Steve, as usual I appreciate your trying to thoughtfully nuance your takes, and to apply general principles rather than tribal loyalties. And this issue is particularly difficult, because it's hard to find the good guys; all sides have legitimate grievances, and none are very pure themselves. In that context, I'm not taking a political "…
Steve, as usual I appreciate your trying to thoughtfully nuance your takes, and to apply general principles rather than tribal loyalties. And this issue is particularly difficult, because it's hard to find the good guys; all sides have legitimate grievances, and none are very pure themselves. In that context, I'm not taking a political "side". My goal is accurate, insightful, and hopefully actionable understanding of all sides. That can include agreeing or disagreeing with some side about some point, without always supporting or opposing that side.
So I'd like to nuance a bit further around the edges.
The framing offered from the pro-Palestinian side is that Israel is engaged in mindless retribution without end (probably ending only in genocide), and focuses on noting that Israel has already caused many more deaths in Gaza than Israelis killed Oct 7, so they should consider their revenge mission complete and go home.
To put it another way, this imagines the IDF goal as past focused - asserting that their primary purpose is indiscriminate retribution for recent Israeli deaths. Let's call this the "revenge model".
Another model of the IDF mission in Gaza is more future focused: they could want to prevent any recurrence of Oct 7 like attacks. Let's call this the "preventive model". In this model, Israel believes that unless they destroy virtually the entire tunnel system in Gaza, greatly degrading the military capability of Hamas, the promised repeat attacks will be launched. So, in this model, they have to finish taking out almost all of the tunnels to make the invasion worthwhile. It's slow and dangerous work - for soldiers and any remaining civilians.
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So, two models. The key questions differ depending on the model and what it seeks (revenge or prevention):
[revenge model] - if the other tribe killed X of yours, and you kill n*X of theirs, how big an "n" is OK?
[preventative model] - is there an effective alternative approach for preventing future attacks which Israel could take, at lower collateral damage to civilian Gazans?
The number of civilian losses matters in any case of course, but it's the ONLY concern in the revenge model, while it needs to be discussed in context and balance with the prevention goals in the second model.
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Both models would predict civilian deaths in Gaza, but in different ways and degrees.
My reading of the news and analysis provides more support for the "preventive model". If Israel's goal was to kill lots of Gazans in indiscriminate attacks, they could do that safely and vastly more efficiently from within their own borders, suffering near zero casualties. They could have done that in a week.
Instead they are systematically destroying the tunnel complexes from end to end, while trying to evacuate civilians - and this is consistent with their stated intentions.
I think a cease-fire will become far easier after the IDF has destroyed the Hamas tunnels, but is going to be a harder sell to Israel before then. The cost to both sides (on many levels) is terrible, but if all that doesn't even stop Hamas for long from attacking again, then what was gained?
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Any discussion which centers "civilian deaths in Gaza" as the only or key issue while completely ignoring any concerns for "how to prevent future attacks", is going to be distorting our thinking rather than illuminating it.
I'm not signed up for any side in that conflict. My personal focus is more on trying to understand as fully as possible the underlying dynamics that keep this conflict from being resolved. I haven't found any very plausible solutions, but I'd dearly like one. Meanwhile, I may sometimes speak up if I hear what seems to be fuzzy thinking or a misinformed viewpoint on ANY side. Fostering mistaken understanding does not lead to solutions.
So for example, I'm not myself asserting that destroying the Hamas tunnel system is a workable, or the only workable, approach to seriously inhibiting future attacks. I'm just saying that's how Israel sees it, so arguments which presume their main goal is revenge ("stop because you've done enough revenge") will understandably fall on deaf ears of people who are saying "we haven't yet destroyed enough tunnels to stop future repeat attacks, and that's what motivates us, not revenge".
Solid proposals for how they could stop future attacks in a better way would be apropos.
Or argumetns for why they don't need to take out all the tunnels, or why they should accept future attacks if the only way to stop them will increase the number of civilian deaths in Gaza, or various other responses which would address the core Israeli concerns as revealed by official statements and by their actions.
