From an outside perspective, this doesn't appear to be the case.
It's like that old management consulting saw: "Strategy without execution is useless — execution without strategy is aimless." Israel's actions appear to be entirely reactive; they're on the back foot, and they don't have a clear set of strategic objectives. Execution without strategy.
In essence, they're responded to one chevauchée raid with another chevauchée raid. It's only going to end in tears for all involved.
It appears the government has no clear strategy and lacks the famous "the day after" plan.
But from IDF side, it took two weeks to take over the whole border with Egypt. Rafah is empty and by the end of the month, it will be Israeli.
So yes, they spent months not doing anything while the government was trying to secure hostage release and Biden was screaming do not touch Rafah.
But in general what strategy do you need? Take over, destroy the military infra and prevent smuggling. That's all that is needed.
Gaza is thousand years back, it will never recover. It is not a threat anymore in any meaningful way.
Do you really believe this? Do you think this is an efficient way to perform military counterinsurgency?
And are you really sure it's a good idea to wallow in war crimes like this in relation to the rest of the world? Something like, the UAE kind of gets away with it in Sudan currently, so Israel can use IDF like its own janjaweed?
Look at Judea&Samaria, beyond a shooting from stolen weapons nothing happens and that's without tight control over the border.
Insurgency works as long as you have a constant supply of weapons. Gaza had it, but not anymore.
Why do you think that? I follow the reports from palestinian resistance and news quite closely and see no signs that the weapon supplies have been cut off.
> But in general what strategy do you need? Take over, destroy the military infra and prevent smuggling. That's all that is needed. Gaza is thousand years back, it will never recover. It is not a threat anymore in any meaningful way.
Impressively amoral post, but this is insanity.
(1) Israel doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is not self-sufficient.
(2) There's something monstrous about keeping 2M people herded up in a closed pen.
Whether or not those people are "threats" shall remain to be seen, but Israel is going to lose (is, already, losing) the hearts and minds of everybody on the planet under age 40 -- and you're going to see what being a real pariah state feels like. Israel won't survive as a state very long after that; it is a hard thing, to be despised. And yet, if it comes to that point, it will be very richly deserved.
What you need is a strategy which improves the lives of Gazans -- not one that bombs their homes to rubble and sets them back a thousand years. You need to address their very real grievance. Without this, you're both sunk. Gonna end in tears, like I said.
>Whether or not those people are "threats" shall remain to be seen, but Israel is going to lose (is, already, losing) the hearts and minds of everybody on the planet under age 40
At this point, I think these are not the real power dynamics.
I used to think Israel needed western support to exist. I don't do anymore. Now I believe that Israel needs any support, and they are perfectly fine with the idea of allying with Russia, China or whoever seems reliable enough and willing to put up with their stuff. Which means that Israel is not dependent on the west, more specifically, the US. The US is reliant on Israel for presence in the middle east.
Which would explain why they seem to do whatever they want, ignoring warnings from the US. The warnings aren't real, Israel is going to commit unspeakable abuses on a population either way, so might as well have them on our side. I believe that to be the current state of affairs.
I have no doubts that Israel is willing to search for support anywhere it can find it. Yet, this doesn't mean that they don't need the western one to keep with their standards of living, political standing in the west, and self-identification as a modern western country. A serious political condemnation and sanctions would be enough to steer Israel towards a different course- provided that the radicalisation of society hasn't already reached a point of no return.
On the other hand, the US certainly doesn't need an ally that creates far more problems than it resolves. Their solid, oil-rich ally in the region is Saudi Arabia. The power dynamic between Israel and the US is not that of a client-state and its powerful protector or even one between allies; it resembles more that of a narcissistic, abusive lover towards their submissive partner. This is why we have been seeing the entire US government utterly humiliating itself for the past few months, finding pathetic excuses to pretend they haven't been slapped in the face every single day, while reiterating their unconditional love and swearing that their partner never did anything wrong.
