Hamas As ISIS 2.0

The Palestinian issue is quite simple. The Israeli government wants the land, but it doesn't want the people. That conundrum will, of course, outlast this war, which is a particularly brutal episode in a longer, ongoing conflict. And, just as it has since Rabin's assassination, it will become more acute as they continue to try to square that circle by forcing the Palestinians to live in a system of de facto reservations in the West Bank while they watch Israelis "settle" more of their land and as the Israeli government again punishes the 2+ million people of Gaza and more thoroughly entraps them in the world's most densely populated prison camp.

Israel really doesn't have another answer to that conundrum. The government doesn't want to absorb the Palestinians as Israeli citizens. That's why outright annexation hasn't happened, nor will it happen ... unless the Palestinians are forced to leave en masse or they magically disappear from the Occupied Territories. Until that happens, the Israeli government can and will slowly encircle and displace people in and around the much less densely-packed West Bank. But they are stuck with over two million largely-impoverished Gazans who have nowhere to go, both geographically and metaphorically. It's been that way since Israel left and then encased Gaza in an “Iron Wall” back in 2005. Hamas took over two years later.

When Netanyahu compared Hamas to ISIS he probably didn't realize how apt that comparison is. Yes, Hamas is "savage," bloodthirsty and suicidal like ISIS. But it is also true that the seeds of ISIS were sown in the cruel prison camps the US built and ran in Iraq. It was in those indiscriminately-filled prisons that angry men with nothing to lose congealed into a sociopathic gang that grew into a murderous menace. So, yes ... perhaps the comparison makes more sense than Netanyahu realizes.