Notes on Gaza

I want to start by making it absolutely clear that I am on Israel's side. The people of Israel deserve to live in peace and security, and achieving this should be our main concern.

I'm writing this because it's epistemologically virtuous to make public predictions. I put roughly 80% confidence on any statement that I make here. If I'm wrong about this, and I hope that I am, I will update my worldview accordingly.

This attack has been called Israel's equivalent of 9/11. I agree. They were both horrible terrorist attacks that wounded the soul of a nation. And I fear that the government of Israel is about to make exactly the same mistake that the US government made after 9/11. 

The correct response to 9/11 would have been to lock cockpit doors, invest in better policing and intelligence, use some diplomacy to reduce the amount of money going to Wahabist training centers, and do nothing else. Instead the USA started a punitive military action without a real plan. That military action killed more of our people than the actual terrorist attack, burned three trillion dollars (which using standard VSL calculations is the equivalent of killing 300,000 Americans), seriously harmed our moral standing in the world, and did very little to protect us or prevent future attacks. (I credit the lack of subsequent attacks to better intelligence, better police work within our borders, and a few targeted assassinations.)

I think that the correct response to the Gaza terror attack would be to upgrade air defense systems, install drones or turrets that are capable of shooting down paragliders, strengthen the border fences, maybe encourage civilians to be better-armed, and do nothing else. But the government is making an emotional decision to go in guns blazing without good intel and without a plan.

I think that going into Gaza is going to stick the Israeli army into a sausage grinder, like the US army in Iraq or the Russian army in Ukraine. I predict that more Israelis will die as a result of reacting to the terrorist attack than were killed in the actual attack, and that military intervention will do little to improve their long-term security.

The hostages are a much harder question, but the fact that Hamas took so many of them is an indication that previous policy has failed. Governments need to make a credible promise to never negotiate with hostage takers. I would prefer to live under a government that never paid ransom, but instead worked to find and carpet bomb any facility where hostages are being held. This policy would dramatically reduce the chances that I was taken as a hostage, and even if I was, I would much rather die in an airstrike than be used to give a billion dollars in funding to a terrorist group that would use that to kill more people.

Without any moral condemnation, and with a full understanding of why they chose to do this, I will point out that the past Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip has been a failure. It did not prevent attacks, and gave people motivation to launch them. Punitive collective punishment does not work, and it breeds more terrorists. The economic situation in Gaza has created a situation where it's very easy to recruit people into a terror group.

Israel has chosen to shut off the fuel and electricity and other essentials of modern life to a group of 2 million innocent people and a few thousand terrorists. This policy will create more terrorists faster than Israel can kill them. If my little sister froze to death because of a foreign government shut off heating oil, and threatening to bomb any aid convoys, I would want to go out and start killing them, and there are a lot of young men in the Gaza strip who will react the same way.

The correct long-term solution would be to give Gaza to Egypt. Cede the territory, let the city be part of Egypt, integrated into the Egyptian economy with free movement of people, and fully under control of the Egyptian police and security forces. Let young men leave and work elsewhere in Egypt, so you don't have the 90% youth unemployment that always breeds violent rebellion. This would not reduce the risk of Gaza-originating terrorist attacks to zero, but it would make Israel a lot safer than any other policy.

The USA and European countries should negotiate this transfer, if necessary paying Egypt some money to compensate them for the costs of integration.