Julian Borger – The Guardian Oct 27, 2023
The huge force that Israel has amassed along Gaza’s border over the past three weeks began to roll forward on Friday night, accompanied by a barrage of airstrikes and the pounding of artillery.
The Israel Defence Forces called it “an expansion” of ground operations, but a spokesperson for the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, went further, describing it as the beginning of the “turnaround” against Hamas.
“Hamas will feel our anger tonight,” the spokesperson, Mark Regev, told MSNBC.
It was not immediately clear whether Friday night’s incursions into Gaza marked the start of a major ground offensive, or its precursor, a ratcheting-up of presssure on Hamas. Whatever the tactical nature of the operation, the impact on Gaza’s population of 2.3 million will undoubtedly be to worsen the devastation wrought by the past three weeks of airstrikes.
Netanyahu has been cagey about the nature of the campaign in Gaza. He gave a speech on Wednesday night that sounded like a rallying cry for a ground assault, but it was carefully drafted, committing to nothing specific.
Whatever happens, Netanyahu – down in the polls and widely blamed for allowing the 7 October attack by Hamas – is making sure he does not take sole responsibility for whatever comes next.
Palestinians search for survivors under the rubble of a house destroyed by Israeli strikes in southern Gaza. Click to enlarge
“There is one group that supports a ground operation and one that is less enthusiastic,” said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat. “It’s not just the military versus Netanyahu. The division is within the war cabinet and within the military.”
There has been no shortage of reasons to delay the assault. Many in the security establishment, supported by the Biden administration, have wanted to give more time to efforts to extricate more than 200 hostages from Gaza.
The US also reportedly needed breathing space to bring in more munitions to defend its bases in the region in anticipation of a backlash from its enemies and their backers in Tehran. The IDF, meanwhile, is using the time to train reservists in urban warfare and top up their arsenal.
The plight of the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza does not seem to have been a factor in the pause. Only a thin dribble of aid has been allowed in so far, the small relief convoys have brought no fuel to power hospitals or the water system, and the bombardment of Gaza, north and south, has been maintained.
‘The Americans have their doubts’
The pause has given Israel time to reconsider its war aims and its ability to achieve them. The initial impetus to charge into Gaza was based on a desire for quick retribution and the generals’ quest for redemption in the eyes of the population after the appalling lapse of 7 October.
US military leaders were reportedly shocked at the vagueness of Israeli planning for the offensive, the blithe optimism about the urban warfare it faced, and the wishful thinking about Gaza’s long-term future post-Hamas.
“The Americans have their doubts,” Pinkas said. “And what they are questioning is the quality of Israeli decision-making. I think they are looking at gross incompetence on several levels here.”
The US was sufficiently concerned to send a Marine lieutenant general, James Glynn, and a team of urban warfare experts to sit alongside their counterparts.
Israeli soldiers conduct a mock assault during an urban warfare exercise at Zeelim army base. Click to enlarge
It is an unprecedented melding of the US and Israeli militaries, with profound implications for both. It becomes much harder for Israel to act independently of the US – a calculated decision by Netanyahu, his critics say, to give him someone else to blame when things go wrong.
The Biden administration believes being inside the room will give it more of a restraining influence, but that has not been the case in Gaza and makes it impossible for the US to sidestep shared responsibility for the civilian death toll.
Meanwhile, Israel’s war aims have come into sharper focus. The military leadership realises that “destroying” Hamas – as an ideology and an affiliation – is impossible. In his speech on Wednesday, Netanyahu defined the goal as “destroying its military and governing abilities”. Those are two very different, and very difficult, goals, each with substantial complications.
“These two objectives cannot be achieved without the ground offensive,” said Shlomo Brom, a former general and director of IDF strategic planning. “So that’s why I believe that the government already decided on the ground campaign.”
‘It is hard to imagine a more challenging context’
While Hamas has ruled the entire Gaza Strip, the IDF believes the bulk of its military infrastructure – its “centre of gravity”, was how one general put it – is in the north.
