Thucydides on Gaza

Reading the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides today I was struck by the speech of Diodotus against Cleon about the fate of Mytilene. His point was that when the innocent are punished just as much as the guilty then at the next revolt the former will join in knowing they have nothing to lose. The complete mobilisation of the people is inevitable. That is what Hamas wants and they will get it. The Israelis knowing this will try to push as many of the Gazans into exile as possible, creating a new Nakba. The openly fascistic Netenyahu has his counterpart in Cleon:

‘Personally I have had occasion often enough already to observe that a democracy is incapable of governing others, and I am all the more convinced of this when I see how you are now changing your minds about the Mytilenians. Because fear and conspiracy play no part in your daily relations with each other, you imagine that the same thing is true of your allies, and you fail to see that when you allow them to persuade you to make a mistaken decision and when you give way to your own feelings of compassion you are being guilty of a kind of weakness which is dangerous to you and which will not make them love you any more. What you do not realize is that your empire is a tyranny exercised over subjects who do not like it and who are always plotting against you; you will not make them obey you by injuring your own interests in order to do them a favour; your leadership depends on superior strength and not on any goodwill of theirs.

.... After a lapse of time the injured party will lose the edge of his anger when he comes to act against those who have wronged him; whereas the best punishment and the one most fitted to the crime is when reprisals follow immediately. Diodotus:

Consider this now: at the moment, if a city has revolted and realizes that the revolt cannot succeed, it will come to terms while it is still capable of paying an indemnity and continuing to pay tribute afterwards. But if Cleon’s method is adopted, can you not see that every city will not only make much more careful preparations for revolt, but will also hold out against siege to the very end, since to surrender early or late means just the same thing?