Episode 300 - War in the Middle East, Part I
Max and Aaron react to the terror attack in Israel earlier this month, and discuss both its geopolitical significance and dealing with the shock and grief.
Links
Wikipedia - Elections in Palestine
Newsweek - Gaza Strip's Size Compared to US Cities in Series of Maps
Wikipedia - Trinitite
Transcript
Max: You're listening to the Local Maximum episode 300.
Narration: Time to expand your perspective. Welcome to the Local Maximum. Now here's your host, Max Sklar.
Max: Welcome everyone. Welcome. You have reached another Local Maximum. Today I am joined by Aaron once again for episode 300. How are you doing, Aaron?
Aaron: I'm doing as well as one can in these times, these troubled times.
Max: Yeah, I often have said that over the last week. And, you know, I wanted to talk about this, this war in Israel and this war in Gaza over last week, but I felt like I just, I couldn't get it out yet. So I hope that the episode on Web 3.0 with Sam went over well, but of course, maybe people will go back to it. I enjoyed speaking with him.
But today, we have to, we have to talk about this topic. This is why sometimes big things happen in the news, we kind of want to, you know, brush it off, and just, you know, focus on building on the show, but this is one that I felt like I really can't brush off, and it would be helpful to talk about it. And thank you for coming on, you know, to make sure that I don't say anything stupid, but, but we're gonna give it a shot.
Because I think it's, you know, it's one of those. I think we covered other events that we certainly covered COVID We certainly covered, you know, the rioting in 2020 as it was happening.
Aaron: Covered the start of the war in Ukraine.
Max: Yes, we covered that. So we do cover things. January 6, a little bit on that episode with that. Doesn't probably doesn't mention January 6 by name, but it's Decentralization Before Our Eyes, that I think has aged very well. But yeah, but this, let me just start by kind of trying to describe what happens. And then what happened last week.
Aaron: Just for those listening, the future, we are recording on October 15. So some of this information could change your perspective on it could change in the very near future. So just dropping a pin in that where we are at the moment.
Max: Oh, yeah, that's right. I mean, I listened to a bunch of podcasts and read a bunch of articles before doing this. And one of them was I think it was like Pod Save America, where they were going, oh, yeah, and the, you know, this attack led to, you know, 250 Israeli deaths. And, you know, I was like, oh, this is very early on, because we later learned it was well into the 1000s, you know, between one and two thousand.
But essentially Hamas, you know, attacked Israel proper from the Gaza Strip. And a whole lot of their guys, their terrorists came in and this was on, actually on a Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. A lot of people don't know that. Or, or maybe the day before Simchas Torah, I always forget what that one's called. But it was also nearly 50 years to the day, after the Yom Kippur War. You know, this holiday, Simchas Torah is like, I think two weeks after Yom Kippur on the Hebrew calendar.
But as it turns out, because the calendars differ and they kind of run around each other a little bit sometimes, you know, sometimes the Hebrew calendar is past the Gregorian calendar, sometimes it’s before the Gregorian calendar, this ends up lining up just about 50 years after after that, that war. And so and there's no accident, this thing starts, you know, during a religious holiday, even though this time it's one that's less well known.
But things do shut down during that time, particularly in Israel. For me, I think one of the comparisons to 911 that I want to make is I had the feeling after 911 That these terrorists were like, one of that's the sinking feelings is that you know, they will target everybody. It was just like wanton mass killing of whoever they can get their hands on, you know, basically on 911 and in this.
Aaron: Certainly a sense that nothing is safe.
Max: Yeah, it's like they'll kill us all if they if they could, you know,
Aaron: Israel is a little bit different in the sense that they've been living with semi random rocket attacks for decades. So there's not really a sense that anywhere in in the State of Israel is untouchable. But ground incursions and you know, gun battles on the streets is not something that I think anyone was anticipating in these areas, and that has changed.
Max: It's easy to forget. And I mean, I know people, I know that people who live there with the, you know, with the rockets, you know, we know that they go into shelters, and they have this Iron Dome that often takes care of the rockets.
When you kind of hear the news on that year after year, and then you hear about this Iron Dome, and it doesn't seem like, you know, I'm sure, if your house get got hit by a rocket, you know, that's a lot of damage for you. But it doesn't seem like, just looking at it from afar. For us, it doesn't have that same psychological effect.