That is why the Palestinian civilian population in northern Gaza, more than 1 million people, were ordered south of the Wadi Gaza River, which bisects the strip. The IDF plans to hold ground in the north long enough to destroy Hamas’s heavy weaponry and the tunnel network it has spent 16 years building. The southern half will not be spared bombing, as the people there have discovered, and the IDF is expected to mount “search and destroy” attacks aimed at Hamas members, civilian and military.
Holding the north will be hard enough. “It will be slow, very hard, and will require a great deal of preparation if we want to minimise our own casualties,” Brom said.
The Americans have come with cautionary tales from battles such as Falluja and Mosul in Iraq, or Raqqa in Syria, of how hard it is to fight in densely populated areas. In Gaza the military problems will be multiplied by Hamas’s extensive network of tunnels.
“It is hard to imagine a more challenging context for operations than Gaza City,” said David Petraeus, the US general who led US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and went on to become CIA director.
IDF on the Israel Lebanon border. Click to enlarge“Urban operations are always very difficult, but those in this case likely will be fiendishly so – with snipers, suicide bombers, 300 miles of tunnels, and improvised explosive devices, against terrorists who do not wear uniforms, know the area intimately, will use civilians and hostages as human shields, and have been preparing for this fight for months, if not years,” Petraeus said.
A report earlier this month by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Washington thinktank, compared the coming fight to the battles for western Mosul and Raqqa in 2017.
An estimated 13,000 buildings were destroyed in west Mosul over 180 days of fighting and the capture of all of Mosul took 277 days, during which an estimated 9,000 civilians were killed. The authorities in Gaza say more than 7,000 Palestinians have died already, and the number is likely to increase rapidly as living conditions collapse and the ground offensive begins.
‘I hope there will be political change’
One option discussed between US and Israeli officers was a series of limited incursions targeting bits of Gaza at a time, on “search and destroy” missions. On the other end of the scale, some warn that the IDF will have to occupy the whole of the Gaza Strip for a time to do the job properly. Whatever option is chosen, Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has said Israel has no intention of occupying the territory permanently.
Once Israeli forces enter Gaza, however, it may be hard for them to leave and still claim to have succeeded. That will depend on the ultimate political aims of the war, which appear to be the haziest part of the whole plan.
“Let’s assume that we invade Gaza and succeed in destroying most of the military capabilities of Hamas,” Brom said. “One thing that’s clear is that Israel doesn’t want to return to being the government in Gaza indefinitely. So it will wish to transfer the government to someone else. And there is a lot of thinking going on about who this will be.”
An Israeli general spoke hopefully in private of regional powers stepping in with investment to rebuild Gaza, and somehow overseeing a transition to a non-Hamas regime, possibly the Palestinian Authority.
It is hard to imagine who would send in peacekeeping troops after an Israeli invasion, and the authority is weak and discredited in the eyes of much of the population. It is highly unlikely that it would want to return to power in Gaza on the back of Israeli tanks.
For the Arab world, it could conceivably be a moment of leverage to demand a return to a real two-state solution.
That would involve the dismantling of settlements and the complete reversal of Netanyahu’s political project of destroying the two-state solution as a reality and as an idea. It was in pursuit of that project that Netanyahu, boosting the standing of Hamas in Gaza, sliced up the West Bank with settlements and gave radical settlers free rein to prey on the Palestinian inhabitants.
It is this project that has led Israel to its current security crisis. Finding a way out of it would involve a complete change of direction.
“There will be political implications as a result of the disastrous failure to government policies. So I hope that there will be political change,” Brom said.
There is little wonder in Israel, then, that Netanyahu has had his foot firmly, albeit surreptitiously, on the brakes. The logic of Israeli success requires him to relinquish power, while failure means a bloody morass in Gaza and perhaps the West Bank too, with the very real possibility that whatever comes next will be worse than what came before.
Nimrod Novik, who served as a foreign policy adviser to Shimon Peres when he was prime minister, said: “History tells us that when one extreme version disappears, the successor tends to be a lot more extreme and violent than the one it replaces.”
Israel has won.. Gaza is all theirs.. So next is the Westbank.. How are they going to do that??? Hmmm.. Call Hamas!!!! Don’t worry about the world.. They are all numb and controlled by their own police..
