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Comment by anonu | Hacker News Reader

And then what? Is Hamas a wart you can simply excise? And if you do, will you just be galvanizing the next generation of fighters? If so many are part of the population, it would seem so...

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I believe the Israeli goal is shockingly quaint: get the government in Gaza, who is Hamas, to surrender unconditionally. Attack until the leadership of the movement is completely demoralized and gives up.

Mind you I 100% disagree that it is possible. Israel is looking at a long occupation.

There are other options that are even more shockingly quaint. Effectively Gaza is being strangled, no water, no power, no aid. This can't last without mass casualties and if and when that happens the only effect it will have is to swell the ranks of Hamas even further, perpetuating the conflict.

Unconditional surrender isn’t a goal, its absolute acquiescence to some goal. So what's the actual goal? Demanding unconditional surrender generally means either annexation or occupation, setting up a replacement government, and leaving either once it stabilizes or when you don’t care about what happens in the territory, anything less, and unconditional surrender was an unnecessary and likely costly demand to get there.

"shockingly quaint"

That's basically what happened to WW2 Germany. The country was crushed to the point where they unconditionally surrendered, killing 5 million German soldiers in the process.

Nazism is pretty much dead in Germany. So the approach did in fact work, and quite possibly would have worked even without the Marshal plan.

> Nazism is pretty much dead in Germany.

You wish.

You are right, Hamas cannot be excised as we see in Afganistan.

Only way for Gazans will be to assimilate to israeli/western values I guess (if they want to have a proper life)

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