Ramsey county, (St. Paul) MN has a total area of 170 square miles (441 km²) and a population of 530,000 ...

Gaza Strip has a total area of 360 square kilometers (139 sq mi) with a population of (July 2007 estimate) 1,481,080 ...

The U.S. is a party, directly, to murder, as in, for example Condi Rice's statement 1/2/09 that no cease fire would be "acceptable" to the U.S. unless Hamas acceded to our conditions (stopped retaliating against Israel).

While the above analysis is essentially sound in most of its claims, there is, as always in this conflict, much more to the story that needs to be added.

First, while it's true that Israel set Hamas up for failure, it goes far beyond that. There's reason to believe that the US actually conspired to destabilize the Hamas government with violence shortly after the 2006 elections, and, after offering to recognize Israel in early 2006 and being obviously spurned, Hamas pursued attacks on Israel not so much from incentives but, from its own point of view, out of necessity. One has to ask whether any legitimate government (since Hamas was democratically elected)might in fact have the right to attack at least military targets in any other nation that has enforced a virtual blockade of airspace, port, and land borders on the first nation. The fact that Hamas lacks any real military capability, backers or not, doesn't justify its turning to targeting civilian areas but certainly makes its terrorism more understandable when so many Gazan children have been killed by disproportionate Isreali responses (and, in fact, there's evidence that Israel has targeted Gazan civilians as well in the past).

It is absolutely true that Israel would be in a weak position militarily without the cumulative untold billions of dollars in military aid from the US, but I think there's more reason to believe that the Gazans who support resistance against Israel are less influenced by outside backers than by the need for their own survival. The problem with establishing "justification" on any side in this conflict is finding an "original sin" that cannot in some way be attributed to a prior transgression by the other side. That's what happens when a conflict continues on and off for almost 100 years, and that's why the relatively clean slate that led to the near-success of Taba negotiations (while failing in Camp David) needs to be revived.

I totally agree that Israel's invasion will be ultimately self-defeating and that, without the involvement of such major backers as the US, any solution is unlikely.

There is another theory that might also be operative. It is based on cost-benefit. An insurgency can only operate successfully with the support of the population.

The insurgency gets this in one of two ways. or both — carrot and stick (positive and negative reinforcement). Those who cooperate are rewarded and those who don't are punished. It's more costly to the population not to cooperate than cooperate, so they cooperate with the insurgency at least minimally.

The alternative theory is to make is more costly for the population to cooperate with the insurgency than not by showing them that cooperation involves massive destruction, casualties, and deaths.

The downside of the alternative theory is that inflames the populace, so that they are driven to the insurgency. Then the only alternative is their annihilation.

...doctrine of counter-guerrilla warfare is Isolate, Concentrate Annihilate derived?

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

has begun.

I did inhale.

I think Stirling himself elucidated the concept in more detail HERE together with its antithesis.

It seems to me that the real question here is whether "guerrilla" warfare in Gaza can in any real way be compared to the more classic definition, for example, in Vietnam, where the Viet Cong, while perhaps implicitly supported by some of the population simply because of the predatory corruption of the South Vietnamese government forces, was nevertheless a ruthless, doctrinaire movement that also oppressed civilians with need. In Vietnam, the Marines actually made substantial progress in anti-insurgency programs (eventually scrapped because of the expense and more newsworthy search and destroy tactics) that strengthened peasant villages and gave them development aid to the detriment of both the VC and ARVN.

But Hamas, unlike your classic guerrilla movement, is the elected government of Gaza. While its religious orthodoxy (which has moderated to some extent) may separate it from much of the population of Gaza, I think there's reason to believe Hamas is seen less as an "insurgent" group by Gazans than as a resistance movement against a universally hated oppressor, especially when you consider that Fatah discredited itself long ago with its corruption and callousness while Hamas was actually providing essential services to a destitute population under occupation.

Based on its own propaganda, Israel may treat Hamas as a guerrilla movement, but once the IDF sets foot in Gaza, all I can see is another attack on an entire people that have already been brutalized since 1967. This is the possible interpretation that neither our media nor Obama is willing even to consider.

