As you noted, Israel has no good choices:
- If Israel leaves after killing lots of people (Gazan and Israeli), Hamas will be replaced by an even more militant organization and the rockets will just get worse, meaning that Israel will have killed a lot of people for no gain.
- If Israel stays, the IDF will be bled every hour of every day by random killings, just like the US in Iraq. To maintain any order at all, Israel would probably need ~100K soldiers all the time (150k US soldiers could do nothing in Iraq). Assuming just a 1% kill rate of the IDF = 3 killed/day. Plus as you noted, Israel would need to feed all he Gazan.
In the end it would be cheaper for Israel to evacuate Sderot area and open up Gaza for free trade with the world. Trying to keep a lid on is going to cost Israel much more than it anticipates. |
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