If you define “goaded” as “put into a situation in which a different response wouldn’t have been possible”, then it’s the correct word. The Israelis could have decided to "end the back and forth once and for all" five years ago or five years from now, but they didn’t— they decided to do it now.
> What is the goal here? How can we "win" in Gaza?
People make this a philosophical question. It's not. Israel's goal is to eliminate Hamas. Not the "idea", the actual people and military material of the fighting force of Hamas.
That is Israel's goal.
Also, it's looking increasingly likely that there will be something of a re-occupation of Gaza, at least for the immediate future until some alternative governing entity will be found.
Note: I'm stating the goal without getting into whether it's a good idea or not, or even achievable or not.
But worth saying that Israel's government thinks it can achieve the goal of destroying Hamas, and even if not, it is possible that when the war was launched, it did think it could be achieved (and e.g. underestimated Hamas).
Also, we use "achievable" here as if it's one dimensional, but it's not - the question is actually "achievable at what cost", where the cost is in Palestinian civilian lives lost and the population displaced, in IDF soldier's lives, and in disruption of the Israeli economy.
Seems the plan is to invade Rafah and force all remaining Palestinians to flee into the Sinai desert/Egypt. Then there'll be no Palestine, and eventually the world will forget about what happened.
It would be nice if the children on both sides weren't involved or they were allowed to get out and the world could have cut off both countries completely like a Bug's Bunny cartoon with a saw.
No money from the US or Iran would flow in until this thousand year religious war was figured out so we could all stop caring about a tiny piece of land that only matters because of religious text.
Jews, Christians, and Muslims have been fighting over this and the surrounding area since before they wrote all their books to convince everyone they are in the right.
If that is your way of saying, that there was never peace in that region among the 3 Abrahamic faiths, then you are highly mistaken. Seems history loves to be forgotten and rewritten.
