The Vigil.

 

The agonising evening vigil watching the tortuous transfer of hostages to the Red Cross ambulances at one of the Gaza border crossings, is an all-consuming experience.

Time and again we ask how Israel with all its cutting-edge technology was hoodwinked so easily.

An exposé published recently told how security personnel, in the military and government echelons dismissed surveillance reports, not bothering to check them thoroughly.

Soldiers in the IDF’s prestigious 8200 signal intelligence unit reportedly warned senior officers before the October 7 ferocious attack that Hamas was preparing a highly organised and meticulously planned mass incursion, but were told their concerns were “delusional.”

The exposé was one of a number of reports aired over the past month claiming the IDF had received advance warnings of a possible Hamas attack, including reports filed by IDF surveillance personnel based on the Gaza border detailing unusual Hamas training exercises carried out before October 7.

According to TV Channel 12 and other news outlets an officer in Unit 8200 compiled a report from an array of raw intelligence data detailing a scenario that essentially predicted the October 7 incursion.

She, together with another officer, also pointed to a Hamas exercise carried out a month before the actual attack, noting that it included preparations for a large incursion with multiple entry points into Israel.

“They were told in real-time. There were so many things that should have alerted them well in advance,” an unnamed source from Unit 8200 told the Kan news network.

Another report claimed that before October 7, the IDF ‘acquired’ a Hamas terror manual that described how to break through the hitherto assumed-to-be impenetrable IDF barrier along the Gaza Strip.

The manual described taking over IDF positions, capturing kibbutzim and towns in the region, killing and kidnapping residents.

It described how pick-up trucks would be used in the attack, along with motorbikes and hang-gliders.

 Understandably, even if they had acknowledged the reports the inner circle of decision makers in the IDF and the government faced a dilemma.  An Israeli preemptive attack would undoubtedly be condemned by the UN, unfriendly nations and friendly nations alike. Even President Biden would be hard put to support such an action. 

That being said, stationing additional forces, particularly   armoured and artillery units along the Gaza Strip border would require mobilising reserve army units, reminiscent of the situation Israel faced at the time of the Yom Kippur War. Perhaps an assertive action short of calling up reserve army forces, telegraphing to Hamas that we are aware of what they were planning, could have warded off the October 7 attack. I hasten to add that this is my unqualified layman’s opinion.

At this juncture I want insert a margin note: -

Unit 8200 is an Israeli Intelligence Corps unit of the IDF responsible for clandestine operations, collecting signal intelligence and code decryption, counterintelligence, cyberwarfare, military intelligence, and surveillance. The unit is a branch of the Military Defence Directorate.

Earlier this week I read a summary of a publication issued by the Begin–Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA Centre) an Israeli think tank affiliated with Bar-Ilan University. BESA conducts policy-relevant research on Middle Eastern and global strategic affairs, specifically related to national security, Israel’s foreign policy and regional peace and stability.

For the sake of brevity, I am ‘cherry-picking’ from the summary and rephrasing some of it.

“Hamas gathered information on Israel, much of it unclassified, and successfully used it to carry out the largest and most devastating terrorist attack in Israel’s history.

At the core of every advanced organisation’s information security and cyber defence lies a mechanism for risk management. This mechanism weighs the likelihood of the realisation of intelligence and technological threats against the potential damage resulting from an information leak. Risk management allows a focus on the protection of significant assets and ensures, as much as possible, that threats against them are eliminated. The less favourable alternative is “protecting everything,” an approach guaranteed to be ineffective due to innumerable “secrets” and limited resources.

The summary attempts to describe a phenomenon termed the “unclassified secret,” namely, information that is not classified by definition but which still holds great value for an adversary seeking to harm a country or organisation. In a democratic and open society, the freedom of information is a fundamental right. The ability of people in society to share information is vital for progress and development. It provides the infrastructure for citizens to be engaged, oversee the authorities, criticise them, and form independent opinions through free and reasoned discussion. In this way, public information, or unclassified security information, is accessible to everyone – including foreign actors and enemies – especially as platforms for its distribution and accessibility continue to evolve.

The events of October 7 will be investigated thoroughly, but it can already be said that Hamas constructed a good intelligence assessment of Israel’s defence components along the Gaza border fence. This enabled Hamas to neutralise some of the sensors and detection capabilities, prevent effective control of events on the Israeli side, and operate effectively inside the military positions and communities it overran. In addition to military information, Hamas had public, private, and administrative information that facilitated its operations inside the communities it attacked. Moreover, Hamas possessed freely available maps and detailed information about specific sites within the Israeli communities, some of which can be found online (such as addresses of senior officials) and information that could be collected through human sources (HUMINT), such as the locations of first response teams, IDF camps and defence perimeters of the communities, and more.

Examining the security information collected by Hamas over the years, reveals that a significant part of its intelligence is based on information that is not classified by definition. For example, most of the human collection elements (HUMINT) recruited by Hamas were instructed to mark locations throughout Israel that are visible to all. In addition, Hamas collected a wealth of information from Israeli media about Israeli society, issues related to the Gaza periphery communities, and Israel’s military capabilities, all of which was discussed openly.