Really, there is no rational (in the sense of geo-political or strategic) explanation for this. It's a psychological subjugation.
Hello friend. I've been on HN for a while. I contribute to the discussions here and contribute with submissions (you can check my submissions and comments pages through my profile). I have earned my right to crack a joke once in a while.
Please consider not shooting from the hip and respecting other users' comments here, yourself.
Is it? Pragmatically speaking, who is going to make it end in tears? Nobody in the region really wants a war with Israel: the Arab countries got their fill of it and Iran sure doesn't want to get into an actual war. And if anyone gets any big ideas, there's always Uncle Sam (and Uncle Sam's Western allies; who, btw, include Turkey).
I understand that people want to see things put right, but we must understand what world we live in and how the cards are dealt. There are three great powers, the US, China and Russia, and Israel has a um special relation with one of them, whereas none of its enemies do. The Arab countries want to make peace and do business, Iran might like to be a regional power but has no friends in the region and the Palestinians have nothing to negotiate with and nobody to stand up for them; nobody with any clout, that is.
There is nothing and nobody that can make it all end in tears for Israel. You and others misunderstand the geopolitical situation in the Middle East: Israel can do whatever the fuck it pleases, and it does.
To be perfectly clear, it is a shitty situation, but there is no obvious way out of it.
US support, extraordinarily stalwart as it is, has shown its first cracks. Western allies are considerably less religiously motivated, or defense-industrial-linkage motivated, and can’t be counted on in the same way. Recent ICC news can be read as an indicator of prevailing winds.
The US is not above dropping allies when politically convenient, and as Israel burns its public image (or seeks geopolitical independence), both parties stateside can entertain anti-Zionism.
Watch what was previously far-left/right become normalized as legitimate considerations regarding US support of Israel. That Iran would entertain its recent long-range strike should tell of regional estimations of how likely the US would be to intervene, and then extrapolate from there.
I don't completely disagree. It's clear that the US does not want war in the Middle East: it's bad for business and I think that the US too has had its fill of fighting. I'm also kind of getting the vibe that the US administration is not at all happy with the Israeli government's actions.
But that doesn't change the geopolicical situation: Israel is an important ally of the US in the Middle East and the US is an important ally of NATO, so whatever Israel does, the US will stand behind, and Nato will stand behind the US.
In any case, if the US wanted to stop the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza they would have done it months ago. I don't think they really care, and if the Republicans come into power, with all the looney tune characters from the Christian Zionist right in their ranks, I don't think there's going to be more care.
But, hey, we'll see what happens. It would be great if public sentiment and opinion counted for something in modern liberal democracies, but we have the recent enough example of the war on Iraq and the gigantic demonstrations against it in the UK, and how they didn't change one thing in the decisions of a liberal British PM.
> There are three great powers, the US, China and Russia, and Israel has a um special relation with one of them, whereas none of its enemies do.
Things keep going the way they're going, and that special relationship has got twenty years left on the clock, max.
I don't think that American support should be taken for granted -- and it's not like Israel is cozying up to the Russians or Chinese. They may well end up like South Africa, with investment bans, arms embargoes, sanctions, no participation in international cultural events, etc. That's a very hard fate for a nation. The white South Africans of those days weren't able to hold out for very long.
I disagree. It is very obvious, as Levitz points out above, that Israel can just cozy up to the Chinese or the Russians if Uncle Sam washes its hands of it, China and Russia who would jump at the chance to gain a foothold in the Middle East, right next door to all those industrial juice springs. If I may.
But even if that were not the case 20 years is plenty of time to cleanse Gaza, and the West Bank with it, of every last Palestinian. I'd say at the current rate it would take hardly a couple years.
Edit: to be fair, I don't know how to compare SA and Israel. Maybe you have a point, but I don't think it's that simple to impose any kind of, essentially, sanctions to Israel as long as Uncle Sam's got its back. That special relation is a pretty big trump card there. And, btw, we're still at a Democratic president. Can you imagine the Republicans letting Israel suffer arms bans and trade embargoes?
