Lonny's War Update- October 217, 2023 - May 10, 2024

 

Day 217  of 132 of our hostages in Hamas captivity- **There is nothing more important than getting them home! NOTHING!**

“I’ve never met them,

But I miss them. 

I’ve never met them,

but I think of them every second. 

I’ve never met them,

but they are my family. 

BRING THEM HOME NOW!!!”

There is no victory until all of the hostages are home!

‎אין נצחון עד שכל החטופים בבית

Red Alerts - Missile, Rocket, Drone (UAV - unmanned aerial vehicles), and Terror Attacks

*9:00am-south - rockets kibbutzim Holit and Sufa, Gaza border communities 

*9:50- south- rockets Kerem Shalom 

*10:00-south - rockets Kerem Shalom

IDF Spokesman: Following the alert that was activated earlier today in Kerem Shalom, one launch was detected that crossed from the Rafah area to the area surrounding Gaza and was successfully intercepted by the air defense fighters. A short time later, another alert was activated in the Kerem Shalom area, during which the air defense fighters successfully intercepted a launch Another who crossed from the Rafah area.

*2:15pm - north - Three anti-tank missiles were fired at Kibbutz Misgav in the Upper Galilee next to the Lebanon border a short while ago, according to Hebrew media reports.

There are no immediate reports of casualties in the incident, though one of the missiles hit a building, causing some damage.

*2:30pm- north- hostile aircraft intrustion, Tel Hai, Kiryat Shemona, Misgav Am, Golan Heights, Upper Galilee

Hostage Updates 

• My brother’s FB post: The gaps between Israel and Hamas seem irreparable. Hamas will not agree to a deal until the war ends. Israel will not agree to a deal that involves ending the war. Because Netanyahu refuses to reach any political end to the war, ending the war leaves Hamas dominating Gaza. So Netanyahu's choice is no agreement, no return of Israeli hostages, occupying Gaza, and an endless war. So is this what we really want (and I ask Israelis)?

• The reason for the explosion in the negotiations - Hamas' demand for a 12-week ceasefire. Hamas demanded that Israel agree in the first stage to a 12-week ceasefire, instead of six weeks that it initially demanded - so it was reported today (Friday) in the US. According to the report, Israel objected to the demand of the terror organization - and made it clear that agreement would be an announcement of a cessation of hostilities.  According to three sources who spoke with CNN, Israel expressed willingness for a ceasefire of only six weeks in the first stage of the deal, but they said extending it to 12 weeks (about 3 months) is a "clear reversal." They said a long ceasefire would make it difficult to resume the war and would thus "effectively end the war." An American source quoted by Al-Jazeera claimed yesterday that it was decided to temporarily halt the talks in Cairo due to the current situation in Rafah. Hamas' delegation traveled to Doha while the delegations of Israel, Qatar and Egypt remained. The CIA director is on his way to the US as planned.    https://www.mako.co.il/news-military/2024_q2/Article-3e673353cf06f81027.htm

Gaza Fighting 

• The IDF provided an update on the continued heavy fighting in eastern Rafah and Zeitoun in the center of the Gaza Strip, where the army launched a broad operation this week. Combat soldiers from the Giv'ati Brigade located several underground tunnel shafts in the eastern Rafah area, and in parallel there was combat on the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, where combat soldiers from the 401st Brigade eliminated several terrorist cells in face-to-face battles and airstrikes.  Aircraft led by the Air Force and the 215th Fire Brigade struck several areas in Rafah from which rockets and mortars were recently fired towards Israeli territory and the Kerem Shalom crossing.   Meanwhile, soldiers from the Nahal Brigade and the 2nd Brigade are also operating in the Zeitoun neighborhood in southern Gaza. Over the past day, aircraft and fighter jets from the Air Force struck and destroyed about 40 terrorist targets across the Strip. Among the targeted sites were military buildings, observation posts, terrorist cells and additional military infrastructure.