It feels like, oh, those rockets are just making some kind of statement, you know, it's not like, oh, I'm just trying to take out as many as possible. They don't seem designed for that.
Aaron: In a lot of ways it's become analogous to well, if you live in the Midwest, you deal with tornadoes. And it's just kind of a fact of life. And in most of our reactions to it. It's kind of been sanitized away of who's doing what and why.
Max: Yeah, yeah, the tornadoes are not adversarial. Like this kind of issue. By that, I mean, you know, if the rockets aren't working for years and years, you should have seen it coming. Well, eventually, they're going to find a way around it.
And so, the craziness this time, whereas, you know, 911 was random maximal killing, but it was kind of at a distance, right? It was sort of just, you know, we're gonna fly these planes, I guess it was not at a distance inside those planes in some degree. But in this case, it was, you know, and I, there are other podcasts that go through this.
We've all seen the images on Twitter, but it was just, you know, face-to-face door-to-door, you know, children, elderly. And of course, we've all seen that, you know, that music festival, and hostages hostages brought back to Gaza, and who knows what, you know, hell they're being put through right now.
Aaron: Yeah, it's, I can't even imagine what that must be like. It's a level of intimacy to the violence that I hope I never have to experience.
Max: Yeah, yeah, I know, we, it kind of makes you real realize that we live in extraordinary times, and for us an extraordinary place in the US where, for you and me having been born, you know, in the Northeast US in the 80s, we haven't really had to experience anything like the kind of human brutality.
Aaron: The closest thing would be for people of our generation would be those who served abroad in the global war on terror. And it's a little bit different when you're there as part of a military unit than when it's coming to. It's coming to where you live. So it's not not completely divorced in that then probably the closest analogue for our generation, but it's still not the same,
Max: but also unlike, you know, our grandfather's generation or my grandfather's generation, or, and unlike what's happening in Israel right now, the reality is most of us were not involved in the global war on terror.
Most of us were not asked to join in on the global war on terror. We were not told that this was an important, particularly important thing that I needed to do for my country right now, you know, and I don't know necessarily why that is other than they didn't really seem to need us. That was the sense I got at the time.
Aaron: Yeah, and for those who aren't aware, the State of Israel does have essentially universal service in the armed forces or some sort of national service, the armed services being the most common form.
And so the vast majority of the population that is of age either has served and is currently in the reserves, or has a direct familial connection to people who are either currently serving or potentially could be called up so very different in the United States than in the United States, where I don't know off the top of my head what the percentage is, but I would guess that it's in the low single digit percentages of people who are actually have have served in our armed forces or our nuclear family members of those who do.
We have had the privilege and perhaps the danger of being so many degrees of separation away from the brutality and the violence of war. That, that for most of us, it's something we see on television and we see, you know, smart bombs.
If you think back to the first Gulf War, you know, smart bombs dropping down chimneys, and surgical strikes, and that's what we think of. And it's rare that we get exposed to — brutality, I feel like is being overused and doesn't doesn't do justice to to it — but the brutality of war, of the things that we're seeing going on in, in Palestine and and Israel right now, that's what war is, and we've become, we fooled ourselves into thinking that it's something cleaner than that, and that it's possible to have a just war, a war that doesn't involve war crimes.
And that's, I would say, the exception rather than the rule, that that something can escalate to this level and not involve war crimes, you know, potentially from both sides, that the bad things are going to happen on both sides of this equation here. And I wish we hadn't gotten to this point. But, you know, I can't wish my way out of it, either.
Max: Yeah, I think that's very well said. So slight thing to add to that, though, is that every war is very different. Like, you know, the Russia-Ukraine war has been, yes, it's been brutal. It's been, you know, very dislocating for Ukrainians in particular. But the Russians don't go in there doing the types of things that Hamas is doing, or I guess has done in you know.
Aaron: But you have heard of people, you know, of Russians, basically going door to door and executing every, you know, adult male.
Max: Oh, I hadn’t heard that.
Aaron: And it was, I think we particularly heard about that when they were like pulling out of cities that they were losing. And, you know, I haven't certainly haven't done the work to verify those stories.
Max: Yeah, it feels like you get a lot of false stories. During war. I mean, the only things that we can- it seems like — maybe it's just my bias — it seems like war crimes against Israel are questioned the most, and there has to be…at this point. It's just there's so much overwhelming, like the in person video and eyewitness affidavits. Like you have to get everything. And you're like, Okay, this is really happening.
