Thread by @MouinRabbani

THREAD: On Monday Israel’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, stated that Hamas’s military force, the Martyr Izz-al-Din al-Qassam Brigades as well as the Jerusalem Battalions of Islamic Jihad (PIJ) were on the verge of collapse.

His views have been echoed by most other Israeli military and political leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Chief of the General Staff Herzl Halevi and Ronen Bar, Director of the domestic intelligence agency known as Shin Bet or Shabak.

These assessments were augmented by reports that Hamas and PIJ leaders are no longer able to command or communicate with their forces, and that the latter, feeling abandoned, are deserting and surrendering in growing numbers.

The battle for control over the northern Gaza Strip was effectively over.

Wednesday, Israel announced that ten of its soldiers were killed in a single encounter with the Qassam Brigades in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood on the eastern fringes of Gaza City, i.e. the neighborhood closest to the boundary with Israel.

This is the highest daily toll of military casualties reported by Israel since 7 October. Significantly, those killed included a lieutenant colonel who was a battalion commander in the Golani Brigade, a colonel who led a commando brigade, and four majors.

More than two dozen soldiers and officers were wounded in the incident.

Significantly, the Israeli soldiers were not killed in street battles but in a carefully prepared and executed two-stage ambush.

According to initial Israeli media reports, Israeli and Palestinian forces were engaged in house-to-house combat in the Qasaba quarter of Shuja’iyya, and an Israeli force, monitored by video surveillance, entered a building from which Palestinian fighters had withdrawn.

An explosive device that had been concealed within the building was detonated, killing or injuring a number of Israeli soldiers. When a second force arrived to rescue them the building, which had been previously mined, was blown up over their heads.

Further south, Israel airdropped supplies to soldiers near Khan Yunis, indicating the force was surrounded and could not be supplied by land from depots within Israel located only a few kilometers away.

The villages east of Khan Yunis and closer to the boundary with Israel – Khuza’a, Bani Suhaila, Abasan al-Kabira and Abasan al-Saghira – as well as Qarara to its north continue to be bombed by the Israeli air force and artillery around the clock.

Ergo, Israeli land forces have yet to establish control over them. Intermittent air raids and battles also continue to be reported in Beit Lahia and Beit Hanun, the northernmost towns in the Gaza Strip that Israel entered on 26 October on the first day of its ground operation.

And Hamas and PIJ last week fired their heaviest rocket barrages on greater Tel Aviv region since the war began.

Although Israel several days ago reported that it had completed its encirclement of Jabalya Refugee Camp and the adjoining town of Jabalya-Nazla, located to the northeast of Gaza City, and expected to complete their subjugation within a day or two,

satellite imagery suggested encirclement was still a long way off. Nor have Israeli ground forces yet penetrated the inner neighborhoods of Gaza City.

Separately, Israeli media this week reported that its military forces have suffered over 5,000 wounded since (including) 7 October, with some 2,000 expected to have permanent disabilities, such as amputations.

And yesterday the military reported that some twenty per cent of its casualties were the result of friendly fire.

Given that Israel is operating under military censorship the above can be assumed to be an at best incomplete and partial account. There are persistent suspicions Israeli casualties are significantly higher,

and we also for example know very little about Israeli casualties resulting from daily attacks launched from Lebanon by the much more powerful and better-armed Hizballah.

Prohibiting foreign journalists, investigators, and human rights monitors from entering the Gaza Strip is only side of the coin. Restricting what Israeli media are permitted to report, for not only operational but also political considerations, is the other.

The daily video clips released by Hamas, PIJ, and Hizballah, which document direct encounters with Israeli forces and whose authenticity has not been seriously questioned, certainly suggest a higher level of Israeli casualties.

Israeli clips by contrast show soldiers firing into an empty classroom, or a stripped down captive (in this case a middle-aged restaurant owner forced to play the part of Qassam commander)

successively handing over a machine gun apparently concealed in his shorts with different hands in multiple takes of Unconditional Surrender in Tokyo Bay. And, of course, hundreds of Hagari tunnel memes.

As previously noted, Israel has yet to assassinate a senior Hamas or PIJ leader, and has thus far killed more UN staff, journalists, and health care workers (take your pick) than Hamas commanders.

