Did you see the ny times article about how israel knew hamas was planing to attack and ignored it?

i get the importance of these articles as analysis of israel's overestimated intelligence and military capabilities but personally i can never parse them separately to how israel ignores every other warning to end its occupation/settlement expansions/settler terrorism/abuses of human rights.

these are the same thing, the only difference is that the former was a warning about the imminent death of israeli citizens while the latter is a warning about the increasing amount of palestinian death and the unsustainability of the status quo

sure they underestimated hamas but that also comes from an arrogant belief that you can put two million people under a blockade and kill thousands of them every few years with no moral or political repercussions, and the past decade has only served to affirm this arrogance.

but like most israeli arrogance, it comes from the estimation that the only safety that matters and the only political narrative that matters is the israeli one. even now the only prominent calculations about 'peace' are the ones that center how israeli civilians can live in comfort and confront palestinians less in the future. gaza was out of sight and out of mind. but what articles like this really serve to highlight is that the israeli state prioritized its own existence and the expansion of its settlements over the safety of its citizens, which has always been true of israeli state-making that sees global antisemitism as a political advantage anyway

civilians cannot live in comfort in an apartheid regime. ethnic supremacy is a rot to democracy. israelis will eventually find themselves living under a true middle eastern dictatorship, because this is what their country requires. israeli citizens now can believe that this war is being waged on their behalf, and that a two-state solution is sought on their behalf, and that their voices and safety matter. there is enough nationalist fervor in israel to keep this narrative alive. but no matter what security they get, how many bombs they drop, how much political immunity they have, as long as they never confront the nature of their country they're just fighting for a military fascist regime. that's worked out well for everyone around them.