1/ I would like to consider Israel's "operation" in the West Bank not as the next step in Israel's plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians and rob their land but as a sign of desperation and destabilization, not just of Israel but of a global paradigm of power. --->
2/ It is logical to see a plan in Israel's demeanor. It behooves us to think that evil is meticulously planned. If it is then we can tell evil apart from good through careful observation. We can then take active measures to refrain from evil and ultimately defeat it. --->
3/ I don't think Israel has a plan. Did Israelis plan in advance to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians in 1948? They did, and at the very least they capitalized on opportunities to do so. What is happening in Gaza and the WB is worse, I think, because there is no plan. --->
4/ There is no plan (other than "fighting terrorism" which we consider a moral justification for killing as many people as is required to "eliminate" the terrorists. We have been reduced to body counts) as far as official Israel and the majority of Israelis are concerned. --->
5/ The vibe here is that, at most, there are sectorial plans. The settlers want to settle Gaza. The racist right is happy about sticking it to the world, to Palestinians, to the Israeli left. The country, Israel, is disintegrating at every level of civic existence. --->
6/ Crime is rampant, prices are rising, schools will likely not open on September 1st (a deal was signed with Teachers unions two years ago and has yet to be fulfilled), the "war" seems endless and ever-growing. There is no sense that the state exists in any meaningful way. --->
7/ No plan. The sense of entitlement that allows us to kill as many Palestinians as we need without compunction comes from the paradigm that has upheld Israel since its inception as a beacon of righteousness. We are the epitome of western/northern goodness. --->
8/ We manifest "shared values", bringing democracy to one of the most undemocratic regions of the world! But even more than that, we manifest forgiveness and deliverance. The west wronged us in the most violent and lethal way it could. We were victims of the west's demons. --->
9/ We were the victims of the dark side but our sacrifice allowed the light to overcome the darkness. We brought the west to its senses. We were redeemed, but so was the global order based on the axiomatic dominance of the "enlightened" part of the world. It was a symbiosis. --->
10/ This is now unravelling. We could keep up appearances only through systematic repression that corrupted us thoroughly. We are not an aberration. This is the feature, not the bug. Supremacy becomes entitlement that, when threatened, becomes murderous solipsism. --->
11/ Israel failed to establish its supremacy (and its entitlement) with regard to Gaza and Lebanon. After fighting for nearly a year, Israel's only option is to continue fighting. That is a demonstration of weakness, not strength. The paradigm is teetering. --->
12/ So we target the West Bank. That is, after all, the one area we believe we have "in hand", simply because all-out war has not erupted there yet. Of course, the violence carried out in the WB over the past year by settlers and the IDF is a self-fulfilling prophecy. --->
13/ The "surge of terrorism" is not an Iranian plot or a "problem" being "solved" with force. The strength of an occupation such as ours is in its transparent inevitability. Israel is not "advancing". Israel is trapped on a treadmill that is constantly increasing speed. --->
14/ We have lost our supremacy and our entitlement. Using sheer, illegitimate force, we are hoping against hope that "the world" will come to our rescue. We are the world's virtue, proof of its redemption! This is not a plan. This is our bedrock. It, and we , are shattering.
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