Theoretically, if it was the US military who goes into Gaza with the objective of getting rid of Hamas, how could they do it without killing civilians?

The layers of ignorance baked into this question make it nearly impossible to answer.

@hat Yep. But that does not help.

I wondered about that, too. How would they respond to an organization sworn to its total destruction. How would they get rid of the rockets, weapons and supplies hidden in booby-trapped tunnels under schools, hospitals, apartments, etc.? How would they stop rockets being fired into Israel every day? How would the get back hostages?
Here’s my uneducated/uniformed plan. I would love to hear other solutions.

I would record and publish on every social media app the rockets being launched and landing in Israel I’d publish a running total of the number of hostages and the number of rockets being launched.
I would let it happen and try diplomacy for one week or 1000 launches whichever is longer and then immediately call in precision strikes on the next source location – no matter what it is.
If launches continue and hostages are still held, I would next isolate the areas as attempt to cut supply lines.
If launches continue I would record and publish for 2 days and then precision airstrike the next source location.
If launches continue and it is obvious that civilians are being used as shields to protect stores of weapons and rockets, I would notify everyone in the area that total destruction will follow the next barrage of rockets from that area.
If launches continue and hostages are held I would continue to publish information and photos of weapons stored in civilian locations and tunnels under civilian facilities for example, rockets stored in MRI machines in hospitals.
I would make it clear that the pressure will continue as long as rockets are being launched and hostages are held.

I realize this is not a popular answer but you asked what I’d do.
Does anyone else have a solution? Let’s brainstorm.

^^Also wondering, how does the IDF get intelligence from within Gaza, aside from satellite surveillance? Spies?

I’d send in the latest Boston Dynamics robotic dogs equipped with laser rifles and their AI trained hostile/friendly detection system to take out all the evil Hamas militant scum with zero civilian casualties.

They would probably have to send in a drone to scout the area to see where humans is and the civilians are so they have an understanding of where to attack and how to get civilians out of Gaza and to safety. After the place is scouted, a task force can be sent in to get out the civilians and attack the militants. They could possibly do a drone strike if there are no civilians.
I don’t know if this will work but it is a thought.

They couldn’t, because Hamas purposely mixed in with the citizenry; there is very little distinction between a Gazan ‘citizen’ and a Hamas terrorist. This is how Hamas organized their rule over the last 40 years, and did so because it enabled them to pull off the chit they are doing now.

Keep in mind that this war was begun by Hamas and on their timetable, and you can be sure that some of their strategy was to cause human suffering and make Israel look bad. They have done that for 40 years as well.

I sort of agree with @hat, but opposite. The bullshit being sold by Hamas supporters is breathtaking in its wrongness.

@mazingerz88 They have excellent intelligence and information processing capabilities. Satellite, aircraft flyovers, drones and cooperators supply visual info. The flight paths and origins of the crude, 50kg Qassam rockets are simple to record and predict. The Iron Dome system looks at the flight path, predicts where the rocket warhead will land and will only bother to intercept it if its going to hit something of value. It will ignore rockets that will land in open areas (or on Palestinian property – like the Hamas rocket that misfired and landed in the hospital parking lot). Likewise, by working backwards, the launcher origin can be identified almost instantly, (<500ms). In the time it takes to fire the first Qassam, the location is identified. Targeting information is available before the volley is finished. That is why Hamas fires them while next to schools, hospitals, and mosques. Rocket launchers at Daycare

You will never get rid of Hamas or something like it if the situation in Gaza is conducive to the formation of a group like Hamas.

Israel isn’t trying to get rid of Hamas, they are trying to expel Palestinians from Gaza, and using getting rid of Hamas (something they know they can’t actually do) as a pretext for ethnic cleansing.

The idea that Hamas is the only problem, that if there were just no Hamas, everything would be fine and peaceful, is a gross misunderstanding of the situation in the region.

Simply put: you can’t fight a guerrilla group without killing civilians. There is no “magic formula” that will only target the “bad guys”. Hamas is not a national military; it can’t be fought like one.

^^So what if Israel declares they got rid of all Hamas fighters they’re targeting, killing more Palestinians yes, but then they stop?

And surviving Palestinians are able to resettle? Doesn’t that disprove your belief that Israel simply wants to expel Palestinians?

