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Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

Jan 19

🧵 The Middle East is in a transition phase. This requires Israel to re-think its security policy. For decades Iran was seen as the major threat along with its proxies. Hamas was dismissed as basically not a threat. Oct 7 should be a lesson that this minor the case and the status quo since 2005 need a re-think

Iran is weakened today by losing Syria. However the new Syrian government is closely linked to Qatar and Turkey, both of which back Hamas. In the next decade the Abbas government of the PA will leave office and it’s possible Netanyahu will also leave office within the next 20 years. New leaders will face new challenges. Netanyahu was the architect of the policy regarding Hamas in which it grew more powerful. He won’t change that status quo probably

The reason Israel has tended to focus on Iran and Hezbollah is because Iran was seen as an existential threat via the nuclear program whereas Hamas and Palestinian groups were written off as being able to “only” kill dozens of Israelis a year but these losses were apparently judged acceptable since it’s not “existential”. The question is maybe Hamas is an existential threat. It could take over the West Bank in the next decades and be backed by a NATO member and major non-NATO ally .

Read 9 tweets

Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

Jan 17

🧵 At some point there is going to need to be a looks back at the 15 months of the Gaza war and a kind of debriefing or analysis of it, what went right, what went wrong for Israel and the IDF . This will need to take a look at different aspects and also look at its phases etc, here are a few thoughts and discussion points

First of all a lot went right for the IDF in Gaza in terms of tactical learning curve, medical care for soldiers, use of new tech with the Ghost unit, close fire support, “closing circles”…but a lot of the IDF momentum doctrine seems to have not borne fruit exactly

It strikes me that there were missed opportunities. For instance, Israel chose not to seize the initiative on Oct 8 and begin to advance to keep Hamas off balance, rather it settled in for a slow campaign because it had no clear plans to respond. This may have saved lives initially, but not in the long run

Read 15 tweets

Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

Jan 15

There is some debate today about whether Hamas has recruited some 10,000 new fighters or not throughout the course of the war. This is based on some US assessments that have been published.

We need to understand something about Hamas "numbers" of fighters to begin with to discuss this. Prior to Oct. 6 Hamas was portrayed as deterred, so even if it had 20-30,000 fighters, these were portrayed as not a major threat, just men with AKs basically.

After Oct. 7 the new narrative was that Hamas had around 24 "battalions" in Gaza. The IDF claimed to have destroyed around 10 of these in the first three months of the war and by March 2024 reports claimed the IDF said it had “dismantled” 20 of the original 24 Hamas battalions. There was very little verifiable evidence for this, but it portrayed Hamas as basically decimated and defeated by March 2024. Oddly....Hamas then continued to fight on in tough battles for six months in Rafah and then for three months in Jabaliya from Oct 2023 to Jan. 2024.

Read 10 tweets

Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

Jan 1

I think this is likely an assessment that reflects the thinking that informs Israel's current policies on Gaza.

However it leads to several tough questions.
1. Once it's acknowledged that returning hostages is basically impossible, one has to wonder why it wasn't an absolute priority throughout the years, leading up to Oct. 7, to prevent hostage taking at all costs. On Oct. 6 there was complete complacency along the border; very few combat soldiers, numerous unarmed soldiers, primarily women, in observations rooms right on the border in posts that were difficult to defend; civilian communities with only a handful of rifles that were secured in an armory in each community, hard to reach quickly.

Hamas openly trained to attack and take hostages, and yet the assessment was that it was deterred, there wasn't even a skeptical voice saying "what if they are not, then this will be catastrophe."

Second, once the assessment is that it's basically impossible to return hostages from Gaza, one has to ask if there is an updated policy on hostage taking that prioritizes preventing it? A year and two months after Oct. 7 what would be done differently? Are there any procedures in place?

Third, once the assessment is that it's basically impossiblee to return hostages, when one has to ask why it wasn't decided early in 2024 to remove Hamas completely and attempt to rescue hostages by force, rather than just let meaningless talks drag on? Why wasn't more pressure put on Hamas and why wasn't it removed systematically from Gaza? Instead it got a kind of de facto ceasefire in parts of Gaza beginning in March 2024 and throughout the year it wasn't under pressure in many parts of Gaza.

Read 7 tweets

Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

Dec 30, 2024

There is one brutal enduring fact about the war in Gaza.

Hamas sees the entire war as a success and if it could go back to October 6 it would do it again.

More jarring is that most of the NGOs and UN orgs that work in Gaza would like the war to end and have Hamas continue to rule Gaza. They don’t see the Hamas attack as a disaster for Gaza. They see Israel’s response as bad, but they think Hamas is a good steward of Gaza. They have partnered with Hamas and profited immensely off its rule. They want to perpetuate Hamas rule and they feed off the disasters and suffering it brings.

Defeating Hamas is made more difficult by the stakeholders in Gaza who prefer Hamas. This is not just the NGOs and UN, but also Ankara and Doha and other countries. Hamas has massive backing globally. And all those backers see October 7 as a success. None of them saw October 7 as a breaking point. There is not ONE example of an NGO or country that formerly engaged with Hamas saying “this is a red line, we now recognize this organization can’t run Gaza in the future.”

Read 7 tweets

Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

Dec 30, 2024

As there are remembrances of former President Jimmy Carter, with differing views on his legacy; I'd like to draw attention to his 2009 trip to the Middle East which symbolizes his approach. He met with Assad, and reported only on Assad's complaints about the US but didn't mention anything about the Assad regime abuses.

Now let's compare that with his meetings with the Palestinian Authority where he pressed them on police policies and abuses. He mentioned prisoners who were detained for political reasons. So in Syria he couldn't mention political prisoners or police abuses, but he could complain to the Palestinian Authority, a much smaller and weaker polity about abuses?

He went to Israel and he writes about being "grilled" by Knesset members and he writes about human rights. But he never mentions human rights in Syria.

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