Winning hearts and minds - My FOOT !!
The Gazans and the Muslim world's hearts and minds are deeply, very deeply entrenched in killing Jews (and even Hindus and Christians if opportunity presents). Any number of concessions and friendly gestures short of entire Jewish community getting killed and wiped out, with their women taken as sex slaves and converted, will not win the Muslim world's heart and minds. You may disagree all you want, but this is the deep reality.
Not I did say at the start that it is a Kobiashi Maru scenario. The reason that bit from Star Trek made it into the common lexicon because it is a test at the Star Fleet Academy designed to be a no win situation.
Israel is not going to win over the Muslim world anytime soon, but they could make inroads in opinion in the west with the right messaging. But it's going to take a lot to counter the damage Hamas has already done.
By being kind to non-combatants, it won't change opinions short term, but over time it could make inroads. Germany and especially Japan were the mortal enemies of the United States in 1945, but they are two of the best allies the US has today. What contributed dramatically to this change was the way the vanquished were treated after the fighting stopped.
An army in the position that Israel is in has a near zero chance of actually ending the insurgency. History has not been kind to outside armies fighting an insurgency outside their borders. Israel's path right now is a path to disaster over the long term.
Gandhi (who himself was a Hindu) wanted Hindus to be thrown as sacrificial lambs in any communal riots, just to appease the murderers. He was of the opinion, that once the murderers lust has been satisfied, then the killings will stop and peace will be ushered. What an Idiot ! If you give in and appease the perpetrators, you get instant peace which is just temporary. You are basically laying a foundation for a larger problem in the future.
History has shown us over and over again, that a large Muslim community cannot co-exist peacefully as close neighbors in proximity with people of another faith. Israel should create the buffer necessary if they need to be left alone and live peacefully. It is time Egypt and other Muslim countries open their borders for Gazans to move in as refugees and eventually citizenship, and Gaza be left empty as a safe buffer for Israel. Not much different from how fleeing Jews were welcomed in US and other European countries after WW2.
China has got it right with Uyghurs.
Recent history has demonstrated that Muslims don't often peacefully co-exist with other groups, but there are Muslims communities in many countries who are at peace with the people around them. In the US Detroit has a large Muslim community and there is little trouble. Both the UK and Canada have larger Muslim populations than the US and there is little violence between Muslims and the greater community.
Going further back in history Muslims were quite tolerant of other "people of the Book", ie Christians and Jews. When Muslims were in control, the only restrictions put on non-Muslims were they could not hold any government job and they had to pay an extra tax. That was it.
When things were turned around and Muslims were under the rule of Christians, they didn't fare as well.
The Crusades created the first bad blood between Muslims and Christians, and that was an invasion by the Christians. But once the Crusades were over, there were hundreds of years of relative peace between Muslims and others until the British played divide and conquer in India pitting various groups against one another to weaken the governments so they could take over. Amplifying the differences between Hindus and Muslims was part of this.
Then the match thrown into the room filled with gasoline fumes was the Zionist movement in Palestine and the establishment of Israel. Regardless of what anyone else thinks, much of the Muslim world sees that as a European invasion of the Middle East. They see it as a modern crusade.
Saying that is BS makes no difference to how the Muslim world sees this.
Short term, attitudes are not going to improve no matter what Israel does. Israel can make it worse, which is what they are doing. On any given topic support for any position is going to vary over a range. A majority may be anti-Israel for example, but before the current conflict the bulk of the population in Gaza was probably not interested in doing anything about it. On a scale of 1-10 where 5 is neutral and 10 is a burning hatred of Israel, the bulk of the population was probably between 6-8. Now a significantly larger chunk of the population are closer to 10.
A lot of the TikTok crowd in the west are around a 6. And since they don't actually have a dog in the fight, it really isn't that important to them.
A long term campaign of treating Palestinian non-combatants with respect and compassion would move more Palestinians back towards 6 and might move more people in the west to at least a 4. To get people in the west to at least 5 could be done in a few years because there is less resistance to change minds. With the Palestinian population, it would likely take generations.
The larger the population at 10, the more danger Israel is in ultimately. Get enough people who hate Israel so much they don't care if they live or die and the Palestinians have an army that can simply overwhelm the IDF with sheer numbers in human wave attacks. The slaughter would be staggering, but a large enough force could do it. Israel has a population of about 9.5 million and there are 1 billion Muslims in the world.
A large enough population who hates Israel that much isn't there now, but their actions are making that population larger every day.
Heavy seas broke damaged the coastal port pier that the US military built for Gaza.
US pier constructed off Gaza has broken apart
That happened to one of the Allied Mulberries after the D-Day invasion.