We must have done this before. Just turning the other cheek and cracking on with life three days after October 7th wasn’t a serious option. Hezbollah had started their stage of a coordinated attack by then.
That was two years ago. The 24 months of sustained brutality which followed hasn’t only turned Gaza into a pile of rubble and dead bodies; it’s had the same effect on Israel’s international reputation. Let’s hope something constructive comes out of the next two years, because if it doesn’t the whole region is pretty much ****ed.
On the bright side, Hamas are far weaker with several leaders dead. Hezbollah are a tiny fraction of the threat they were, the Houthis are even more of a joke than they were, Assad is living in a penthouse in Moscow addicted to World of Warcraft, Qatar know they aren’t untouchable and Iran have been put well in their place. This was their big shot to wipe out Israel from several fronts. They miscalculated terribly. Gaza is fine and they were in pristine malls buying iPhone 17s and eating kebab platters a day after the end of the worst genocide ever.
Conflict only seems to strengthen the grip on power of the extremists in both Iran and Israel. Both countries have an educated, mostly liberal middle class, but both are governed by religious fundamentalists and bitter old men. Hopefully that will change, not sure how or when though.
There’s just no equivalence between the two. Israel will have an election at most a year from now and Netanyahu will probably lose even with Israel’s mental voting system. This ends when Iran and its proxies learn to accept Jews exist on a tiny slither of land the size of Wales. If they want to kill each other in the meantime they’re welcome to.
People thinking that Iran and Israel are basically interchangeable and can be 'solved' in the same way is one of the reasons the region is such a mess. The only thing they have in common is the first letter of their name.
I think it was more the fact that Israel could have had all of the hostages released within 2 days, but chose not to because Netanyahu wanted to use them as leverage for a war inside Gaza. The article is worth a read because it’s from the guy who set up the hostages support and pressure group as the Israeli govt and IDF did nothing in the first few days and weeks regarding the hostages. Their only concern was with a war on Hamas ‘We left the meeting very disappointed because Netanyahu talked about dismantling Hamas as the goal of the war. He didn’t promise anything regarding the demand to return the hostages. He merely said a military operation in Gaza was needed to serve as leverage for the hostages’ release.