But meeting "we need to prevent future attacks" with "you've had enough revenge so stop" is miscommunication, not debate.
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I think Steve proposes that Israel withdraw to 1967 borders as part of a solution. Some two state variant like that used to be my supported position as well.
As I understand it today, the question for Israel is whether having an independent Palestinian state would end the attacks on Israel, or make the attacks ever larger and more deadly. I would be glad to hear reason and evidence to believe one or the other of these outcomes.
However bad the situation there now, it could easily become 10 to 100 times worse even locally, if two armed neighboring states fight to the death. (Not to mention spreading to the rest of the world) And I unfortunately see the "two state solution" as being fairly likely to lead to that. A short term approach to saving tens of thousands of lives could lead to later losing millions; or not. Anyway, I would LOVE to have confidence in a peaceful two state outcome, so if somebody believes in that, please reason with me, give me evidence for more hope.
"The framing offered from the pro-Palestinian side is that Israel is engaged in mindless retribution without end (probably ending only in genocide), and focuses on noting that Israel has already caused many more deaths in Gaza than Israelis killed Oct 7, so they should consider their revenge mission complete and go home."
Hmm, I don't think this is any vaguely serious person's framing. It certainly isn't my framing.
After what Hamas did, I don't think anybody expected Israel to go into Gaza, kill 1200 civilians, and call it a day. Not least because in every single conflict for decades, Israel has responded to aggression from Palestinians with a death toll tens of times greater than was inflicted on it. I think the overall ratio of Palestinian civilian to Israeli civilian deaths stands at around 17:1.
The problem was, Israel's stated goal of destroying Hamas is poorly defined, likely impossible, and very difficult to connect to the slaughter taking place in Gaza right now.
There are ~30,000 Hamas soldiers. How many of them have to be killed before Hams is "destroyed"? All of them? Okay, how will they know when they've done that? How much civilian "collateral damage" will that require? What about the Hamas leadership living outside of Gaza? What about the young men being radicalised, right now, into joining Hamas? Do all of them have to be killed too? This is what I mean by undefined. This is why, after 25,000 people have been killed, after 100+ days of near relentless bombing, Israel shows no sign of stopping and no signs of accomplishing any of its "goals."
And how do you prevent future attacks when you have given millions of people very, very good reason to hate you? We're not just talking about the bombing since October 7th here. Palestinians were attacking Israel before Hamas came along. Before the tunnels. The tunnels, and even Hamas, aren't the source of Israel's problems.
The source of the problem is two-fold:
1. Israel's violent oppression of the Palestinian people and its ongoing theft of land.
2. Anti-semitic extremists who want to kill all Jews.
Solving problem 1 is obviously entirely in Israel's hands. They could do it tomorrow. Solving problem 2 is out of Israel's hands. But I think the dangers of problem 2 are fuelled by problem 1.
Antisemitism is, of course, not a new problem. But Jews and Arabs have lived peacefully alongside each other in that region of the world for centuries. The establishment of a Jewish state in the region, a place that the Jews said, "this is OURS," not, "we will live here with everybody else," was, I think, one of the key drivers of the current problems. As I say in my conversation with Tom, David Ben-Gurion, the "founding father" of Israel, seems to agree with this assessment.
Israel's actions after that; land theft, the horrors of the Nakba (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ1TAOibLss), the oppression of the Palestinian people, only fuelled anti-Jewish sentiment. And this made it easy for the extremists to recruit people to their side.
I don't believe (and obviously my beliefs don't necessarily count for much, but I think they make sense here), that most of the 30,000 people fighting for Hamas are anti-Jewish extremists. I think they hate Israel for reasons that are frankly quite understandable. Things ike Israel killing members of their family, or stealing their parents' homes, or forcing them to live under siege.
I'm not saying that if Israel stopped doing this things, it would make the people in the region love them, but I think this is the only way to begin a peace process. You can't negotiate peace while you're standing on somebody's neck. And given that Netanyahu is never going to lift his foot off the Palestinians' necks, the first step towards a two-state solution now resides in removing him from power. To be fair, I think the vast majority of people, including Israelis, agree with that.