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims that there are four Hamas battalions in Rafah, which constitutes the last stronghold of the terror organization in the Gaza Strip - which needs to be dealt with. Well, the last sentence is inaccurate, to say the least. Three knowledgeable and involved Israeli sources confirmed to me that there are no longer four Hamas battalions in Rafah. A large part of the fighting force left the city and its surroundings; it moved to Khan Younis, and perhaps also to the central camps. What remains are approximately two battalions in the west, apparently in the Tel Sultan area. Some might say - what's the importance, two battalions or four? The answer is that Hamas' move teaches about the conduct of the entire war. The organization has not tried so far to wage broad and massive battles with the IDF. It understands that it has no chance against an IDF brigade. Sinwar's bet was and remains simple: Hamas will survive longer underground than the IDF can remain above it. The reader will decide to what extent this bet has proven accurate.  Just yesterday we learned of a new IDF operation in the Zeitoun neighborhood. The IDF allegedly conquered this area months ago. But what? The IDF did not stay. No occupation regime was established in the Strip. There was no house-to-house transfer, and even if there was - Hamas' underground city still serves as a central shelter for terrorists. On the other hand, Netanyahu, despite pleas - I have no other word, apart from pleas - refused in any way to bring in another force into the Strip. Not Majed Faraj's Fatah people, according to a plan prepared by the Defense Minister and the Shin Bet. Certainly not the Palestinian Authority.  A senior security official told me: "The residents of Gaza, for the most part, hate Hamas. And yet they prefer it. It's either Hamas or chaos. There are people in Israel who say - we prefer there to be a Somalia in Gaza for a few years. The Gazans, if faced with the option of a Hamas regime or Somalia, will always choose the option of stability and order. Even if they hate Sinwar." —-Netanyahu is the one person who bears most of the responsibility for October 7, and because he has refused repeatedly to listen to all of the security forces, the United States, the European Allies and other the Arab allies, he will also bear responsibility for enabling Hamas to continue to control Gaza. His refusals to allow a Palestinian body such as a reformed Palestinian Authority or Majed Fatah and Fatah or Mohammed Dahlan come in to Gaza as the alternative to Hamas, has, in reality just given the green light to Hamas to retake control. Most Gazans hate Hamas and have hated them for a long time but Hamas is a totalitarian government that literally punishes anyone who attempts to stand up to them. Both my brother and I know of many Gazans who promoted peace and/or talking with Israelis who were arrested and tortured by Hamas, some even being killed by them. They were so happy by the prospect of Israel getting rid of them but that happiness has somewhat dissipated by what is happening in the ground in all of the places that the IDF has left. As soon as the soldiers leave, Hamas operatives appear in the streets openly as internal ‘security’ forces. Netanyahu’s plan for ‘total victory’ is a farce especially when he won’t allow any strategic plan be developed for the future of Gaza. 

• Seven months after it carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Hamas is still very much alive and kicking.  It has reportedly reasserted significant civil control in Gaza cities troops swept through and then left. In some areas, Hamas fighters have resumed their rocket fire, including a recent attack on Sderot and the deadly strike on Israel Defense Forces infantrymen near Kerem Shalom on Sunday.  Not only is Hamas surviving, it looks increasingly plucky about its chances to guarantee its return to power.  The recent Kerem Shalom rocket strike that killed four troops was evidence of Hamas’s mood, argued Meir Ben-Shabbat, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former national security adviser.

  “It reflects the self-confidence of Hamas commanders who didn’t hesitate to initiate such an attack, from a humanitarian zone, during critical negotiations for the organization despite the risk of damaging a vital supply artery for the population,” said Ben-Shabbat, adding that the strike was intended to stress to Gazans that its attempts to force Israel into a ceasefire “come from a position of strength and not from surrender or fatigue.”  As the weeks go by, the world has shown a diminishing appetite for Israel’s defeat of Hamas. Almost no one talks about the dismantling of Hamas’s military capabilities anymore; the priority among Israel’s closest allies is to arrange a ceasefire and to get the hostages out.  But rather than move with lightning speed to finish the job, Israel’s military appears to have adopted a plodding pace that only allows plenty of time for resistance to the war’s continuation to build up, both abroad and domestically. And that resistance — most notably United States President Joe Biden’s warning that Israel won’t get offensive weapons if it goes into Rafah — will likely slow the campaign even further.

  Not all of the blame can be laid at the feet of Israel’s political leadership. The IDF too, in decisions made years ago and after October 7, has played a central role in crafting a campaign that has been adrift for months.  Not everyone agrees that there is something fundamentally wrong with the pace of the war. Ben-Shabbat explained that a long fight is unavoidable given the widespread public support Hamas enjoys, and its deep roots among the population.  “This is a complex challenge that demands determination and time, and includes significant challenges, like those around providing humanitarian aid to the population,” he explained, “as well as the need to avoid striking the hostages and to take advantage of opportunities to free them.”