These facts together constitute a particularly challenging phenomenon referred to as the “unclassified secret.” This is information that is defined either as public or unclassified by the authorities, is nevertheless, highly valuable to hostile actors that collect it for their purposes. In the case of a terrorist organisation like Hamas and an attack like the one it carried out, tactical and micro-tactical information defined as unclassified, as well as public information that is openly accessible, become extremely valuable, especially when it provides details that complement information collected from other undisclosed intelligence sources operated by Hamas or other terrorist organisations.

For example, in a scenario in which terrorists plan to attack settlements on the Gaza border, maps of Israel that are available on Google Earth constitute valuable information for the enemy. Obviously, Israel can’t demand that the internet should remove all open-source information.

The other extreme is to say the unclassified secret is the inevitable bane of a democratic and open society, especially in areas of risk and near hostile borders. Consequently, there is nothing that can be done to reduce the risk inherent in the phenomenon.

Therefore, we should delineate a few guiding principles with which to approach situations in which unclassified secrets of a kind highly valuable to the enemy are easily available.

Unclassified information must be addressed systematically in the context of the impact of public knowledge of security components that enable the enemy to exploit it for operational purposes. The “unclassified” domain must be addressed within situational assessments while realising and considering its value to the enemy.

In this context, attention should be given to public sources of information that require protection, monitoring, and control, in particular:

First response teams, public-military relations, settlement defence systems, and reinforcement forces.

Human concentrations that could serve as prime targets for attack, both permanent and occasional (public transportation stations, event halls, parks, etc.).

Residences of senior officials, security personnel, local leaders, etc.

Technological assets (websites, servers, cameras, etc.) in the public domain.

Within this framework, the trend should be towards reducing the ease of obtaining non-essential public information, such as: protecting databases according to privacy protection regulations, defining target groups who are prohibited from keeping a high personal digital footprint, monitoring digital impropriety and issuing warnings for prevention and damage reduction, and even considering tighter censorship. Regarding military information that is published for various reasons by security officials, the balance between their needs and information security must be reevaluated. As in many cases, this information becomes “unclassified secrets”: information approved for publication by the authorities that ends up aiding the enemy.

For example, in the context of the human threat, when Hamas openly trains and declares its intention to attack communities on the Gaza border, this should prompt a reconsideration of work-permit policies so as to prevent the possibility of Gazan workers, or those with potential connections to the powers in the Gaza Strip, working in these communities and gaining access to unclassified secrets. Similarly, increased awareness is needed regarding intelligence-gathering by civilians around security sites and places frequented by large numbers of people.

The interface between the security and the public domain, and between the unclassified and classified areas, poses a significant challenge when trying to provide a fitting and balanced response to the problem of unclassified secrets. The formation of security policies in this context is complex and will require attention, resource allocation, legislation, and broad cooperation. The need to maintain maximum information freedom while recognising security constraints – a challenge that accompanies democracies worldwide, including Israel – will only continue to grow.

Of course, even after the formulation and implementation of policy guidelines, the reasonable working assumption is that the enemy will continue to obtain valuable information. Accordingly, in all defensive arrangements, military or civilian, practical consideration should be given to the information load that the other side has, including unclassified yet useful material. Correspondingly, a complementary defensive or offensive response is required.

The battle over unclassified secrets is here to stay. We must be aware of it and prepare ourselves accordingly.”

The summary was compiled by Dr. Natanel Flamer a senior lecturer at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Bar-Ilan University and senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies. Dr. Flamer specialises in intelligence, terrorism, and asymmetrical warfare in the Middle East.

Lieut. Col. (ret.) Erez Magen also contributed to the summary. He is an information security and cybersecurity expert, founder of Magen Cyber, which provides security solutions to security organisations and companies in Israel and around the world.

 Have a good weekend.

Beni

30th of November, 2023

 

 

Bringing them home.

 

If all goes well and according to plan, the first phase of the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners will take place on Friday afternoon. In the meantime, the fighting continues unabated.

Observing the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler of the Israel Democracy Institute said,  ' New-Tech' plays a role in the Gaza war, but not to the level Israel once envisioned.

"When technology replaces humans, it comes at the cost of dulling human intuition and tends to distance the soldier from the battlefield reality"

In 2020, Israel launched a new military doctrine and modernisation programme commonly referred to as the “Momentum” plan. The concept relies on a rapid war of manoeuvre, blending quick strikes and the highest technological capabilities the IDF can bring to the front.

The grinding war in Gaza — four weeks of aerial bombardment followed by the slow taking of territory — resembles nothing like what was laid out in that 2020 document. Instead, Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks has relied heavily on classic military tactics and, in some cases, older military hardware that the developers of the “Momentum” plan expected to send to the scrap metal yards.

The campaign in Gaza illustrates the challenges that militaries continue to confront as they incorporate advanced technology in existing platforms.     For instance, while Israel has used artificial intelligence and big data to identify targets, the automated tools still require a large force on the ground to carry out the campaign. Efficient use of strike cells and closing sensor-to-shooter loops faster, can have an impact, but the pace of the campaign shows that overall, the change may be incremental.

