Luxury Box Seats to a Rally

My eighth floor office oversees 3rd Avenue at 42nd Street, so I have a pretty nice view of the Israeli consulate. Given the recent conflict in Gaza between the Israel Defense Force and Hamas militants, I also had luxury box seats to a large rally below my window, where hundreds of people waved Israeli flags, sang songs, and gave speeches in support of Israel.

A few days ago, I had asked a politically-aware friend what his take on the recent conflict was, and he sort of shrugged and said, "What else is new?" I think the apparent repetitiveness of the conflict disturbs me. (1) Palestinians fire rockets or commit some variation of terror towards Israel, (2) Israel goes into the (Gaza or West Bank) and wreaks havoc killing militants and some civilians as collateral damage, (3) an uneasy cease-fire is reached, (4) repeat and rinse. You almost (I stress almost) might wish for an all out knock-down drag out war to establish a victor and a clear end-state of stability as opposed to what seems like meaningless skirmishes where hundreds die and no progress is made. So the question is: what exactly is the end game at least from the Israeli perspective?

An article in Newsweek provides a pretty bleak analysis of this. The columnist, John Barry, points out that the end of a war by either negotiation or decisive victory hasn't be attempted by either side, using the Iraq insurgency as an example of a much "stronger" resistance which the Palestinians are capable of executing but have opted not to do so and arguing that Israel's past military responses as restrained compared to its full potential as a nuclear-armed juggernaut. He then points out that neither side has "really committed itself to the painful compromises that a negotiated outcome would entail."

What Barry never really addresses is what would happen if, for example, Israel decides to pursue a decisive military victory because of their conviction that the Palestinians will never live up to any negotiated settlement. Or in other words, why fight towards an accord (as opposed to destroying the enemy to the point of incapacitation) which is never taken seriously or cannot be enforced due to the inability of the Palestinian Authority to control radicals who will stop nothing short of the extermination of Israel?

If Israel's present end game (as stated by a senior Israeli defense advisor) is "a military effort to crush Palestinian resistance for a generation" you can't help but feel conflicted. Nobody is in favor of war, but nobody could be in favor of an illusion of peace which doesn't really exist.