Israel and Palestine

There ain't much of an advantage in the rockets being guided if the targets are random, yes? Or worse, when the targets are civilian utilities.

I don't know, what's there to ignore. What does being "less bad than Hamas" entail, in precise terms? It's certainly not equivalent to "being alright and entirely acceptable", is it, let alone "something to be proud of"?

There's at least two websites whose mission in life are to fight those. Biases may be the most interesting failings in human nature because they are systematic and predictable', and therefore can be predicted, accounted, and compensated for. I leave the implications as an exercise to the reader. As a further hint: knowing about biases does not exeem you from them, in the same way that knowing about disease does not make a doctor immune.

edited 27th Mar '15 12:05:24 PM by TheHandle

So they attacked the bases of the militants they were trying to fight? Interesting.

Not exactly. It's more that they attack residential areas in order to lure in militants to defend them. As you may have noticed from the above articles, the IDF doesn't really pay much attention to where militants are likely to be. Both sides taking up residence in civilian buildings is Stage Two, once they've made contact with each other - houses are temporary cover, not established bases.

As for the IDF's embedding in Israeli civilian areas, it goes a bit beyond their HQ - many of their bases near the Gaza border are in towns and villages, and are used to launch attacks whenever a lawn-mowing operation kicks off. From the Cast Lead report:

X3 The question was how many puppies they kill, as that's what Aszur was using in his analogy.

edited 27th Mar '15 12:28:24 PM by Silasw

False equivalence. There's an enormous difference between bases that are clearly labeled as military installations close to civilian areas, and using civilian facilities to hide military installations.

True, which is why I was making it clear that Hamas and the IDF do a bit of both. One is inadvisable but kinda-sorta-OK, the other isn't.

edited 27th Mar '15 12:56:36 PM by Iaculus

Anything showing said bases in the middle of urban areas? Because otherwise that's still not what Hamas does at all. Being located near villages is rather different from being in the middle of cities.

There are some bases in the middle of cities, if that's what you ask. I should know, since I served in one of those myself.

From what I know, there are several IDF bases inside cities — Navy bases in Haifa and Ashdod, the Kirya in Tel Aviv, the Adjutant Corps' HQ in Ramat Gan, and a couple of bases inside Jerusalem. However, all of them are cordoned off from the rest of the city and are clearly marked as military bases, unlike the places Hamas operates from. Also, there are plans to move some of those bases away from population centres — there're plans to move them to the Negev.

edited 27th Mar '15 1:28:23 PM by desdendelle

Pardon me for interrupting but briefly. There is another consideration that I think pretty much all of you overlook.

While a military base may be separate and cordoned off from the civilian sectors or even in remote areas there is almost always a town, village, city, or some other civilization center around them. These towns frequently spring as close to military bases as they can because military people don't live on bases 24/7 and local areas make a fair bit of cash off of the mini-economy generated by said military bases. This of course just causes people to be attracted to the economic opportunity there. Additional economy grows up in the area and soon you have a city.

You can see overt modern example sin places like Russia, the US, and Western Europe. Where possible they will distance themselves but it is not always possible in regions that have steadily growing population density like in California. The UK has similar issues and I shared an article a little while back about one of the problems of the Israel/Palestine region is the rapidly expanding urban sprawl from all involved in general is rapidly overrunning available space and a lot of it has already sprouted up around the bases even if they were original seperated. Military bases won't remain isolated for long once the civilian population centers have no place left to expand except towards the military bases as close as they can.

Even where I live I lived with walking distance of major US military base. I have also lived on them. Many bases have housing for civilians that work with or are married or family of military members both on and off the base and those also help spawn towns and population centers. Bellevue, NE pretty much cradles a lot of Offut Air Force Bases perimeter. To the point you can see jets taking off from the roads nearby and hear the roar of the jets as they rattle your house on lift off. The base was more remote but the pop center grew around it and slowly pushed in close as it could.

Smack bang in the city of Omaha, NE is a Fort called Fort Omaha that was an old Army fort that is now Reserve Center. It used be in the middle of nowhere but the city grew around it over the years. There is a community college right next to the Navy/USMC Joint Reserve Center now but the location has a very long history as an area for the military to operate from and in long before the city was there.

This is as old as long term military bases. The villages would move closer to them because the militaries of the forts and castles would patrol the local area not just for enemies but would also heavily suppress bandits and raiders making it an attractive place to settle.

The vast majority of military bases in cities are not put there to be used as a shield but are there because there is not many other places they can be and the population frequently grows up around it. Trying to compare Hamas launching attacks directly from civilian housing to military bases within a city is apples and oranges.

edited 27th Mar '15 7:34:40 PM by TuefelHundenIV

It's just like the way Castle Town spring up around castles.