A piece in the Economist under the heading - “The sinews of war” claims that Israel’s declared goal of destroying Hamas for good requires its financial base to be dismantled, too. Very little of this sits in Gaza at all. Instead, it is overseas in friendly countries. Furnished with money-launderers, mining companies and much else, Hamas’s financial empire is reckoned to bring in more than $1bn a year. Having been painstakingly crafted to avoid Western sanctions, it may be out of reach for Israel and its allies.

Let’s leave the money wherever it is deposited, accruing interest.

I’m tempted to hope that once the Hamas military echelon has been eliminated, maybe it will be possible use the money for constructive civilian purposes in Gaza.

“The guns will go quiet; food and medicine will get to those in desperate need and hostages will be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners. That may sound like the start of a process to end the brutal six-week-old war between Israel and Hamas, which has reduced much of Gaza to rubble. 

It almost certainly is not,” wrote Ethan Bronner, Bloomberg News.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made that clear, shortly before his cabinet agreed early Wednesday to the deal. “We are at war and we will continue the war,” he said. 

His words signal disappointment in store for the many countries — from the Arab world to Europe — that have been urging a short-term cease-fire in the hope it will lead to something more enduring. 

As for the US, Israel’s chief backer, its position is somewhat different. Washington joined the calls for a pause but recognises that fighting is likely to resume. It just wants that Israel will conduct the war with more restraint when that happens.  

Most of the world is simply telling Israel to stop.

“Many people don’t want to believe the Israelis; it seems they would rather believe Hamas. Media outlets often caveat announcements by the IDF, pointedly saying that what they claim cannot be independently verified. Rarely, however, are reports from Gaza questioned in such a way, when every word coming from any part of the Strip that is still dominated by Hamas should be seen as being spoken under duress, whether by journalists, doctors or UN officials. 

Very often casualty figures from the Gaza Health Ministry are treated as if they come from the UK National Health Service (NHS), even though it is well understood that the ministry is ruthlessly controlled by Hamas,” Commented Colonel Richard Kemp in a post on the UK news website The Telegraph.

Kemp is a frequent visitor to Israel, and makes it a point to give interviews to media outlets that tend to adopt a hostile approach to Israel. The way he sees it, Israel isn't just defending itself, but the free world as a whole.

One of those interviews would turn particularly testy, as the interviewer challenged Kemp about how Israel's response is "disproportionate," which really annoyed him. He questioned the entire approach, rhetorically asking the interviewer if he expects Israel to start chopping off babies' heads and committing war crimes while sadistically smiling to the cameras, as that would likely be "proportional."

Kemp said he doubts the interview will be broadcasted. He says the BBC is pathologically anti-Israel. Their idea of a debate is bringing in two experts. One who is anti-Israel, and the other is very anti-Israel.

“The soldiers in the field who are at the pinnacle of a highly accomplished offensive effort will go into static mode,” analyst Yossi Yehoshua wrote in Yediot Aharonot.

The deal struck in recent days is little different from one rejected by Israel weeks ago. But two things have happened since. 

The families of hostages have agitated successfully and now their cause has gained precedence over the military campaign in Gaza.

Since the hostages were victims of Israel’s failure to defend its border and protect its citizens on Oct. 7, there’s been a growing sense that to abandon them again by walking away from a deal would be inexcusable. But then the war will start again.

“It’s very clear to the decision-makers that they cannot stop,” Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli national security adviser, told reporters. “Israeli sentiment will not let them. If they stop after the four, five or six days of cease-fire, that will be the end of this government.”

Amidror acknowledged that the coming pause might allow Hamas to regroup and replenish some of its armaments. However, that won’t change the balance of power or significantly affect Israeli losses. 

Now that one halt in fighting has been agreed, some diplomats say more can follow.

“I hope that the deal can be the basis for extended pauses and then transition to a cease-fire,” said Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan.

The US has urged pauses for humanitarian aid and hostage releases but not for ending hostilities quickly. The Biden administration’s view has been that in order to destroy Hamas – a goal the US says it shares — Israel needs to fight more carefully, which may mean fighting for longer. 

Israel has agreed to a condition laid out by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to halt Israeli UAVs (drones) in the Gaza airspace for six hours on each day of the ceasefire in exchange for the release of some of the hostages held by Hamas.

The condition's implementation was addressed by an Israeli official who cited statements made by the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), stating that they have intelligence-gathering capabilities even during the ceasefire days. "We will not be blind and we'll know what's happening on the ground," the official said. He was probably referring to the Ofeq series of Israeli reconnaissance satellites   first launched in 1988. The low Earth orbit satellites complete one Earth orbit every 90 minutes.

Ofeq satellites have an effective operational lifespan of 1–3 years and are equipped with ultraviolet and visible imaging sensors. Some reports place the imaging resolution at 80 cm for Ofeq-5. Ofeq-13 was successfully launched in March this year. It’s reasonable to suppose that its imaging resolution is at least as good as its predecessors.

Confident that our ‘eyes in the sky’ are aiding our ‘boots on the ground’ we can all sleep safely at night.

