Remarks of an interested observer.

 Paging through a number of international news outlets concerning the dilemma Israel and Iran are facing, I have summarised what I consider to be the most relevant topics.

I hasten to add that I am no more than an interested observer using open-source information.

Israel is threatening to retaliate for Iran’s ballistic missile attack on October 1. Will it bomb Tehran's nuclear sites? Can it?

Israel sees Iran as an existential threat to its existence, and for good reason. Iran's clerical leaders have repeatedly threatened to annihilate Israel.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, Iran has increased its stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels.

IAEA’s Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, said earlier this year that Iran has enough uranium enriched to near-weapons-grade levels to make "several" nuclear bombs if it wanted to do so.

Still, on Monday, CIA Director Bill Burns said that while it was clear that Iran has developed the "means of delivery" for a potential nuclear weapon by building up its missile arsenal, "we do not see evidence today that the supreme leader has reversed the decision that he took at the end of 2003 to suspend the weaponisation programme."

Iran, in other words, according to Burns, may have technically halted its explicit work on nuclear weapons in 2003, but it has continued to acquire nuclear technology and expertise that is a requirement for any such programme.

Various reports have circulated as to what Israel might target. Among the options: Iran's military bases, its oil and economic infrastructure, key leaders in the Iranian regime and, perhaps the riskiest of all, nuclear sites.

Still, Israel’s killing Sept. 27 of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah by heavy bombing may be "proof of concept" for Israel to target Iran’s deeply buried nuclear facilities, according to a former Air Force intelligence officer.

Israel dropped a series of what are believed to have been 2,000-pound bombs on Nasrallah’s bunker in Beirut’s Dahiya neighbourhood. By hitting the same target repeatedly, the Israeli air force succeeded in destroying Nasrallah’s bunker.

It’s a tactic that might work on Iran’s nuclear facilities, hidden deep in mountainous desert areas.

I am inclined to discard the speculation, albeit well-reasoned and stay with an emphatic statement made by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant recently.

“Israel’s strike on Iran will be lethal, precise and especially surprising.

It won’t understand what happened to it, or how.” The statement was made during a visit to IDF Intelligence Unit 9900 — a unit that gathers intelligence in theatres of war. Gallant added, “On the other hand, Iran’s strike last week was aggressive, but it failed because it was inaccurate.”

Destroying those buried facilities would be extremely challenging," said Scott Murray, a retired Air Force colonel with extensive experience targeting U.S. adversaries in the Middle East.

Hypothetically speaking, if tasked with the job, the U.S. Air Force would likely rely on one of its largest conventional weapons to destroy such a site. The GBU-57, or "Massive Ordnance Penetrator," is a 30,000-pound bomb encased in steel that allows it to burrow deep into the earth before exploding.

Israel, as it did to kill Nasrallah in Beirut, would have to rely on a series of smaller bombs striking the same spot.  However, the difference is that Israeli pilots would face surface-to-air missile defences in Iran.

“It will be ten times more difficult,” he said.

Margin note:- Furthermore, Iran’s nuclear  sites are far too  many and too widely dispersed for that option to be seriously considered.

Some analysts say Israel is most likely to respond to Iran's Oct. 1 attack by targeting Iranian military installations, especially those that produce ballistic missiles like the ones used in the attack. It could also seek to destroy Iranian air defence systems and missile-launching facilities.

If Israel does decide to go after Iran's nuclear facilities, which many experts on Iran and current and former officials see as unlikely, it could have impacts that go beyond military ones.

"In the process, Israel risks causing nuclear contamination as some of these facilities are close to population centres," said Ali Vaez, the Iran Project Director at Crisis Group, a Brussels-headquartered think tank. "It also exposes itself to an Iranian attack on Dimona, which could cause an environmental disaster in Israel."

Dimona is an Israeli nuclear installation located in the Negev.

Vaez said that an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear programme would also be "bound to push Iran to withdraw" from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which has been in force since 1970, and "dash toward the ultimate deterrent given that its conventional and regional deterrence have clearly proven insufficient to protect its homeland."

Iran has threatened to escalate its attacks against Israel if it comes under attack and it has characterised its nuclear and energy facilities as "red lines," without elaborating.

In fact, according to a 2022 week-long simulation involving 30 leading Iran and Middle East experts, any attempt by Israel to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, regardless of whether it is deemed successful, unsuccessful or even partially successful would only serve as a catalyst to further nuclear proliferation by Iran. It would also likely, according to Wikistrat, the Israel-based security and global risks consultancy that hosted the simulation, spur Iran's regional competitor Saudi Arabia to accelerate its nuclear programme and see Russia and China further drawn into the region to take a more active role in Iran's defence by supplying it with advanced defensive capabilities.

