And Bibi supported and kept Hamas in power so Israeli society could labor under the delusion that keeping Palestinians out of sight and out of mind was a viable plan. Until it wasn’t.

He’s been elected again and again, and has been steadfast in preventing self governance from ever taking hold. To the degree Israel is a “democracy” it is because there is voter consensus that there can be no Palestinian self rule.

He's a believer. He want several things that can't be well understood by the non-religious. He wants the al Aqsa mosque demolished/removed, so the temple can be rebuilt. He wants all of Jerusalem. And, even what he would call all of "Greater Israel" eventually. In that order, but he's willing to settle for those things out of order if it looks possible. A peaceful neighboring Palestine doesn't allow for any of that. A peaceful, neighboring Palestine wouldn't, for instance, ever do anything that could be used as an excuse to seize territory, or to remove Palestinians (via any of the various forms of ethnic cleansing). This thing in Gaza may well have been dragged out, just in the hopes that the people in the West Bank would be provoked into doing something, or that Iron Dome might shoot down something in just such a way as that the debris would fall on al Aqsa.

All of this will seem like the dumbest bullshit to you. Why would anyone want that? But there are millions of people in Israel that want nothing more than this. And he is their leader.

None of that seems accurate, not when it comes to Netanyahu. He's not a religious zealot and almost certainly isn't pursuing anything because of religion.

> But there are millions of people in Israel that want nothing more than this. And he is their leader.

I don't think there are millions in Israel that want Al Aqsa demolished, that is a delusion that has no historical basis at all. There are of course religious extremists who want really bad things, but they are a relatively small minority of the population.

Most of the population just wants to live in peace and safety. They believe there is no safety to be found with a Palestinian state next door (with good reason, see what happened in Gaza).

> This thing in Gaza may well have been dragged out, just in the hopes that [...] or Iron Dome might shoot down something in just such a way as that the debris would fall on al Aqsa.

This is a ridiculous line of thinking. Hamas (and Iran) are shooting rockets at Israel, including at al Aqsa, Israel is spending millions with the iron dome to shoot down those rockets, and you think it's part of a nefarious Israeli plan to destroy al Aqsa?

> I don't think there are millions in Israel that want Al Aqsa demolished,

There are well over 1 million ultra-orthodox. There's also a not-really-countable number of non-ultra-orthodox who want the same thing, but their opinions are a bit more diverse. Say, somewhere around 1.6-2 million. That's plural millions, as far as I understand grammar.

>They believe there is no safety to be found with a Palestinian state next door (with good reason, see what happened in Gaza).

They also believe there's no safety for a single state solution, because Palestinians will eventually become the majority, and vote out the jews. There is of course, an unspoken third option as well. No one would admit to favoring that.

> Israel is spending millions with the iron dome to shoot down those rockets,

The debris has to land somewhere. It doesn't just evaporate. Could someone finagle it so that it lands where they want? Would be a beat trick. Just have to wait for the right trajectory, one would think.

> There are well over 1 million ultra-orthodox. There's also a not-really-countable number of non-ultra-orthodox who want the same thing, but their opinions are a bit more diverse. Say, somewhere around 1.6-2 million. That's plural millions, as far as I understand grammar.

First, you're assuming that all ultra-Orthodox want to see Al Aqsa demolished, which is a huge assumption that is probably not correct.

Second, in a country of 9 million people, I think it's misleading to say that "millions want" when referring to less than 2 million. I think saying about a country of 9m people that "millions want to see an incredibly important place/monument destroyed" gives a very wrong impression of what is the general spirit here, and is especially misleading because "Al Aqsa is in danger" has been a common worry of the Palestinians for a hundred years, with very little factual basis for that worry, IMO.

> They also believe there's no safety for a single state solution, because Palestinians will eventually become the majority, and vote out the jews.

Of course. The one state solution is a ridiculous non-solution as acknowledged by every official international body that has ever considered the problem, and as acknowledged by about 99% of the people living in the region. And as agreed by the parties themselves in the Oslo accords and ensuing future peace process in which the plan was to find a way to create two states living side by side.

> There is of course, an unspoken third option as well. No one would admit to favoring that.

Unfortunately, you're wrong about that. There is a small, minority, but currently influential group of Israelis that pretty explicitly espouses the idea of, in their words, "voluntary relocation". Which everyone reads as a pretty implicit call for ethnic cleansing.

> The debris has to land somewhere. It doesn't just evaporate.

No kidding. Plenty of people have been hurt by this debris, and I've seen pieces of it - those can be pretty big chunks of metal falling on people's heads.

Still, the implication that it would somehow be part of Israel's plan to destroy Al Aqsa to keep the war going so that maybe debris from rockets that Israel shoots down would land on Al Aqsa, and the implication that this would then be Israel's fault, and not the fault of the people shooting the rockets at Al Aqsa in the first place, is... I don't know what to even call it beyond morally absurd.

You're partially right, and I've stated many times that I think Israel has acted in morally wrong ways for the last 15 years of Netanyahu's rule.

But I think it's important to understand that the reason the Israeli electorate went down this path is because of the failure of the peace process in the 1990s and 2000s. The Israeli public multiple times elected leaders pursuing peace. Even former right-wing hawks turned around and pursued peace. And some things came out of it, like the creation of the PA which gave limited self-governance to the Palestinians.

But eventually, the Palestinians turned down what were perceived to be very serious and generous peace offers by the Israeli public, walked away from the negotiations, and started a terrible wave of terror attacks.

Similarly, Israel removed all settlers and all army personnel from Gaza, the result of which was the election of Hamas, with a sworn mission to destroy Israel, and constant rocket attacks on Israel.

So the way the Israeli public (correctly) sees it, there is no "partner for peace", and even when peace was very seriously pursued and positive steps taken to give Palestinians what they ostensibly wanted, the result was violence directed at Israel.

That is why there was a turn away from pursuing peace and just trying to "live with the situation".