The problem is Hamas, not necessarily the Palestinians. There’s millions of Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank and East Jerusalem who live largest peaceably(if tense at times) with Israeli Jews. Cities like Haifa are even largely integrated.
There is room for more moderate Palestinians and Jews, but neither runs the show now.
Israel’s current course will result in enormous casualties (we have only seen the start) with no viable end game. It’s impossible to root out guerrillas with bombs without taking the civilian population with it. In the process, Israel will lose the world, including the United States and Europe. It’s on its way to becoming a quasi genocidal pariah state--indeed kind of like Hamas itself.
As a lifelong supporter of Israel, I cry as I confess I no longer can support Israel in good conscience.
I completely understand. I cannot give unconditional support to any side. All sides have legitimate grievances, and no sides are pure.
The population of Gaza is variously estimated between 2 and 2.5 million by different sources. It has been growing by about 2% per year, 40-50,000 people. If we take Hamas' figures as accurate, Israel has killed about half a year's population growth, setting the population back to what it was last summer. That is a terrible, terrible tragedy. (Tho it's far down the list of conflict deaths in recent years).
How much is at stake here? I believe that literally millions of lives, on all sides, are at stake.
I very much care about the suffering in Gaza (and the West Bank, and around the world). But I don't want to be stampeded by that into courses of actions which might result in millions of deaths down the line.
I agree about millions of lives. This could spin seriously out of control. And China/Taiwan is now leagues worse than just days ago as a result of independence-minded Lai's election (DPP) last week, and as a result of diverted attention and resources in Ukraine and now the Middle East. China was humiliated by the Taiwan election, and it is nothing if not opportunistic.
I will take a straight up bet on a Chinese economic blockade on part or all of Taiwan in 2024-2025. If Trump is elected, I'll give you odds in 2025. Trump is an isolationist at heart despite his bloviating, and I think Xi knows that.
I always appreciate your intelligent and informed commentary.
But shouldn't it be obvious that killing over 1% of the population of Gaza will generate more Hamas recruits?
If you're looking for a solution that will prevent more attacks, there needs to be a clear path to granting Palestinians civil rights. That could be a one state solution, where Jews make up about 7 million people in a state with about 14 million people. Or it could be a two state solution. Or I suppose Israel could drive all the Palestinians out of greater Israel, which would probably require killing many tens of thousands of civilians, and some willingness of a neighbor, Egypt, Lebanon or Jordan, to cooperate and admit millions of refugees.
From my perspective, Israel is committing slow suicide. A democratic nation can not survive while oppressing a huge chunk of its population. It took the US until the late 1960s to learn that lesson, and Blacks only make up 15% of the population. Palestinians in the occupied territories make up 36% of Israel's population.
Israel will eventually learn that if something can not go on forever, it will stop.
I'm sure that Israel is 100% aware of that, having dealt closely with it for decades. It's hardly a new insight in unconventional warfare, and has probably been taught on day one of studying same for a century.
However, the Israeli analysis could be that Hamas already has as many recruits as it can equip anyway, so it's more important to destroy the military and organizational infrastructure which allows Hamas to send rockets and invasions into Israel.
They may be weighing 30,000 actual trained Hamas fighters with a fantastic tunnel system and 15 years of accumulated weaponry, supplies, etc be more dangerous than 90,000 potential recruits who may hate Israel but do not have the infrastructure and tools to attack it.
Israel knows it cannot eliminate every existing member of Hamas, but they seem to hope that they can render Hamas militarily impotent for a decade or more, which is a different proposition (whether they are correct or not in their calculations is frankly beyond my ability to discern).
In all honesty, I don't see much of a long term path for Israel. You suggest with good reason that they are committing long term suicide, but your suggested alternatives may be seen as shorter term suicide and thus no better. If they can survive long enough, perhaps something like a reform movement might break out in the Arab world, and produce new options for further survival; if they commit suicide in the shorter term, there's less to hope for.