Oren Kesler, Wikistrat's CEO, said he did not think Israel would target Iran's nuclear facilities because hitting them with bombs, no matter how powerful, would not be sufficient to dismantle them. He said any bombing campaign would need to be supplemented with ground operations by special forces and this would require Israel to "reallocate its military power" from other areas such as Lebanon at a time when it forces are being stretched on other fronts.

However, Kesler said there are other things Israel may be considering as it decides what to do next.

"The answer in one word is time,” he said.

"In the Middle East, you cannot deny the impact time has. Sometimes it's the best result you can get. Israel's not going to destroy Iran's nuclear programme. It may be able to postpone it, though. And with time, you can build capabilities. You can make new alliances. You need to ask yourself, what happens if tomorrow the leadership changes in Iran? Who's to say Iran later on won't decide to move away from a policy of brinkmanship?"

In the meantime, let’s wait and see if Yoav Gallant’s surprise option produces the desired effect.

 

G'mar Chatima Tova.

Beni,

10th of October, 2024.

Safe and sound.

 

 

 It has been a hectic week! Far more than usual in this hyperactive region.

 David Daoud is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), focusing on Hezbollah, Israel, and Lebanon issues.

I am quoting from an op-ed he wrote for the Atlantic Council think tank

“On September 27, the unimaginable happened. At approximately 5:22 p.m. local time, reports emerged of a massive Israeli strike on the predominantly Shia southern suburbs of Beirut, known colloquially as Dahiyeh. Six buildings had been flattened, throwing up pillars of thick reddish smoke against Beirut’s skyline. Later in the day Hezbollah’s Al-Manar news outlet said the Israeli explosives had ‘terraformed’ the area. “The first comments from the Israelis were uncharacteristically cryptic, even for them, about the strike’s target. But clearly, it had been someone of high value, someone they wanted to ensure didn’t survive. Then the news started to trickle in on Hebrew media: Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah had been targeted, and there was a growing assessment that he was killed.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s media outlets refused to deny Nasrallah’s presence at the strike’s location, exponentially increasing the likelihood of his death with each passing hour. Confirmation—from Hezbollah and Israel—would only come the next day on September 28. Nasrallah had died, leaving behind an organisation virtually synonymous with his name.

Replacing Nasrallah—not just the man, but the cultish icon—will be a heavy lift whose chances of success are improbable at best, leaving his death as perhaps the one obstacle Hezbollah may not be able to overcome. If, in time, Nasrallah’s demise contributes to the dissolution of the organization that had become so identified with his person during his lifetime, the world will be better off for it.”

Jonathan Panikoff (The Atlantic Council) opines that Iran is split internally about how hard to respond to Israel. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and other hard-liners are likely advocating for a more aggressive response to restore deterrence and shore up Hezbollah. They are almost certainly the factions that pushed for Friday’s ballistic missile strike on Israel.

However, Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s reformist president who took office in July, has spoken of Israel’s escalation as “a trap” to draw Tehran into a wider war that it cannot win. Avoiding direct conflict with Israel is crucial to Iran’s desire to repair its ailing economy and ease Western sanctions against it.

Israel has put Iran in a no-win situation. If it fails to escalate and strike Israel, it loses credibility with its proxies, which believe it hasn’t done enough to help them. Yet escalation could result in retaliatory strikes from Israel on Iran itself, up to and including its nuclear facilities.

Last Friday’s strike looks like something of a compromise, enough of an attack to assuage hard-liners and buy Iran’s leadership time without going so far as to trigger a wider war with Israel or, even worse, with the United States.   

Importantly, Israel’s recent actions have restored the aura of its intelligence capability and strengthened its ability to deter its enemies. Both had been called into question following Hamas’s terrorist attack on October 7, 2023.

It has been the remarkable quality and depth of Israeli intelligence, and probably also its vast mining of data, that has allowed its change of course with Hezbollah.

Accurate and precise intelligence is what allowed Israel to take out Fuad Shukr, one of Nasrallah’s most crucial lieutenants, in late July and to sabotage thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies in September. It was necessary to pinpoint the location of Nasrallah and it will be a valuable asset in any future confrontation.

Unnamed sources told Reuters that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been taken to a secure location inside Iran. The move was made amid heightened security concerns for his safety, a day after the IDF assassinated Nasrallah.

