I guess they are taking a victory lap around yesterday's major embarrassment. I never thought that you could dismantle a terrorist organization so surgically by just booby-trapping comms devices.
This will certainly be made into a blockbuster movie in ten years.
I'll re-iterate my previous comment on this matter: this is an impressive supply-chain hack with absolutely oversized results, and you gotta hand it to them for pulling it off.
I think this will go down as being significantly more impressive than Stuxnet.
It doesn’t look very surgical to me given the civilian casualties and general disregard of what can happen to innocent people. If anything this looks more like a state-sponsored terrorist attack than covert ops with collateral damage.
Actual combat and conventional attacks on a guerilla force embedded in an urban civilian population is far more catastrophic and less surgical than the risk of being inside the ~0.5m lethal radius of these pagers.
It's a horrific attack with awful innocent deaths at the same time that any conventional attack that achieved the same impact on Hezbollah would have been even worse for those around them.
I'm not so sure. It certainly shook Hezbollah and no doubt some of the dead or seriously injured held sufficiently important jobs within the organization to cause problems.
On the other hand you now have a few thousand people who suffered unpleasant but not debilitating injuries who are now sadder, wiser, and very very pissed off. My impression is that many of those attacked could have been middle managers or mid-ranking officers. They're now veterans of a traumatizing national event, which will probably increase Hezbollah's standing among the general populace.
(The notion of Hezbollah as a mob of ak-47 wielding foot soldiers is a stereotype from movies and TV that seems to have taken root among many HN readers.)
I see it a bit differently, or at least I see a different possibility. Most of the injured were pager-owning Hezbollah members who were already pissed off in a way that has religious & ideological foundations unlikely to be changed regardless of events. The general populace might go either way, angry at the attack and/or angry at the Hezbollah members for attacking a much more powerful enemy and bringing the violence into their community.
I don't want to go on a pdf hunt for the one perfect paper now, but years of social science and historical reading inclines me to believe that external attacks almost always unify rather than divide a population.
Consider how Gaza has been pounded mercilessly for most of a year now, with the burden falling mainly on civilians, but they're not turning on Hamas.
Good point, but I'm also not sure it will cause a significant shift in positive support beyond anything already seen. Other commenters here have said 50,000+ rockets/missiles have been launch by Israel so far in this conflict. Those are much more damaging so I'm not sure support will increase base on this.
I'm not saying it could have been worse. I'm saying it has been worse and usually is worse.
Otherwise:
1) UN Resolution: Done
2) Camp-David (or other such): Hezbollah has repeatedly refused to engage in any negotiations.
3) Something New: Okay, but until a never-before-seen peace genius comes up with that, and given the ineffectiveness of #1 and #2, we're left with the status quo where less bad options are the awful best to be hoped for.
Well, not exactly. The recent actions of Hezbollah are connected to Palestinian cause. If Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved, what does it leave to Hezbollah? It may not collapse, but Palestine becomes a major political factor. That’s the reason I mentioned Camp-David and „something new“. If statehood of Palestine is secured and adequate solution for refugees is offered, it will be the key to resolution of many conflicts in that region.
>it will be the key to resolution of many conflicts in that region.
If you're broadening the discussion to the wider context, how do you reconcile this opinion with the origins and current stated goals of Hezbollah and other groups involved in these many conflicts?
Hezbollah is fundamentally against the existence of Israel: "It's destination is manifested in our motto, 'Death to Israel'." --Hezbollah secretary general Nasrallah circa 2022
I don't know why you keep mentioning Camp David if you are thinking in terms of Palestinian statehood. Hamas has the destruction of Israel baked into its founding charter. In fact that charter specifically calls out the Camp David agreement from 1978 as treacherous and outright rejects any negotiated peace, especially of the "Camp David" variety: "These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems as arbitraters." (Chapter 13 of the Hamas Covenant)
> how do you reconcile this opinion with the origins and current stated goals
They are not set in stone.
> Hamas has the destruction of Israel baked into its founding charter.
Hamas is not Palestine.
I understand what are you talking about, but let me remind you that there were precedents in history of a political reconciliation with terrorist organizations (namely FARC). It requires a lot of goodwill and a lot of work. Israel does practically nothing in that regard, actually moving in the direction that leads to more radicalization.
It is targeted, by definition. Every pager was owned by a Hezbollah member or was about to be. Same with the walkies.
That there was collateral damage is unfortunate, but Israel was definitely not indiscriminately targeting civilians, which is what would make it terrorism.