To my best assessment (and I do not claim to be an expert, tho I read experts on all sides), neither a one state nor a two state solution will create peace and continued existence for Israel. Other countries taking Palestinians as refugees might work for Israel, but (1) the Palestinians don't want that and (2) the potential host countries have had bad experiences with Palestinians and do not want them.
In the US, Blacks make up about 13% of the population. Inside Israel proper, about 20% of the Israeli citizens are Arabic today, mostly Muslim or Christian Arabs. They vote, they elect members of parliament, and the supreme court justice who ruled against Netanyahu was Arabic.
The residents of Gaza and of the West Bank, by and large, do not want to be Israeli citizens. They might accept temporary citizenship if that was seen as a temporary step towards the elimination of Israel, which it would very possibly be.
If you think that giving everybody in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank equal citizenship would end well, I suggest moving to South Africa for a few years and then let's talk. I too cheered the idealism of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but in the end it has not produced a society able to cooperate. There is a very poor historical track record from mixing peoples who hate each other, and having them sort it out democratically. If you doubt that, name the 3 best successes from history.
(Let me be very clear - I personally would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE a positive ending from just that one state solution with people willing to use democratic means and accept the outcome, rather than violence; that would please me no end. But that wishful thinking doesn't make it the most likely outcome.)
It appears we agree that Israel is on a long term path with a very bad ending.
I'm arguing a counterfactual: that had Israel worked with and empowered the PA in the West Bank, instead of working non-stop to humiliate it and steal land from its residents, perhaps it would have a rational negotiating partner by now.
But there's no way to know if my counterfactual was accurate. I'm just guessing when I claim/hope that there's still a way out via a two state solution if Israel works with the PA, or a reconstituted PA.
However, such a solution would require Israel to start dismantling its West Bank settlements, and I see absolutely no evidence that Israel is prepared to do that, or anything else to change the status quo today.
Still, I can't help but think that indiscriminately killing 25,000 and counting people, the vast majority of whom must certainly be civilians, is moving Israel and the Palestinians towards a far worse place.
Steve, as usual I appreciate your trying to thoughtfully nuance your takes, and to apply general principles rather than tribal loyalties. And this issue is particularly difficult, because it's hard to find the good guys; all sides have legitimate grievances, and none are very pure themselves. In that context, I'm not taking a political "side". My goal is accurate, insightful, and hopefully actionable understanding of all sides. That can include agreeing or disagreeing with some side about some point, without always supporting or opposing that side.
So I'd like to nuance a bit further around the edges.
The framing offered from the pro-Palestinian side is that Israel is engaged in mindless retribution without end (probably ending only in genocide), and focuses on noting that Israel has already caused many more deaths in Gaza than Israelis killed Oct 7, so they should consider their revenge mission complete and go home.
To put it another way, this imagines the IDF goal as past focused - asserting that their primary purpose is indiscriminate retribution for recent Israeli deaths. Let's call this the "revenge model".
Another model of the IDF mission in Gaza is more future focused: they could want to prevent any recurrence of Oct 7 like attacks. Let's call this the "preventive model". In this model, Israel believes that unless they destroy virtually the entire tunnel system in Gaza, greatly degrading the military capability of Hamas, the promised repeat attacks will be launched. So, in this model, they have to finish taking out almost all of the tunnels to make the invasion worthwhile. It's slow and dangerous work - for soldiers and any remaining civilians.
-----
So, two models. The key questions differ depending on the model and what it seeks (revenge or prevention):
[revenge model] - if the other tribe killed X of yours, and you kill n*X of theirs, how big an "n" is OK?
[preventative model] - is there an effective alternative approach for preventing future attacks which Israel could take, at lower collateral damage to civilian Gazans?
The number of civilian losses matters in any case of course, but it's the ONLY concern in the revenge model, while it needs to be discussed in context and balance with the prevention goals in the second model.
-----
Both models would predict civilian deaths in Gaza, but in different ways and degrees.