> But even if that were not the case 20 years is plenty of time to cleanse Gaza, and the West Bank with it, of every last Palestinian. I'd say at the current rate it would take hardly a couple years.
Surely you realize that this is completely unhinged?
You are apparently an intelligent person. Doesn't it strike you that there should be a moral dimension to this? That there is a right way to act that is independent of realpolitik? Do you not realize that those people are, quite literally, under the care of Israel's government, and that to "cleanse" them would be a crime of world-historical proportions -- even if it might make life a little bit easier for people in Tel Aviv?
Besides, I don't think you understand what the reaction would be. Also, I think you overstate China's willingness, and Russia's capacity, to meaningfully support Israel should the US wash its hands of the region.
>> Doesn't it strike you that there should be a moral dimension to this?
I'm not endorsing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians if that's what you mean. At the same time, you can say that Israel has lost peoples' hearts, that it goes against international law, that it's unhinged etc etc but none of those things will stop the people in power in Israel, who btw are textbook fascists who spit "peace" like a dirty word, from doing whatever they like.
Historically speaking, the Holocaust did not end until the Allies invaded Germany (and even then, it continued until the last moment) and the massacre of Palestinians will not stop until a large international force invades Israel. This will not happen, so the massacre will continue until the last Palestinian dies or leaves and Israel extends from the river to the sea, just like the settlers want it.
That's the facts on the ground. In Lord of the Rings, the bad guys lose. In the real world, they often get their cake and eat it. You can call it unhinged, or realpolitik, you can insult me and attack me, but you're just shooting the messenger.
I kinda agree with your position, but I don’t share your optimistic outlook regarding Israel fate if it loses US support. I think the Arab world is mostly at peace with Israel because of US support, and Russia/China are only thinly supporting other nations because US has such a large stronghold via Israel that make really little sense economically. If Israel loses US support, this calculation changes wildly, and I’m kinda skeptic that Israel could pivot that quickly to other patron, the chaos on the power struggle between factions would create enough delay.
My impression yet is that unless something radically changes, I don’t think Israel would lose US, the power vacuum in the region would be filled by somebody else, something US is unlikely to allow. Despite the show, I don’t believe Biden/Netanyahu’s fallout; it’s simply the only way Biden can do at least the tiny amount of damage control that allows him to keep the most of Jewish/leftist voting blocks.
You're probably right that there would be a power struggle etc, if Israel simply unceremoniously dumped the US as a patron. I just think they would sound out the other great powers beforehand (at the risk of intelligence leaking that they are doing so, of course) so it would be a careful and calculated move, not a sudden jump. That's what I'd do if I was in their shoes, anyway.
The other thing to keep in mind is that Israel is a nuclear power and there are no others in the region (for now), so that, too, gives them some extra time and leverage.
I totally agree that all this is just hypothetical and I, too, am not convinced that Biden is going to take serious action on Netanyahu. I would think that he's royally pissed off at him, privately, though. Bibi has caused Biden no end of trouble and I think it's clear that if Biden lost the elections, Bibi would celebrate.
That's hard to square with the reality on the ground: tens of thousand killed, millions displaced, half of all buildings damaged and the Palestinians can do nothing to stop it, but they're "perfectly capable" of genocide?
Israel has a fully mechanised army, tanks, F16s, drones, rockets, bombs, nukes, while Hamas has ... their grandpas' hand-me down AK-47s? What are they gonna do to genocide the Israelis? Give them the evil eye?
Your prediction isn't substantial. Israel will never win a popularity contest, but that is irrelevant. It also isn't true that all young people are firmly on one side of this issue, in fact they are probably a minority, even if they can be pretty loud. Strong opinions and little information often comes in a package.