The move to safeguard Iran's top decision-maker is the latest show of nervousness by the Iranian authorities as Israel launched a series of devastating attacks on Hezbollah. Nonetheless, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been urging to settle the score with the “Zionist entity.” Some Middle East affairs analysts claim that Ali Khamenei overruling his aides and advisers ordered the recent missile attack.

In a lead article that appeared in the Economist this week the authors cautioned, “Ever since Hamas’s slaughter of Israelis on October 7th 2023, violence has been spreading. One year on, the Middle East is an inch away from an all-out war between Israel and Iran. Israel’s skilful decapitation of Hezbollah, prompted the Islamic Republic to rain missiles on Israel on October 1st. Israel may retaliate, perhaps striking Iran’s industrial, military or nuclear facilities, hoping to end once and for all the threat it poses to the Jewish state.

Kill or be killed is the region’s new logic. Deterrence and diplomacy would be better.”     I doubt if we will accept their advice.

I want thank friends and family concerned for my safety and wellbeing.

I am safe and sound. The last time I checked all the family were ‘present and accounted for.’

Shana Tova.

 

We live in interesting times.

 

Beni, 

4th of October, 2024.

 

Ambiguity.

 

This preamble to this week’s post is about my birthday party. If you didn’t know better, you would probably think I am a nine-year-old telling my friends what a great party I had. Explaining that I hadn’t invited them because the invitations were sent mostly to my family. Admittedly, at times I behave more like a nine-year-old and less like a ninety-year-old.

In retrospect the change of venue from the swimming pool to the club house definitely was for the better!  I mentioned that we had to move because the pool was mistakenly “double-booked.”

Situated not far from the pool the club house is ideally equipped for small to medium size gatherings. The food was served buffet-style, bought from a local caterer. The place has all the audio-visual equipment we required.    The presentation projected onto a large backdrop screen included pre-recorded segments, mostly family photos and clips.

Your are welcome to view them by assessing the attached link -

 https://youtu.be/7_ApSb_qJMY

The background music isn’t played in the link. However, birthday greetings from my eldest daughter and her husband Marc were played intermittently on the backdrop screen. They live in Auckland, NZ.  

Here’s the link-

https://youtu.be/iSzOnQRAm5Y

While we were partying Israel allegedly ‘sparked off’ another pyrotechnic show.

An Associated Press correspondent reporting from Beirut said — “The Hezbollah commander killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs Friday was one of the Lebanese militant group’s top military officials, in charge of its elite forces, and had been on Washington’s wanted list for years.

Ibrahim Akil, 61, was the second top commander of Hezbollah to be killed in an Israeli airstrike in the southern suburb of Beirut in as many months, dealing a severe blow to the group’s command structure.

The strike Friday came as the group was still reeling from a widely suspected Israeli attack targeting Hezbollah communications earlier this week when thousands of pagers exploded simultaneously. The attack killed 12 people, mostly Hezbollah members, and injured thousands.

Akil was a member of Hezbollah’s highest military body, the Jihad Council since 2008, and head of the elite Radwan Forces. The forces also fought in Syria gaining experience in urban warfare and counterinsurgency.

During the 1980s, Akil was a principal member of Islamic Jihad Organization—Hizballah’s terrorist cell—that claimed the bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, which killed 63 people, and the U.S. Marine barracks in October 1983, which killed 241 U.S. personnel.

In the 1980s, Akil directed the taking of American and German hostages in Lebanon and held them there.

Akil was under U.S. sanctions and in 2023, the U.S. State Department announced a reward of up to $7 million for information leading to his “identification, location, arrest, and/or conviction.”

Israel has consistently upheld a policy of ambiguity regarding its alleged involvement in ‘targeted assassinations’, So I doubt if it will be collecting the reward.

Trying to fathom out we did and how it was accomplished is mind- boggling.

Take care,

Beni

21/09/2024.

Tunnel Vision.

 In a video prepared mainly for foreign news media outlets, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari gave a tour of the claustrophobic underground passageway in Rafah's Tel Sultan neighbourhood. The tunnel where the murdered Israeli hostages were kept. The place was littered with bottles of urine, women's clothes, and large blood stains on the ground, where the hostages Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Almog Sarusi, Carmel Gat and Alex Lobanov were held and executed at the end of last month. The army first presented the video to the families and they agreed to show it to the public as well. In the video, one sees IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari going down into the narrow, low tunnel, unable to stand upright. describing the conditions under which the hostages were held there.  