My reading of the news and analysis provides more support for the "preventive model". If Israel's goal was to kill lots of Gazans in indiscriminate attacks, they could do that safely and vastly more efficiently from within their own borders, suffering near zero casualties. They could have done that in a week.
Instead they are systematically destroying the tunnel complexes from end to end, while trying to evacuate civilians - and this is consistent with their stated intentions.
I think a cease-fire will become far easier after the IDF has destroyed the Hamas tunnels, but is going to be a harder sell to Israel before then. The cost to both sides (on many levels) is terrible, but if all that doesn't even stop Hamas for long from attacking again, then what was gained?
-----
Any discussion which centers "civilian deaths in Gaza" as the only or key issue while completely ignoring any concerns for "how to prevent future attacks", is going to be distorting our thinking rather than illuminating it.
I'm not signed up for any side in that conflict. My personal focus is more on trying to understand as fully as possible the underlying dynamics that keep this conflict from being resolved. I haven't found any very plausible solutions, but I'd dearly like one. Meanwhile, I may sometimes speak up if I hear what seems to be fuzzy thinking or a misinformed viewpoint on ANY side. Fostering mistaken understanding does not lead to solutions.
So for example, I'm not myself asserting that destroying the Hamas tunnel system is a workable, or the only workable, approach to seriously inhibiting future attacks. I'm just saying that's how Israel sees it, so arguments which presume their main goal is revenge ("stop because you've done enough revenge") will understandably fall on deaf ears of people who are saying "we haven't yet destroyed enough tunnels to stop future repeat attacks, and that's what motivates us, not revenge".
Solid proposals for how they could stop future attacks in a better way would be apropos.
Or argumetns for why they don't need to take out all the tunnels, or why they should accept future attacks if the only way to stop them will increase the number of civilian deaths in Gaza, or various other responses which would address the core Israeli concerns as revealed by official statements and by their actions.
But meeting "we need to prevent future attacks" with "you've had enough revenge so stop" is miscommunication, not debate.
-----
I think Steve proposes that Israel withdraw to 1967 borders as part of a solution. Some two state variant like that used to be my supported position as well.
As I understand it today, the question for Israel is whether having an independent Palestinian state would end the attacks on Israel, or make the attacks ever larger and more deadly. I would be glad to hear reason and evidence to believe one or the other of these outcomes.
However bad the situation there now, it could easily become 10 to 100 times worse even locally, if two armed neighboring states fight to the death. (Not to mention spreading to the rest of the world) And I unfortunately see the "two state solution" as being fairly likely to lead to that. A short term approach to saving tens of thousands of lives could lead to later losing millions; or not. Anyway, I would LOVE to have confidence in a peaceful two state outcome, so if somebody believes in that, please reason with me, give me evidence for more hope.
"The framing offered from the pro-Palestinian side is that Israel is engaged in mindless retribution without end (probably ending only in genocide), and focuses on noting that Israel has already caused many more deaths in Gaza than Israelis killed Oct 7, so they should consider their revenge mission complete and go home."
Hmm, I don't think this is any vaguely serious person's framing. It certainly isn't my framing.
After what Hamas did, I don't think anybody expected Israel to go into Gaza, kill 1200 civilians, and call it a day. Not least because in every single conflict for decades, Israel has responded to aggression from Palestinians with a death toll tens of times greater than was inflicted on it. I think the overall ratio of Palestinian civilian to Israeli civilian deaths stands at around 17:1.
The problem was, Israel's stated goal of destroying Hamas is poorly defined, likely impossible, and very difficult to connect to the slaughter taking place in Gaza right now.
There are ~30,000 Hamas soldiers. How many of them have to be killed before Hams is "destroyed"? All of them? Okay, how will they know when they've done that? How much civilian "collateral damage" will that require? What about the Hamas leadership living outside of Gaza? What about the young men being radicalised, right now, into joining Hamas? Do all of them have to be killed too? This is what I mean by undefined. This is why, after 25,000 people have been killed, after 100+ days of near relentless bombing, Israel shows no sign of stopping and no signs of accomplishing any of its "goals."