Take care.

 

Beni,

 23^rd of November, 2023.

After the war.

 

In a piece she wrote for Foreign Policy columnist Amy Mackinnon didn’t leave much room for optimism. Under the heading – “What Gaza’s Future Might Look Like After the War,” she said the monumental challenge of reconstruction will likely cost billions of dollars. “Amid periodic outbreaks of hostilities between Israel and Hamas over the past decade, Gaza has been in a nearly constant state of reconstruction. Efforts to rebuild homes and infrastructure destroyed by war have been hamstrung by unfulfilled donor pledges and complicated screening mechanisms put in place to prevent construction materials from falling into the hands of Hamas.”

Israel too is beginning to assess damage caused by the Gaza war and is making budgetary amendments. 

In a press conference held recently, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the 2023-2024 national budget was no longer relevant.

He estimated that the direct cost of the war at about $246 million a day. Smotrich added that he did not yet have an assessment of the indirect costs on an economy partly paralysed by the mass mobilisation of military reservists and civil defence needs.

The finance minister no doubt is consoled by the knowledge that in recent years Israeli arms sales have increased considerably. Furthermore, Israeli air-defence systems are performing exceptionally well, notably the Iron Dome and Arrow 3 systems. Therefore, it’s reasonable to expect an additional increase in export sales of air-defence systems.

Two weeks ago, the Washington Post published an analysis of President Biden’s dismissal of the reported Palestinian death toll in the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

“I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war. … I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”

Biden’s dismissal of the ministry’s statistics — that he had “no confidence” in them — was striking. The State Department has regularly cited ministry statistics without caveats in its annual human rights reports. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which tracks deaths in the conflict, has found the ministry’s numbers to be reliable after conducting its own investigation. “Past experience indicated that death tolls were reported with high accuracy,” an OCHA official told Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s editor and chief writer of ‘The Fact Checker’ since 2011. Kessler is one of the pioneers of political fact-checking. 

My comment- Who checks the fact checker who relies largely on OCHA reports?

UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese

Currently in Australia, heading for New Zealand UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese is bent on gaining support for her insidious mission to demonise Israel.

About the time she received her commission a report by UNwatch titled “Mandate to Discriminate.” (UNwatch is an NGO that analyses and monitors the activities of the United Nations) discovered a serious omission in the conflicts of interest form submitted by Albanese for her UN candidacy. She reportedly failed to declare that her husband, Massimiliano Calì, previously worked for the Palestinian Authority.

 In a stunning exercise in victim blaming, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese has denied that Israel has the right to defend itself against Palestinian terrorism.

“Israel has a right to defend itself, but can’t claim it when it comes to the people it oppresses [or] whose land it colonises,” she tweeted on April 8.

In other words, Ms. Albanese means Israel has no right to defend itself against Palestinian terrorism, depending on which side of the supposed ‘green line’ its citizens are. Only in the Orwellian world of the United Nations, could a senior official put forward such a warped proposition justifying the murder of Jews.
The Israeli government has demanded her dismissal, labelling her language as hate-filled, that of an anti-Semite, and symptomatic of an anti-Israeli mindset that underplays the country’s legitimate security concerns. It refuses to cooperate with her as it has done so with her predecessors. She was appointed to a six-year term in 2022.

Albanese’s arguments have gained traction and a wide audience in Arab and parts of the western media. She argues that Israel cannot invoke the right to self-defence under the UN charter since the threat comes not from a state, but a military group, in a territory that Israel occupies militarily. Israel rejects the idea that it has occupied Gaza since withdrawing its forces in 2005, but the UN and other global bodies consider the occupation to have continued since then as it has maintained effective control over the small territory by land, sea and air.

Israel argues that controlling access to the Gaza Strip is vitally important to ensure its security. Hamas and other terrorist organisations in Gaza have often voiced their intention to annihilate Israel. The closure on Gaza helps prevent arms being smuggled into the enclave.

However, this is just the latest in Ms. Albanese’s long history of relentless, systematic and visceral bias against Israel.

 

The Israel Air Force has dropped leaflets over Gaza that warn civilians to distant themselves from Hamas operatives making clear Israel’s intention to minimise civilian casualties. Since the operation began, Hamas has repeatedly instructed Palestinians to ignore these warnings.

The IDF has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect innocent bystanders

As early as 2006 the IDF began warning the residents of buildings in Gaza that were about to be attacked because they harboured terrorists and their munitions.

Roof knocking was used during the 2008–2009 Gaza War, Operation Pillar of Defence in 2012, and Operation Protective Edge in 2014. In the six months prior to its use, Israel collected data on Hamas members, which they used to issue warnings. Typically, Israeli intelligence officers and Shin Bet security agents contacted residents of a building in which they suspected storage of military assets and told them that they had 10–15 minutes to flee the attack, although in some cases the delay has been as little as five minutes.

In 2016,the US military adopted the Israeli battlefield tactic(roof knocking) in its war against Islamic State. It was used in an attack against an ISIS storage facility in  Mosul, Iraq.  As women and children lived in the house, a Hellfire missile was initially shot at the roof as a warning.