Israel exists because Jews were despised. They did not have support when the country was founded and got weapons on the black market. Today their security situation is a lot more stable.
There are western firms/nations trading with Russia today, money always beats popularity, geostrategic interest beats popularity, pretty much anything beats unsolicited opinions from college students on Israel.
In fact I believe support for Gaza will need a lot more political capital in the future and the countries supporting them actively will try to withdraw from this conflict.
The few Gazans that sold products on the world market will have their existence evaporated, since they had to trade through Israel. Those that worked in Israel probably will not return for a very long time.
People pointing their fingers at Israel often simply lack perspective.
> So yes, antisemites and the mentally ill are loud on the streets and on the university campuses but they haven't won the hearts and the minds of people, and rightfully so.
Is that right?
> The survey found that 61% of the population opposes Israel's military action in the sealed-off Palestinian territory.
> Public support in Germany for Israel's military operations has dropped significantly, the survey shows.
> In November, shortly after the October 7 attacks, 62% favoured the Israeli military actions in Gaza, compared to 33% in the most recent survey, indicating a recent shift in public opinion almost eight months into the conflict.
Your point about the Eurovision is something I also am very curious about. I don’t understand how that’s possible, from TikTok and Instagram to Reddit and HN, All I see are mass protests and hate comments against Israel. So how come tens of millions overwhelmingly voted for Israel, even in Scandinavia? Sweden gave them 12 points!
Can you speak more to your perspective? The only way I can understand your take is to say that the West Bank is rightfully Israeli and therefore its residents should be citizens with voting rights. Are you opposed to an independent Palestinian state?
The west bank isn't independent. If a citizen there commits a crime, they are sent to an Israelite court. Their infrastructure and policing are done by Israel. Their elected officials are completely powerless, they cannot change anything.
Their vote cannot affect the government that governs them. They are israeli citizens with no say in the state that controls them.
Not OP, but I am for either giving the Palestinians the same rights as Israelis in a 1 state solution or a an independent Palestinian state but since Israel doesn't seem interested in that it's a cheap talking point because Israel will just crush the Palestinians under its boot until economic sanctions are applied similar to how it was done re South Africa.
"Yitzhak Rabin presented the Oslo II Interim Agreement to the Knesset on October 5, 1995, in his final speech to the legislative body. As he spoke, he boldly laid out what he believed to be the future of the Jewish state, boasting that “The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six-Day War.” He also described his vision of a Palestinian “entity” he described as “less than a state.”
You can't expect people under brutal military occupation to suddenly start loving their occupiers while under that occupation.
You have to end that occupation, period. That means ALL illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank need to move off the settlements too btw.
If after an independent Palestinian state is established on the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, all of West Bank and all of Gaza and then Israel faces violence from that state, then you'll have support of many you don't right now.
You can't occupy people forever, or because one of their leaders rejected a deal once etc.
>> You can't occupy people forever, or because one of their leaders rejected a deal once etc.
Turkey, which has for all intents and purposes occupied the (ancestral lands of) the Kurdish people for many years, would like to disagree.
Turkey, btw, which has occupied the ancestral lands of the Kurdish people, alongside the ancestral lands of the Ionian and Pontiac Greeks, Assyrian and Cappadokian Christians and Armenians, whom it has ethnically cleansed and genocided.
Sure you can occupy people forever. Or until you massacre every last one of them who won't leave (what is now) your land.
But Israel was not the one that rejected two state solutions offered by UN in 1948, USA in 2000, and by Israel in 1990s, 2008 etc. It was Arab countries, and Palestinian leaders.
Why was Palestine not a state before 1967 with Gaza and West bank as territory?
How many times have Palestinians offered to recognize and make permanent peace with Israel?
Responding to your edit
>> If after an independent Palestinian state is established on the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, all of West Bank and all of Gaza and then Israel faces violence from that state, then you'll have support of many you don't right now.
