Starving them Into Submission

I find that I cannot muster much outrage about either the Israeli government's botched assault on the Gaza aid flotilla or the provocation offered by those who organized and manned the convoy. Things like that happen when people live year after year in screwed-up circumstances.

The problem is the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, and the immediate cause of the incident was Israel's strategy of starving the Gaza Strip into submission. Not that Gazans are literally starving, since the Israelis and Egyptians allow food aid, but the publicly proclaimed goal of the Israeli blockade is to make things so bad in Gaza that the people will overthrow Hamas and seek peace with Israel.

Since that is not going to happen, it is a policy of misery for misery's sake. The experience of the past century has been that authoritarian regimes cannot be removed by economic pressure. The rulers always have ways of getting what they want for themselves, and the poorer the people become, the less they are able to influence their government in any way at all. Destroying the economy of Gaza is not helping Israel or hurting Hamas. It is hurting the ordinary people of Gaza, and the anger they feel over their circumstances is not directed at Hamas, it is directed at Israel. War, always and everywhere, empowers fanatics and shoulders moderates aside.