The Geneva Conventions don’t say how it could be done they say how it must be done. Civilians must be protected in war – a guiding principle no right thinking person could disagree with.

@LuckyGuy By “cooperators” you mean Palestinians who are anti-Hamas? Human intelligence.

I just couldn’t imagine Israel able to confirm where Hamas fighters are taking refuge by the lone use of spy drones.

I think it is the United Nations that defines proportionality, maybe it is part of the Geneva Convention also, I do not know. Getting rid of Hamas is pretty important, justified, and the world seems to be on the board with it, so most likely civilian lives being lost during a mission as @LuckyGuy describes would probably pass the test of following the rules of war.

I would hope that if the US went in they could send more ground troops and just overwhelm the area and protect civilians and help them at the same time, and corner and kill and capture Hamas.

^With due respect, one cannot overwhelm the Gazan people, nor any tunnel system.

There is no military that could match them person to person.
Ground wars in urban areas where we don’t speak the local language are a disaster waiting to happen.

Tell you what I would do.

There is already an established border around the Gazan Strip.
We could have told everyone to leave through certain areas, and heavily invested in trying to vet everyone comming out.
It would have taken a LONG time.
But we could have only given aid to those wanting to leave. No power, or water in the city, except at their one main hospital.

Spend billions of dollars trying to get a multinational effort at weeding out Hamas soldiers.
Probably fail some.
While all this happens, just leave Gaza to grow sparse of civilians.

Again, a multinational effort will attempt to work with the UN about getting out foreign nationals, and those who cannot report to deportation areas.

Hear me out.

After a few months, we start sending in drones, and watch from above with hordes of other actual attack drones.
At this point, we have already “cleared major population centers.

Never fire a shot. Just take out people who won’t surrender weapons, and keep the water/food power off.

Set up a zone in Gaza for people to turn themselves in, as they starve. Obviously, they will have to be prepared for suicide attacks etc…

After months of a major immigration disaster, political tensions being pressed, and yep more drones. Until finally ground troops hunt each found tunnel to it’s end. There would be traps, and casualties.
But time would be on our side.

If we get them pinned down, we pump in non-lethal gas, until they run out of masks.

Finally. Send in the dogs, and the marines.

An absolute economic tragedy.
Tensions would be high.

Hostages? Hopefully those are used as bartering chips in exchange for surrender conditions. If we save any, great.
But. The hostages cannot be considered ultimately. It is a convenience that we cannot afford.

After 8 months or so, we could let the very pissed off, highly inconvenienced Gazans return to their homes, with no further military presence.

Lots of lost money. Lots of hurt feelings.

But.
32,000 Palestinians have died since 10/7. Over 75,000 wounded. Almost half of Gaza’s population are children.
There should be little doubt those numbers will be worse.

Things could have been done better. More difficult, but better.

^^Thanks.

I would have filled a fleet of tanker ships with fresh water and then flooded the tunnels. Then I would have offered prisoner swaps for hostages and allowed Hamas to surrender war criminals for trial in The Hague in exchange for Israel offering it’s own war criminals to also stand trial in The Hague.

^^The hostages, I think some were in the tunnels.

@MrGrimm888 Who is taking in the Gazans in your plan? I have said all along I wish other Arab countries would take in Gazans temporarily to ease the suffering. None of them will do it, not even the West Bank.

If the Israelis succeed “quickly” in seriously damaging Hamas, probably fewer Palestinians will die than a prolonged war, but that doesn’t mean there might not be a better way.

@flutherother I just realized I didn’t tag you regarding my response to your statement about protecting civilians. You can see it above, but basically the rules of proportionality during war and Hamas using Gazans as shields means civilians are going to get killed if Israel pursues Hamas. It totally sucks.

@Demosthenes So, let’s say Hamas is gone and Gaza is it’s own state or together with the West Bank. How are things better in Gaza? I worry there is never any relief or real opportunity for the Gazans.

This is one of Trumps plan. He will ask cousin Putin to do it and thus not take the blame.
This is an example of how Donald’s brain works.

They couldn’t…plain and simply. The question assumes you can readily identify combatants from non-combatants. Viet Nam should have taught us that is not the case. The US would likely have similar intel on Hamas as Israel does. And it would show that Hamas is hiding behind, effectively, human shields.