This was a surgical strike that happened to have some unfortunate collateral damage. Well within the accepted rules of war.
It was not unfortunate collateral damage in the sense of unknown unknown. Civilian casualties must have been anticipated and nothing has been done to prevent them. It is not „accepted“ rules of war, but normalized disregard of human life.
Once again: watch any of the videos. The vast majority of them involve anyone standing around the operative walking away just fine. This was a targeted attack.
Some civilians got hurt, but the intent was not to harm them, and that is the point.
While it seems few bystanders suffered physical injuries, it's naive imho to think that this won't cause enormously elevated fear among the population at large. 'Koolaid' is still synonymous with mass cult poisoning in the US even though that incident happened ~50 years ago in a different country. Everyone in Lebanon is having nightmares about random electronic devices turning out to be bombs, even though they know that's logically not the case. Just like people in New York feel differently about seeing airliners than they did before 9-11.
Sure, that's true. They would have much worse trauma if these were air-dropped bomb or rocket. As strikes go, this was very surgical; but you're right, war is awful.
What makes you think that I did not watch them? And why do you think a few videos circulating online are representative of a few thousands explosions?
> Some civilians got hurt, but the intent was not to harm them
What makes „some“ any different than a hundred or a million? How can you be certain of the intent if civilian casualties were/should have been anticipated?
Didn’t mean to imply you hadn’t watched them at all; was simply trying to use them as evidence.
> What makes „some“ any different than a hundred or a million? How can you be certain of the intent if civilian casualties were/should have been anticipated?
The point I’m trying to make is that there was a very small amount of explosive in each device. They could have added more material had they wanted to do more damage.
There were many ways to make this far more damaging, and they could simply have shot rockets or bombs from the air.
This was a targeted attack, focused on the specific users of these devices, who are Hezbollah militants. Bystanders were not intended to be harmed, which makes this, by definition, a discriminate and surgical attack on Hezbollah militants.
1. Those pagers were purchased by Hezbollah, for Hezbollah. They were distributed by Hezbollah, to Hezbollah. I have extremely little doubt that Israel had intel telling them this, and that these weren’t used by hospitals by doctors and nurses.
2. Of course you can’t guarantee this, but the expectation is that operatives have these devices on them, as it is how they communicate with the rest of Hezbollah. That is a reasonable assumption in the fog of war.
3. Of course you can’t guarantee that. You minimize casualties by making the impact smaller but still meaningful; by using less explosive, but still enough to accomplish the goal.
There are no guarantees in war. Ops fail sometimes. You try to predict collateral damage, which Israel clearly did, by targeting specific devices used by and distributed by Hezbollah, and by using a relatively small amount of explosive.
Both of those things indicate that care was put into minimizing collateral damage. Even if they minimized the amount of explosive to avoid detection, that still accomplished the secondary effect of minimizing damage.
> Those pagers were purchased by Hezbollah, for Hezbollah. They were distributed by Hezbollah, to Hezbollah. I have extremely little doubt that Israel had intel telling them this, and that these weren’t used by hospitals by doctors and nurses.
Hezbollah actually runs hospitals and employs doctors and nurses in them, so, "they were purchased by Hezbollah, for Hezbollah" is not, even if one assumes it is true, even remote support for "these weren't used by doctors and nurses".
In addition to being a political party, and having an armed wing, Hezbollah operates a fairly extensive set of social services.
Except Hezbollah combatants are not exclusively "who was hit", and your entire argument that this was reasonably narrowly targeted on legitimate targets and not an indiscriminate attack rested on literally not understanding what Hezbollah is.
"Who was hit" specifically refers to who was the target; who owned those pagers.
I did not misunderstand what Hezbollah was, please. I spent years working intel. I'm well aware that terrorist groups often provide social services to the civilians they claim to protect. In large part, it's how terrorist groups often maintain power.
This attack did not target doctors or nurses. It targeted Hezbollah operatives. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, and Israel is at war with them. Social services run by Hezbollah were not the target, but if a doctor or nurse happens to be a Hezbollah operative, then they were targeted.
Again: the goal was Hezbollah operatives. If you were a doctor or nurse and unaffiliated with Hezbollah, you were not targeted.
> I did not misunderstand what Hezbollah was, please. I spent years working intel.
So you used juxtaposition of concepts you new were unrelated to create a false impression knowingly, rather than because you failed to understand the nature of the situation, and we are to take the deliberately dishonest propaganda technique as superior to genuine ignorance?
