naraburns nihil supernum
6mo ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
Israel bent the knee, unsurprisingly. The siege is all but broken. There are also reports floating around that the US is pressuring Israel to delay the invasion. The Israelis basically tried a genteel version of ethnic cleansing by enticing Egypt to take them in, apparently with the blessing of EU+US. But it flopped and the Egyptians told the Europeans that the refugees would be allowed to stream into Europe the first possible moment. Given the explosive politics re: mass migration in Europe, I suspect the Europeans got cold feet and backed off.
So we're seeing two different versions of reality playing out. Israeli statements continue to be incredibly hawkish and all-but-confirming an invasion. Meanwhile the US is undercutting and undermining those efforts by either reversing or delaying Israeli decisions. If Israel will not be able to ethnically cleanse the Gaza strip - which it transparently wants to do - then I don't see how they are not walking straight into a trap here.
I'm not sure that Israel wants or would prefer 'genteel' ethnic cleansing, even ignoring the US and EU reactions to such a thing. Some of the individual settler-groups, sure, but from the IDF's perspective it's kinda a white elephant. And as bad as the issue of the Gazan Strip is today, at least the IDF wasn't considering a war with Egypt every time a few hitch-hikers get kidnapped.
Of course, on the flip side, I don't think Egypt wants to handle just the civilians who want to leave the Strip, or just the civilians for only a few months, and is willing to threaten to mass ship them to the EU even if Israel could credibly commit, and Israel can't credibly commit. So it doesn't really matter.
On the gripping hand, there were a lot of options on the table that involved ground forces (or prolonged active bombing campaigns), without permanently taking the Gaza Strip, but I'm not sure the delays -- especially in when combined with unsearch humanitarian aid -- are compatible with them. Maybe Biden's just trying to buy time before those more energetic efforts start, either to try to line up some Muslim custodian government or for hostage negotiation or both, but a lot of stuff coming from the White House right now seem like they're just pivoting really hard to the Squad alignment.
Which... boots on the ground in the Gazan Strip seems like a recipe for years of bloodbaths, so maybe that just works out? But there's a limit to the model of war as politics by other means. Trivially, 'just barrier down Hamas and lob a bomb in there when you spot someone with a big hat' was the pre-2023 Likud philosophy, and it doesn't seem like there's some obvious way to prevent a re-occurrence of 10/7 or some similar category of catastrophe. Yes, obviously the intel failures and work permit program and some imports will be getting a lot of scrutiny, but that's a really fancy way of saying 'try again harder' that isn't likely to be perfect for forty years.
And even if you can persuade Netanyahu to make the 'right' decision today, there's little or no reason to suspect that he'll be in charge forever: the opposing coalition is in a double-digit lead right now, and not especially dovish right now. If you persuade them without persuading the people voting for them, they'll just get replaced in turn. And if you could persuade the broader populace, you wouldn't need to set up a game of musical chairs for the political leadership.
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
gattsuru 6mo ago
there's some obvious way to prevent a re-occurrence of 10/7 or some similar category of catastrophe
Having a heavily-mined no-man's land on your side of the border fence? There's a strip that is tens to a hundred meters wide already, make it 500m everywhere, dig anti-vehicle ditches, build electric fences, saturate the ground with landmines, turn the only remaining border crossing into a fortress.
Points for thinking about it, but I'm skeptical on both the political and pragmatic side.
Israel isn't a signatory to the Ottowa Treaty, but large deployments of landmines near a civilian area would be a long-lasting cause celebre even before some teenager became an example, and their use in the past at the West Bank / Golan Heights in much more conventional military contexts had previously been a matter of a lot of international fuckery. There are also just pretty high upper limits to the utility of landmines in an open environment where your sappers would be near-constantly observed. Electric fences are so simultaneously useless (defeated by gloves!) and politically controversial that they've been a goto slur for electronic monitoring.
A lot of the remainder of your suggests are just things already present, but harder, in ways that may not be possible. Israel hadn't closed all but one border crossing, but the number of crossings dropped dramatically from 2005-2011, culminating in the closure of the Karni crossing, while the remaining handful had been heavily fortified. Of the three major remaining ones, Rafah is in Egyptian territory and Kerem Shalom is politically necessary as part of relationships with Egypt. There's already some use of anti-vehicle ditches and other terrain.
10/7 seems like it depended on overwhelming observation, surveillance, and quick-response features so fast and so heavily that the IDF response took hours; I'm not seeing how 500m would have changed much of it.
And, yes, as 2fara points out, you need to block of not just the tactics from 10/7, but the whole class of any successful attack of this scale.
I think you’re overestimating the efficiency of land mines. They aren’t just dump-and-forget. See this manual for some of the complexities involved. Note in particular figure 2-2: possible effects of minefields. Disrupt the enemy, slow him down, turn him towards a different angle of approach…or maybe, maybe stop his advance. All of these are only considered effective when combined with integrated fires. In other words, if you give the enemy a passive obstacle, he will circumvent it.
Getting enough mines to cover the border is achievable. At which point irregular forces of terrorists just…start tossing explosives in that direction. Sending dogs or prisoners out to find—or make—a path. They don’t even have to exploit any gaps, just waste Israeli time and money repairing and replacing static obstacles.