But hey, those Pro-Palestinians have no problem with that. They seem to only have a problem with Israel not being deterred by it.

@mazingerz88 ”^^The hostages, I think some were in the tunnels.”

Not the ones that were swapped with the Palestinians that Israel had “kidnapped” (i.e. arrested and held without charges or access to a lawyer indefinitely).

@seawulf575 If those killed by Hamas in that attack were Americans, would the US military command recommend to the President to drop bombs on the same locations the IDF did?

As the above answers said, it’s an impossible situation. War always will 100% have collateral damage.

We’ve used tech to try to minimize collateral damage but it’s always gonna happen.

^^This reminds me of operation Shock and Awe. Which supposedly killed thousands of Iraqi civilians.

@JLeslie You are correct, that nobody would take the Gazans.
In that case, Israel (again with international support) would temporarily construct a temporary camp in Israel.
Gazans are accustomed to living in refugee camps already.

That could be thrown together, just like after a natural disaster.

But Israel wouldn’t control the Gazans. They would pick representatives from the Gazans to govern the camp.
If they’re smart, Israel pushes people that want peace, and help them rise to power.

A new leader of Gaza, who isn’t Hamas, could emerge from the situation.
If Israel didn’t screw it up by making it a bad place, it could have worked.

There isn’t any way of proving anything now.

Here’s another plan that lets economics do the heavy lifting.

As background, it costs about $500 to make a Qassam or buy one from Iran. An Iron Dome guided missile to take one down costs about $20,000. (some sources say as high as 100k) It is far better to get them on the ground. So…
1) Offer $200 in food and supplies for every working Qassam rocket turned in.
2) Offer $100 for every AK in working order.
3) Pay $40 for each RPG and magnetic tank mine turned in.
4) Offer $1000 in food aid for the release of hostage.
When people get hungry enough they will start turning in the weapons and rethinking their choice of leadership.

Offer a reward for information leading to the destruction of tunnels and caches of weapons.

Try it for a month an see what happens. If the rockets don’t stop then go back to the methods mentioned above. .

^^I wondered about what might happen if a Palestinian speak out against Hamas outside his own house. Or posts something similar and Hamas finds out.

^The US has a long history of using money to motivate people.
Results aren’t always good.

I shudder to think of how many people probably got killed by US drones, because of a neighbor with a grudge, or just a drug addict cashing in on the opportunity to get rich selling people out.

@JLeslie Egypt sealed their borders against the Palestinians as well. And the Gaza is right up against Egypt. They have a big, beautiful wall to keep the people from entering illegally. Funny how no one is calling them out for not supporting the civilians, isn’t it?

@MrGrimm888 Israel tried letting the Palestinians elect their own leaders. They elected Hamas. And Hamas has made sure there were no more elections. But hey, we should support Hamas instead of Israel, right? They’re the good guys according to many jellies on these pages.

@LuckyGuy While I like the way you think, the problem is that Hamas would kill the civilians that wanted to take part in your plan and then would blame Israel. Hamas has already shown they have no loyalty to the people. They are fanatics.

@LuckyGuy “When people get hungry enough they will start turning in the weapons and rethinking their choice of leadership.”

That’s genocidal collective punishment. Explain how kidnaping and starving random Jews to death in a basement somewhere the US until Israel complies with International law would be any worse? You’re holding one person (mostly kids) accountable for the actions of another. Clearly that’s wrong and an unacceptable method to compel change. But why is it ok to starve kids to death in Gaza? The suggestion is fucking psychotic.

@gorillapaws, So maybe Israel should just take all the civilians as hostages, right? Isn’t that what good people do? That would just calm things right down, wouldn’t it? But you’re right, that wouldn’t work. Why? Because (a) it is what fanatics do and (b) Hamas doesn’t care about the civilians anyway. Funny that you can’t actually call out their bullshit.

@gorillapaws That’s Bin Laden logic right there. Bin Laden believed there were no innocent Americans, because they vote for and enable their murderous, imperialist government, therefore they deserve 9/11. Just another way of justifying collective punishment. Y’all acting like voting for Hamas is like voting for your local representative…

Maybe my example wasn’t clear. I was showing an example that was CLEARLY WRONG and then showing how @LuckyGuy‘s suggestion was EVEN WORSE than that thing that was CLEARLY WRONG. The point wasn’t to advocate for harming anybody, it was to advocate AGAINST harming people.