Israeli General Brom: “Let’s assume that we invade Gaza and succeed in destroying most of the military capabilities of Hamas,” Brom said.” Let’s assume another possibility; the dissolution of the state of Israel via military defeat from all the enemies Israel has managed to create. When/if that occurs, the middle east will return to a one state solution – the land including the former Israel becomes once again Palestine. At that point, remaining Jews will definitely have to get along with Palestinians as they once did prior to 1948.
If the people of Gaza don’t flee to Egypt, and why should they because that would be exactly what their enemy wants them to do. Many, many will die in Gaza from starvation, disease and American bombs. Reputation of Israel will not recover and their only option might be to walk away from their illegal settlements and let the Palestinians have their state…
Option 2 is the destruction of Zionism and the end of Israel.
A long struggle to destroy Hamas will be a very bad look for Israel. Expect the West to go cold on Israel, even the US, that bastion of indispensable and exceptional bullshit will have most of its responsibilities taken from her.
Mongrels (Jews) vs. mongrels (Arabs)
So what side of anti-white scum (Jews/Muslims) do you support in this conflict?
Do White British people realise how bad colonies are which is why since 1867, Britain has taken on a policy of decolonisation, starting with Canada.
The bit which annoys white British people is this constant nonsense that white British people were seemingly the only ever colonisers of the world and even though literally no one alive today had anything to do with it, they’re somehow to blame.
Do Mongolians ever understand that their country massacred 10% of the world’s known population during the Khan dynasty and want to say sorry? Do jewish folk realise that their bankers Rothschilds Sassoons etcwere the only people with the money to buiold run and maintain slave ships?and made milions seling opium to China ? do they want top say sorry ? Do Japanese people ever understand that their ancestors murdered twelve million people in less than two decades throughout the 1930’s and 1940’s and want to say sorry?Do Turkish people ever understand that they committed genocide against the Armenians and want to say sorry?Do Peruvians ever understand that the Inca empire enslaved, murdered and sacrificed up to ten million people across South America and want to say sorry? Do the Irish ever understand that they had a thriving slave trade with Scandinavian countries, trading in captured folk from Britain during the Viking era and want to say sorry?Do North African countries ever realise that their white slave trade actually raided the coasts of Cornwall and took white British people as slaves fifty years before the first British slave ship even set sail, and want to say sorry? Does anyone else out there ever realise that it was Britain that abolished slavery and forced all legal trading in slaves around the globe to end or face war and want to say, thank you? Does anyone else out there ever realise it was the British who invented vaccines and then distributed them globally. Britain then set about trying to eradicate diseases such as malaria smallpox and cholera from much of South East Asia, and does anyone want to say thank you? Does anyone else out there ever realise that in 2018 the Japanese board of industry and trading declared that 55% of the worlds leading ideas, inventions and discoveries came from Britain and want to say thank you?No country is perfect, we’ve all messed up, but for God’s sake let’s focus on the worlds achievements and celebrate them instead of constantly banging on about the dark side of history regardless of what nation you come from. Would you see a young German person, born in the 21st century, and accuse them of gassing 6 milion jews in the holocaust? No of course not. So stop doing the same against Britain, its just getting annoying and shows your genuine lack of historical knowledge.
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The Nazis know Gaza is a trap, and this is one reason for a delayed ground invasion, but the other is that we don’t know what Hezbollah, Iran, Egypt and even Syria and Jordan will do, or if China and Russia can hold them back.
But, it doesn’t really matter, because every day which passes, is another nail in Israels coffin, and it is destroying any last vetiges in US power. Let’s face it, the US has been a diplomatic joke since 2009. We have national leaders refusing to take Biden’s phone calls and Blinkin kept waiting 14 hours in Saudi. We even have a US presidential meeting Xi, but Biden has no chance. Even the Brits are treated like lepers.
My opinion, Hamas attack was part real, part false flag, & Nutternazi needs a long war, to buy time, and hold the failing Nazi state together.