Another IDF spokesman said it did not have any specific or real-time intelligence on the six hostages being held there in the weeks before they were murdered, but had indications that the hostages could be in the general area they were searching, and therefore had operated carefully above ground and even more so below the surface in the tunnels. Apparently, after spotting Israeli forces approaching the area, the Hamas terrorists guarding the six hostages decided to execute them.

Hagari also aired a Hebrew version of the same video aimed at reaching Israeli viewers. “They were held here in this tunnel in horrific conditions, where there is no air to breathe, where you cannot stand upright. They survived, but they were murdered by Hamas terrorists. There are still hostages, 101, some of them are alive in the same conditions in tunnels like this in Gaza.” He said.

I’ve noticed that on previous occasions when interviewed, Hagari was meticulously careful not to add personal comments. Nevertheless, he intimated that time was running out for the rest of the hostages still alive. Commentators, Israeli affairs analysts and run-of-the-mill observers like myself noticed that Daniel Hagari was making a clear, critical point. “Close the deal now!” Prime Minister Netanyahu’s obstinate insistence on commanding the Philadelphi Corridor is tantamount to prolonging the war in Gaza and adversely affecting IDF operations in the West Bank and the northern front against Hezbollah in Lebanon. One analyst called it “Tunnel Vision.”

Netanyahu has had a bad week!

“The Bibi Files”, a new documentary by filmmakers Alexis Bloom and Alex Gibney, which features never-before-seen footage of Israeli police interrogating Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, his family and his inner circle on corruption allegations. The documentary was screened as a work-in-progress at the 2024 Toronto Film Festival on Monday, hours after a Jerusalem court rejected a petition by Netanyahu to block the screening.

The documentary, which shows leaked interrogation footage of the Israeli prime minister, made its debut at the festival.

Israeli courts rejected Netanyahu’s request before the film – in which he is seen furiously denying allegations of bribery and corruption – was unveiled to a tense and vocal audience, many of whom were carrying signs reading “Bring Them Home” and “Deal Now”, referring to the hostages held in Gaza.

The film, directed by Alexis Bloom and produced by Alex Gibney, builds a rigorous and damning case, posing an argument close observers may already be familiar with: Netanyahu is prolonging the devastating war in Gaza to avoid possible prison time stemming from corruption charges. A humanitarian crisis flouting international law is all about his self-preservation.

According to the documentary – which Bloom began working on before October 7, when a source provided Gibney with the leaked videos – Netanyahu’s lawyer filed a motion to delay the trial currently scheduled for December. The lawyer cites the ongoing war as the reason.

“I’ve never seen the depth of moral corruption as I’ve seen in this man,” Gibney, the director of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, told the audience following the screening. A member of what appeared to be a largely pro-Israel audience policed Gibney’s language, interrupting the producer to clarify that Netanyahu had not yet been found guilty. The attempts at seizing control of the narrative, both on screen and off, didn’t end there.

The interrogation videos shown in the film were recorded by police between 2016 and 2018 before they formally brought charges of corruption against Netanyahu. The footage includes the prime minister addressing allegations that he and his wife accepted expensive champagne, Cuban cigars and jewellery from the Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan. Netanyahu is heard minimizing the champagne and cigars as simply gifts from a friend, while denying knowledge of the jewellery.

Several witnesses who worked for Milchan and Netanyahu are also shown speaking to police. They paint a picture of regular gifts expected by Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, in exchange for favours. One such favour includes a marginal tax break extension that benefited Milchan. Netanyahu argues his unusual interference regarding the tax break was for the good of the state, not Milchan. Meanwhile, the LA Confidential producer corroborated much of the witness testimony, though, in one excerpt, he gently asks police not to use the word “bribery” because it would make him look bad.

Netanyahu is also seen vehemently denying allegations that he signed off on regulations favouring the Israeli media mogul Shaul Elovitch. The prime minister repeatedly and dramatically calls one of his top aides, Nir Hefetz, a liar for saying so. Other witnesses argue Elovitch paid back the alleged generosity by allowing Netanyahu to directly influence coverage of his family on the popular website Walla.

The incriminating evidence in the interrogation videos has already been leaked and reported on by Israeli media. But the videos will never be shown to the public (at least legally) in Israel. According to Gibney, Israeli law grants privacy to subjects who have been photographed in official proceedings, which would make publication of the footage illegal. “It’s a law peculiar to Israel [that] doesn’t affect the rest of the world,” Gibney said.