  Even in light of those challenges, the IDF seems more sluggish than it has in past conflicts, even those that were the most challenging. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the IDF managed to stem two surprise invasions, to counterattack within the first week, and have both Egypt and Syria on their heels within 19 days. Low-intensity fighting did continue for months, but only after the IDF very quickly knocked two large, well-armed foes out simultaneously.   Today, managing a two-front war seems an unfathomably tall order for Israel’s military. “It cannot conduct a serious offensive against Hezbollah while it is fighting Hamas,” lamented Ido Hecht, a defense analyst at the Begin-Sadat Center at Bar-Ilan University. But even focusing on just a single foe — Hamas in Gaza — the IDF has taken its time.

  It took three weeks to even begin the ground offensive in Gaza after October 7, wasting valuable time with reservists mobilized and international goodwill still strong. When it did finally move in, it launched a torpid staged advance into Gaza designed to last several months as it moved north to south, rather than aggressively taking Rafah and the strategic Egypt-Gaza border area in the first phase along with Gaza City.  Despite impressive tactical achievements wherever IDF troops have operated, the military effort to crush Hamas as a coherent fighting force is unfinished, and it remains unclear that it ever will be completed — not to mention the years of clean-up operations afterward. Most brigades have long been pulled from Gaza.

  Despite pulling up short of Rafah, Netanyahu has continually maintained that an IDF conquest of the southern Gaza city is vital to Israel’s war aims. Back in February, Netanyahu said that Israel had only one month left to complete its upcoming operation in Rafah, before Ramadan. A quiet Ramadan came and went, and Rafah remained in Hamas hands. As the Muslim holy month ended, Netanyahu pledged again to go into Rafah and destroy the four battalions there. “This will happen. There is a date,” Netanyahu said in a video statement. It was one of four times since February he announced that he had authorized IDF operational plans for Rafah. At long last, IDF tanks moved into the Rafah area Monday night, taking the border crossing with Egypt with ease. But that incursion was still not the long-promised showdown with the bulk of Hamas’s remaining units. It was a “limited operation,” an Israeli official told The Times of Israel, implemented to pressure Hamas to accept a hostage deal.

  On Tuesday, as Israeli troops operated around the Rafah Border Crossing, the Biden administration briefed a number of reporters that it had recently held up a large shipment of bombs that it feared Israel might use in Rafah, a clear warning to Israel not to expand the invasion. Then came Biden’s explicit warning on CNN that there would be consequences if Israel moves to complete the destruction of Hamas forces in Rafah.  The roots of the unsatisfactory military performance at the operation and strategic levels — which have “dug Israel into a very deep hole in the ground, which will take a long time to climb out of,” according to Hecht — go back well before October 7.

  “The IDF could have come closer to the objective in seven months if it had not made a series of professional mistakes over the past 25 years that reduced its capability to conduct this campaign better,” Hecht argued. During Israel’s early decades, the IDF’s operational concept rested on aggressive movement by its ground forces into enemy territory, quickly shifting the fight away from population centers to deliver decisive — and rapid — defeats to adversary forces.  That approach was stunningly effective during the era of Israel’s victories over conventional armies. Arab divisions were unequivocally devastated on the battlefield within days or weeks, and captured territory was the basis for peace talks with the leaders of the hostile coalition, which saw members drop out with each defeat at the hands of Israeli ground forces.

  The quick ground maneuver concept began to crumble after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Though that conflict still ended with Israel’s ground forces notching a classic battlefield victory, the unexpected losses of IDF tanks at the hands of Egyptian and Syrian missiles, and an unprecedented lack of faith in leaders sending young men into battle, spurred Israelis to reconsider whether risking their lives in pitched battles was as necessary as they had been told.

  The debate over the proper application of military force in Israel took place at the same time that US military thinkers were relying on their technological advantage to deal with the problem of the Soviet numerical advantage in Europe. Instead of meeting Russian armor head-on, they envisioned using precision missiles and improved intelligence capacity as the keys to devastating enemy forces. The stunning US victory over the large Iraqi army in 1991 underscored to Israel the potential of fighting smarter while risking fewer ground forces.  Israel’s military chiefs closed armored and artillery units, the source of the mobility and firepower needed in a high-intensity scrum for territory. The infantry was also stripped down, with many of its medium and heavy capabilities — grenades, mortars, shoulder-fired missiles —  retired or mothballed.