The fake news Guardian talks about splits, but fails to mention that Israel is undergoing a coup, and civil war could breakout the moment the war stops, and it doesn’t bode well when all these reservists are poorly trained and are fed up with their war mongering Nazi leaders. How many Jews will leave Israel? Well, the fake news won’t report it.
I am not interested in juda ArshkeNAZIS aims
because I know them + dont read this !
Dated, but he’s talking Nazis…
https://youtu.be/14si4mDQcVM?si=vKF6yAIHPVXyJWxg
I was told that US has 30,000 troops in Gaza. MacGregor says Delta forces were cut to pieces.
If so, the USA is guilty as hell for not just funding Israel, all the jets, and bombs but literally joining Satan in the genocide.
https://www.republicbroadcastingarchives.org/the-scorpio-international-holding-company-llc-with-scorpio-october-29-2023/
It seems to me, as this war drags on and the daily death toll of Palestinians goes up and away, now 8,000 to a much higher number then Arab states will be compelled to go to war against Israel.
The world can hardly stand by while Israel genocides the entire Gaza population.
Why the IDF has any operational airfields is beyond me. F-16s etc spend 99% of their life on the tarmac and are sitting ducks. Why try to shoot down a jet moving at high speed with flares when you can send in the drones and take out the entire airfield with one shot.
All aircraft ever made are lightweight frames with a thin skin filled with fuel.
Take out any aircraft in the hanger and the entire insides will be torched because the heat value of the fuel will send the temp so high everything inside the hanger will be burnt toast.
China should give Hezbollah a whole shitload of drones and start attacking IDF airbases.
Jews will be unable to genocide Gaza if the IDF airbases are destroyed.
@Phil Thibeggar
I was kind of with you all the way until you mentioned vaccines.
Small pox was not eradicated by vaccinations. Actually the vaccine industry is a hoax industry, even though I love the theory of how they work.
But I guess we all have limits on our research history
OPERATION CLEARANCE
Here they come israel expelling 35 milion refugees from across the middle east
to europe and the UK
Government is already moving our people out of council homes to make way for them
WE have to say NO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atjzQuvdgFg
natzis natzis natzis
give it a rest Daniel Cohen i mean Carl Jones
idiot
At the end of W W 2 Churchill pushed for 1000 bomber raids on the defeated Germany
as he told his staff
we do not want to house and feed millions of refugees
so they were bombed and burnt in their homes
this was blamed on Arthur Harris but it was churchill and rothschilds idea
the biblical clean sing by fire was used on any survivors
mainly women and children the UK prime minister Harold Macmillan said the holocaust story was maed up to cover up this horrendous crime
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2023/10/29/713620/SPANISH-MINISTER-OF-SOCIAL-RIGHTS-IONE-BELARRA-NETANYAHU-WAR-CRIMINAL-EUROPEANS-COMPLICIT-IN-GENOCIDE
BLOODY DOLLS
aangirfan
Israel-Palestine war:
Jewish Settlers threaten West Bank children with bloody dolls.
The dolls, left at a vandalised Bedouin school, and leaflets warning of a ‘major Nakba’ are part of a series of escalating attacks by Israeli settlers since the start of the war
Israeli settlers left dolls at the entrance of the Arab Al-Kaabna School after vandalising it
Residents in the Bedouin community are repeatedly attacked as settlers aim to displace residents and seize their lands.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-west-bank-attacks-leaflets-blood-dolls-nakba
27 October 2023
Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank have distributed threatening leaflets on cars and left bloodied dolls at schools, warning Palestinians to leave or be killed.
“By God, we will descend upon your heads with a great catastrophe soon. You have the last chance to escape to Jordan in an organised manner,” said one leaflet circulated on Friday in the West Bank city of Salfit.
“After that, we will destroy every enemy and forcefully expel you from our holy land … Load your bags immediately and leave. We are coming.” This land is now ours
The leaflet also warned of a new “major Nakba”, referencing the 1948 displacement and murder of 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland.
In the occupied Al-Ma’rajat area near Jericho, dolls covered in red paint, ostensibly to look like blood and scare young students, were left at the entrance of a school after settlers vandalised it.