That's a lot of words to say "I discovered one spot in which you misspoke, and that means you must be a deliberate warmongering asshole"
But no matter how many words you use to say that, it will remain untrue.
I did not intend to create a false impression, imply any kind of propaganda, be dishonest, or anything else. Your implication is, frankly, insulting.
My contention is very simple: they targeted Hezbollah operatives, very clearly, and given this particular vulnerability could not really have targeted them any more specifically. These were devices that were owned by and used by Hezbollah operatives, regardless of their role in the organization. Civilians did not use these devices, and the intent was not to harm any civilians.
The end. I'm done playing your games, as I believe I have stated my position very clearly, and at this point you are intentionally missing the point solely to argue some misguided other point about moral relativism.
> 1. Those pagers were purchased by Hezbollah, for Hezbollah. They were distributed by Hezbollah, to Hezbollah. I have extremely little doubt that Israel had intel telling them this, and that these weren’t used by hospitals by doctors and nurses.
Do you have any hard evidence of that? It is absolutely plausible scenario that Hezbollah distributed some of the devices to non-members as part of civil defense plan. In case of the war they may want to have a reliable and authoritative communication channel to civilians.
> Of course you can’t guarantee this, but the expectation is that operatives have these devices on them, as it is how they communicate with the rest of Hezbollah. That is a reasonable assumption in the fog of war.
No, it is not reasonable assumption, on the contrary, and we have seen that. It does look like most of the victims weren’t on duty, so it is reasonable to assume that they won‘t be carrying the device all the time.
> 3. Of course you can’t guarantee that. You minimize casualties by making the impact smaller but still meaningful; by using less explosive, but still enough to accomplish the goal.
Minimize != avoid. They knew that the explosion may harm the wrong person, because they did not take the measures to prevent that (chosen method made it impossible). This is indiscriminate attack by definition.
I think you have either intentionally or unintentionally missed my point, and you're talking past me now. War never has any guarantees. You do the best you can, and you do the best the intel suggests, and you minimize and avoid civilian casualties as best you can.
Israel exploited an opportunity here to strike Hezbollah's communications network and leadership surgically; they did just that. No, there are never any guarantees there will be no collateral damage.
I'm done explaining that, as I think I have been very clear.
You have been very clear in repeating the same argument again and again. I and few other commenters here think it is flawed, because you just assert rather than demonstrate sufficient care about preventing civilian casualties. It is obvious that Israel did target Hezbollah operatives. It is not obvious - and you did not prove that — they were not indiscriminate when triggering the explosions.
By targeting Hezbollah operatives, and by including a small amount of explosive rather than a large amount, triggering the explosions was intended to harm the Hezbollah operatives.
Is your contention that they should have individually confirmed each device was in each owner's pocket before triggering the explosions? That would be both impossible and unreasonable to expect.
(And thank you for engaging in good faith, rather than resorting to ad hominem nonense)
> Is your contention that they should have individually confirmed each device was in each owner's pocket before triggering the explosions? That would be both impossible and unreasonable to expect.
Yes, that would be impossible. This is the exact reason why it shouldn’t have happened. Israel must seek diplomatic solutions to these hostilities instead of testing ethical boundaries of warfare. I have reasons to believe they exist, even if it may seem a long way.
Israel is at war with Hezbollah. I'm all for diplomatic solutions, but that requires both sides to desire one, and Hezbollah has shown no desire. Neither has Israel, but again: Israel is at war.
By this logic the war can be stopped only by victory. As we know from history diplomacy can work. Israel has an advantage in this war, so they could have started exploring diplomatic solution instead of continuing escalation. Hezbollah has made it clear that their recent strikes are related to operation in Gaza (and it often happens that they use Palestinian cause for strikes). This could be the direction in which Israel should have start looking long ago.
Israel did not start this war with Hezbollah. It is not incumbent on Israel to begin diplomatic talks. Israel is at war.
As the attacker, it is incumbent upon Hezbollah to signal diplomacy.
By the same token, it is incumbent on Russia to signal that they would like to engage diplomatically, not Ukraine. It is entirely clear that Ukraine is willing to engage diplomatically, if and only if Russia retreats and surrenders, as they were the aggressor.
Anyway, I think we’ve both said our piece here, and I understand your position.
I think you need to look at the nature of the attack, the targeted, the design of the weapon, and the intended outcome. These devices were not designed specifically to be lethal (although some were). They were designed to send a message by maiming the targets and to create a distrust of needed comm tech by not just Hezbolah, but by Hamas and the Iranians too. I’m sure the designers of the attack realized that some would be lethal and that some non-targets would be affected. All that went in to the calculation. They decided the strategic and tactical payoff was worth the collateral damage. Welcome to warfare.