  Netanyahu, who led the country during this shift away from ground forces, was firmly in the camp that saw ground maneuver as a vulnerability, not an asset. So after October 7, as Israeli planners scrambled to put together a campaign plan for conquering Gaza –something that had not existed for almost a decade — they found that they didn’t have sufficient forces. Even if the planners had concluded that taking Rafah at the same time as Gaza City was the way to go, years of neglecting the pieces needed for such a maneuver meant the army could not seriously consider such an undertaking.

  “Today, the IDF is incapable of a simultaneous offensive in a number of sectors in Gaza,” Hecht explained. They also recognized that the reservists, insufficiently trained, needed several weeks to regain the ability to fight in a full-scale ground offensive. Hence the weeks of idling outside of Gaza. “The delay in commencing ground operations, a sequenced campaign, a slow gradual offensive to enable the troops to acclimate to the new combat reality  — high-intensity regular warfare — all lengthened the duration of operations,” Hecht pointed out. “After four months, Israel had to begin releasing reserves to return them to the economy.” Ground forces learned lessons and improved quickly, but the majority of reserves were released just as they were overcoming the effects of years of neglect. “During those four months, the achievements were remarkable,” he continued, “but less than could have been achieved if the IDF had been fully capable and big enough to commence the offensive immediately.”

  There have been other signs of unsatisfactory military leadership at the highest levels. IDF leaders supported a major operation against Hezbollah in the wake of the October 7 attacks, which would have left Israel dangerously overstretched. Reservists participating in planning sessions in “the Pit,” the IDF’s underground operations center in the Kirya, have come out frustrated with what they call “a war without shins” – the Hebrew letter that connotes when an operation is set to start, comparable to H-Hour in the US military.  The campaign against Hamas, they told The Times of Israel, is devoid of firm timetables.

  A new type of war

  The Swords of Iron war is longer than previous Israeli conflicts because it has a fundamentally different political goal than Israel’s many previous campaigns, according to military theorist Eran Ortal. “For the first time, Israel is committed not only to the defeat of the enemy’s forces but also to the annihilation of its regime,” writes Ortal. That type of campaign rests on replacing the enemy regime, in this case, Hamas. But Israel’s government — in an attempt to keep the right flank of the coalition onboard — refused to begin installing a new regime while Hamas was underground. Doing so might have enhanced the pressure on Hamas, which would see an alternative to its rule taking hold at the same time that its military capabilities were being dismantled. Instead, Hamas has remained without any serious challenger to its rule, and there is little reason for Gazans to do anything to resist the group as it returns to the areas that the IDF has left — which today is almost all of Gaza’s population centers.

  “Hamas is running the Strip now in the absence of another organization to run it,” an IDF official told Kan News, “and that is the heart of the problem.” While the campaign has been stuck in place for months, Israel continues to pay the price of being at war while not really fighting one anymore, suffering international isolation and a low boil of hostilities on its northern border. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah might like to stop the exchange of fire across the Lebanon-Israel border, but he won’t do so until there is some sort of ceasefire in Gaza. So, while some Gazans have begun returning to their homes, residents of Israel’s north are still refugees because the war in Gaza technically stretches on. “Cornered now into a long total war against the Hamas regime, Israel can hardly sustain the effort needed and has no good solutions for the simultaneous threat from Lebanon,” Ortal argued.

  And the longer the war in Gaza drags on, the longer Israel’s focus is on Hamas, and not on the even more serious threats of Hezbollah and Iran. “What I have not heard from the IDF or the political echelon is a strategy to deal with Iran itself,” pointed out Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. The White House hasn’t helped shorten the campaign either, even though it desperately wants it to end.

  Trailing GOP challenger Donald Trump in polls, Biden — who has drawn the ire of progressives and Muslim-Americans for his support of Israel — wants to move the public debate in the US beyond the war in Gaza by putting the conflict in the rear-view mirror. But his administration has done whatever it can to block, or at least significantly delay, an Israeli operation into Rafah that would allow Israel to declare the war itself over, insisting on detailed humanitarian plans and repeatedly expressing opposition to such a move.  Instead, it is trying to effectively bring the war to an end through a ceasefire-for-hostages deal between Israel and Hamas. But, as the administration ramps up public pressure on Israel and calls for Israel to stay out of Rafah, officials consistently incentivize Hamas to hold out for a better deal. The longer Hamas waits, the more Israel’s relationships with allies fray.