He explained that they brought The Bibi Files to Toronto, as a work-in-progress, because it urgently needed to be seen while the death toll in Gaza continues to rise. But also because they are seeking distribution partners at the festival’s market, hoping to get the film released as quickly as possible for the world to see.

Though the documentary doesn’t reveal new information, Gibney explains that for an audience familiar with Netanyahu’s carefully stage-managed speeches, watching his agitation under interrogation, where his performance begins to crack, is illuminating. At various points when police officers confront him with incriminating testimony from his peers, Netanyahu raises fists and repeatedly slams his hand against his desk as if the banging will silence the accusations.

“Even in the interrogation videos, you see performances,” says Gibney. “But you see performances that are not as finely tuned; that are performed for an audience of three people; that he doesn’t think is going to get out of the room.”

The Bibi Files contextualizes the interrogation videos with a portrait of Netanyahu, whose career is built on stoking fear and promising security, and whose personal life is largely in service of his wife Sara’s turbulent moods and expensive lifestyle. Sara Netanyahu’s erratic testimonies and outbursts during testimony are also included in the footage.

Insiders like the Israeli journalist Raviv Drucker, former Shin Bet head Ami Ayalon, a childhood friend and more, are on hand as talking heads. They connect the dots and reveal the long-running pattern of Netanyahu serving his own interests while clinging to power – from deliberate ploys to sabotage an alliance between the West Bank and Gaza by enabling Hamas, to his alliance with the violent far right and attempted overhaul of the supreme court to save himself from prosecution.

Mittal Balmes Cohen of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem stated, "We won't see a substantial change in public opinion in Israel, but in the international arena it has great significance."

I’ll conclude with a personal titbit. On the 11th of September our inner family circle quietly celebrated my 90th birthday. Later this month we plan to have a much larger celebration.

 

Take care.

Beni,   12th of September, 2024.

 

The Philadelphi Corridor.

“Through the street outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s house passed a slow procession of empty coffins - carried by protesters in a sea of Israeli flags. Since six Israeli hostages were found dead in a Gaza tunnel last weekend, the weight of the war there has hung heavier on Israel’s leader.” Said a reporter for the BBC. The hostages were executed by their Hamas guards shortly before IDF troops discovered their bodies. “I think the fact that they were alive and murdered right before they could have been saved – that broke it,” said one of the protestors in Tel Aviv. “That’s a breaking point for a lot of people –they realise that sitting at home is not going to do anything.” Tens of thousands of people took to the streets again on Monday, after mass demonstrations flooded the streets a day earlier. Many want to see this moment as a turning point, but Prime Minister Netanyahu has been here before. He’s lived through months of these street protests – and years of similar ones. Protected by a parliamentary majority, his strategy has largely been to ignore their demands. Maybe something has changed. For the second time in 48 hours, Netanyahu held a press conference to argue his uncompromising position on the Philadelphi corridor in Gaza, the major sticking point to a ceasefire. On Monday he addressed Israeli media, on Wednesday night it was international journalists. That he has held these two events in as many days, after months of no press conferences, can only be explained by the pressure he is under, domestically and from foreign leaders. Both press conferences were defiant and uncompromising - there was little hope for the families of hostages desperate for a deal and a reunion with their loved ones. Netanyahu's argument is that Hamas will try to rearm and potentially smuggle hostages out of Gaza if his forces leave the southern corridor. He believes, maybe rightly, that if they left then international pressure would prevent