Its most visible achievements to date consist of raising an Israeli flag over Al-Shifa Hospital, and more recently blowing up an empty UN school in Beit Lahia to the deafening cheers of a company of Israeli soldiers cowering behind a sandy embankment hundreds of yards away.

Given the overwhelming disparity in military power, Israel indisputably has the capacity to fully conquer the Gaza Strip and deal a severe blow to Hamas and PIJ. If it so chooses.

The question, rather, is whether it is prepared to invest the (Israeli, not Palestinian) blood, treasure, and time required to do so. In this respect Israel’s military doctrine, that its wars need to be short, decisive, and fought on enemy territory, has already been shattered.

Instead, Israel is fighting a war of attrition on multiple fronts. This is also imposing significant economic costs. Aside from the obvious price tag, it includes hundreds of thousands of reservists mobilised and removed from the work force since 7 October,

reductions in foreign investment and tourism, ships avoiding the journey to the port of Eilat, and other losses that can’t be compensated by US taxpayers. The so-called Gaza envelope surrounding the Gaza Strip, and the far north abutting the Lebanese border,

account for the bulk of Israel’s agricultural production, including fruits, vegetables, poultry and eggs. Not only have the residents of these regions been evacuated, but the foreigners who do the actual work are no longer arriving.

It is probably true that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu would, for personal as well as political reasons, like to see this war prolonged. As would his extreme-right brothers in arms. But those who are most determined to prosecute the war against the Gaza Strip,

and Lebanon if given half a chance, are the security establishment. It is they who on 7 October lost the confidence of the Israeli public, and of their US and European sponsors.

They are therefore determined to restore both this confidence and Israel’s power of deterrence vis-à-vis not only the Palestinians but the Arabs in general. No one likes to place their personal security in the hands of an incompetent weakling,

or maintain a strategic partnership with one, but loves such an adversary. This explains the frenzied, genocidal violence unleashed by Israel against the Gaza Strip.

It is not only a lust for revenge and campaign to either expel the Palestinians to the Sinai desert or make the Gaza Strip unfit for human habitation.

It is equally to impress upon friend and foe alike that Israel remains a mighty regional power deserving of their support and fear.

Israel’s problem, as previously noted and demonstrated yet again in Shuja’iyya yesterday, is that its military is a highly efficient killing machine but mediocre when it comes to combat. You can’t conquer territory using only an air force.

And ground operations are by contrast not cost free. As for reports that Israel has begun flooding the Gaza Strip tunnel network, such wars are rarely if ever decided by silver bullets. Destroying the water supply in the Gaza Strip is probably the more important motivation.

The Israeli military’s strength is colonization and genocide, not urban warfare. Even when pitted against a comparatively weak adversary that has been under occupation for half a century and blockade for almost two decades,

two months have proven insufficient for decisive progress. Suffice it to say that Israeli, US, and European leaders have, in unison, been insisting Israel is fighting for its very existence and survival.

Not against Egypt or Iran, or even Hizballah. But against Hamas and PIJ, which between them have zero fighter jets, zero tanks, zero battleships, and zero anti-aircraft systems.

Reeling from the attacks of 7 October, Israeli public opinion was initially solidly behind Israel’s war effort. The campaign by the families of captives in the Gaza Strip to bring their loved ones home alive at any cost has eaten into this consensus,

particularly after the Palestinians demonstrated that negotiations and truce, rather than insane violence, was the only option in this regard. In a society more sensitive to military than civilian casualties, mounting losses such as those in Shuja’iyya will have a further impact.

But as with the US in Vietnam, a crisis of confidence in political and military leaders who repeatedly offer rosy predictions, mistaking mass killings of civilians for imminent military victory, can be decisive.

People don’t like being lied to on matters of national security. What scares them even more is a realisation they’re not being lied to, but that their leaders are delusional.

Aware of the dangers, expect Israel’s onslaught to escalate yet further and reach a murderous crescendo potentially without parallel since the Second World War.

But there are increasing indications this is the darkness before dawn. When US and European leaders who have repeatedly demonstrated their thorough disdain for Palestinian life begin to advocate for a reduction in the pace of mass killings,

it’s clear that as far as their real interests are concerned this war is gradually running its course. END