Trolley problems: the people of Gaza

There's a famous moral dilemma, where the person is forced to choose between inaction, and action which causes lessor evil. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem. There is no "correct" answer for this problem, of course, just philosophical takes on the morality of each choice. This is somewhat related to the more general question of whether or not propagating a smaller evil is justified to prevent a larger evil (eg: killing one to save many, or causing some to suffer in the goal of reducing larger future suffering).

I lead with this, because I feel like there's a variant of this problem which is applicable to a number of human populations in the world, where the human population is doing something "bad", and as a result are suffering... and others needs to decide to what extent to help them at that point. By rendering assistance, one would be indirectly supporting the "bad" actions which led to the current state, and perhaps indirectly supporting more bad actions in the future. Conversely, by not rendering assistance, people suffer, and perhaps some of those people had little choice in the precipitating events. It's a dilemma.

This is perhaps no more clear in the present world than the situation in Gaza currently. The people there have grown up in a culture of hate, and over a decade ago, chose to elect a literal terrorist group as their leadership. Since then, they have been engaged in acts of terror and would-be genocide, at the expense of the rest of the welfare of the population. Humanitarian supplies were stolen and diverted to the terrorist groups, water infrastructure was dismantled to make parts for rockets to murder more people, atrocities were committed, etc., leading up to a justified military push to cripple the terrorist group, which left thousands dead.

Now, the people there are starving (due to no industry other than hate), their water infrastructure is crumbling (due to scavenging for rocket parts), many people are displaced (due to push back against heinous acts of terrorism), etc. The world has a choice to try to act to help them or not. Helping them through the normal channels (eg: the UN) is known to indirectly funnel money to Hamas (the terrorist group), because they control the territory there, and steal supplies. Helping them construct infrastructure would just supply more material for rockets (as last time). Ultimately, and brutally honestly, even helping them survive at all almost certainly contributes to a greater evil in the future, as all survivors are bred in a systemic and societal culture of hate, and will almost certainly be terrorists in the future. There's a compelling argument that the least bad thing to do, on the whole, is nothing, and allow everyone there to die. That seems terrible... but that's the Trolley Problem writ large, in the real world.

There are potential improvements which could be made, but they require some lateral thinking, and are certainly not guaranteed to succeed. For example, I applaud efforts to try to deliver aid through non-UN programs in a controlled manner, which could help (both in swaying people away from hate, and in preventing supplies from being diverted). Ultimately, the challenge is to try to separate out the people who can turn away from that ideology from those who cannot, and just try to save the former. But that's a very challenging problem, and the consequences of failure are both costly and deadly.

There are no right answers, just moral grey area and real-world consequences. The people of Gaza have tied themselves to the tracks, and are crying out for the world to help; the world needs to decide on short-term aid, or the overwhelmingly greater good.