Aaron: But it certainly seems like there's a serious danger of regardless of what the military actions are taken on the ground are, that Israel loses the PR war here. And as you may already seeing some of that.
So I don't want to get too far into the details on some of the events that have been, not accused, alleged. But there was a particular one involving the beheading of infants that there was a claim of made from several sources. And the latest reporting I've heard on that is that well, the IDF is declining to confirm those, which now makes everyone say, oh, then does that mean it's you know, fake news that it's all rumors and unsubstantiated?
And the statement from the IDF, the way I read it, was mostly that we have a war to fight here. Our job is not to go around doing an investigative reporting, if you want to send an investigators later, that's fine. But that's not what we're focused on at the moment.
Which I think is entirely reasonable. There's an argument to be said that if you're using these reports to motivate and calibrate your reactions, then you want to be fairly confident in them. But also, yeah, the IDF is not, you know, CSI Israel.
Max: Yeah, yeah. And it, it matters in the historical record, but it doesn't, like. What's it supposed to be like?
Aaron: At the of the day, if the result is that, well, no, there actually weren't any babies beheaded. They were just killed. Okay, so maybe we got something wrong there. But does that all of a sudden make it okay. so it's not a big deal anymore? No. But there's the danger of becoming hyper focused on the specific details here and losing the thread of what actually did happen and the significance.
Max: I feel like that's an aspect of the information where we have these days that is just so frustrating.
Aaron: Well, it's, and, you know, this is not something unique to this conflict, or to one side or the other here, but it's absolutely a propaganda tactic to if you can't disprove what happened then just prove a tiny piece of what you’re being accused of.
And you know, if you can just prove one count then, not in a legal sense or logical sense, but in a public relations sense, it throws everything else into doubt. And so that is definitely in play here. I see. And I should not be as shocked as I am to see it.
Max: Yeah, yeah. All right. So, I another comparison to 911, I think that the psychological effect inside Israel will be similar, I think you're seeing the society that had been divided for a long time, is very unified on this. And, you know, from what I hear, and this is all qualitative, like, you know, there's a big culture of like, helping out and chipping in and people are flying back to Israel to join the military.
So it's not like, oh, no, you know, I'm being called, drafted, how do I get out of it? It's, it's the kind of thing where, like, I'm pretty sure there was a draft in World War Two here, right. But I also think it was like, you know, people were, they probably didn't need one in that sense.
So yeah, I don't think the psychological effect will be as pronounced here in the United States, just because we've been so far from it. And that's just the way it is.
Aaron: I'd say one interesting difference. So there's, there's the population, the populace is unifying, in that together to support each other.
Max: By the way, keep up before you get into that, hold that thought. The fourth turning book that I'm reading now says this kind of thing happens in the fourth turning where the society is so divided, and then sees a threat and turns on a dime. We haven't seen that yet in the US, but what Neil Howe’s book is talking about applies to Israel; seems to apply almost perfectly right now.
Aaron: Yeah, so I was gonna say that they're pulling together, both on the civil and the political side. And part of that is the formation of a coalition government. So Netanyahu’s war cabinet, which involves not just the, you know, his party was Likud, but also, what would have essentially been the opposition party.
Max: So yeah, the head of the opposition party is named Benny Gantz, is one of them. He was the blue and white party. And just would not, he refused-
Aaron: Former general in the IDF, wasn't he? Minister of Defense or something.
Max: Yeah, he refused to join the Netanyahu government for many years. Another one is Yair Lapid. I don't think he's in the war cabinet yet. But he's a TV host. Probably better to get the General. But that's nothing against Yair Lapid. I'm not gonna get involved.
I guess I'm already talking about the nitty gritty of Israeli politics. It would be like, there was a war in the US. And the President shuffled the cabinet to take equally from both parties or something like that.
Aaron: So the big difference, I think, one of the big differences between the US reaction to 911. And what we're seeing in Israel now is that post 911, the President George W. Bush saw a huge boost in his popularity and his approval ratings. Wow. While the people of Israel appear to be unified behind their government, they are not unified behind Netanyahu.
And in fact, I think I saw something like 80-something percent of people in Israel blame him for what happened. So that's an interesting dynamic, and I don't think we're going to see the fallout from that. In the short term, I guess, it depends how long this war goes on. But whenever the next election gets called, I would not be shocked to see him thrown out, as, you know, repercussions for that. And maybe, maybe his party won't pay the price, but he will.