During the 2023 Israel-Hamas war, CNN reported that many people in Gaza said the IDF had abandoned the "roof knocking" policy. In October 2023, a senior Israeli official stated that the practice would no longer be the norm and would only be used under certain circumstances. An IDF officer told the New York Times that instead of the "roof knocking" policy, Israel is issuing mass evacuation orders  and leaflets stating that people sheltering near Hamas terrorists are risking their lives.

In some cases, residents who were warned about an impending bombing climbed up voluntarily to their roofs to show they would not leave. When faced with similar defiance situations, IDF commanders have either called off the bombing or launched a a low-charge warning missile at empty areas of the roof, in order to frighten the people gathered on the roof into leaving the building.

 The New York Times stated that according to Israeli reports, Hamas asked residents to stand on the roofs of buildings to dissuade Israeli pilots from attacking their homes. 

A NATO  report  confirmed the practice, describing it as an example of lawfare.  However, Amnesty International argued that Hamas' purported call may have been "motivated by a desire to avoid further panic" among civilians because Gaza lacked adequate shelters.

The Israeli Government stated "While these warnings, could not eliminate all harm to civilians, they were frequently effective," and that aerial video surveillance by IDF forces showed civilians leaving targeted areas prior to an attack as a direct result of the warnings. In November 2014, the most senior US military official, General Martin Dempsey, cited "roof knocking" as an example where Israel "did some extraordinary things to limit civilian casualties" during Operation Protective Edge.

Israeli officials have said they will take steps to limit civilian casualties, but it fell to a Pentagon official, Dana Stroul, to provide more detail during a hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the Israeli-Gaza war.

"They have dropped 1.5 million leaflets in Gaza asking civilians to evacuate," Stroul said. "They have sent over hundreds of thousands of text messages and made phone calls to cell phones.  In our conversations with the Israel Defence Forces they have made clear they assess collateral damage estimates before they take strikes."

I’ll conclude by thanking the many friends concerned about my safety.

 

Take care.

 

Beni,

   

16^th of November, 2023.

The endgame.

  Disclaimer: Most of the topics included in my posts are quoted from open-source intelligence (OSINT). Occasionally I add a personal comment.

 

The Guardian dedicated an editorial to a feasible endgame for the Gaza conflict, complaining that Binyamin Netanyahu does not have an endgame.                                                                                             

 By the way, the IDF prefers to call the Gaza operation by the Hebrew nom de guerre ‘timron’ which translates as ‘manoeuvre.’

 “What happens to Gaza the day after the war ends?”  asked Patrick Wintour diplomatic editor for The Guardian.

“When US Secretary Of State Antony Blinken arrived in the Middle East on his most recent visit, one of his aims was to clarify what happens to Gaza after the war, but some of Blinken’s ideas have met with opposition from Israel and Arab states.

Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said on Saturday at a press conference alongside Blinken: “What happens next? How can we even entertain what will happen in Gaza when we do not know what kind of Gaza will be left when this war is over? Are we going to be talking about a wasteland? Are we going to be talking about a whole population reduced to refugees? Simply, we do not know – we do not have all the variables to even start thinking about that.”

Netanyahu discussed potential "tactical pauses" in a phone call with US President Joe Biden on Monday. However, in a statement that was issued following their conversation there was no mention of a ceasefire.

While key Israeli ally, the United States is seeking a humanitarian "pause" in the fighting, several countries and UN agencies have repeatedly called for a ceasefire.

"There will be no ceasefire -- general ceasefire -- in Gaza, without the release of our hostages," Netanyahu said.

"As far as tactical, little pauses -- an hour here, an hour there -- we've had them before. I suppose we'll check the circumstances in order to enable goods -- humanitarian goods -- to come in or our hostages, individual hostages, to leave," he added.

A very pragmatic opinion was put forward by Jacob Nagel, Lieutenant General (res.) and professor at the faculty of Aeronautics and Aerospace Engineering at the Technion in Haifa and head of the Centre for Security Science and Technology (CSST) Texas. He argues that Israel cannot risk relinquishing security control of Gaza. “No matter which entity will take responsibility for Gaza’s civil affairs, Israel will be the full security authority. “The entire Gaza Strip, especially Gaza City, will be demilitarised and will not contain tunnels, weapons or the ability to produce weapons. 

All goods that enter Gaza will be completely monitored by Israel, and Israeli security forces will be able to enter Gaza anytime, anywhere, to ensure the removal of any potential threat to Israel.”  I think Jacob Nagel’s opinion is widely endorsed by both rank and file Israelis and leaders alike.

 The need to be ever watchful was stressed by Howard LaFranchi in his report for the Christian Science Monitor on October 23.

“Hamas is not a carpetbagger extremist group, but a deeply implanted governing organisation espousing a brand of Palestinian nationalism that won’t be extinguished with regime change in Gaza.”  

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, there ‘came a blast from the past.’ Former Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan gave an interview to The Economist from the comfort of his chosen exile in Abu Dhabi. He suggested that after the war a two-year transitional technocratic government should be created for Gaza and the West Bank jointly. After that, elections with all Palestinian political factions standing, including Hamas, should take place for a parliamentary system of government, without a President. This Palestinian state should be internationally recognised.