> They were designed to send a message by maiming the targets and to create a distrust of needed comm tech
The „distrust“ cannot be seriously considered an objective, only if for short term. Next time they will add extra checks of incoming equipment, add random distribution and rotation of devices and problem will be solved.
> The „distrust“ cannot be seriously considered an objective, only if for short term. Next time they will add extra checks of incoming equipment, add random distribution and rotation of devices and problem will be solved.
That's not true; for one thing, their communications infrastructure is now completely gone. Organizing is made much more difficult. Moreover, there is no guarantee that this wasn't Israel intending to force Hezbollah to use cellular means or other means of communication that Israel has already tapped/broken, giving Israel yet another advantage.
Also, they don't know if there are other devices that are compromised, so the next days will either be tossing all battery-powered equipment they own or inspecting it all, causing disruption to their plans for battle, which means this was a massive win.
> Let’s not normalize it by such talks.
Hate to break it to you, but war is normal. People have been fighting wars since we've existed on this Earth. It's not fun to talk about, but war is war.
I look forward to one day having real peace on Earth, but we're definitely not there yet.
Do you have an example of a weapon of war that is more surgical? I think this is the typical Israel criticism that is devoid of any realistic basic to be honest.
Please spend some time reading this whole thread to understand better my arguments. Your question is based on flawed logic and does not require an answer in context of what’s going on.
And very possibly in violation of the Geneva Convention's prohibition of "indiscriminate" attacks:
Rule 12. Indiscriminate attacks are those:
(a) which are not directed at a specific military objective;
(b) which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or
(c) which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by international humanitarian law; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.
(a) Disrupt Hezbollah’s communications network and take out operatives.
(b) The pagers were specifically distributed to Hezbollah operatives, not civilians. It targeted, by definition, the owners of those pagers, supporting the military objective.
(c) It was limited, by definition. This contained tiny amount of explosives, focused very much on targeting the owner of the device, not “civilians or civilian objects without distinction” (from military objectives).
A 30g explosive going off in a device that is owned by a militant? Yes, that is limited, by definition.
Once again, people in that grocery store who were standing near the militant mostly walked away - you can see that on nearly every video that has been released.
A non-targeted attack would have been a rocket hitting the grocery store. This was, by definition, a targeted attack. Even if a person had stood there and shot the militant directly, and there had been a civilian that caught a stray bullet, this would still have been a targeted attack.
As it is, eight Hezbollah militants have died, and the one civilian injury was a Hezbollah militant’s daughter; killing a child was clearly not the intent.
It's not a victory lap; this operation by itself is one of the largest and most intricate operations Israeli intelligence has ever executed, and would have been planned months in advance. Repeating from elsewhere on the thread: the reporting is that this is happening now because Hezbollah was on the verge of discovering the operation. I think it's likely both sets of devices came from the same manufacturer or distributor.
I agree -- "victory lap" is just a figure of speech. Yesterday's results were probably far outsized impact on their own, and today's are (apologies for another figure of speech) "icing on the cake".
I would imagine that they've been feeding these booby-trapped devices to the supply chain for at least a few months and showing that multiple devices are potentially bombs is just an even more powerful psychological victory. What devices can they even trust now? Will they need to go back to sneakernet?
No, definitely not a victory lap. Having completely blown cover on the explosive new feature they added to the pagers, the timer was ticking on Hezbollah checking all their other gadgets for similar extras. It was "use it or lose it".
Do we know the percentage of the total devices used by Hezbollah that got attacked? I guess even if all of them were destroyed, it hardly does any dismantling. But I would expect this operation to open a window of possibility to do some other actions.
Independent estimates peg Hezbollah membership in Lebanon to a wide range, 20k to 50k. Reporting says the pager shipment was 5000 units and so far ~3000 known targets. Figure some devices broke, hadn't been activated yet, didn't trigger correctly, etc. Figure not every member needed or had a pager, call it 50% to be safe but it might be reasonable to think only the equivalent of a team leader would have one. Either way this is a significant fraction of their contact capabilities.
1) The victims of yesterday's attack were overwhelmingly terrorist soldiers and mid-level management which fits the definition of surgical. If the results of this operation are as good as suggested by all the early reports, they just carved a major hole in the upper ranks of the organization (not even including the major damage they've caused over the last six months with surgical strikes on leaders).