Huh, why did they not accept it in 2000 then? Why launch the second intifada? Why ask the "right to return"? Why call for the destruction of the entirety of Israel as a "white settler colonial state"?
It's questionable that the Western dominated UN of 1948 had any authority to make such a proposal and that it was fair in terms of how the territory was to be divided.
> Why was Palestine not a state before 1967 with Gaza and West bank as territory?
Because it was occupied by Egypt and Jordan and before then by the Brits and before then by the Ottomans....
Are you making an argument that the Palestinians were occupied since forever so why not occupy them forever?
> Huh, why did they not accept it in 2000 then?
The 2000 deal was a deal for 'less than a state' that's why, see my previous post.
The West Bank is occupied by in substantial fraction by Americans, not even Israelis, who choose to live in the West Bank, from where Palestinians were exiled by the IDF, under Israeli protection. How is that anything like Afghanistan nation building?
Countries with bantustans that they technically don't claim as part of their territory, but in practice completely control without giving the population any rights, are not normally considered democratic. See for example South Africa.
The reason why South Africa and many intellectuals consider Israel to be an apartheid state is not because of the treatment of Arabs that were allowed to become Israeli citizens after the Nakba, but because of the occupation of the West-Bank. The West-Bank is not rightfully Israel land, but has been de facto under Israeli occupation for 50 years. The situation there is very comparable to SA Bantustans; the people there have no rights, have no nationality, and are brutally suppressed by the Israeli government and fascist settlers. Ghaza is basically an open air concentration camp.
The status quo is apartheid. The options to change that are one multicultural state, a two-state solution or genocide.
Israel, contrary to generally agreed upon international law, considers East Jerusalem as a part of Israel. The autochtonous Palestinians living there are eligible for Israeli citizenship which would allow them to vote. However only a tiny fraction has gotten Israeli citizenship as that would legitimise the annexation.
This is absolutely true: there are hundreds of thousands of adults who live within Israeli territory under Israeli control, where Israeli law and order is applied, who are not allowed to vote, have no representation at all, and are regularly subject to lethal violence from Israeli citizens.
> Given that designation as a separate state, complaining that they can't vote in Israeli elections is like complaining that Canadians can't vote in US elections.
I don’t remember the US ever occupying Canada.
Not like that at all, and this is a clearly biased take even considering this line on its own.
At no point did Filipinos have the ability to vote for Senators, Congressmen, or the President. Same for Puerto Ricans. US has other territories too, by the way, with the same restrictions.
You have no problem calling the US a democracy, but when the same rules are applied elsewhere you have a problem?
Look, you really like to talk with confidence, but every time you bring up a a point, you pull a whatabout. Have you even looked into what the people you’re so very concerned with want? That’s the most relevant part of all. It’s not your feelings. It’s what the people you say you care about want. It doesn’t appear they want what you want for them, and you’re big mad about that bro.
Nothing like moving the goal posts, conflating a whole bunch of different issues, and then projecting statements on to me when you’re called out nonsense.
Why is your definition of democratic the valid one?
Mine is, a country is only a real democracy if ALL people it rules over have the same set of rights. Israel isn't a democracy and so isn't the DRC, despite the fact that it has democratic in its name.
I like how these people think the checkmate move is assume the person they’re talking to is a blind supporter of the USA for some reason, and have zero response when they realize that rationally applying the same rules to everybody really does mean Israel doesn’t pass the bar for a democracy.
> > Given that designation as a separate state, complaining that they can't vote in Israeli elections is like complaining that Canadians can't vote in US elections.
> I don’t remember the US ever occupying Canada.
I'm confused by this.
Normally under international law, it is illegal to allow people in occupied territory to vote or otherwise integrate them into civil government.
Israel has even gotten criticized by the UN human rights council for allowing elections in occupied territory (in golan heights, so not Palestinian occupied territory) http://undocs.org/A/HRC/37/L.18
An occupying force holding its own elections in an occupied place is indeed illegal (your reference was about Israeli people holding elections in the Golan heights).