  Après moi, le déluge

  An ark must be built before the flood. But when Hamas fighters poured across the border on October 7 in what it called Operation Al Aqsa Flood, the IDF wasn’t constructed for the war it had no choice but to fight.

  Still, Israel has had enough time to recover and recreate itself for the complex campaign against Hamas. Yet its political and military leaders are taking their time, and avoiding the difficult decisions that people in their positions are expected to make.

  Some will try to shift the blame to the Biden Administration. The White House has undoubtedly undermined the military threat to Hamas and done whatever it can to force a Rafah operation to be pushed off. But it is not Biden’s fault that the military campaign was designed to move slowly, and he would like nothing more than for Netanyahu to start replacing Hamas with a credible alternative on the ground.

  Meanwhile, Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 atrocities, will for the foreseeable future continue to control the fate of Israeli hostages, residents of the south and 60,000 evacuated residents of Israel’s north, as Israel’s leaders and media wait anxiously for his decisions. He does not appear to be in any rush. ------ The IDF was fundamentally unprepared for this war and because it is totally urban warfare, none of the 'manuals' for fighting the wars of the past fit this type of war. Both the military and the political frameworks of Israel thought that we would never be entering Gaza with foot troops again and therefore, no one was trained for it. Netanyahu was fully focused on Iran being the only real bully in the neighborhood and all of those under him basically became his 'yes men'.  When I worked in Intel, I was so impressed with the senior vice president of the corporation because of how he chose the people who directly reported to him. He deliberately avoided any yes people. He surrounded himself with people who saw things differently than he did so he could get a well rounded picture and then make his decisions. Netanyahu, like other authoritarian style politicians and leaders only want yes people around them, people who take what he says as gospel and then do his bidding in both spreading the word and doing what is necessary to make his words their actions. It is this type of leadership that produces blindness to everything else which is exactly what happened here and led up to October 7. Unfortunately, it is the same style of leadership that has brought us to this point in the war as well. We are totally lacking in strategic planning and cohesive decision making. The quagmire of Gaza is of  Netanyahu's making because keeping his dysfunctional government going is the most important thing to him, no matter what the cost and the costs are very high. This article successfully point out many of the problems caused by this constant lack of decision making and strategic planning. And it is this that is the cause of everything else that we are seeing today: the failure of the hostage negotiations, the chaos of Gaza which carries with it the renewed strength of Hamas in governing there, the deterioration of relations with the US and almost every one of our allies, the dangers to the peace treaty and agreements with Egypt, the worsening of the Israeli economy together with a finance minister who is ill equipped to deal with any economic issues that don't concern West Bank settlements, a worsening internal security situation due to a criminal being the minister of Police, and an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness that pervades Israeli society due to the lack of everything on the part of the government. I am not saying that new elections and a new government will be a panacea to all of these problems, but it will definitely be a step in the right direction.  Link
  
  

• United Nations aid agencies warn that dwindling food and fuel stocks could force aid operations to grind to a halt within days in Gaza as vital crossings remain shut, forcing hospitals to close down and leading to more malnutrition. 
  Israel’s Kerem Shalom Crossing with Gaza was shuttered for a few days this week after it was shuttered days earlier following a deadly Hamas rocket attack, while the Rafah Border Crossing on the Egypt border has been closed since the IDF captured the Palestinian side of the terminal on Tuesday.
  “For five days, no fuel and virtually no humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip, and we are scraping the bottom of the barrel,” says the UNICEF Senior Emergency Coordinator in the Gaza Strip, Hamish Young.
  “This is already a huge issue for the population and for all humanitarian actors but in a matter of days, if not corrected, the lack of fuel could grind humanitarian operations to a halt,” he tells a virtual briefing. 
  More than 100,000 people have fled Rafah in the last five days, he adds.  link
  
  

  
  Tents housing internally displaced Palestinians stand on the beach in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on May 10, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
  
  

Northern Israel - Lebanon/Hizbollah

• Israeli fighter jets struck buildings and other infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah in the southern Lebanon towns of Kafr Kila, Alma ash-Shab, and Yaroun a short while ago, the military says. The strikes come following repeated rocket and drone attacks on northern Israel today.  Video of the bombing here https://x.com/manniefabian/status/1788682475260018927?s=46&t=daojaboZusplUT3Vmzo4Ag