But again, I'm getting way out over my skis in speculating on Israeli politics. I just thought that was an interesting divergence there.
Max: It is very interesting. It'll be interesting to see like, like, that could change depending on how the next few weeks and months go.
Aaron: He could still come out of this, you know, a hero for how he, how he conducts himself in the government or he could be, you know, putting the nail in his political career's coffin.
Max: Yeah, yeah. So when this first happened, I didn't think I would be impacted personally, but then, you know, I saw all of the, you know, as I scrolled Facebook which I haven't done in a long time. I didn't realize how many people I knew, you know, have friends and family over there and how many people have, you know, know people who were either killed or wounded or taken prisoner over there. So it sounds kind of crazy.
And it just so happens. I don't think I had interviewed guests. You know, I've had Israeli guests on the show, but I don't think I've interviewed the guests who were in Israel until recently. And recently, I had two. One, I already did the interview. So that is, that's gonna go out soon, the next few weeks. And another one, you know, I, you know, he had to postpone the interview. Hopefully, we'll get to do it at some point.
But I'm kind of in this situation where you know. I'm not gonna say who it is. But it wasn't the guest himself. It was like his representative at the company telling me so I'm like, oh, you know, what's happening over here? He could be called up to military service for I know, you know, I don't know.
So that was, you know, that was pretty crazy where it was like, this is actually closer to home than, I should have known that this would be closer to home than I expected. But you know, it ended up being I know, that doesn't matter. Oh, I have to postpone my podcast interview. But it's not a complaint. That's just like an observation.
Aaron: Yeah, for sure. It makes it much more real, when, even if the personal impact to you is not a huge deal. But that you are just that one degree separated from what's actually going on there.
Max: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, you know, to me, you know, I had visited Ukraine, I think, a couple years, no, three years before the invasion. So I already had that kind of, like, that kind of group that I had been in touch with there.
And so I felt with that, Israel, obviously, you know, I'd been there in 2000, you know, as a Jew, you know, I just know, so many people in Israel, are connected with Israel. I'm not someone who has tons of friends in Israel, or tons of connections in Israel. I, you know, I probably know a few people. But you know, that's about it. But you know, that first, second, degree separation was a lot larger than I realized.
Aaron: Yeah. And it's, it's kind of impressive, given that Israel only has a population of nine, ten million? But there's that that makes for a lot of connections.
Max: Yeah, yeah. All right. So what happens next? I have, that's my next thing. We are going to go through the entire history here. All right, ready to stay up for 100 hours at a time? No, let's do the best we can. Okay, because I know quite a bit of history here.
Unfortunately, a lot of that history research was motivated by the type of reaction that we're currently seeing in terms of like these, you know, this sort of pro-Hamas rhetoric that I've heard over the years. And so I've had to do a lot of research on this topic. And yeah, they're sometimes some of the things that Israeli supporters put out are not quite fair or correct.
But oftentimes, the anti-Israel talking points are unfair, incorrect. And sometimes it's just like, name calling, like, you know, settler-colonialist apartheid, which doesn't have any real meaning. It's just a way of like, using words to sort of get people sort of. How should I put this? Using words that you're not defining well, to get what you want.
Aaron: It's much like the calling someone a racist, or a Nazi has been almost entirely devalued in modern American dialogue, that we've seen something like that with a lot of these buzzwords in the context of Israel and Palestine.
Max: Yeah. Yeah. So I guess the big question now to what happens next. And then we'll get into a little bit of the history. Is a ground invasion of Gaza — which seems like it's inevitable, like it's going to happen — is it unavoidable? Is it possible not to do it? Because the ground invasion of Gaza is going to be very costly.
I think the IDF knows that. But oftentimes, these things end up being far worse than you even think, almost like when you remodel your house, it ends up costing five times as much. Sorry, guys, I hate doing that. You need a little gallows humor. But I don't see a way of avoiding it.
Aaron: Yeah. And Gaza is particularly ill suited to a ground invasion being that it is. I think I heard somewhere that it's one of the most densely populated parts, if not of the world, at least of that region.
Max: It’s not like New York City, but yeah.
Aaron: Yeah, but it's highly urbanized in terms of like, you know, high rise buildings. And, you know, we're not talking, you know, residential houses with front and back lawns, and, you know, white picket fences.