them returning. On the one hand Netanyahu insists Israel doesn't want to remain in Gaza forever, but on the other hand he says there is no alternative force that could or would keep security on the border. Netanyahu stands almost alone right now, under extreme pressure from his own people and The White House and surrounded by a shrinking cohort of trusted advisers. He is convinced he is acting for the future of Israel but he hasn't convinced even some of his closest allies. Netanyahu is fighting to stay in Gaza, fighting to stay in power and fighting to secure his legacy, badly damaged after the security failures of October 7 and the backlash for failing to get the hostages out. Many other leaders would have resigned long before now, and this might be the fight of Netanyahu's political life, but you wouldn't bet against him winning it. In another interview he said, “It’s unlikely that a realistic security plan exists that would prevent the smuggling of weapons under that critical buffer zone between Egypt and Gaza. Bring me anyone who will actually show us, not on paper, not in words, but on the ground, day after day, week after week, month after month, that they can actually prevent the recurrence of weapons smuggling. If such a plan exists, we’re open to considering it. But I don’t see that happening… and until that happens, we’re there, with the IDF protecting the Philadelphi Corridor. “When we want to come back [to Philadelphi] we’ll pay an exorbitant price in many fields,” including the loss of soldiers’ lives in retaking the Corridor, Netanyahu told reporters in Jerusalem, “We’re in now, [if] we leave, we won’t [be able to] come back. You know it. Everybody here knows it. Everybody in here knows what pressure will be put on us so that we don’t come back, what price we’ll have to pay if we do want to come back, it’s just not going to happen,” Netanyahu stated. Many well qualified military analysts, more familiar with the Philadelphi Corridor than Netanyahu is, claim that it can, if need be, retaken quickly without loss of life. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets again on Monday, after mass demonstrations flooded Tel Aviv last night. Many want to see this moment as a turning point, but Prime Minister Netanyahu has been here before. He’s lived through months of these street protests – and years of similar ones. Protected by a parliamentary majority, his strategy has largely been to ignore their demands. In a live press conference on Monday night, Netanyahu defied anyone to demand more concessions from Israel in its negotiations over a hostage and ceasefire deal, brokered by the US. "These murderers executed six of our hostages; they shot them in the back of the head,” he said. “And now, after this, we’re asked to show seriousness? We’re asked to make concessions?” The message that would send to Hamas, he said, would be: “kill more hostages [and] you’ll get more concessions.” A key demand of Hamas is that Israel withdraws all its forces from the Philadelphi Corridor. Israel’s security chiefs, including the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, have been widely reported in local media as supporting alternatives to keeping troops on the ground. Yoav Gallant has publicly pressed the cabinet to back a proposed compromise. The most dangerous moment of Israel’s previous mass protests, sparked by Netanyahu’s judicial reform plans, was when he tried to sack Gallant – and was then forced to reinstate him. If he tried that again, says political analyst Tamar Hermann of Israel’s Democracy Institute, that could be the real turning point for protests here. The threat to him from demonstrators now, she says, is “zero”. Most are left-leaning critics whose opposition to the prime minister runs far deeper than the hostage crisis in Gaza. “Netanyahu knows better than I do,” she said, “the best thing is to let it play as a safety valve – let people say, ‘we hate you, you are a murderer’.” Prime Minister Netanyahu, protected by his parliamentary majority, seems to believe he can ride out the demands for a deal being made from the street, at least for now. But the demands from his own defence minister, from the US president, could prove harder to ignore. I certainly hope so. Have a good weekend. Beni, 5th of September, 2024. A