Comparing an _occupied_ people’s attempt to hold elections in the occupied place (Palestinian people in Palestine) to two separate non-occupied states (USA and Canada) is nonsense.
There is an argument to be made that if the Palestinians have to ask permission to become a real state from Israel, then their "government" isn't really a government, and that all the Palestinians are in thrall to Tel Aviv, a government which rules them but does not represent them, whose laws bind them but for whom they may not vote.
There is such a valid argument. But the Oslo accords officially created the PA, which rules over the Palestinians in the West Bank. And Gaza is ruled by Hamas. The Palestinians are governed by a mix of Israeli military law and PA laws, which originate from Jordan, I believe.
Some argue that in practice, Israel has control over all the Palestinians, so in practice there is one large apartheid state. I don't believe this argument is valid, for the reasons I outlined above; I think it doesn't make sense for Palestinians to fight for their own State, have a semi-autonomous government that rules over them in practice (two if you count Hamas), fight to get international recognition for this Palestinian State and get it from many countries, but claim that they are being ruled by Tel Aviv.
(Of course the situation is murky - I think the important thing isn't what label we give this, it's to know what the facts are. Those above are the relevant facts, I believe. If you agree with me on the facts but choose to label it in one way vs. another, I think that's a less important discussion at that point.)
And Bibi supported and kept Hamas in power so Israeli society could labor under the delusion that keeping Palestinians out of sight and out of mind was a viable plan. Until it wasn’t.
He’s been elected again and again, and has been steadfast in preventing self governance from ever taking hold. To the degree Israel is a “democracy” it is because there is voter consensus that there can be no Palestinian self rule.
He's a believer. He want several things that can't be well understood by the non-religious. He wants the al Aqsa mosque demolished/removed, so the temple can be rebuilt. He wants all of Jerusalem. And, even what he would call all of "Greater Israel" eventually. In that order, but he's willing to settle for those things out of order if it looks possible. A peaceful neighboring Palestine doesn't allow for any of that. A peaceful, neighboring Palestine wouldn't, for instance, ever do anything that could be used as an excuse to seize territory, or to remove Palestinians (via any of the various forms of ethnic cleansing). This thing in Gaza may well have been dragged out, just in the hopes that the people in the West Bank would be provoked into doing something, or that Iron Dome might shoot down something in just such a way as that the debris would fall on al Aqsa.
All of this will seem like the dumbest bullshit to you. Why would anyone want that? But there are millions of people in Israel that want nothing more than this. And he is their leader.
None of that seems accurate, not when it comes to Netanyahu. He's not a religious zealot and almost certainly isn't pursuing anything because of religion.
> But there are millions of people in Israel that want nothing more than this. And he is their leader.
I don't think there are millions in Israel that want Al Aqsa demolished, that is a delusion that has no historical basis at all. There are of course religious extremists who want really bad things, but they are a relatively small minority of the population.
Most of the population just wants to live in peace and safety. They believe there is no safety to be found with a Palestinian state next door (with good reason, see what happened in Gaza).
> This thing in Gaza may well have been dragged out, just in the hopes that [...] or Iron Dome might shoot down something in just such a way as that the debris would fall on al Aqsa.
This is a ridiculous line of thinking. Hamas (and Iran) are shooting rockets at Israel, including at al Aqsa, Israel is spending millions with the iron dome to shoot down those rockets, and you think it's part of a nefarious Israeli plan to destroy al Aqsa?
> I don't think there are millions in Israel that want Al Aqsa demolished,
There are well over 1 million ultra-orthodox. There's also a not-really-countable number of non-ultra-orthodox who want the same thing, but their opinions are a bit more diverse. Say, somewhere around 1.6-2 million. That's plural millions, as far as I understand grammar.
>They believe there is no safety to be found with a Palestinian state next door (with good reason, see what happened in Gaza).