Max: Though I looked on the map, there are a few of those. And I was honestly surprised, by like, when they showed videos of the evacuation, like how many kind of nice cars there were. And I'm not reading too much into that. But you know, those could be Hamas cars. But yeah, I had a different image in my head from what words we were getting to describe.
Aaron: Well, it sounds like they've been bombing aggressively for the last couple of days. But even if they like, “level” sections of it before they send in ground troops, that that doesn't mean that there's there's not going to be booby traps and ambushes everywhere, that that kind of urban fighting is gonna have very high casualty rates.
Max: Sometimes the rebels make it harder. And yeah, again, I'm not in the military, you're in the military, this should be like, this is probably it's not like we're telling the IDF stuff they don't already know.
Aaron: Right. Well, and the other highly speculative piece that I'm sure the IDF and the war cabinet is trying to triangulate on is what rate of casualties? What rate and what number is the Israeli public willing to tolerate?
Because there will there could very well come a point where even if they're making positive progress, if they're losing, you know, hundreds of lives the day that the people say it's not worth it, back out and worse, because the alternative to sending in the ground forces might be to to step up the bombing in a way that's even worse for the folks inside.
The other challenge is, they’ve dropped leaflets and instructed folks in a particular zone, I think it's the northern half of the strip to evacuate. I've heard allegations, rumors that Hamas is not allowing them to evacuate. I've heard that. So I believe that the Gaza Strip shares a border with Egypt. Egypt has said that they are not opening the border with a humanitarian corridor to allow mass evacuation.
So they, even if the people in Gaza are willing and able, they've essentially said, okay, squeeze your population into the southern half, so that we can commence ground operations in the northern half. And that is not an easy lift. And they're certainly not doing it without, you know, complications from their internal elements.
Max: Yeah, the southern half is less populated than the northern half. And I've heard this, like, he'll, there's a lot of questions that like, oh, how difficult is it to evacuate a city? And so there's been some, you know, comparisons to evacuating a city during a hurricane, which, you know, we do from time to time, but that's sort of hard when you have like, you know, bombs flying.
And I think Hamas put something out saying, like, oh, Israel is bombing the roads that people are using to leave. But that turned out to seemingly be fake news. So but of course, it was going around on Twitter a bunch. But, you know, who knows, there's gonna be a lot of news coming out of that.
Aaron: The black pill take, which which I don't know how realistic this is or not, but I'm afraid it is highly accurate, is that it's in Hamas interest to prevent people from evacuating to maximize Palestinian casualties in the bombing and the ground war, because that will, you know, that will activate increased sympathy and support internationally for for their situation.
Max: That's the game theory of this war.
Aaron: They've certainly given the impression that they are willing to do that, certainly Hamas leadership, particularly the ones who are over in the visit at Doha that they are willing to, to, to spend as many Palestinian lives as it takes to advance their campaign because it's not their lives. And that's, that's highly cynical, and a little accusatory, but I have yet to be convinced that it's not the truth.
Max: Yeah, I don't see the evidence otherwise. I think and yeah, so I often had to try to understand this evacuation, I often try to take the Gaza Strip and try to overlay it on top of the towns where I live.
So I, you know, I could probably use Connecticut as an example for for you and me, but maybe for those who live somewhere else, try to think of what what 25 miles means. You know, in southern Connecticut, 25 miles means essentially, Stanford where I live up, north, north-ish, you know, mostly east, let's say Stanford to Bridgeport, is about 25 miles. So they're evacuating Bridgeport and Fairfield and telling everybody, you have to move west. So it's like two towns worth of people. You can drive it easily. There'll be plenty of traffic, walking it, you can walk one town in Connecticut, not a problem.
If you're really on the edge of Bridgeport over there, that's going to be quite a trek. So there is that one town in, in the Gaza Strip, that's all the way on the ends. I forgot what it's called. Where there's actually a particularly, there's actually quite a bit of bombing going on right now. Because I think there's a lot of Hamas fighters there. I'm going to open up my Google Maps now to try to identify that. And so if you live there, that would be and you have to like to go by foot.
That would be a, you know, that'd be a 25 mile trek, but hopefully you get — Beit Hanoun is the name of it, it's basically right in the corner there — you can, you know, bait hopefully, once you get through Gaza, even if you're not at the river yet. Hopefully, you know, you're at least in a safer spot. But I don't know exactly how that works. But, yeah, that if you look at the map here, you know, that whole northern part of Gaza is all city.