 Dahlan remains a powerful figure in Gaza, where he formerly ran security for PA President Mahmoud Abbas and has since brokered deals to bring money and fuel into the Strip.

However, he dismisses the suggestion that he would agree to be installed by Israel to rule the enclave. His reputation was damaged in the Karni scandal of 1997 when it was revealed that Dahlan was diverting 40% of the taxes levied at the Karni border crossing (an estimated one million Shekels a month) to his personal bank account.

 

Jon B Alterman also posed the question - “What Comes After War in Gaza.”

Alterman is senior vice president, Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy, and the director of the Middle East Programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Earlier in his career, he was a member of the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State, a special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and a foreign policy adviser to Senator Daniel P. Moynihan.

“War contains many uncertainties, but there are some things about the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas that seem in little doubt. One is that Israel will deal Hamas a decisive blow. It will kill thousands of Hamas fighters, destroy the organisation’s infrastructure, and neutralise much of its weapons stocks.

Another is that Israel will refuse a return to the status quo ante, as it has done in the four other times since 2007 that it has struck out against Hamas in Gaza. Israeli security officials had often called it ‘mowing the grass,’ the unpleasant task that inevitably needs to be done periodically. That strategy has failed.

Yet the things that will determine who ultimately wins this war are entirely uncertain. What politics will emerge in Gaza after the fighting stops and the rubble is cleared? Who will be in control, and who will support them? Will Gazans seek a pathway forward living in peace and increased prosperity, or will the voices of alienation and despair grow even louder and usher in a new cycle of violence?

Not surprisingly, Israelis are not discussing these longer-term questions much yet. Israelis are still reeling from the shocking losses of October 7 and the unfolding hostage crisis. They are united in their need to act firmly, to reassert Israel’s deterrent power, and to avenge the hundreds of acts of cold-blooded murder.

Increasingly, they are also critical of their leadership. They accuse politicians and the military alike of missing the signs of an impending attack and of being distracted from the country’s real security issues. The time for accountability will come. In the meantime, Israelis will need their leadership to make an excruciating decision: when to stop fighting, and on what terms.

This challenge is not unique to Israel. All military operations reach levels of diminishing returns. They start off with robust target sets and frequent advances. Over time, it costs more and more to get less and less incremental benefit.

The impending Israeli assault on Gaza will produce a stream of disturbing images that will capitalise on increasingly lax content moderation by some social media platforms. What Hamas cannot win on the battlefield it will seek to win through information operations. Israeli leaders know they will come under profound international pressure to stop fighting and start negotiating, and that pressure is likely to become overwhelming within a month of beginning ground operations.” Well, this week a month after the ‘manoeuvre’ began we still haven’t come to the end of our tether. 

Virtually all of the Arab states are hostile to Hamas, whose roots are in the Muslim Brotherhood. Regional governments see the Brotherhood as a threat, and they see Hamas’ Iranian patrons as a major threat, too. They are fundamentally strategically aligned with Israel and the U.S.

There are potential roles for Gulf Arab States, which can both help fund Gaza’s recovery and help give Arab legitimacy to what comes after.

Further to that, Alterman said, “But ultimately, a better outcome in Gaza requires Gazans to rise to the opportunity of a different kind of leadership. Hamas’ vicious attack on October 7 will prove to be a pyrrhic victory. It has strengthened Israeli resolve to destroy the organisation and its capabilities. The destruction of Gaza will be comprehensive, and it needs to provoke some soul-searching among Palestinians.

There also needs to be an Israeli recognition that there is both the possibility and the necessity for a different kind of relationship with Gaza in particular and Palestinian aspirations more generally. This will be hard for an Israeli public that has grown comfortable with the idea that the   Palestinian problem is not only too hard to solve, but also a problem that doesn’t need to be solved, a problem behind walls.”

My own conclusion is that as long as Palestinian leaders insist on including their ‘excess baggage’ in the deal, there will be no deal. By ‘excess baggage’  I refer to the multi-generation Palestinian refugees keys-in-hand demanding to return home.

 

Have good weekend,

 

Beni,

 

9^th of November, 2023.

The Gaza tunnel dilemma.

  

“As Israeli troops push deeper into Gaza in retaliation for the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, the ground attack won’t look quite like the door-to-door skirmishes seen in Fallujah, Mosul and other past urban clashes,” predicted Rick Jervis in a piece he wrote for USA Today.

“Instead, it will happen largely out of sight and underground, deep in a warren of connecting tunnels that Hamas has been digging and lining with concrete for more than a decade. The battle to control and destroy this subterranean labyrinth, estimated at more than 480 kilometres, will be a key strategy for the IDF, according to military analysts and experts – and will make the incursion into Gaza unlike any past urban conflict.

