No. of Recommendations: 11
Does anyone think the leaders in Israel learned ANYTHING from America's experience after September 11, 2001?
I do. I think they learned that in the immediate aftermath of such an attack, the domestic populace will almost uniformly demand that something be done to punish the people who attacked. Whether it is fruitless, or even counter-productive, such a response is absolutely necessary. And that there will be very little, if any, serious international objections to taking those steps. Israel is now relatively unconstrained in taking whatever immediate response they want to take.
Unlike the U.S. in Afghanistan, Israel has very real security interests in what happens in Gaza (and the West Bank). So these attacks have just bought Israel another decade or two of time being able to implement their least-bad outcome. There is no actual solution, sadly. Israel will not allow a Palestinian state with an army or air force to exist as long as Hamas exists. It is in the best interest of other regional actors that Israel not be allowed to normalize relations within the region, so they support Hamas. So the stalemate continues until either of those things change - and neither is likely to ever change. The status quo is terrible, but it is Israel's least-bad outcome.
Now, Israel has much more time before the international community can create a circumstance where the status quo is no longer the least-bad outcome. The deaths from the initial attacks were significant enough to shock the international community (again, this is Israel's 9/11). But once you start seeing images of little kids and grandparents being held in captivity by Hamas, as they bid for prisoner exchanges? Israel will be able to point to this for at least a decade as to why Hamas - and therefore the Palestinian people that they govern - can never be allowed to have control of a sovereign state. And it will be at least a decade before memory fades enough for that argument to no longer be effective.