The Bedouin.

Two weeks before IDF troops rescued Farhan al-Qadi from the Gaza tunnels in which he had been kept for the majority of his ten-and-a-half-month captivity, the Hamas terrorists tasked with guarding him fled leaving him to fend for himself. According to news media reports, al-Qadi’s captors abandoned him in an underground room with nothing but some bread to eat. It appears that they heard the IDF’s Combat Engineering Corps pneumatic drills working nearby. Before leaving, the Hamas terrorists rigged the surrounding tunnels with explosives, to ensure that he would not make it out alive, should he try to escape. When IDF troops entered the tunnels days later, al-Qadi was asked to identify himself. “Don’t shoot! I’m Farhan,” he answered. When “I heard Hebrew outside the door, I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it,” he told President Isaac Herzog in a phone call soon after his rescue on Tuesday. According to the Kan public broadcaster, he was able to inform the IDF which parts of the surrounding tunnel system were booby-trapped. Al-Qadi was abducted on October 7 from Kibbutz Magen, near the Gaza border, where he worked as a security guard at a packaging plant. The 52-year-old Bedouin father of 11 recounted that he was kept in complete darkness in the tunnels for most of his 326 days in captivity. At the start of his captivity, al-Qadi said he was held in an apartment above ground with several other hostages, but he was soon moved below ground. “After about two months, the terrorists moved me to a tunnel,” he was quoted by Israel TV Channel 12 as having said. “I was alone there, with only the terrorists around me. I didn’t know the difference between night and day.” “The terrorists were masked, and gave me food, mostly slices of bread — there was very little food,” he said. Qaid Farhad Alkadi, 52, is one of Israel’s roughly 300,000 Bedouin Arabs, a poor and traditionally nomadic minority that has a complicated relationship with the government and the courts. While they are Israeli citizens and some serve in the army, about a third of them, including Alkadi, live in villages the government considers illegal and wants to demolish. Since November, about 70% of Khirbet Karkur residents have been told the government plans to raze their homes because they were built without permits in a “protected forest” not zoned for housing. Alkadi’s family hasn’t received a notice, but the looming mass displacement of this close-knit community has cast a pall on what has otherwise been a joyous 24 hours. Unrecognized villages are not connected to state water, sewage, or electricity infrastructure, and the roads to many, including Khirbet Karkur, are dusty and potholed. Khirbet Karkur is nestled in the shadow of a large garbage dump, and the smell of rotting garbage drifts over the squat corrugated metal homes. Piles of construction debris and trash ring the small cluster of dwellings. Israel’s Supreme Court has previously deemed many of the unrecognized Bedouin villages illegal, and the government has said they are trying to bring order to a lawless area and give a better quality of life to the impoverished minority. For decades, Israel has been trying to convince scattered, off-the-grid Bedouin villagers that it is in their interest to move into government-designated Bedouin townships, where the government can provide them with water, electricity and schools. Muhammad Abu Tailakh, the head of Khirbet Karkur’s local council is also a public health lecturer at Ben Gurion University in nearby Be’er Sheva. Most of the Negev Bedouin tribes migrated to the Negev from the Arabian Desert, Transjordan, Egypt, and the Sinai from the 18th century onwards. Traditional Bedouin lifestyle began to change after the French invasion of Egypt in 1798. The rise of the puritanical Wahhabi sect forced them to reduce their raiding of caravans. Instead, the Bedouin acquired a monopoly on guiding pilgrim caravans to Mecca, as well as selling them provisions. The opening of the Suez Canal reduced the dependence on desert caravans and attracted the Bedouin to newly formed settlements that sprung up along the Canal. Bedouin settling in permanent communities began under Ottoman rule following the need to establish law and order in the Negev; the Ottoman Empire viewed the Bedouins as a threat to the state's control. In 1858, a new Ottoman Land Law was issued that offered the legal grounds for the displacement of the Bedouin. Few Bedouin opted to register their lands, due to lack of enforcement by the Ottomans, illiteracy, refusal to pay taxes and lack of written documentation of ownership. The Negev Bedouin are Arabs who originally had a nomadic lifestyle rearing livestock in the deserts of southern Israel. The community is traditional and conservative, with a well-defined value system that directs and monitors behaviour and interpersonal relations. The Negev Bedouin tribes have been divided into three classes, according to their origin: descendants of ancient Arabian nomads, descendants of some Sinai Bedouin tribes, and Palestinian peasants (Fellaheen) who came from cultivated areas. Contrary to the image of the Bedouin as fierce stateless nomads roving the entire region, by the turn of the 20th century, much of the Bedouin population in Palestine was settled, semi-nomadic, and engaged in agriculture according to an intricate system of land ownership, grazing rights, and water access. Today, many Bedouin call themselves 'Negev Arabs' rather than 'Bedouin', explaining that 'Bedouin' identity is intimately tied in with a pastoral nomadic way of life – a way of life they say is over. Although the Bedouin in Israel continue to be perceived as nomads, today almost all of them are settled in permanent communities. Fast forward to 1963 when IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan was in favour of transferring the Bedouin to the centre of the country in order to eliminate land claims and create a cadre of urban labourers: "We should transform the Bedouin into an urban proletariat—in industry, services, construction, and agriculture. 88% of the Israeli population are not farmers, let the Bedouin be like them. Indeed, this will be a radical move which means that the Bedouin would not live on his land with his herds, but would become an urban person who comes home in the afternoon and puts his slippers on. His children will get used to a father who wears pants, without a dagger, and who does not pick out their nits in public. They will go to school, their hair combed and parted. This will be a revolution, but it can be achieved in two generations. Without coercion but with governmental direction ... this phenomenon of the Bedouins will disappear." Ben-Gurion supported this idea, but the Bedouin strongly opposed it. Later, the proposal was withdrawn. Today they are only partially integrated with problems yet to be solved. Take care. Beni, 29th of August, 2024.

Cemeteries.

 

An editorial in yesterday’s edition of the Jerusalem Post stated unequivocally that Hamas's intransigence is preventing the war in Gaza from ending.

“It’s not Israel that is holding up a deal that would bring some of the hostages back home; it’s Hamas.”

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken made a determined effort to draw Hamas fully into the latest round of negotiations, “It’s now incumbent on Hamas to do the same [as Israel]. And then the parties, with the help of the mediators the United States, Egypt and Qatar, have to come together and complete the process of reaching clear understandings about how they’ll implement commitments that they’ve made under this agreement,” Blinken said.