Aaron: Yeah, that appears to be the densest part.
Max: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay. And, you know, I am kind of waiting to be convinced. You know, a lot of libertarians out there, you know, I have a lot of contact with often think, oh, you know, ground invasion is never, you know, is never the answer is never, you know, or something like that. And, but I just don't see, like, you know, when pushed, they're like, well, you know, Israel just has to kind of write off the write off the hostages, and just say, well, you know, sucks for them, and then sort of retreat, and then hope for the best.
First of all, no country would do that. Secondly, I don't even like, they'll argue, well, no country has ever done it. But once they do it, it ends up being a really great strategy. Because, you know, I find that hard to believe
Aaron: I know, not all libertarians are slaves to the nonaggression principle. But the question that is begged here is okay, so if you don't initiate aggression, what happens when you are aggressed against? What is the appropriate action? And maybe they would say, well, you need to go to an impartial mediator or a, you know, a third party enforcement organization. And let's just say that the UN in its attempt to fulfill that role has been highly ineffective. And the UN is one of the major sources of funding, and organization and regulation of Palestine. They are a party to the problem here.
Max: Right. Well, they also go back in history and frame Israel as the aggressor as well.
Aaron: Yes, you can. You can reframe any way you want.
Max: But, I mean, when it comes to geopolitical actors, there's always this. There's no geopolitical actor that hasn't been in the game except for like very isolated countries. So anyway, I didn't want to get into a whole long thing about that. Those could be debates and debates and debates and debates.
A little bit of Gaza history, like a lot of us think of Gaza as this like, you know, these poor guys in the city that's just constantly under control of Hamas and just being pounded by bombs. Gaza was an important trading and cultural port for many years. And if you look at the map, it makes a lot of sense. Like if I didn't see the country boundaries, and I was just looking for real estate like it's the last metropolitan area as you go south in the Mediterranean, before you get to the Sinai Peninsula, which is a desert.
So from a real estate perspective, you know, Donald Trump would probably say this, these guys, they got really great real estate. It should be prosperous, and it should be kind of more metropolitan and not a single party dictatorship. So I looked into this. It turns out, there's been, you know, Jews have lived there.
There's been a Jewish presence there from the first century BCE, up until 1929. It wasn't that Jews were the majority there. But it was like, hey, this was a city, where, like most trading cities, people have a lot of different, you know, religions and backgrounds would come.
Aaron: Like much of the Holy Land.
Max: Yeah, yeah. And so basically, Jews were there from the first century BC, I don't have an exact year, up until 1929. There was this riot in 1929 where they were forced to leave, which, I mean, that's a whole other rabbit hole. But that, you know, imagine having a riot so bad. You're forced to leave the city. That's, we're not talking. We're not talking like the American riots.
Aaron: And then yeah, well, the closest analog I can think of is oh, gosh, what was the…
Max: Wall Street riot?
Aaron: No, no.
Max: Tulsa?
Aaron: Yeah. Thank you. Tulsa. Yeah, I was gonna say the black Wall Street. Yeah. Which, I imagine would be somewhat comparable.
Max: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so then, you know, Israel's established in 1948. There was that war in 1967, where they took over the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, after winning, and then next year established settlements, both in the Sinai and in in the Gaza Strip again, but when you look at it that way, it's like, okay, you know, for, you know, a lot of times these are, and I'm not saying that these, these settlements are all a good idea.
And I understand that there's like, a problem where you put a little enclave in, in territory that is supposed to be, at least possibly supposed to be become a foreign country someday or supposed to come autonomous, someday, that obviously is gonna cause problems.
But the idea of this being like total outsiders, you know, coming in, who are just foreign colonials, when within living memory of 1968, you had these, you had you had that presence there, it kind of paints that a little differently. So, anyway, just some food for thought. I don't know what, you know, what difference that makes.
But anyway, that. Do, in 2009, those settlements were scrapped. And so this is what happened in the early 2000s. I was there in 2000. And when I was there in the summer of 2000, it felt, the situation felt a lot like it did a few weeks ago, where it was like, they're really close to peace. And they're just about to seal the deal.
Because when I was there, you know, Bill Clinton was working with Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, and they were, they were finally hammering out an agreement. They were at Camp David, while I was there, and it seemed like it was going well. We now know it's not going well.
