wat0n wrote:Netanyahu doesn't have any long-term plans for Gaza or anywhere else because he has no future.
You don't know that. That's just your wishful thinking. The Liberals constantly do this. Putin was supposed to be toast in 6 months, The Taliban were history. Assad was finished. They said it about Boris Johnson. Yes he did go eventually, but it was long after his obituary had been written. Netanyahu might be gone by Christmas, but equally he might still be prime minister in two years time.
He's struggling to remain PM for as long as possible, to avoid going to jail for taking bribes.
If he really wants the IDF to stay there indefinitely, he's going to be up for a nasty surprise. I doubt the US will want to undo the Gaza withdrawal of 2005, which was supposed to be permanent, but it doesn't matter - he's fucked either way.
As I said before Netanyahu sure didn't need this. His coalition is trying to ramp up settlement in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan. That's quite enough to be going on with. Its Zionist liberals, Zionist moderates, Two-Stateers that want to see Hamas destroyed. It is just not in the Israeli Right's interest to destroy Hamas.
I'm sceptical about the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. I guess we'll have to see if it actually amounts to anything, Netanyahu needs to be seen to be tough, both on Hamas and the people of Gaza. He needs to be seen to have inflicted massive vengeance, massive collective punishment against the Gazan people, while of course allowing Israel's western liberals friends to pretend that its not collective punishment. At the end of the day he must be able to blame the survival of Hamas on Joe Biden and western leaders.