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Israel needs a new policy in Gaza

The escalation in the violence emanating from Gaza on the very day after Israel permitted the transfer of millions of Qatari-sourced dollars into the coastal enclave underscores the futility of persisting with conventional wisdom.

Smoke and fire rise from a location reportedly belonging to Hamas, following an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on July 14, 2018. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.
Smoke and fire rise from a location reportedly belonging to Hamas, following an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on July 14, 2018. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.

The escalation in the violence emanating from Gaza on the very day after Israel permitted the transfer of millions of Qatari-sourced dollars into the coastal enclave underscores the futility of persisting with conventional wisdom. Indeed, it highlighted just how wrong-headed the prevailing dogma that enhanced humanitarian aid will serve to quell—or at least reduce—the terrorist activity along, and across, the border, has proved to be.

After all, any fair-minded analysis of the history of the conflict will inevitably lead to the conclusion that the deprivation in Gaza is not the cause of the anti-Israel animus; rather, it is the anti-Israel animus that precipitated the deprivation there.

It was Albert Einstein who reported remarked that: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Clearly, the problem of Gaza was created by the misconceived idea of foisting self-government on the Gazans. As such, it is a problem that cannot be solved by mindlessly persisting with the same idea that created it. Accordingly, the attempt to preserve the notion that the Gazans should govern themselves must be set aside in favor of other, more promising policy paradigms.

The video above by the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies lays out the rationale for what is arguably the only formula for a lasting, humanitarian solution to the perennial “circle of violence” that has plagued the hapless territory for so long.

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