Details of the bridging agreement that have been leaked in various media reports indicated that Israel has gone as far as it can in its insistence on maintaining a presence in the two critical Gaza security corridors of Philadelphi and Netzarim.

US President Joe Biden accused Hamas of “backing away” from the plan during his speech Monday night at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The Jerusalem Post editorial summed up saying. “We thank them for standing with Israel and for confirming over the last 24 hours that it’s not Israel that is holding up a deal that would bring some of the hostages back home; it’s Hamas.”

 A margin note “The Jerusalem Post professes to be in the Israeli political centre, yet it is widely considered to be on the political right.”

CNN reported from Doha, Qatar that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that despite reported comments from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has agreed to withdrawals of IDF forces from Gaza that are laid out in the recent mediators’ proposal to get closer to a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.

“The agreement is very clear on the schedule and the locations of IDF withdrawals from Gaza, and Israel has agreed to that,” said Blinken in remarks to reporters before departing Qatar.

Blinken was responding to Israeli media reports that Netanyahu told a group of families of terror victims and hostages that he conveyed to Blinken that Israel will not leave the Philadelphi corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border and the Netzarim corridor, which bisects Gaza, “regardless of the pressure to do so.” They are “strategic military and political assets,” Netanyahu added, according to the reports.

Margin note: Netanyahu is not averse to “talking out of both sides of his mouth.”

Blinken said that Netanyahu told him directly in their meeting that Israel agreed to “the bridging proposal and thus the detailed plan” for withdrawal.

Back to the main text: -

Defence minister Yoav Galant and other Likud Knesset members tend to agree with Blinken and remain at odds with the prime minister.

It’s appropriate at this juncture to conclude by adding something else unearthed in Gaza.

Earlier this week, the BBC and other British news outlets reported that Israeli forces operating in Gaza discovered a seven-page document dated October 5, 2022.

The document outlined Hamas’s intention to pressure the UK government into reversing its stance on Jerusalem following then-Prime Minister Liz Truss's announcement to relocate the British embassy from Tel Aviv.

The planned coercive measures threatened in the document include exhuming the remains of British soldiers buried in Gaza.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) has maintained a cemetery in Gaza for over a century, containing the remains of more than 3,000 Commonwealth troops from the World Wars. Many of these soldiers died in 1917, fighting the Ottomans during a conflict that led to British rule in Palestine.

Other demands included paying "lease fees" for the cemetery land dating back to 1917. The document warns that if the UK does not comply, the bodies would be removed and held "hostage."

Though predating the current war, the threat outlined in the document is definitely real.

There’s another CWGC cemetery a crow’s fly away in Be’er- Sheva.

1,241 Commonwealth soldiers (973 British, 173 Australian, 31 New Zealanders and 1 Indian) are buried there. They fought and died in the battles over Gaza and Be'er-Sheva during World War I. During the battle a force numbering 40,000 infantrymen attacked Be’er Sheva capturing Turkish trenches west of the town. In the meanwhile, approximately 800 mounted forces (after a long flanking movement) fought east of the town and after a whole day of fighting the Australian Light Horse charged the Turkish defences just before sunset and liberated Be'er-Sheva.

When I visited the cemetery many years ago, I looked for and found the grave of Seymour van den Bergh, an English Jew who fell in battle five days before the liberation of Be'er-Sheva.

While paging down through the account of the two cemeteries I recalled something I had written about a remarkable discovery in an industrial site near Acco (Acre). Work clearing the site was impeded by a small burial plot containing four graves. The plot was very old and the graves appeared to be Muslim graves. However, archaeologists from the Israeli antiquities department sent to investigate the site suspected that the graves weren’t authentic. On examination one grave contained a skeleton with a missing leg and arm. The discovery provided the answer to the mystery of the last resting place of Louis-Marie-Joseph-Maximilian Caffarelli du Falga a French officer who fought in Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. Caffarelli lost his leg in an earlier battle but I’m told Napoleon refused to pension off his best military cartographer. At one of the assaults on Acco a musket ball shattered Caffarelli’s right arm and the army surgeon had to amputate it. The wound was infected and gangrene set in. A few days later he died. Knowing that the Arabs were inclined to desecrate French military graves, Cafferelli and three other French soldiers were interred with Muslim style headstones.

The Israeli government traced descendants of the hapless Cafferelli and they were brought to a ceremony commemorating the death of their long dead ancestor. “Vive la difference.”

 

Have a good weekend.

 

Beni, 22nd of August, 2024.