And how do you prevent future attacks when you have given millions of people very, very good reason to hate you? We're not just talking about the bombing since October 7th here. Palestinians were attacking Israel before Hamas came along. Before the tunnels. The tunnels, and even Hamas, aren't the source of Israel's problems.
The source of the problem is two-fold:
1. Israel's violent oppression of the Palestinian people and its ongoing theft of land.
2. Anti-semitic extremists who want to kill all Jews.
Solving problem 1 is obviously entirely in Israel's hands. They could do it tomorrow. Solving problem 2 is out of Israel's hands. But I think the dangers of problem 2 are fuelled by problem 1.
Antisemitism is, of course, not a new problem. But Jews and Arabs have lived peacefully alongside each other in that region of the world for centuries. The establishment of a Jewish state in the region, a place that the Jews said, "this is OURS," not, "we will live here with everybody else," was, I think, one of the key drivers of the current problems. As I say in my conversation with Tom, David Ben-Gurion, the "founding father" of Israel, seems to agree with this assessment.
Israel's actions after that; land theft, the horrors of the Nakba (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ1TAOibLss), the oppression of the Palestinian people, only fuelled anti-Jewish sentiment. And this made it easy for the extremists to recruit people to their side.
I don't believe (and obviously my beliefs don't necessarily count for much, but I think they make sense here), that most of the 30,000 people fighting for Hamas are anti-Jewish extremists. I think they hate Israel for reasons that are frankly quite understandable. Things ike Israel killing members of their family, or stealing their parents' homes, or forcing them to live under siege.
I'm not saying that if Israel stopped doing this things, it would make the people in the region love them, but I think this is the only way to begin a peace process. You can't negotiate peace while you're standing on somebody's neck. And given that Netanyahu is never going to lift his foot off the Palestinians' necks, the first step towards a two-state solution now resides in removing him from power. To be fair, I think the vast majority of people, including Israelis, agree with that.
The problem is Hamas, not necessarily the Palestinians. There’s millions of Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank and East Jerusalem who live largest peaceably(if tense at times) with Israeli Jews. Cities like Haifa are even largely integrated.
There is room for more moderate Palestinians and Jews, but neither runs the show now.
Israel’s current course will result in enormous casualties (we have only seen the start) with no viable end game. It’s impossible to root out guerrillas with bombs without taking the civilian population with it. In the process, Israel will lose the world, including the United States and Europe. It’s on its way to becoming a quasi genocidal pariah state--indeed kind of like Hamas itself.
As a lifelong supporter of Israel, I cry as I confess I no longer can support Israel in good conscience.
Israel’s
I completely understand. I cannot give unconditional support to any side. All sides have legitimate grievances, and no sides are pure.
The population of Gaza is variously estimated between 2 and 2.5 million by different sources. It has been growing by about 2% per year, 40-50,000 people. If we take Hamas' figures as accurate, Israel has killed about half a year's population growth, setting the population back to what it was last summer. That is a terrible, terrible tragedy. (Tho it's far down the list of conflict deaths in recent years).
How much is at stake here? I believe that literally millions of lives, on all sides, are at stake.
I very much care about the suffering in Gaza (and the West Bank, and around the world). But I don't want to be stampeded by that into courses of actions which might result in millions of deaths down the line.
I agree about millions of lives. This could spin seriously out of control. And China/Taiwan is now leagues worse than just days ago as a result of independence-minded Lai's election (DPP) last week, and as a result of diverted attention and resources in Ukraine and now the Middle East. China was humiliated by the Taiwan election, and it is nothing if not opportunistic.
I will take a straight up bet on a Chinese economic blockade on part or all of Taiwan in 2024-2025. If Trump is elected, I'll give you odds in 2025. Trump is an isolationist at heart despite his bloviating, and I think Xi knows that.
I always appreciate your intelligent and informed commentary.
But shouldn't it be obvious that killing over 1% of the population of Gaza will generate more Hamas recruits?