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Notes -
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/biden-says-netanyahu-agrees-to-allow-continued-flow-of-humanitarian-aid-to-gaza/
Israel bent the knee, unsurprisingly. The siege is all but broken. There are also reports floating around that the US is pressuring Israel to delay the invasion. The Israelis basically tried a genteel version of ethnic cleansing by enticing Egypt to take them in, apparently with the blessing of EU+US. But it flopped and the Egyptians told the Europeans that the refugees would be allowed to stream into Europe the first possible moment. Given the explosive politics re: mass migration in Europe, I suspect the Europeans got cold feet and backed off.
So we're seeing two different versions of reality playing out. Israeli statements continue to be incredibly hawkish and all-but-confirming an invasion. Meanwhile the US is undercutting and undermining those efforts by either reversing or delaying Israeli decisions. If Israel will not be able to ethnically cleanse the Gaza strip - which it transparently wants to do - then I don't see how they are not walking straight into a trap here.
I'm not sure that Israel wants or would prefer 'genteel' ethnic cleansing, even ignoring the US and EU reactions to such a thing. Some of the individual settler-groups, sure, but from the IDF's perspective it's kinda a white elephant. And as bad as the issue of the Gazan Strip is today, at least the IDF wasn't considering a war with Egypt every time a few hitch-hikers get kidnapped.
Of course, on the flip side, I don't think Egypt wants to handle just the civilians who want to leave the Strip, or just the civilians for only a few months, and is willing to threaten to mass ship them to the EU even if Israel could credibly commit, and Israel can't credibly commit. So it doesn't really matter.
On the gripping hand, there were a lot of options on the table that involved ground forces (or prolonged active bombing campaigns), without permanently taking the Gaza Strip, but I'm not sure the delays -- especially in when combined with unsearch humanitarian aid -- are compatible with them. Maybe Biden's just trying to buy time before those more energetic efforts start, either to try to line up some Muslim custodian government or for hostage negotiation or both, but a lot of stuff coming from the White House right now seem like they're just pivoting really hard to the Squad alignment.
Which... boots on the ground in the Gazan Strip seems like a recipe for years of bloodbaths, so maybe that just works out? But there's a limit to the model of war as politics by other means. Trivially, 'just barrier down Hamas and lob a bomb in there when you spot someone with a big hat' was the pre-2023 Likud philosophy, and it doesn't seem like there's some obvious way to prevent a re-occurrence of 10/7 or some similar category of catastrophe. Yes, obviously the intel failures and work permit program and some imports will be getting a lot of scrutiny, but that's a really fancy way of saying 'try again harder' that isn't likely to be perfect for forty years.
And even if you can persuade Netanyahu to make the 'right' decision today, there's little or no reason to suspect that he'll be in charge forever: the opposing coalition is in a double-digit lead right now, and not especially dovish right now. If you persuade them without persuading the people voting for them, they'll just get replaced in turn. And if you could persuade the broader populace, you wouldn't need to set up a game of musical chairs for the political leadership.
Having a heavily-mined no-man's land on your side of the border fence? There's a strip that is tens to a hundred meters wide already, make it 500m everywhere, dig anti-vehicle ditches, build electric fences, saturate the ground with landmines, turn the only remaining border crossing into a fortress.
Points for thinking about it, but I'm skeptical on both the political and pragmatic side.
Israel isn't a signatory to the Ottowa Treaty, but large deployments of landmines near a civilian area would be a long-lasting cause celebre even before some teenager became an example, and their use in the past at the West Bank / Golan Heights in much more conventional military contexts had previously been a matter of a lot of international fuckery. There are also just pretty high upper limits to the utility of landmines in an open environment where your sappers would be near-constantly observed. Electric fences are so simultaneously useless (defeated by gloves!) and politically controversial that they've been a goto slur for electronic monitoring.
A lot of the remainder of your suggests are just things already present, but harder, in ways that may not be possible. Israel hadn't closed all but one border crossing, but the number of crossings dropped dramatically from 2005-2011, culminating in the closure of the Karni crossing, while the remaining handful had been heavily fortified. Of the three major remaining ones, Rafah is in Egyptian territory and Kerem Shalom is politically necessary as part of relationships with Egypt. There's already some use of anti-vehicle ditches and other terrain.
10/7 seems like it depended on overwhelming observation, surveillance, and quick-response features so fast and so heavily that the IDF response took hours; I'm not seeing how 500m would have changed much of it.
And, yes, as 2fara points out, you need to block of not just the tactics from 10/7, but the whole class of any successful attack of this scale.
Put millions of mines behind your barrier wall. So only people who breached it are going to explode.
Do not put random mines in Gaza or on fields.
Just dump massive amounts of them?
I think you’re overestimating the efficiency of land mines. They aren’t just dump-and-forget. See this manual for some of the complexities involved. Note in particular figure 2-2: possible effects of minefields. Disrupt the enemy, slow him down, turn him towards a different angle of approach…or maybe, maybe stop his advance. All of these are only considered effective when combined with integrated fires. In other words, if you give the enemy a passive obstacle, he will circumvent it.
Getting enough mines to cover the border is achievable. At which point irregular forces of terrorists just…start tossing explosives in that direction. Sending dogs or prisoners out to find—or make—a path. They don’t even have to exploit any gaps, just waste Israeli time and money repairing and replacing static obstacles.
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