For these ‘de-tunnelling’ operations, specialised units code-named Samur – Hebrew for ‘weasel’ – expect to squeeze through the narrow passages and find rocket assembly lines, stores of small arms and mortars and, deeper still, Hamas’ leaders’ lodging and headquarters – much of it probably booby-trapped with homemade bombs. They may also be searching for some of the more than 230 hostages taken from Israel who may be hidden in those same tunnels.”

“It’s going to be an undertaking like nothing the IDF has ever done,” said retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Mark Schwartz, who ran U.S. security coordination with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority from 2019 to 2021. “And frankly unlike anything we’ve ever done.” 

“The response by Israeli ground troops, now underway by degrees, will bring the next phase of the fight – including the fight for the tunnels.

The fight in Gaza may bear some similarities to operations in Fallujah, or in Mosul, where U.S.-backed Iraqi forces flushed Islamic state fighters out of a tunnel network in 2014. 

But in Gaza, Israeli forces face more formidable infrastructure and more challenging geography.  

Hamas’ tunnel system is more advanced, and its fighters are better trained, more disciplined and better equipped than the Islamic state fighters, “said Eitan Shamir, director of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv. 

“In Gaza – hemmed in by Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, which gives civilians nowhere to flee – a ground war is uniquely challenging,” said Seth Jones, a military analyst at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies. 

"The intricate nature of the tunnel complex in a densely packed urban environment that is entirely fenced in, makes this a fundamentally different – and in many ways a more difficult environment than what U.S. forces had to face in cities like Fallujah or Mosul," he said. “The possibility of civilian casualties is much greater in Gaza.”

 “Since the 2014 Israeli-Hamas conflict, Israel has been gathering intelligence and training troops on how to find and destroy the subterranean labyrinth, “said Eitan Shamir. “At the centre of the effort is a clandestine laboratory – known simply as ‘the lab’ – where scientists from various disciplines meet to try to discover tunnel locations and devise technologies that could penetrate them.” 

Remote-controlled robots have been developed to enter and search the tunnels. Israeli engineers have developed technology that uses acoustic or seismic sensors and software to detect digging, similar to the science used by oil and gas companies to detect oil reserves, according to the Congressional Research Service.

“Because some tunnels are so deep and are concrete-lined, they can survive heavy bombing. Hamas terrorists are thought to have enough provisions to live several months underground.

As the IDF rumbles into the dense urban quarters of Gaza City, Hamas fighters will use the tunnels to launch surprise attacks on Israeli troops, then melt away underground again and pop up in another location. They’ll also use snipers, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) – and bomb-dropping drones.”

Shamir said he believed Israel’s initial incursion into Gaza is more of a tactic to try to pressure Hamas into a negotiated release of the prisoners. As the IDF moves into denser urban areas and begins destroying tunnels, it becomes exponentially harder to rescue them,” Shamir said. 

The task of neutralising the tunnel advantage will fall to’ Yahalom,’ the special forces unit of the Combat Engineering Corps, who have been training for tunnel combat. A subunit of the Yahalom will enter the tunnels and try to disarm or destroy the intersecting passages and look for hostages.

In an essay he wrote recently, Edward Luttwak, an Israeli strategist and historian said, “Though Israeli forces may not know the precise entrance of every tunnel, they’ve been monitoring for years where cement-mixing trucks in Gaza have been deployed to give them an idea,”. 

Israeli tunnel specialists will be ferried by 70-ton Namer infantry combat vehicles, considered some of the most heavily armoured vehicles in the world, he wrote. As they reach suspected tunnel sites, several Namers will form a perimeter – “an improvised fortress” – protecting the combat engineers.

“In 2014, the last time Israeli troops fought in Gaza, most were riding thinly armoured M113s, which were easily penetrated by RPG anti-tank rockets, with some 60 soldiers killed and hundreds wounded,” Luttwak wrote. “Not this time.”

Margin note: The veteran U.S manufactured M113 armoured personnel carrier (APC) was intended to serve as battlefield ‘taxi’ shuttling troops into battle, before returning to take on more infantrymen. More advanced APCs have been fitted with better protective plating and carry a variety of heavy and light machine-guns. They are still nevertheless, battlefield ‘taxis’ , but with a dual role. The Military Today website describing the Israeli APC, said -The latest design of the Namer is based on the Merkava Mk.4 main battle tank chassis. Currently it is one of the most protected APCs in the world. It provides infantry with the level of protection and mobility matching those of the latest main battle tanks. The ‘Namer’ heavy APC is fitted with modular armour and was planned to be equipped with the ‘Trophy’ active protection system; regrettably budgetary restrictions have postponed the planned addition.  Earlier this week eight IDF infantrymen were killed when a Hamas terrorist fired an anti-tank missile at a ‘Namer ‘APC.

Back to the main text

Mark Schwartz, who coordinated training with Israeli and Palestinian Authority security forces, witnessed some of the tunnel training in Israel. The Israeli military re-created what they believe the Gazan tunnels look like and sent soldiers through the maze to test weaponry and tactics, as well as unmanned vehicles and robotics.

“They know what they’re going to experience,” Schwartz said. “But the magnitude of what they’re going to deal with compared with what they’ve done in the past is very different.”