2) We don't have confirmation that's it's them (but it likely is), and we know far more than that: we know that it incapacitated thousands of members of a designated terrorist organization with minimal impact outside of them.
1) The victims of yesterday's attack were overwhelmingly terrorist soldiers and mid-level management which fits the definition of surgical. If the results of this operation are as good as suggested by all the early reports, they just carved a major hole in the upper ranks of the organization (not even including the major damage they've caused over the last six months with surgical strikes on leaders).*
2) We don't have confirmation that's it's them (but it likely is), and we know far more than that: we know that it incapacitated thousands of members of a designated terrorist organization with minimal impact outside of them.*
"We know for sure this was super-surgical and ONLY killed the 'bad guy club', and since they are in the 'bad guy club' it was done by good guys clearly. Also we don't actually know if it was the 'good guy club', but we know without a doubt they are surgical." -- as if the Hannibal Directive, ethnic cleansing, and colonization are all so super-surgical and precise. Preposterous.
*3) Well, that's just your opinion, man.*
Well it sure seems like the International Criminal Court, UN, and other world bodies are starting to open their eyes.
This isn't the 50's anymore -- media is not controllable in the same way. israels crimes against all of humanity are coming to light.
That's like, a matter of historical record man. With 'allies' like these, who needs enemies?
There is absolutely no way you can argue 'anti-bds' laws are not in violation of the first amendment and be serious. Especially given that for many government jobs you MUST sign them to get hired.
A foreign government that flatly refuses to registrer it's influence organization under FARA has taken away one of the most important rights of all Americans, whether they realize it or not.
starting? they've been cheering for hamas from day 1, and now I'm sure they'll have some motions to pass about a Hezbollah minion having the rights to keep his balls...
Well I don't agree on (1) or (2). I think they are at least attempting to degrade the capabilities of Hezbollah, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the US and others. I don't really want to get into the depths of Arab/Israel conflicts as I don't think anyone really has a good solution to that, certainly not me.
However, I do find anti-BDS laws very hard to justify. It seems that many conflate antizionism with antisemitism, probably because some of the most vocal people are actually just dogwhistling against Jews in general. However, there is a large contingent of people, especially in the West, who are opposed to Israel's battlefield tactics and the current conflict, while simultaneously believing that Israel has a right to exist and defend themselves. Those people might reasonably decide that they want to boycott Israel or Israeli products to make their views heard (hit them in the pocketbook), but are prohibited from expressing themselves by these laws.
Are they unconstitutional in the US? One would imagine that if the Citizens United case says that money is speech, that would equally apply to people who want to boycott Israel. After all, we already tolerate much worse forms of antisemtic speech here. Why would we not also tolerate people voting with their money?
For sure, yesterday's was a terrorist attack, since it indiscriminately hit civilians (multiple children, healthcare workers, etc.)
That said, before more people jump on the rethoric of declaring a specific entity terrorist:
The decision is usually made by your state's authorities, and depending on where you live, Hezbollah might not be considered a terrorist organization, or its military wing might be considered terrorist, but not Hezbollah as a whole (like in the EU).
Since we've seen medics among the victims, it's pretty clear that this was not surgically targeting a the military wing, and thus few people would dare claim that this was targeted against terrorists.
Now that the pandoras box of mass booby trapping electronic devices has been opened, who is to say we won't see tit for tat retaliations with other supply chain attacks?
Will every teddy bear now need to be scanned for explosives before entering the country?
Mostly terrorists are dead and this killed far less civilians than the alternative ways of waging war (ground invasion or bombing campaign). This is the level of surgical operation that everyone was calling for since Hezbollah declared war on Israel on October 8th, and now that Israel is delivering that level of precision there's still some people complaining, it's unbelievable how naive some people are.
Please do teach us all how to wage a war on a jihadist organization, with zero civilian casualties. How would you do that?
Apparently, extreme targeting by micro explosive devices is not enough. No matter what Israel would do, it will always be held at an enormously higher standard than other countries.
Why did Hezbollah start firing rockets into Israel in the first place? it was totally unprovoked. Now they are reaping what they sowed.
History puts pretty much everyone in the world living on land that was taken from someone else at some point in time. And if we all did our best to move to where our parents/GPs/GGPs came from we'd again face the issue of that land having been taken previously.
This line of thinking is turtles all the way down and in no way a helpful path towards getting two peoples who believe in opposing views to stop killing each other.
