MIN. GALLANT: The goals are the goals for the war. That means that the -- by the end of the war, as long as it takes, we need to make sure that we have our hostages back, that we eliminate the Hamas abilities, and that's include destroying Hamas military capability and its ability to govern in Gaza.
And it have certain power matters, including the amount of battalion -- battalions that we need to dismantle and the chain of command and the supreme military leadership and so forth and so on.
The phases are the technique which is part of the plan that we have to deploy in the area in order to achieve our goals. And as Secretary Austin said, this is only the -- the way that we shape our plan in order to achieve the goals.
And as it happened in the battlefield, the circumstances are changing. You change your efforts and you do something different in a different phase. And the intensity in the first phase is given, but in other phases, we will concentrate on certain issue. For instance, the engaging and -- detecting the supreme leadership of Hamas and others.
So all in all, there is no -- there is no clock that is running, and we have to obey a certain day, but we need to get to a different performances on the ground before we move to the next phase. And I believe that we will find a proper time to do so.
And the most important issue, as I mentioned in the beginning -- we will -- we will prevail, we will dismantle Hamas. Otherwise, we will not be able to exist and live in the way we want to live in this region. Because there is a price to deterrence and they need to know that if they kill or kidnap 1,500 people, including kids and women, this is the end of Hamas.
tl:dr: "no, we dont' have any kind of strategic victory. we have no fucking clue about anything except killing Arabs".
And the most important issue, as I mentioned in the beginning -- we will -- we will prevail, we will dismantle Hamas.
American War on Terror logic applied to your next door neighbor.
Just gonna keep bombing and shooting until people stop feeling scared.
Only... they'll never stop feeling scared, because the fear is the product of propaganda rather than material condition.
Also, if they did dismantle Hamas, a new organisation would just take their place. The Palestinian's desire to be freed from occupation won't ever go away just because the IDF defeated some group or another. Even Israel has terminal movie brain, where defeating the "big bad" makes all their followers just give up.
Also, if they did dismantle Hamas, a new organisation would just take their place.
Hamas, itself, filled in the role of militant opposition that Arafat's PLO had left behind.
But that militant role is two-sided. Yes, it becomes a natural relief valve for young frustrated and abused Palestinian citizens. But it also becomes a shooting gallery for the IDF. Palestinians are kettled to the point of an explosion and the Israelis use the pressure to continue justification for their own militant oppression. Israeli citizens are sheep-dogged into compliance with increasingly radical and dictatorial state leadership under the theory that any cease-fire on their end would result in their annihilation.
But this sets up a paradox for the Israelis, in turn, because its very difficult to convince people that the Palestinians are rabid dogs while simultaneously advocating for new settlements deeper into Palestinian territory. So Palestine must be portrayed as both strong (necessitating the IDF) and weak (guaranteeing the impotency of rocket attacks and marches and break outs).
Even Israel has terminal movie brain, where defeating the "big bad" makes all their followers just give up.
Israeli leadership is on the third generation of drinking-their-own-koolaid. This isn't just going after the Top Guy. We're at the point that people have bought in on a defensive genocide. This means butchering all 2M of Hamas's most dedicated fighters in Gaza, and likely turning to purge the West Bank after that. And then? Perhaps on to waging war into Jordan, to quash the 3M Palestinians there. Egypt - an erstwhile ally of Israel for decades - needs to get back into the game and purge their own Palestinian populations. And even that won't be enough, I'm sure.
The question is in reference to a public statement Austin made a few weeks ago, where he said that indiscriminately killing civilians may lead to a "tactical victory" but in the long term it results in a "strategic defeat".
Basically admitting that asides from it being awful on moral grounds it's a bad idea strategically too.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech/Article/3604755/a-time-for-american-leadership-remarks-by-secretary-of-defense-lloyd-j-austin-i/
Turns out that murdering all of someone's friends and family makes them far more likely to resist your occupation.
Because there is a price to deterrence and they need to know that if they kill or kidnap 1,500 people, including kids and women, this is the end of Hamas.
You just know the end of that sentence was going to be "we will kill twenty times as many in return" but halfway through he realized he was speaking in English instead of Hebrew.
The shape of our plan is the shape of the phase that determines the plan for our goals
