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The Gaza War Is Yet Another Self-made, Inescapable Israeli Imbroglio - Opinion - Haaretz.com

B. Michael Dec 11, 2023 11:43 pm IST

"Plonter" (Yiddish for a knot that cannot be easily loosened, an imbroglio) was, as everyone knows, the second name of the first Lebanon war. Anyone with eyes on their head quickly realized that we had rashly and arrogantly entered a quagmire from which we could not easily escape. And when Yitzhak Rabin used the term "plonter" to describe the war, it practically became its official name.

The northern plonter in Lebanon wasn't the only plonter in the history of our nation. A substantial part of this history could be boiled down to a list of the plonters in which it has become ensnared, or in which it ensnared itself.

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First among them is the Nakba of 1948, the mass expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians and plunder of their property. The overconfident Israeli presumption at the time was that this would be the end of it – we expelled, we inherited, end of story. Problem solved. But it was not solved. It became a huge, complicated problem whose consequences we are still paying for to this day. The Nakba, one could say, was the original plonter, the forebear of all the plonters to come.

The second plonter began in 1967. This time it was in the east. The West Bank, Gaza and Palestinian Jerusalem were conquered. So was the Western Wall. And from its cracks, the religious demon arose. The worst sort of demon, which immediately began to eat away at the nation's sanity.

A line of Israeli right-wing activists walk along a road during a two day march in the West Bank, organized by the early settler organization "Gush Emunim," in 1975.Credit: Moshe Milner/GPO

In a flash, it spawned the settlement enterprise, the Jewish underground, the Haredi ultranationalists – and thus was born the most dangerous plonter of all for the country's survival: a toxic and malignant combination of God, lands and psychopaths.

Despite the pesky sorts who warned over and over again for decades (I am proud to count myself among them) that a monster was growing here – one that would devour the country if it wasn't stopped – no one woke up. Today the monster is in power, fulfilling to the letter all of the nightmare scenarios that were foreseen by those who kept warning and warning.

The third plonter was the northern one, the war in Lebanon. Entrance on June 4, 1982. Exit on May 24, 2000. An 18-year-long plonter, seemingly, but actually, a plonter that also continues to this day. It is the one that gave us Hezbollah.

And now – the fourth plonter. The southern one. Hamas. A gang of murderous religious fanatics who want to redeem the holy places in Jerusalem. Just like the religious fanatics of the eastern, Haredi ultranationalist plonter.

After the atrocities of October 7, blinded by a desire for revenge and the sting of the insult, we entered this plonter in our usual way: hastily, arrogantly, wildely, without a moment's consideration of the exit plan.

And now we are stuck in the mountains of rubble we created. Drenched in rivers of blood and death. Responsible, against our will, for the fate of 2 million homeless people who are left with nothing, many of them descendants of the refugees of the Nakba plonter.

Palestinians evacuate the northern Gaza Strip to its south, last month.Credit: Fatima Shbair / AP

How we'll extract ourselves from there is anyone's guess. The nutcases of the eastern plonter don't want to leave there anyway. They are certain that God promised Deir al-Balah to them too. And there is at least one more person who also apparently is not at all keen to get out of there. He's content there, and in any case, his wife won't let him leave.

So this is the situation right now: Hezbollah in the north, Haredi ultranationalists in the east, Hamas in the south and the Nakba hovering over everything. Four plonters, the work of our own hands, fueling one another. And caught in the middle: one nation that is continually expanding, two religions fighting it out over the same mount, three communities of violent Sicarii in the service of a bloodthirsty God, two messiahs that are about to arrive any minute now, and Bibi.

So how do we get out of all this? Easy: We get rid of the occupation, separate religion and state, write a decent constitution, and start from scratch. Simple.

How do we really get out? We don't. It's too late.