  
  

• "Hezbollah is prepared and ready for war at any time, in the immediate term, and is not afraid of it" - this is the assessment of Tal Beeri, head of the research department at the Alma Center for Security Challenges in the North. At a conference held yesterday (Thursday) at Kibbutz Lohamei HaGhettaot, attended by military attaches from around the world, embassy representatives and foreign journalists alongside senior active and reserve military personnel, researchers from the research center presented their assessments regarding the challenges of war on the northern front and in Iran. The picture presented by Beeri, during a discussion in a session that examined the intentions and capabilities of the Shiite terrorist organization, left no one indifferent among the conference participants. "Until now, the IDF has not struck Hezbollah's significant systems," Beeri noted. "Even if the government tries to reach a diplomatic agreement, it will only postpone the war that will erupt when Hezbollah wants it and under its conditions – in my estimation, no later than within two years, by the end of 2026." In his review, Beeri presented the security challenges posed by Hezbollah and the picture of its forces and arsenal of weapons that it continues to develop even these days. "The main problem is Hezbollah's precision project," he claimed. He explained that the Iranian-backed terrorist organization not only possesses dedicated precision missiles like the "Fatah-110," which have a range of 330 km and a strike radius of up to 10 meters, but is also upgrading its old missile array, such as those produced in Iran in the 1980s and called "wreckers," at the CERS center in Syria. At the conversion plant, precision guidance systems are installed on them, which can also strike targets at a distance of up to 125 km.  The pace of missile conversion led the Alma Center researchers to raise their estimate of the precision munitions held by Hezbollah. "Instead of hundreds of precision rockets, missiles and precision ammunition, Hezbollah today holds thousands," Beeri warns. This is out of an arsenal of about 250,000 munitions. These missiles will often be launched from underground and camouflaged firing pits. He also noted that the possibility cannot be ruled out that Hezbollah will also use chemical weapons against maneuvering military forces.

  In light of reports in Israel about the redeployment of Hezbollah's elite Radwan force, which had been stationed on the northern border until October 7, and the alleged Israeli strike that killed about 9 senior commanders in the special force, Beeri said: "We estimate that if Radwan wants to, it can still operationally implement an invasion plan into the north, which will be more limited with a force of 100 to 200 operatives and a smaller area than what it had prepared for before the Hamas attack." This is because it has lost the "element of surprise" in the infiltration and attempted conquest of communities with the participation of thousands of skilled fighters – a plan it had conceived more than a decade ago and which Hamas had adopted.

  At Alma, they estimate that the capabilities of the Radwan force were not impacted by the IDF's elimination efforts either, since it operates with continuous command and control, and more significant actions are required to damage its capabilities. "Radwan still constitutes a clear and immediate challenge and danger in the context of any invasion into Israeli territory," Beeri said. **"An agreement will only buy time"** 

  Against the backdrop of the ongoing war in the south and the government's and IDF's policy of conducting a limited and secondary campaign in the north, under titles like "defensive battle" and "lethal defense," Beeri warns that Hezbollah is engaged in intensive learning and drawing lessons from the IDF's combat against terror tunnels in the Gaza Strip, and is implementing them in the "land of tunnels" that we are already familiar with from the Second Lebanon War in 2006. The tunnels were dug with Iranian and North Korean funding and guidance. "Hezbollah in Lebanon has tunnels that cross areas into southern Lebanon and beyond the Litani, and they are intended for the movement of forces, vehicles and more," he noted. "Among other things, it holds tactical and offensive tunnels inside the villages adjacent to the border, tunnels of hell whose purpose is to explode underneath villages and forces, and tunnels for firing missiles toward Israel." While the United States and France are exerting heavy pressure on Israel not to launch a military campaign against Hezbollah, and to force the government to reach an agreement to remove the terror operatives and its means from the border, researchers at the Galilee institute estimate that Hezbollah will seek to intensify fire in the shadow of efforts to achieve calm – in order to achieve a "picture of victory." "No political or diplomatic agreement will prevent Hezbollah from continuing to operate," Beeri warned. "Any such agreement means buying time, with the only side that will fulfill its part of the agreement being the Israeli side, while Hezbollah waits for the opportune time for it to open a full confrontation."

