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NM.
Thoughts on the middle east conflicts.
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This was from back in March, when I was getting flak for not believing Hamas provided numbers. The UN just updated their figures on May 8 from data through April 30, and Hamas Ministry of Health is still their source.
7,797 children killed
Still more than anyone wants, but that was a 50% exaggeration. And Hamas doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hos...8*MTcxNTQzNjg5NS4yLjEuMTcxNTQzNzU5Ny4zNi4wLjA.
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Reports are that Hamas is popping up and skirmishing with IDF again in the north of Gaza - where they had supposedly been eradicated? After 7 months of war and running low on reservists, that must be annoying to Bibi.
A 50 percent exaggeration, and Hamas uses child soldiers so that confuses the numbers even further.
"Running low on reservists"? Every citizen of Israel is a reservist. I doubt that they're "running low" on anything. It's likely just a matter of budgeting or redefining troop rotations (as we did with our reservists during Gulf II).
The point is, they do not appear to be winning the war.
And it was entirely predictable.
That's because it can't be won. Except by making a carefully tailored definition of victory.
As I understand it, the Israeli definition of victory is complete and permanent elimination of Hamas. This does not seem to permit of compromise on their part.
The bit at the bottom......
Disclaimer: The UN has so far not been able to produce independent, comprehensive, and verified casualty figures; the current numbers have been provided by the Ministry of Health or the Government Media Office in Gaza and the Israeli authorities and await further verification. Other yet-to-be verified figures are also sourced.
AND... counting a child as a combatant and therefore removing them from the child count has so many moral connotations that I'm not going there.
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boatgeek
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Who knew that if you take territory and don't either keep troops there or set up some sort of government when the troops leave, insurgents will come back in and fill the gaps? Answer: every army that has occupied territory.
Truth.
I'm curious how many major strategic hits Israel is going to be willing to take to get some tactical results in Rafah.
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And Hamas' definition of victory, and stated goal, is the complete eradication of the Jewish race.
What compromise would you make with people whose stated intention, including their written constitution, includes the death of you, your children, and your nation?
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Hard to say. We don't really know what the Israeli objectives are. We know what media has provided and what others have inferred from reports or speculation by pundits. There is also the idea that somehow worldview matters to them in a "survival" situation. It doesn't.
The reality is we are all just peering over the fence from the outside. Some are not even doing that but having to look between the fence board cracks. What will happen (and has always happened in Israeli conflicts) is the Israelis will tell us when they are done. They will tell us they have met their objectives. Who are we to say otherwise. All we get to do is analyze the fight and comment based on what may or may not matter.
What we do know is at least 2 generations of Arabs in Gaza will now know the impacts of the war. It has been long enough time since the last real fight that the losses sustained by palestinians may have faded. Unfortunately, this is not the end. It is only a delay. This fight will happen again but maybe at a slightly less intensity the next time.
boatgeek
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The problem is that a significant fraction of the Israeli right wing already made a deal with Hamas. Sure, it was pre-10/7, but it's not like Hamas has changed its stripes recently. It was still well after Hamas had declared war on Israel, and lobbed missiles and physical attacks over the border. The deal was that Hamas got to receive cash and other support through the Israeli borders and in return Hamas would kneecap a two-state solution. And the worst part is that the deal has worked. Israeli public opinion is now solidly against a two-state solution. All it took was 1200 or so dead Israelis. Realpolitik at its finest.
I agree that we don't really know what Israel's strategic objectives are. And according to this piece, Netanyahu doesn't either, or at least he hasn't shared it with the head of the IDF or Shin Bet. Now granted, that's a media report, so it's filtered by whatever slant the Times of Israel has. But at least they're in country and appear at least to have been more on Netanyahu's side than, say, Haaretz.
However, I can't imagine that torching relationships with the US President is high on the list of objectives. Sure, Netanyahu has had lousy relationships with US presidents in the past, and sure, the administration may change in November*. But burning allies can't be a good plan, either. And having several thousand bombs held in the US is at least some level of setback. Adverse rulings from the ICC and/or ICJ don't help Israel's Good Guy image either.
It remains to be seen how badly the Good Guy image gets tarnished. I don't think that Israel will end up in the same category of Iran or Russia in the near future. They probably won't get economic sanctions unless things get a lot worse. But Israel could in theory lose a lot of the preferential treatment it's gotten over its lifetime, including receiving massive force multipliers like F-35s. And the US and UK have run a lot of interference for Israel at the UN. Losing that would be a major strategic loss.
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