Anna Mulrine Grobe, staff writer at the Christian Science Monitor wrote, “Among military professionals, urban combat is widely considered to be the most gruelling, intricate, and deadly of operations.

As Israel launches a new phase of its war effort with ground-troop incursions into Gaza, its stated goal of destroying Hamas runs up against near-impossible conditions: battling enemies and rescuing hostages while navigating walled-in dead ends, concrete high-rises, and a network of deep and booby-trapped tunnels that its adversary has been preparing for years.

Add Gaza’s civilians to the mix, half of whom are children, and it can seem like a series of no-win trade-offs, even for commanders of well-trained and exquisitely equipped troops. If military leaders prioritise military objectives, then they accept harm to innocent people. If they prioritise civilians, then they accept more casualties among their own forces – and certainty that Hamas will use humanitarian ethical constraints to its advantage.

Cities and their residents don’t fare well in urban warfare. As Israel launches its incursion into Gaza, the question is whether experience, new equipment, and American input will make a difference.

In short, cities and the people in them don’t fare well during urban warfare, and Gaza has been no exception.

 Here’s another opinion, it too reads like Murphy’s law – ‘If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.’

“The potential fighting facing Israeli soldiers also will be claustrophobic and terrifying. Many of the Israeli military’s technological advantages will collapse, giving Hamas the edge,” warned Daphné Richemond-Barak, a professor at Israel’s Reichman University who wrote a book on underground warfare.

“When you enter a tunnel, it’s very narrow, and it’s dark and it’s moist, and you very quickly lose a sense of space and time,” Richemond-Barak told Associated Press. “You have this fear of the unknown, who’s coming around the corner? … Is this going to be an ambush? Nobody can come and rescue you. You can barely communicate with the outside world, with your unit.”

The battlefield could force the IDF into firefights in which hostages may be accidentally killed. Explosive traps also could detonate, burying alive both soldiers and the hostages,” Richemond-Barak said.

Even with those risks, she said the tunnels must be destroyed for Israel to achieve its military objectives.

“There’s a job that needs to get done and it will be done now, ″ she said.

 A report in Haaretz last week said the families of people held hostage in Gaza have appealed to Prime Minister Netanyahu telling him that they support a deal releasing Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons in exchange for hostages held captive by the Gaza terrorist groups. In effect, an all-for-all deal.

Former IDF Chief of Staff and former Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz clarified in a special interview with Channel 12 News that he supports the release of all terrorists from Israeli prisons in exchange for the release of the hostages being held by Hamas.

"Let them take all 6,000 prisoners - and return all our hostages," Mofaz said, adding, "I would return all of them to the Gaza Strip but, first of all release our hostages and captives.”

Seemingly following suit, Hamas is ‘ready to conduct’ an immediate release of all Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip in exchange for all Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli prisons, the terror group said in a statement attributed to Yahya Sinwar on Saturday.

The IDF spokesperson, who was giving a daily briefing at the time of the statement, responded by suggesting that the timing of the statement was "psychological warfare."

"We will continue to exhaust all options to bring them home." He added.

IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht recently called  Yahya Sinwar a ‘dead man walking’ after accusing him of playing a pivotal role in organising the October 7 attacks. 

"I do believe that Deif committed the plan but the real mind, the brain of this attack was mainly Yahya Sinwar," Michael Milshtein, a former intelligence officer in the Israel Defence Forces, told The Wall Street Journal.

"He really understands how Israelis will behave, and how they think, and how they will respond," he added.

The Times of Israel reported that security sources outside Gaza believe Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar were hiding in one of a network of tunnels in the Gaza enclave.

At this juncture it’s appropriate to recycle something I wrote last year about Yahya Sinwar. Maybe you remember it.

“Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar was born in 1962 in a refugee camp in Khan Yunis and attended the Khan Yunis Secondary School for Boys. After high school, he attended the Islamic University of Gaza, where he graduated with a BA in Arabic studies.  

While attending university in 1982, Sinwar was arrested for the first time. In prison he became friendly with Palestinian activists, and decided to dedicate himself to the Palestinian cause.  

In 1985, Sinwar founded Hamas’s security branch, whose job included punishing ‘morality’ offenders and killing Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. His enthusiasm for executing collaborators led Israeli interrogators to refer to him as ‘the Butcher from Khan Younis.’

In 1988, Sinwar was arrested again and sentenced to four life terms in an Israeli prison for attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm through sabotage. During his confinement, Sinwar complained of severe headaches and following medical examination he was diagnosed to be suffering from a brain tumour. The tumour was removed successfully by a team of Israeli surgeons, thus saving his life.

Sinwar was released in 2011, one of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners exchanged for a single Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who was captured in 2006 and held hostage in Gaza for five years by Hamas. Sinwar was the most senior prisoner released in the prisoner exchange.”

 

Paging down through what I have written, I’m tempted to hazard a guess and say that the IDF, military intelligence, Mossad etc., have an operative plan for the Gaza incursion. Admittedly, they all fouled up on October 7, but this time I don’t think they are ‘playing it by ear.’

 

“Stay tuned,” and hope for the best.

 

Beni,

 

2^nd of November, 2023