  In further discussion of the challenges of war against Hezbollah, former Northern Command chief Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon HaCohen presented the terrorist organization's strategy. "Why did Iran and Hezbollah declare war on Israel?" HaCohen wondered. He explained that "it is impossible to answer the question without addressing the religious aspect. Hezbollah is motivated by jihad in which God is part of the decision-making process. The believer can turn the impossible into the possible and into practice (al-Muqawama)." According to him, the meaning of the belief in Islamic redemption in the eyes of Hezbollah and Iran's leader Khamenei is that he will one day merit praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and "everything else is an excuse to fight until Israel is destroyed."  
  

  The conference was concluded by Lt. Col. (res.) Sarit Zehavi, a former senior intelligence officer, the president and founder of the Alma Center and a member of the Devorah Forum. "Ultimately, we will need to reach a political settlement in Lebanon. It will be coordinated – whether we want it or not – with Hezbollah," Zehavi said in opening her remarks. "The question is: What will it look like? To answer this question, we need to look at a previous settlement – UN Security Council Resolution 1701. There is no enforcement authority, no enforcement mandate, and nice wording about disarmament, but 17 years have passed and it has not progressed, and the resolution has never been implemented."

  While international actors are exerting pressure for a return to the settlement reached in 2006, Zehavi said it is unacceptable to rely again on a failed settlement. "The settlement must be based on Resolution 1559, which calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all militias. This resolution was adopted in 2004 and is not related to Israel at all." She shared with the conference participants her greatest nightmare shared by many: "My nightmare as a resident of the north is a ceasefire that takes us back to October 6. The Americans have a ticking clock for the end of the war – their elections. We have a ticking clock for the end of the war – the start of the next school year. What is the Iranian clock? No one knows."

  Zehavi believes that war is the most optimistic possibility for ending Hezbollah's attack on the evacuated northern communities and creating the security opportunity to return their residents home. On the other hand, a political agreement is the pessimistic and dangerous scenario in her view. "In any case, we must not leave the initiative for the next massacre in Hezbollah's hands, so that it decides when and what the campaign it is planning for the conquest of the Galilee will look like," she said. "We need to deny them the ability to carry it out and at the same time be prepared to defend the communities in case of an attempted ground invasion. It is important that we remember – the law for Metula is the same as for Jerusalem."   link

  
  

West Bank

Politics

• My brother’s FB post:   PALESTINIANS SEEK UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY BACKING FOR FULL MEMBERSHIP. The United Nations General Assembly could vote on Friday on a draft resolution that would recognise the Palestinians as qualified to become a full UN member and recommend that the UN Security Council "reconsider the matter favorably." It would effectively act as a global survey of how much support the Palestinians have for their bid, which was vetoed in the UN Security Council last month by the United States. Reuters. 
  
  
•  Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton tears into the pro-Palestinian protest movement that has swept across American colleges, calling them ignorant and lamenting that they’re being misinformed by propaganda on social media and in the classroom.
  “I have had many conversations with a lot of young people over the last many months. They don’t know very much at all about the history of the Middle East or frankly about history in many areas of the world, including in our own country,” Clinton tells MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
  “With respect to the Middle East, they don’t know that under the bringing together of the Israelis and the Palestinians by my husband — then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, the then-head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat — an offer was made to the Palestinians for a state on 96% of the existing territory occupied by the Palestinians with 4% of Israel to be given to reach 100% of the amount of territory that was hoped for.”
  “This offer was made and if Yasser Arafat had accepted it there would have been a Palestinian state now for about 24 years. It’s one of the great tragedies of history that he was unable to say, ‘yes,'” Clinton laments.
  “My husband has a book coming out later this year in which he talks about how Arafat kept saying that he intended to agree, he wanted to agree, but he was pretty sure he’d be killed because Sadat was killed by extremists when he made peace with Israel. Our dear, dear friend, Yitzhak Rabin was killed by a radical Israeli when he was pursuing the two-state solution.”
  “This is a very important piece of history to understand if you’re going to take any kind of position regarding what’s going on right now,” the former US secretary of state says.
  Turning to how these far-left college students have been misinformed, Clinton says they are being fed “propaganda” instead of receiving an education.
  “Anybody who is teaching in a university or anyone who is putting content on social media should be held responsible for what they include and what they exclude. So much of what we’re seeing, particularly on TikTok, about what’s going on in the Middle East is willfully false, but it’s also incredibly slanted, pro-Hamas, anti-Israel.”
  “It is not any place where anyone should go to get information about complex matters like what is going on there… People are on social media oftentimes to press an ideological, religious, financial or partisan political agenda. You don’t get the facts, you don’t get any kind of context.”
  “We have to do a better job… with young people in trying to help them understand how to filter and interpret the information they’re getting.”
  “We also need to do a better job in our classrooms, particularly at the college or university level, not to fall into easy absolutes — you’re either for or against. Life is too complicated, history certainly is.”  link

