u/Unretrofied12

Took the AZ700 yesterday. I passed, thankfully, but I was a little surprised to see labs return on the exams. I'm thankful that they were there. I'll take labs over case studies any day of the week. The last time i saw a lab on an exam was around 4-5 years ago. I remember when they stopped putting labs in the exams due to capacity issues.

The labs themselves were great. Pretty much portal ops your way through some basic tasks like setting up custom rules on a WAF, VNET peering, route tables, NSGs, and DNS zones. 10 tasks in total, all on the easy to medium side and certainly a lot more straight forward than some of the ambiguously worded questions from the exam.

Getting to use Microsoft Learn during the exam is a new feature that wasn't there before either (or at least I never noticed it before). I did use it for one question about Express Route resiliency that was oddly specific.

All in all, probably the hardest exam I've taken yet. Happy to have it behind me.

I want to try something different from the usual “my side good, your side bad” discourse that seems to be the norm here lately. Instead of arguing about blame, this is an attempt to think through a practical question: is there a way to disarm Hamas while actually reducing further bloodshed and destruction in Gaza? This is a theoretical proposal. I am not claiming expertise in military strategy, and I expect people will find flaws in it. That is fine. The current approach has flaws too, and it keeps repeating.

Before getting into the proposal, it is worth looking at a historical parallel from the Vietnam War. The Strategic Hamlet Program, implemented in 1962 by the South Vietnamese government, was built around a simple idea. Separate civilians from insurgents, provide security and services, and build legitimacy over time. Civilians were relocated into protected zones where they received aid, economic support, and a consistent government presence. The goal was to cut the Viet Cong off from recruits and resources while increasing civilian alignment with the state.

The plan was ultimately a failure, mostly because they had put a sleeper agent in charge of it who sabotaged the program in a spectacular fashion, which caused it to have an opposite effect and push more people into insurgency. That's ultimately besides the point because we wouldn't be putting a sleeper agent in charge here.

The program followed three phases: clearing, holding, and winning. Clearing removed insurgent presence. Holding maintained security so insurgents could not return. Winning focused on reconstruction and long term stability.

Now apply that framework to Gaza.

Right now, Gaza is effectively divided via the yellow line, with Israel controlling a significant portion of territory. Whether one agrees with that reality or not, it creates an opening to attempt something more structured than the current cycle.

The proposal is to establish secured civilian zones inside areas already under Israeli control. Call them hamlets if you want, but the name is not important. What matters is the function. These would be deliberately constructed living areas with water, food distribution, medical care, and basic infrastructure. They would be fortified, monitored, and designed to exclude militant infrastructure like tunnels.

Because these areas would be built in territory that is already controlled, the clearing phase is largely done. The focus becomes holding. That means a continuous security presence to ensure these zones stay demilitarized and stable over time. Movement through to these zones from Hamas controlled areas would be regulated through checkpoints along a defined boundary and the trip would be one way.

This is where the proposal becomes more assumption heavy. Israel already deploys extensive surveillance capabilities, including signals intelligence and AI assisted tracking. In theory, these tools could help distinguish between civilians and active Hamas operatives.

No one should pretend this would be perfectly accurate. It would not be. Assuming a 10% margin of error, heavy scrutiny would have to be placed on any positive hits. That means any identification process would need multiple layers of review and human oversight.

Over time, civilians would move into these secured zones, and aid distribution would be concentrated there. This part is critical. Aid would no longer flow broadly into areas where Hamas can intercept and repurpose it. Instead, it would be tied to controlled environments where distribution is more accountable.

The strategic effect is fairly straightforward. If you separate Hamas from the population, you also separate it from recruits, resources, and a large part of its leverage.

Once that separation reaches a meaningful level, military operations become more targeted and less destructive. The battlefield gets smaller. The reliance on human shields becomes less effective. The overall cost of targeting Hamas, both morally and materially, goes down.

This would not be fast. Filtering and relocating a population at this scale would likely take a year or more. But compare that to the current trajectory, which is repeated cycles of destruction, partial rebuilding, and rearmament with no structural change.

Some obvious objections and responses:

This would cost billions. Who is paying for it?
So does the current approach. Repeated military campaigns, reconstruction, and ongoing instability are not cheap, both in currency and human life. The international community is already funding aid at scale. Redirecting that funding into a system with more control and accountability may not just be viable, it may be more efficient.

Who administers this? The IDF is not a humanitarian organization.
The IDF should not be responsible for civilian administration. Its role would be security and enforcement. Administration should be handled by international organizations and Trump's technocratic governing body. Including Gazan Palestinians in that structure would be necessary for legitimacy, especially in any post conflict phase.

This will be seen as forced displacement or ethnic cleansing.
That perception is not going away as things currently stand. The alternatives are Hamas continuing to govern or continued large scale bombing. Both have severe consequences for Palestinians in Gaza. If this kind of system is implemented with oversight, transparency, and a clear path to future governance, it can be framed as a stabilization effort rather than simple removal. Whether people accept that framing will depend heavily on how it is executed.

This is not a clean solution. There is risk in it. But there is also risk in continuing what is already happening. If the goal is actually to dismantle Hamas while reducing civilian suffering, then approaches that separate civilians from combatants, control resource flows, and create stable zones of governance are at least worth serious consideration.