The thing is, 'at some point in time' happens to be 'right now, today' in places like the West Bank. 'This sort of thing has always happened in history' is an incredibly poor argument to deflect responsibility for ongoing oppression. Jewish critics of Zionism have repeatedly pointed out how these very arguments have been employed against Jews in the not-so-distant past. Why would anyone reasonly expect Palestinians to be any less committed to their own collective existence?
I'm not aware of wide scale mass displacement happening to Palestinians in the West Bank. A few thousand people are displaced each year, and it does look like a lot of these are unjustly kicked out of their homes, but it’s out of 3,000,000 Palestinians there and I do not otherwise see anything that looks like a mass forced relocation. I'm sure there are "thin end of the wedge" arguments that could be made here but that's poor soil on which to plant a war. Is there an alternative view that better supports a belief of Israel trying to take it all away from Palestinians?
I'm sure there are "thin end of the wedge" arguments that could be made here but that's poor soil on which to plant a war.
No one (in this thread) said anything about "plant[ing] a war". But (restricted to this particular issue), if there was one side looking for "soil on which to plan a war" -- it would have to be all of those currently involved in or supporting the expansion of the settlements (in any form, to any degree), of course.
Is there an alternative view that better supports a belief of Israel trying to take it all away from Palestinians?
Perhaps not literally all of it, but there are many indications that a plan is underway to annex at least very large chunks of (if not all of) the West Bank.
NYT: Israeli Official Describes Secret Government Bid to Cement Control of West Bank - https://archive.md/DQ1N3
As of 2019, 42 percent want to annex all or some of the West Bank, 28 are opposed, and 30 percent prefer to keep their heads in the sand, according to Haaretz:
A 2019 Haaretz poll investigated support for annexation among Israelis. According to the survey, 30% did not know, 28% of Israelis opposed any annexation and 15% supported annexing Area C alone. 27% wanted to annex the entire West Bank including 16% who opposed granting political rights to Palestinians and 11% who favored granting political rights.
So even back then -- a rough plurality in favor of some degree of large-scale annexation (if we ignore the 30 percent who claim not to have an opinion), and of those, some 2/3 in favor of full annexation.
On war, I intended that more in reference to Hezbollah's actions this past year, ostensibly on behalf of the West Bank issue, but more likely the catspaw of Iran's proxyism.
>settlement expansion
Yes, that is a huge problem for any attempt at long term two-state solutions to be considered. It would be less of a problem if Israel at least did not deny permits etc. to Palestinian settlers to Area C. Security vetting really shouldn't rule out 99% of applicants. In this respect especially Israel appears to have been less diligent about the land-use aspect of the Oslo Accords.
For annexation, I don't think we can go by Smotrich's word. He's only finance minister through political back-room dealing. Likewise the Likud's 2017 non-binding resolution appears to be more political theatre than policy. But yes, still troubling.
So again, I don't see this sufficient to support violent resistance. Support for annexation appears to be on the rise during this period, probably or at least in part as a result.
Everyone seems ready and willing to play into near the worst expectations of their perceived enemies in fear they'll suffer the consequence of that expectation even if it doesn't come true. That's the cycle that needs to break.
So again, I don't see this sufficient to support violent resistance.
That's a question of perspective.
The best course of action for all concerned would be for Israel not to continually take actions which seem specifically designed to drive an entire population into a state of permanent despair, against which non-violent actions seem to have very little to no effect.
I really don't think the fact that it's happening in relatively slow motion makes a big difference. One could argue that the ~2m living in Gaza are the ones who have experienced mass forced displacement, and while I am not in sympathy with many of Hamas' actions, I do think they can make a valid argument for attacking IDF bases and similar strategic infrastructure.
I honestly don't know one way or another, but I'm guessing many/most people displaced in this way probably resettle somewhere else in the west bank, perhaps from Area C to Area A. I know that's not much better but either way at roughly 1/10th of 1% this isn't slow motion displacement. Growth in each governorate of the west bank, even in Area C, of Palestinians has been about 2% or higher for a while. Without making a massive project out of back-envelop estimates, Israel would have to increase this behavior by a factor of 20x just to keep pace with population growth but make no proportional progress. That amounts to Israel's behavior being crappy by not really one of taking the land. But not (what I believe to be) a reasonable justification for an escalation to lethal military attacks.
This will certainly be made into a blockbuster movie in ten years.
I'll re-iterate my previous comment on this matter: this is an impressive supply-chain hack with absolutely oversized results, and you gotta hand it to them for pulling it off.
I think this will go down as being significantly more impressive than Stuxnet.