Jakarta –
Israel continued to carry out brutal bomb attacks on Gaza, causing the death toll of nearly 20 thousand people. Researchers estimate that at least a third of housing in Gaza was damaged or destroyed.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, more than 18,700 Palestinians have died and 50,500 people have been injured. About 90% of the population fled their homes and faced food shortages, sanitation problems, overcrowded shelters, and the spread of disease.
But Israel’s goal of defeating Hamas has not yet been achieved. Israel wrongly assumed that massive airstrikes and ground fighting could defeat the militancy embedded in society. In fact, experts say, it is likely that these tactics will only create more combatants and benefit Hamas.
“The notion that collective punishment will convince the Gaza population to encourage Hamas to come to the negotiating table with Israel is not going to happen,” said Paul Poast, a professor of international security at the University of Chicago who specializes in international security.
“They can even use these (Israeli brutal) actions to say, ‘Look, this is who we are dealing with. We are dealing with Israel. We have been saying for a long time that they don’t care about you and look,” he added.
So far, Israel’s efforts have not produced the expected results. Hamas’s main leaders are still hiding in their vast tunnels or among the 1.9 million refugees. The Israeli military claims to have killed 5,000 Hamas militants, or only about 16% of Hamas’ armed wing.
The massive bombing did not destroy the militancy of Hamas fighters or Gaza residents. Israel did not learn from what happened in World War II, when the Allies began bombing German cities.
A common fallacy of “all-out bombing” is that the sheer amount of death and destruction creates a breaking point where society is divided and refuses to support the government or overthrow it.
In Nazi Germany, the Allies conducted a bombing campaign that destroyed 92 cities and towns with the aim of fomenting rebellion against Adolf Hitler and reducing Germany’s will to fight.
“That never happened, and the Wehrmacht fought hard to the end,” said Robert Pape, a professor and expert on military power at the University of Chicago.
“There is no reason to suggest that the killing of German civilians in World War II by Allied bombing hastened the end of the war. This had no political impact and, if anything, actually strengthened the morale of the German fighters,” he was quoted as saying detikINET from Insider. That is also what is thought to have happened in Gaza.
Watch the video “Elon Musk: Killing 1 Gaza Child is the Same as Hamas Expanding”
(fyk/fyk)
2023-12-19 04:40:01
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