But those are nothing like having military stuff inside civilian housing and such. Especially when the only reason they are there is for the Human Shield against bomb strikes and they have to be damn close due to how smart bombs work nowadays.

Again, I covered that. During lawn-mowing ops, both sides launch attacks from within or very near to civilian structures in Gaza, which the IDF often spices up by stuffing those buildings with civilians to act as human shields. Also, both sides have large semi-public military facilities in built-up urban areas, which is much less bad and avoidable, but still kind of a problem.

There is a catch to this though. Where military base and civilian mingle a lot. It is almost always a case of structure of government being inadequate enough in many regards to keep them separate and civilians who really need a place to expand will expand where they are not stopped from doing so. IIRC there are a select few places in Eastern Europe where old bases have the military squatting in a corner and the rest of the base is pretty much now a town on what used to be a base.

Old fortifications even ones still partially in use have a long history of being coopted by the locals for living space and materials.

As I said, it's much less avoidable. Israeli conscription naturally results in a closer integration between civilian and military infrastructure, while the sheer density of Gaza means that there's not really anywhere for Hamas to put its official military facilities that isn't in splash range of something important (except for a couple of totally inhospitable patches of desert, which are out for obvious reasons).

If the immediate civilian buildings are hit when a base is attacked that is just an unfortunate side effect of having a base in such a cramped place. That would be understandable.

However even in cramped places there are ways to at least give a small buffer zone to keep the civilians at least a little bit aways permitting placement in cramped areas if necessary. Not saying it is easy or will protect the civilians to a high degree as a big buffer zone would but it is possible to at least give a small measure of distance to them.

Hamas has no motivation currently to establish a military base away from civilian structures as doing so pretty much says drop bombs here. Hiding under, around, and in civilian buildings makes them a lot harder to find and increases the chances a bad target ID, a lot more common then admitted by most modern militaries, will hit a civilian target instead or even hit nothing of value like an empty building, empty lot, an orchard, or field. This is as a tactic or strategy and it certainly works in a tactical and strategic sense.

Short of both sides military bodies moving their fights to the desert I don't see it changing any time soon.

edited 27th Mar '15 8:40:02 PM by TuefelHundenIV

@ Tueful: It's an old activity; the Romans had the vicus, examples of which included London and York, amongst many others — including several in what is now Israel, no doubt.

Well there is a difference between having a military base near a civilian center, which is very common, but with the military areas delimited and still apart from the civilian areas from setting military bases inside civilian areas.

Well, to be fair, there are very small bases where the IDF basically takes a building or 2 and converts them into a base. But even then, nobody claims that they're not bases.

Again, you're missing the point. Hamas has defined official buildings as well, some of which are military in purpose - they are, after all, the Gazan government (or were, but the PA basically went 'nope, not touching that' after being handed rule of Gaza). It's just that both sides also have a history of using civilian buildings as cover.

It's kinda hard not to use civilian buildings as cover when you fight in cities. The thing is that Hamas does things like hiding weapons and/or entrances to their tunnels in civilian buildings, and then cry foul when those buildings get attacked.

Israel to resume tax transfers to Palestinian Authority - Israel is to stop withholding tax revenues collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA), a move that has crippled the Palestinian economy.

Abbas: Israeli-Palestinian relationship must change - Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told the Arab League summit meeting in Egypt on Saturday that the Israeli-Palestinian relationship cannot carry on as is, since Israel has meddled with the PA's powers and responsibilities, the Ma'an news agency reported Sunday.

I doubt there are many Governments that aren't guilty of using civilian buildings for cover, at least for Civil Defence purposes^note  Especially during the Cold War.

So basically, Obama just screwed over the rest of the Arab world? Or maybe he doesn't think it matters anymore with Iran actively wanting nukes?

edited 29th Mar '15 4:18:16 AM by nnokwoodeye1

This is a way to undermine Israel's stance, dismissing its attempts to sabotage the Iran negotiations as a petty and self-serving attempt to maintain its monopoly on force in the Middle East. The U.S. still doesn't want a nuclear Iran, but this gives them a lot more diplomatic leeway.

It' is still kinda screwy, though you may be right that it's to shut the Israeli government up when it comes to dealing with Iran.

It seems to be meeting hardball with hardball. Netanyahu's shown himself willing to interfere in the United States' internal politics, and in so doing try to make things difficult for Obama. This is letting him realize that the USA can do far more damage to Israel and Netanyahu than Israel and Netanyahu can do to it.