Thank you for running - for once - reasoned devate. Rare to see on MN!
Paragraph 1 - 100% agree, nobody wants innocent children hurt or killed and I would add that they shouldn't suffer the psychological abuse of being brainwashed and militarised from the cradle. It also breaks my heart that Israelis grow up knowing that at 18 they have to go into the army and they actually might die defending their actual home and homeland.
Paragraph 2 - my opinion is that there are two ministers in Israel's government who are an absolute disgrace and have no business being anywhere near government. Unfortunately they have Netanyahu in an armlock, as if removed they will collapse the coalition. Netanyahu has many flaws, I am no fan and would not vote for him. He gets some things very right and some things very wrong: he is human. I genuinely don't believe he is the monster he is painted as by all the people on these threads who speak with utter hate and repeat modern versions of blood libels. Once people show hate, for me I close down and the conversation is over.
Paragraph 3 & 4 - wholeheartedly agree re Hamas and Gaza needing a competent government
Paragraph 5 - re people of Gaza - unfortunately I do believe that the vast majority are brainwashed and radicalised so it will take a long time. If a new election was called they are likely to choose another radical anti-Israel government. They currently hate Hamas for what Hamas has done including seizing and withholding food supplies, but they are very far from wanting peace with Israel. This is because for generations they have been kept deprived by Iran, Muslim Brotherhood and proxies, and told that their situation is all the fault of the Israelis who stole their country. This is not historical accuracy - history and borders are complex -but they believe it. This will take generations to undo the radicalisation.
Paragraph 6 - Iran. Hamas, Houthis, Hizbullah are arms of the terror monster. IRGC is the head.
My understanding is that about 80% of Iranian people in Iran are anti regime but heavily oppressed. And that the majority outside Iran are anti-regime, and escaped. The minority in Iran keeps power extremely brutally. I have seen on social media a lot of posts by Iranians in diaspora, showing support for Israel attacking the IRGC. And videos of people on balconies in Iran shouting death to Ayatollah and celebrating Israel's actions. I have never heard an Israeli say a bad word about the non-IRGC Iranian people, I believe there is a lot of mutual warmth there. Iranians outside Iran also come to support on many Jewish marches and protests.
The issue in my opinion is political Islam. Islam seeks to colonise and expand (hence there are very few non-Muslims left in the middle east). Once it has colonised a country it considers it an unendurable shame to give it up: the more I have studied, the more I have come to believe that is their main problem with Israel. Israel was colonised by Muslims in around 800CE and they cannot bear that it is in non-Muslim hands, especially by Jews who really, really upset Mohammed by declining his new religion and sticking with what they already had. Let's not also forget that some Arab countries were in close league with the Nazis.
Everything else - religious and cultural differences, land division, resources, even the painful history of the last 100 years, is secondary to that main issue. All other issues can be resolved but when a movement is unwilling to accept you exist and have a right to live, that is when there is no possibility of resolution.
I also genuinely do not believe Israel wants to occupy Gaza. It's too much hassle. Some ministers have made comments to that effect but it isn't a solution generally wanted. Egypt exported many of their Muslim Brotherhood trouble makers to Gaza, Egypt also did not want Gaza. Nobody wants that headache! Maybe a technocratic government would work but who would sit in such a government who is independent of the current clans and tribalism that exists within Gaza and who has no links to Hamas?