Disclosure: I have served in Israel Defense Forces, I live in Israel, I feel horrible about what Israel has done in the past 75 years to millions of Palestinians and I do not want Israel to end up as a horrible stain on human history. I am probably unusually biased when dealing with this topic. I am not making here a claim that people in EA should or should not get involved and in what way.
I want to add some context that I think many people are missing. (I think that context is necessary for applying the ITN framework to the topic).
TL;DR: Israel had a very problematic incentive to empower Hamas and to cause it to gain and maintain control over the Gaza strip, while weakening the much more peaceful Palestinian National Authority. The way that humanity will handle the current conflict and its aftermath may influence whether states can generally expect to benefit from acting on such incentives while violating basic, ~universal norms related to justice and human decency. A failure to uphold such norms can undermine the ability of humanity to coordinate and to achieve a peaceful future[1].
Quoting from Wikipedia (extended-protected entry):
During the 1947–49 Palestine war, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled, comprising around 80% of the Palestinian Arab inhabitants of what became Israel.
I believe it is widely accepted that if that had not happened, it would have been impossible to establish a Jewish, democratic state in the current borders of Israel borders that Israel had after that war. The UN General Assembly Resolution 194 from 1948 resolves that:
refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.
In 1949, in the debates about Israel’s admittance to the UN, Israel’s UN representative promised to “co-operate with the organs of the United Nations with all the means at our disposal in the fulfillment of [Resolution 194]”. It has been 74 years and Israel did not fulfill that promise so far.
The international community has put some amount of pressure on Israel over the years with respect to this issue and the related issue of allowing the establishment of a Palestinian state. But the intensity of that pressure was negatively correlated with the amount of violence that Israel was facing from Hamas et al. But the international community was less inclined to put pressure on Israel while it was facing violence from Hamas et al. This gave Israel a problematic incentive: to make Hamas stronger and the Palestinian National Authority weaker. Israel had various ways possible ways to act on that incentive, including generally promoting violence (e.g. adapting policies that cause incidents in which settlers attack/harass Palestinian people) and allowing the establishment of new settlements that constitute “a flagrant violation under international law” according to the UN Security Council. It is often difficult to know whether a state did X due to an incentive Y. I will now provide some evidence that the incentive above was influential.
Here is a quote from a NY Times article; it refers to Benjamin Netanyahu who has been the prime minster of Israel from 1996 to 1999 and most of the time from 2009 until today (2023).
Over time, however, [Netanyahu] came to see Hamas as a way to balance power against the Palestinian Authority, which has administrative control over the West Bank and has long sought a peace agreement in Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state.
Mr. Netanyahu told aides over the years that a feeble Palestinian Authority lowered the pressure on him to make concessions to Palestinians in negotiations, according to several former Israeli officials and people close to Mr. Netanyahu.
Also, here is a quote from a CNN article that is based on WikiLeaks:
The leaked cables also indicate the Israelis appear to have seen an advantage in Hamas consolidating its control in Gaza. A cable from June 13, 2007, quotes the head of Israeli military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, as saying that “Israel would be ‘happy’ if Hamas took over Gaza because the (Israel Defense Forces) could then deal with Gaza as a hostile state.”
Though we also have an intrinsic desire to enforce (our subjective sense of) justice, which can bias our judgment and make us overweight this utilitarian reasoning.
Disclosure: I have served in Israel Defense Forces, I live in Israel, I feel horrible about what Israel has done in the past 75 years to millions of Palestinians and I do not want Israel to end up as a horrible stain on human history. I am probably unusually biased when dealing with this topic. I am not making here a claim that people in EA should or should not get involved and in what way.
I want to add some context that I think many people are missing. (I think that context is necessary for applying the ITN framework to the topic).
TL;DR: Israel had a very problematic incentive to empower Hamas and to cause it to gain and maintain control over the Gaza strip, while weakening the much more peaceful Palestinian National Authority. The way that humanity will handle the current conflict and its aftermath may influence whether states can generally expect to benefit from acting on such incentives while violating basic, ~universal norms related to justice and human decency. A failure to uphold such norms can undermine the ability of humanity to coordinate and to achieve a peaceful future[1].
Quoting from Wikipedia (extended-protected entry):
I believe it is widely accepted that if that had not happened, it would have been impossible to establish a Jewish, democratic state in the
current borders of Israelborders that Israel had after that war. The UN General Assembly Resolution 194 from 1948 resolves that:In 1949, in the debates about Israel’s admittance to the UN, Israel’s UN representative promised to “co-operate with the organs of the United Nations with all the means at our disposal in the fulfillment of [Resolution 194]”. It has been 74 years and Israel did not fulfill that promise so far.
The international community has put some amount of pressure on Israel over the years with respect to this issue and the related issue of allowing the establishment of a Palestinian state.
But the intensity of that pressure was negatively correlated with the amount of violence that Israel was facing from Hamas et al.But the international community was less inclined to put pressure on Israel while it was facing violence from Hamas et al. This gave Israel a problematic incentive: to make Hamas stronger and the Palestinian National Authority weaker. Israel had variouswayspossible ways to act on that incentive, including generally promoting violence (e.g. adapting policies that cause incidents in which settlers attack/harass Palestinian people) and allowing the establishment of new settlements that constitute “a flagrant violation under international law” according to the UN Security Council. It is often difficult to know whether a state did X due to an incentive Y. I will now provide some evidence that the incentive above was influential.Here is a quote from a NY Times article; it refers to Benjamin Netanyahu who has been the prime minster of Israel from 1996 to 1999 and most of the time from 2009 until today (2023).
Also, here is a quote from a CNN article that is based on WikiLeaks:
Though we also have an intrinsic desire to enforce (our subjective sense of) justice, which can bias our judgment and make us overweight this utilitarian reasoning.
Thanks you for this comment—this is indeed very relevant context, much of which I was not previously aware of.