You are correct Wulf.
The Palestinians got to vote on who to represent them, and they voted for a group that hates Israel (their oppressors.)
Yes. It makes sense, and it happened.
Absolutely nobody has called Hamas “good guys,” that I am aware of.

And nope. No more elections.

Here we see another of your double standards.
You support a wannabe authoritarian dictator, who certainly won’t give up the office again if he’s reelected.

But. Middle eastern politics is where you prefer functioning democracy?

@gorillapaws I was agreeing with you and adding more to what you said, though I can see how that might not have been clear. “But they voted for Hamas!” has to be one of the weakest defenses of genocide I’ve seen.

^Conversely. I believe that their voting for a potential protector exhibited the Palestinians fear of Israel.

They didn’t vote in people who were going to turn into ISIS. They wanted someone to stand up to Israel.

Perhaps Hamas was the lesser of evils, to them, like with US elections where the least shitty person wins….

@Demosthenes I was responding to @seawulf575. Sorry for not being more clear.

Well, I’ve been saying this site needs nested comments since 2009, but somehow I don’t think that’s gonna change. ;)

^At least everyone is being civil.

They could not.

I’m made a couple of proposals to answer the question, not to criticize or critiqe – yet.

Similar to the rules of the website Freecycle, where you only get to ask for something you need after you donate an item, we only get to criticize a proposal after we come up with another solution.

Remember, the goal is to stop the rockets, return the hostages, and minimize civilian deaths.
So far I have only seen 6 proposals: one each from @MrGrimm888 @Kropotkin, @gorillapaws, @KRD, and 2 from me.

What else does anyone have?

(According to the Freecycle rules, since I made a proposal I can criticize or clarify another one.)
@gorillapaws. My suggestion is to very publicly tie food aid to weapon returns. Everyone should know the offer is on the table. The message should be spread via loud speakers, leaflets passed out, and air dropped directly over suspected caches.
Every citizen should know the deal is serious, real, and immediate. The intent is to force Hamas to look in the mirror and see why those children are starving. They will then have to make a very public decision: which is more important to the people? That store of 500 rockets in the basement of the school or food aid to the innocent kids. Every citizen in the area will know what they decided.

@LuckyGuy I get your approach, but I wonder how much autonomy the average Gazan citizen has to make the choice ion the first place.

I doubt that Hamas cares whether Gazans are starving – after all, they used the whole approach of civilian shielding (and the concomitant uproar from the international community) as a strategy before.

So if your proposal – food in exchange for weapons – is ever suggested, Hamas will prefer to keep their weapons and let others starve. This is the mark of religiously-based ideological fanaticism.

Rational people would find your exchange idea worth talking about.

But the Arab Muslim fanatics – for 70+ years – have chosen the irrational over the rational in support of their ideology. So expecting them to all of a sudden care about their people? Not a chance.

^^Do you think there’s a chance Hamas miscalculated, not expecting Israel would kill children in its effort to get to them?

@elbanditoroso Admittedly I’m not in that situation tableand I’m just a guy sitting at my laptop in my kitchen eating lunch…. But I gotta tell ya, at this point if I had kids who were starving and Omar, Amal and Samar, were in my basement sitting on something that could feed my family, one way or the other, they would be gone.
Hamas is not starving. They have supplies. They are letting their people starve.

It’s worth pointing out that there is no Hamas in the West Bank to get rid of and yet Palestinian civilians are being killed there also.

^I think they’ve hit targets in Lebanon, Syria, and maybe Egypt.
The IDF will say, and may be right, that Hamas members left the country around the time of the attack.

I believe 2 hostages were recovered in a neighboring country.

I hope they get those Hamas killers who…supposedly…put a baby in the oven.

@mazingerz88 There were two babies killed. One was shot through a door and another was in the womb of a mother who was killed. They performed an emergency cesarean and unfortunately the infant did not survive. The babies in ovens thing, beheaded babies and mass rapes were all fiction. Hamas did commit war crimes and kidnap/kill civilians.