Aaron: Just to clarify something you said before, I think you said the settlements were scrapped in 2009. But I think your note says 2005
Max: Five. Why did I say 2009 instead of 5? Right. So and again, I don't want to go into like all the causes and whatever. But second intifada breaks out in 2000, left towards the tail end of 2000. And you just have these bombings in Israel, you know, very, yeah. And then tit for tat, obviously. And it just keeps going on and on, and there doesn't seem to be a solution.
And the best solution they could come up with which, you know, was a very imperfect solution was we're going to build a giant wall in the West Bank, and which was, which I'm hoping people are a little bit up to speed on where all these places are, I assume that some people are not, but we don't have time to do the whole thing.
And then for the Gaza Strip, we're just going to take out all our settlements. You know, resettle them somewhere else. And we're just going to let them have it even though there's no peace agreement, and we're still technically at war. And so there's been it's been a little much more quiet there, since except for you know, those rockets and stuff.
So that was not, so that's 2005. It's kind of left to its own. Hamas takes over in 2007, after they kind of went into election in 2006. But then there hasn't been an election held again, it's a very, very hard to understand situation. But the situation with the Palestinian government was that there was a president who was elected in 2005. That's Mahmoud Abbas.
He's now — it was a four year term. There hasn't been an election since. He's 87 years old, I think that's another thing that's going on now where people realize he's old, and there's no obvious successor, and he's been there for 20 years. That's your ugly, that's always an iffy prospect when you have that. And then
Aaron: It’s bad enough in the US about, oh, the likely candidates for the next presidential election are so old. But that's a very different dynamic than having someone who's been in the position for nearly 20 years and when they pass that that's going to be a huge power vacuum.
Max: Right. Right. And, and so right, so 2006, Hamas wins those elections for the parliament, but they don't, but that's not a presidential election. So you have a divided government, so they have a mini civil war. Hamas gets control.
Aaron: They have control over, so I guess the authority is ostensibly the government, which Hamas controls, do they have jurisdiction?
Max: No. So I think the Abbas government is still in control of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
Aaron: I guess that was my question. So we're talking about Hamas and Gaza. But is Hamas in Gaza, also controlling other Palestinians, or is it just focused in Gaza?
Max: So we only hear about them in Gaza right now. So I don't know. But it seems like they're mostly in Gaza.
Aaron: Because there's also Hezbollah?
Max: Oh, yeah. So they are in Lebanon. Okay. Yeah. So they are different. There are different kinds of force. They are, I believe, a Shi’ite force that has actually more direct ties to Iran.
Aaron: I don't know if we explicitly mentioned that in this episode. But that's, that's one of the things that there's been a lot of speculation, maybe maybe stronger than speculation about, is that the Hamas's actions were supported, possibly, you know, with funding and training and logistics by Iran.
In theory, because this is an opportunity for Iran to destabilize the Israeli-Saudi Arabian normalizations of diplomatic ties, which they don't want to see either Israel or Saudi Arabia in a stronger position in the Middle East, because that would threaten their position as a regional power.
Max: Yeah, I mean, that that sounds like a very, it sounds like a very logical explanation. You know, on one hand, it works, on the one hand that worked, on the other hand, it kind of shows that that strategy, you know, that's being pursued by Israel is being pursued by Netanyahu, which was the Saudi deal was working, it was getting close. So they had to, they had to do this.
Okay, so the next question I have is, okay, so we have this ground invasion, this ground invasion, let's say it's successful. But what happens next? Who's going to control this if not Hamas?
Aaron: Because that depends on what does successful mean here? I mean, and that's a problem that we as Americans should be very familiar with, is if you don't define your criteria for success well before you begin a military operation, you end up spending 20 years in Afghanistan and then leaving and having to see your impact wiped out in weeks or months.
Max: There has to actually be someone, some organization in control of the situation there. And I hate to be calling for kind of like, a sort of authoritarian system. It doesn't have to be that authoritarian, but there has to be someone in charge, who can, you know, keep the peace, I almost feel like it's got to be like a British in Hong Kong situation, where they're just lightly administering, you know, very simple trade law.
And, you know, just let people, you know, just let people pursue their economic activity and some of their social activity and try to be hands off. But doing that in Hong Kong is one thing doing that in the Gaza Strip is another.
Aaron: And also when that was done in Hong Kong, the world was a very different place. Yeah, times have changed.