They also believe there's no safety for a single state solution, because Palestinians will eventually become the majority, and vote out the jews. There is of course, an unspoken third option as well. No one would admit to favoring that.
> Israel is spending millions with the iron dome to shoot down those rockets,
The debris has to land somewhere. It doesn't just evaporate. Could someone finagle it so that it lands where they want? Would be a beat trick. Just have to wait for the right trajectory, one would think.
> There are well over 1 million ultra-orthodox. There's also a not-really-countable number of non-ultra-orthodox who want the same thing, but their opinions are a bit more diverse. Say, somewhere around 1.6-2 million. That's plural millions, as far as I understand grammar.
First, you're assuming that all ultra-Orthodox want to see Al Aqsa demolished, which is a huge assumption that is probably not correct.
Second, in a country of 9 million people, I think it's misleading to say that "millions want" when referring to less than 2 million. I think saying about a country of 9m people that "millions want to see an incredibly important place/monument destroyed" gives a very wrong impression of what is the general spirit here, and is especially misleading because "Al Aqsa is in danger" has been a common worry of the Palestinians for a hundred years, with very little factual basis for that worry, IMO.
> They also believe there's no safety for a single state solution, because Palestinians will eventually become the majority, and vote out the jews.
Of course. The one state solution is a ridiculous non-solution as acknowledged by every official international body that has ever considered the problem, and as acknowledged by about 99% of the people living in the region. And as agreed by the parties themselves in the Oslo accords and ensuing future peace process in which the plan was to find a way to create two states living side by side.
> There is of course, an unspoken third option as well. No one would admit to favoring that.
Unfortunately, you're wrong about that. There is a small, minority, but currently influential group of Israelis that pretty explicitly espouses the idea of, in their words, "voluntary relocation". Which everyone reads as a pretty implicit call for ethnic cleansing.
> The debris has to land somewhere. It doesn't just evaporate.
No kidding. Plenty of people have been hurt by this debris, and I've seen pieces of it - those can be pretty big chunks of metal falling on people's heads.
Still, the implication that it would somehow be part of Israel's plan to destroy Al Aqsa to keep the war going so that maybe debris from rockets that Israel shoots down would land on Al Aqsa, and the implication that this would then be Israel's fault, and not the fault of the people shooting the rockets at Al Aqsa in the first place, is... I don't know what to even call it beyond morally absurd.
You're partially right, and I've stated many times that I think Israel has acted in morally wrong ways for the last 15 years of Netanyahu's rule.
But I think it's important to understand that the reason the Israeli electorate went down this path is because of the failure of the peace process in the 1990s and 2000s. The Israeli public multiple times elected leaders pursuing peace. Even former right-wing hawks turned around and pursued peace. And some things came out of it, like the creation of the PA which gave limited self-governance to the Palestinians.
But eventually, the Palestinians turned down what were perceived to be very serious and generous peace offers by the Israeli public, walked away from the negotiations, and started a terrible wave of terror attacks.
Similarly, Israel removed all settlers and all army personnel from Gaza, the result of which was the election of Hamas, with a sworn mission to destroy Israel, and constant rocket attacks on Israel.
So the way the Israeli public (correctly) sees it, there is no "partner for peace", and even when peace was very seriously pursued and positive steps taken to give Palestinians what they ostensibly wanted, the result was violence directed at Israel.
That is why there was a turn away from pursuing peace and just trying to "live with the situation".
Likely that it (or, specifically, East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem was Israeli both under the partition and the 1949 Armistice Agreement) is part of the territory Israel occupied after 1967 that wasn't Israel, despite later being decalred as annexed, and is generally not viewed internationally as Israeli territory.
Likely, but since as you say West Jerusalem is Israeli, and the government of Israel is in West Jerusalem on a practical basis, calling it a Palestinian city is both wrong, and making a point that I think is worth stating explicitly.
