Strategy, according to Liddell Hart, as inspired by Sun Tzu, is the art of distributing and employing military means to fulfill the ends of policy. The ends of policy were not a military responsibility but rather handed down from the level of grand strategy, where all instruments of policy were weighed, one against the other, and where it was necessary to look beyond the war to the subsequent peace. It remains unclear what the exact policy that Israeli policy makers are championing, as it shifts and reorganizes professed priorities continuously. Yet, what appears to the average spectator is that 15,000 deaths and 45,000 casualties is collateral damage Israel is willing to accept as part of its policy, its strategy, and end goal. Of what and why? To free hostages? Rid Gazans from tyrants? Achieve security in the immediate vicinity? Crush "human animals" and nuke them? Which is it?
The conflicting statements by Israeli officials and the brutal actions taken by the military feed into the three main conspiracy theories that attempt to give meaning to what policymakers might be thinking:
1. Israel is destroying the enclave’s infrastructure so they can benefit from the natural gas reserves in a field discovered in 2000. The Gaza Marine natural gas field, located offshore the strip is estimated to hold 32 billion cubic meters of natural gas. It was never developed because of Israel’s objections, fearing that revenues would end up in Hamas’ pockets. Now the opportunity presented itself on a silver plate.
2. Israel is emptying the northern part of the strip to pave the way for the Ben Gurion Canal, which would connect the Gulf of Aqaba (Eilat) in the Red Sea with the Mediterranean Sea and would pass through Israel and end in the Gaza Strip. Note that on October 20, 2020, the Israeli state-owned company Europe Asia Pipeline Company and the Emirati company MED-RED Land Bridge signed an agreement on the use of the Eilat-Ashkelon oil pipeline to transport oil from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, but work on the canal never kicked off. The current Israeli re-occupation of the Gaza Strip came as a gift to revive the project.
3. A clean cut genocide. Gaza would be emptied from Arabs, and Egypt - which recently was promised a 9 billion investment plan and debt talks - would host expelled Gazans. As such, the Israeli premier would bolster his position and the Gaza problem would be swept under the carpet in a Machiavellian regional plan that (behold) included Israeli and Hamas coordination.
Such conspiracies need not be true. They only need to make sense. The issue here is not what Israel wants, it is actually what the spectator expects as a justification of the unjustifiable. The reasons of Israel can be one and many, and its strategy is coping and changing as geopolitical developments require such revision. Israel will and did negotiate with Hamas, and it will as it did resume to kill indiscriminately. Nothing is definite, nor is it just, or with meaning, or entirely rational. And so is the policy behind the strategy employed.
Humans are barely rational creatures who instead respond to messages that tug on their emotions and "feel" as much as they "see" the world. What has been seen and felt must now be understood. To steal a quote from a friend, "for the same things people see different things". But, whichever side of the struggle - even those siding with neither - the images are vivid and real and shared and cant be unseen. The brutality must have a justification that makes more sense than what either side is claiming to achieve. Such senselessness has led to the adoption of conspiracy theories to give the strife some meaning on a timeline of start and end. A why and therefore. A closure to a perceived ugly beginning and middle. A sad attempt of using conspiracies to explain the inexplicable. Hope to find logic in a senseless strategy. A quest for a grand finale.
Yet in the words of Hilary Mantel: "There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one."
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