• Netanyahu takes every opportunity to dodge the question of his personal responsibility for October 7 and segues the conversation to the failures of the intelligence services and the military, as he has been doing since the beginning of the war

• Al Jazeera: The German Defense Minister says that Berlin may follow Washington's lead in sending weapons to Israel if it carries out a large-scale operation in Rafah
  
  
• The political-security cabinet convened yesterday to approve plans for the continued operation in Rafah. The discussion began at 11pm and ended around 2am. During the discussion, cabinet ministers criticized National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who for his part failed to understand what he did wrong when he wrote "Hamas ❤️ Biden" - and called on other ministers to join him.
  The discussion began with Ben Gvir claiming "we're both eating the rotten fish and being kicked out of the city", since Israel provided humanitarian aid on one hand - yet weapons shipments were still delayed. He proposed reducing humanitarian aid "as long as such aid is not reaching the hostages", and then claimed: "We need to speak to the Americans respectfully - but make clear that if there are sanctions on us then there will be less humanitarian aid."
  Bezalel Smotrich: To speak respectfully like your tweet?
  Ben Gvir: I actually wrote it very gently, relative to what most Israelis think about the unprecedented behavior towards us
  Gila Gamliel: He's even a romantic, he added a heart (The Prime Minister bursts out laughing)
  Ben Gvir: I expect all government ministers to join me. There is support for what I said not only from Trump who said very important things, but also from some Democrats.
  Gadi Eizenkot: It's advisable to take a deep breath and give a lot of respect to the President of the United States.
  Ben Gvir: It's advisable to convey a message that even in the United States there is a majority against Biden.
  
  

• CNN publishes an in-depth report on the conditions in Israeli detention facilities holding terror suspects detained during the ongoing war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

  Quoting two Israeli whistleblowers and a Palestinian doctor held in a facility in the Negev, the report details alleged abuse of detainees including physical restraints and beatings.

  “[The beatings] were not done to gather intelligence. They were done out of revenge,” says one of the whistleblowers quoted by CNN. “It was punishment for what [the Palestinians] did on October 7 and punishment for behavior in the camp.”

  Another of the Israeli sources shares photos he took at a detention facility at Sde Teiman, some 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the Gaza border, which show around a hundred blindfolded men in grey tracksuits in a floodlit area surrounded by a barbed wire fence.

  The Palestinian doctor quoted in the report says that guards at Sde Teiman regularly unleash dogs on sleeping detainees in what he calls “the nightly torture.”

  The report also includes a 3D video model of a field hospital in the facility, where the witness accounts say wounded Palestinian detainees are handcuffed to beds wearing diapers and fed through straws.

  The Israel Defense Forces denies the allegations in the CNN report, insisting that “Any allegation of misconduct by IDF soldiers is examined and dealt with accordingly.”

  Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which sparked the ongoing war in Gaza, saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 252 hostages, mostly civilians, many amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.

  Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched a wide-scale military operation in Gaza, during which thousands of terror suspects have been arrested.  ---- I wish that I could say that I don't believe this report, but unfortunately, I can't say that. I wholeheartedly believe based on the many instances of abuse that I have witnessed or heard about by very believable sources. When I served in the army and reserves, I was a military policeman and in the years of the first intifada (uprising of the young Palestinians in the West Bank against Israel), I served in Military Prisons for Palestinian prisoners of the intifada. In those prisons, I witnessed abuses of prisoners (and reported those abuses) and heard about other abuses by fellow Military Police soldiers serving with me. True, that was quite a long time ago, but I know of so many other cases that occurred before October 7 and I have no doubt that there are more and more since then. While I am not condoning the abuses, I can also understand the desire to punish those same barbarians who committed the atrocities of October 7.  Link