Max: Here's another example that I was thinking about the other day, and again, I wish I had, I'm sure we'll get guests or guests or listeners for everyone out there, who please let us know if you know more about these situations than we do. And shed some light on this, but I was thinking about the Rwandan genocide in the 90s. And you know, if you want to see a movie on that, Hotel Rwanda is very good.
But there is after, after that genocide, eventually, you know, eventually that that got kind of petered out. And then the Tutsis came in and came back into power. And their precedent was, I think, Paul Kagame is his name. He's still president in Rwanda. So he's been there 30 years. This is not, this is not like a democratic regime. But the country has done very well.
Aaron: I don't know if they were the first but I believe they were one of the pioneers in the whole, you know, kind of Truth and Reconciliation Commission concept. And it seems to have worked well there. I'm worried that we're dealing with feuds that go back even longer in Israel. But that being said, I don't know that much in depth about the Rwandan genocide and regional history.
Max: So yeah, exactly. So it is possible to get something under control. But the problem with the Gaza Strip is that nobody seems to want to do it. The Egyptians their peace deal got back the Sinai Peninsula. There's a reason why they didn't take back the Gaza Strip.
Well, from what I can tell, they either didn't want it or didn't want it that badly. I don't. I don't know if it was Israel saying like, no way you could have this. I don't think it was but you know, I, I've tried to look into that point in history, which is very interesting.
Aaron: Yeah, well, and there's a perception, certainly that the rest of the Arab world cares deeply about the existence of a Palestinian state, but not so much about the people who actually live in Palestine. And so that makes for a very toxic dynamic.
Max: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, look, I mean, despite what people are saying, Gaza is still going to, Gaza City is still gonna be there. I think in a month, I don't think I don't think it's the kind of thing where, you know, it's just, it's just gonna be wiped off the map. That's not what I mean.
Aaron: There's certainly been some rhetoric to that point. But I don't think either side is well, I don't think the IDF is realistically considering, you know, glassing Gaza and, and making it uninhabitable. There was very early on, I think, some concern of, you know, what, what do we have to do to make sure that the Israelis don't literally go to the nuclear alternative here. I don't think that was necessarily a high risk at the moment. But when this was initially unfolding, nobody knew how far it was gonna go and how bad it was gonna get.
Max: I think, I think most of that talk is from like, Netanyahu’s in the US, like, you know, I'm thinking back to like, re listening to Howard Stern after 911, where he did call for the entire Middle East to be turned into glass. So that is, by the way, do bombs actually turn this stuff into glass? Or is it just rubble that you can't really?
Aaron: So I believe now-
Max: Now, as an engineer, as a mechanical, physical chemistry, and- I don't know what you do. You might have some insight into this.
Aaron: So I believe, in certain parts of the American Southwest, around Nevada, and the test ranges there were in the 1940s and 50s, we were setting off a bunch of our own tests, weapons, that there are portions of the desert, which have — I think it's called trinitite — but it's basically the sand has been turned into radioactive glass.
And it's not like, you know, it's just a, like an ice rink type scenario. But there are like chunks of it. And I think, I don't know if you still can, but at one point, you could certainly go on like tours to, to these test sites and look at it and they had to tell people, don’t take home the radioactive glass. Yeah, it is not safe to do so.
Max: Yeah. All right. Well, well, fortunately, this is not going to happen in Gaza, but unfortunately, there's going to be some very deadly fighting there. And I almost feel like, you know, this situation has been allowed to fester for so many years without any real solution that you know, unfortunately, this this solution of force is the is that, you know, is kind of the, you know, it's kind of inevitable, which which sucks, but I don't know any other way of thinking about it.
Alright, so that is part one of this discussion. I hope that was helpful for some of you out there and I hope everyone is alright, take care yourselves. Next week we're going to dive right into part two of this discussion where we're going to talk about the reaction to these developments in the United States and in the rest of the world. Stuff like, a little bit more like, you know, American politics, our universities, things like that my Zoom call with Yale, all that all that good stuff, so stay tuned for next week on the Local Maximum. Have a great week, everyone.
That's the show. To support the Local Maximum, sign up for exclusive content and the online community at maximum.locals.com. A Local Maximum is available wherever podcasts are found. If you want to keep up, remember to subscribe on your podcast app. Also, check out the website with shownotes and additional materials at localmaxradio.com. If you want to contact me, the host, send an email to localmaxradio@gmail.com Have a great week.
