Enquiring minds want to know: The stated rationale for the Israeli ongoing invasion of Gaza is the elimination of the underground tunnel system that has facilitated the bombardment of cities in Israel and is hence a threat to the country’s populace.
But much has been made of the vaunted “Iron Dome” anti-missile defense system that is said to be virtually foolproof in knocking out incoming rockets. If this is so, what was the need for a full-scale invasion into the populace of western Gaza and Gaza City? Again, the answer repeatedly given is the destruction of the tunnels as the main goal. But can’t this be done by other means, absent the catastrophic humanitarian toll taken by the disproportionate civilian casualties? That is, say, by concentrating almost exclusively on destroying the tunnels bordering on the edges of the state of Israel, applied in tandem with a sort of “rope a dope” policy of letting Hamas exhaust itself and its missiles (which, in truth, are hardly inexhaustible), rather than the “whack-a-mole” tactic of search and destroy, which exacerbates the counterproductive carnage?
Granted, the psychic pressure on a populace that is under perpetual bombardment is an existential fact of life, but for purely practical reasons aren’t there other long-term solutions, not the least of which is letting Hamas burn itself out now that it has been pretty well established that adjacent Arab states would not be too sorry to see it do so?
One does not have to believe that Israel hasn’t a right to exist or to defend itself from those who would wish its annihilation to ask these questions about the current invasion of Gaza by Israeli forces.
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