Isra…

The official story is that tension sparked over planned evictions of Palestinians from a few homes in East Jerusalem that according to some documents belonged to Jews in the 19th century. However, this was planned since 2009, why start shit now?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Ja…

The more likely proximate cause is the cancelation of planned elections in the West Bank. The PLO (which governs the West Bank) is on shaky ground and is worried that elections would lead to a forceful takeover by Hamas, like what happened in Gaza in 2006.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Pale…

So on May 10 the Hamas and Islamic Jihad launched a barrage of rockets at Israeli cities, to demonstrate internally that they're stronger than the PLO and are the only ones still taking the fight to Israel and carrying the cause of Jihad. All politics is internal.

In the time since the last war in Gaza Hamas has built up large weapon stores and infrastructure including new missiles that can reach Tel Aviv, explosive-carrying drones, tunnels for smuggling and raiding, and more. Most of it is paid for by Iran.

So while Hamas was hoping for a quick show of strength aimed at the West Bank, Israel now has casus belli to go in and disarm Hamas assuming that these rockets and drones will fly at Israel sooner or later. So it's preparing a ground operation to blow up tunnels and launchers.

Of course, most Gazans are basically just caught in the crossfire. Hamas doesn't ask their permission to put launchers on the roof and tunnels in the basement, the IDF doesn't ask before going in to destroy them. Both sides are blaming their deaths on the other.

This round will end when enough Hamas military resources are neutralized to stop the rockets flying, which could take several weeks and hundreds of deaths. It's unlikely that this will pose an actual challenge to Hamas' continued iron rule of Gaza, so no long term change.

Separately, there have been incidents of violence within Israel proper between Muslim and Jewish citizens, which everyone is generally just kinda stunned by and is hoping that it's just an isolated thing and not a trend. Except that...

Israel hasn't been able to form a ruling coalition after several elections. Last week an agreement was close that would include both a right-wing party (Bennet) and the joint-list party of Arab Israelis (Abbas). Except that given the violence, both parties are now backing away.

So Bibi is acting Israeli PM except he could be replaced any day by a new coalition, Abu Mazen rules the West Bank except he's always on thin ice, Hamas rules Gaza except they're being hunted by the IDF. So everyone's fighting but no one is securely in charge of any of the sides.

So if you're wondering why everyone from DC to Dubai is spouting platitudes and refusing to engage, it's because no one wants any part of this horrible, hopeless mess. No one has any workable plan for Gaza that would prevent this sort of thing happening every few years. 😢

Oh, right, there's one organization that always wants to be part of horrible messes. Given that the rockets missed the entire country and landed at sea it's still unclear whether this is a lone wolf, an empty signal, or Hezbollah jumping into the fray.
reuters.com/world/middle-e…

Hezbollah of course are also backed by Iran, and Israel recently got much cozier with the anti-Iran axis of Egypt-Saudi-Emirates. So this conflict is at once about one house in East Jerusalem and about multinational coalitions across the Middle East.
reuters.com/article/us-isr…

Anyway, I'm sure the brilliant plan you came up with last night would immediately resolve all these interlocking conflicts, punish the wicked, uplift the oppressed, and bring a golden century of peace to the Middle East. It's all so simple, isn't it?