Insurgency and Counter Insurgency - New Myths - Old Realities Charles Wolf Jr, July 1965

is hoped by me to be a good sign. If he is really as smart, as in intelligent as in knowing the better, the right thing to do, he will finally end the unwavering, unconscionable support the USA has given the atrocities perpetrated by Israel and work work work to end the conflict. one way or another. It's the really smart thing to do. The editor of the Lebanon Daily Star was on NPR and he said Obama must be involved, and has to start with Syria and the other states,[return the Golan Heights, etc.,] then go to Palestine. No way of making peace in the place now. makes sense to me. My Palestinian brother in law says the same. peace now? no way.

1700: "Abolish slavery!"
1800: Woman's Suffrage!"
2000:"World Peace!"

By STEVEN LEE MYERS, NYT
WASHINGTON — In unleashing a series of punishing attacks in Gaza last week, Israel clearly aimed to hand Hamas a defeat from which it could not recover anytime soon.

The campaign may succeed, experts here and in Israel say, but it could also backfire. Either way, the political consequences could reverberate throughout the Middle East, all the way to Iran, and help determine the ability of President-elect Barack Obama to pursue his stated goals of calming the Middle East through diplomacy.

While Israeli leadership was not stating wider goals, there was clearly hope in the country — as tanks and troops massed late in the week — that the assault in Gaza would do more than just stop the rocket fire with which Hamas had broken a cease-fire last month. The larger hope was that subduing Hamas would delegitimize the group’s leadership in the eyes of the Palestinian people and eliminate its power to prevent a two-state solution. Already last week, it was exposing political, ethnic and sectarian divisions in the region that Israel, like the United States, had long sought to exploit.

In a highly optimistic scenario for Israel and the United States, a clear victory for Israel would make it easier for Egypt, Jordan and countries farther afield to declare common cause against Islamic militancy and its main sponsor in the region, Iran.

Then, as Martin S. Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel, argued, an international peacekeeping force made up of Turkish and Arab troops could clear the way for a restoration of political control in Gaza by President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the Fatah movement and is titular president of all Palestinians, but in reality is the weak leader of only the West Bank.
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WAPO excerpt:

Bush Is Conciliatory in Accepting Victory of Hamas

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 27, 2006; A15

President Bush accepted the stunning election results in the Palestinian territories yesterday with a conciliatory tone, saying the landslide victory of the militant Islamic group Hamas was rejection of the "status quo" and a repudiation of the "old guard" that had failed to provide honest government and services.

"There's something healthy about a system that does that," Bush said at a news conference. He reiterated that he will not work with Hamas, formally known at the Islamic Resistance Movement, as a "partner of peace" until it renounces its goal of destroying Israel and disarms its militias. But he left unsaid what a Hamas-led government will mean for the distribution of U.S. financial assistance and for American involvement in trying to reach a peace deal.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also put on a brave face, saying "we still have every reason for hope and for optimism" because voter turnout was high and free from violence. She said the Palestinian people were "expressing their desire for change," because they "have endured governance that was, by all accounts, not meeting their needs."

The upbeat rhetoric belied the fact that the election outcome was the opposite of what the administration had hoped would happen. Behind the scenes, U.S. officials scrambled to survey the wreckage of their Middle East policy.

The Bush administration has spent nearly $500 million in the past year to bolster the Palestinian Authority and the ruling Fatah party, which was nonetheless crushed by Hamas at the polls.

Israeli Arabs learn they are vulnerable to Gaza rockets, but have nowhere to hide

RAHAT, Israel (AP) — A rocket exploded a few hundred yards from Mateb Abu Nasr's house, driving home the message that tens of thousands of Israeli Arabs living within range of militant attacks from Gaza are just as vulnerable as their Jewish neighbors.

But there's a difference: When the wailing sirens warned of an incoming missile, Abu Nasr's family had nowhere to hide.

Homes in Jewish towns and settlements are required to have one room with reinforced walls and a steel door. Public bomb shelters are accessible, and protective barriers even have been erected in rural areas.

The Arab town of Rahat, population 45,000, is about 24 miles from Gaza and is situated on the outer perimeter reachable by the long-range rockets that Hamas has unleashed for the first time. Few homes here have a safety room, and there are no public shelters

"This is clear discrimination," said Hassan el-Rafia, an Arab regional official, who says the lack of defenses is typical of the way Israel treats its Arab citizens. Arabs comprise about 20 percent of Israel's population of 7 million people.
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