If you're looking for a solution that will prevent more attacks, there needs to be a clear path to granting Palestinians civil rights. That could be a one state solution, where Jews make up about 7 million people in a state with about 14 million people. Or it could be a two state solution. Or I suppose Israel could drive all the Palestinians out of greater Israel, which would probably require killing many tens of thousands of civilians, and some willingness of a neighbor, Egypt, Lebanon or Jordan, to cooperate and admit millions of refugees.
From my perspective, Israel is committing slow suicide. A democratic nation can not survive while oppressing a huge chunk of its population. It took the US until the late 1960s to learn that lesson, and Blacks only make up 15% of the population. Palestinians in the occupied territories make up 36% of Israel's population.
Israel will eventually learn that if something can not go on forever, it will stop.
> "will generate more Hamas recruits?"
I'm sure that Israel is 100% aware of that, having dealt closely with it for decades. It's hardly a new insight in unconventional warfare, and has probably been taught on day one of studying same for a century.
However, the Israeli analysis could be that Hamas already has as many recruits as it can equip anyway, so it's more important to destroy the military and organizational infrastructure which allows Hamas to send rockets and invasions into Israel.
They may be weighing 30,000 actual trained Hamas fighters with a fantastic tunnel system and 15 years of accumulated weaponry, supplies, etc be more dangerous than 90,000 potential recruits who may hate Israel but do not have the infrastructure and tools to attack it.
Israel knows it cannot eliminate every existing member of Hamas, but they seem to hope that they can render Hamas militarily impotent for a decade or more, which is a different proposition (whether they are correct or not in their calculations is frankly beyond my ability to discern).
In all honesty, I don't see much of a long term path for Israel. You suggest with good reason that they are committing long term suicide, but your suggested alternatives may be seen as shorter term suicide and thus no better. If they can survive long enough, perhaps something like a reform movement might break out in the Arab world, and produce new options for further survival; if they commit suicide in the shorter term, there's less to hope for.
To my best assessment (and I do not claim to be an expert, tho I read experts on all sides), neither a one state nor a two state solution will create peace and continued existence for Israel. Other countries taking Palestinians as refugees might work for Israel, but (1) the Palestinians don't want that and (2) the potential host countries have had bad experiences with Palestinians and do not want them.
In the US, Blacks make up about 13% of the population. Inside Israel proper, about 20% of the Israeli citizens are Arabic today, mostly Muslim or Christian Arabs. They vote, they elect members of parliament, and the supreme court justice who ruled against Netanyahu was Arabic.
The residents of Gaza and of the West Bank, by and large, do not want to be Israeli citizens. They might accept temporary citizenship if that was seen as a temporary step towards the elimination of Israel, which it would very possibly be.
If you think that giving everybody in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank equal citizenship would end well, I suggest moving to South Africa for a few years and then let's talk. I too cheered the idealism of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but in the end it has not produced a society able to cooperate. There is a very poor historical track record from mixing peoples who hate each other, and having them sort it out democratically. If you doubt that, name the 3 best successes from history.
(Let me be very clear - I personally would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE a positive ending from just that one state solution with people willing to use democratic means and accept the outcome, rather than violence; that would please me no end. But that wishful thinking doesn't make it the most likely outcome.)
It appears we agree that Israel is on a long term path with a very bad ending.
I'm arguing a counterfactual: that had Israel worked with and empowered the PA in the West Bank, instead of working non-stop to humiliate it and steal land from its residents, perhaps it would have a rational negotiating partner by now.
But there's no way to know if my counterfactual was accurate. I'm just guessing when I claim/hope that there's still a way out via a two state solution if Israel works with the PA, or a reconstituted PA.
However, such a solution would require Israel to start dismantling its West Bank settlements, and I see absolutely no evidence that Israel is prepared to do that, or anything else to change the status quo today.
Still, I can't help but think that indiscriminately killing 25,000 and counting people, the vast majority of whom must certainly be civilians, is moving Israel and the Palestinians towards a far worse place.