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PaperclipPerfector
3mo ago
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Transnational Thursday for January 11, 2024
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What are Israel's goals in Gaza at this point, and what have they achieved towards them at this point? I've sort of lost track and would like to catch up.
All signs point to Israel continuing the war until at least the middle of 2024. Eg. the budget that was approved last week includes an additional 50bn shekels (on top of the 30 bn approved for the war in a previous 2023-24 war budget), which most folk assume mean 4-6 more months of war. Israel is debating and negotiating, this week, what that means in terms of goals and how the rest of the war will be fought. Updates likely to come this weekend or sometime next week, after Blinken completes his tour and finishes speaking with all the local leaders
Their stated objective is to eradicate all traces and operational capabilities for Hamas. That's a very nebulous goal - the armed portion of Hamas has somewhere around 20-25k members according to CIA's factbook. The organization is fragmented, though - and the political arm may have hundreds of thousands of supporters. Support for the palestinian side of the war, if not explicitly Hamas, has spread into the West bank, and there have been some brutal IDF operations there too. Especially the younger population in the west bank is becoming more and more restless, so there's a chance there will be further operations and escalation. Some estimates for the number of small arms and other weapons in the Gaza strip are as high as 400-500k, with many other tribes or armed groups potentially supporting Hamas, and participating in the war. So it seems like the IDF has enough plausible deniability, budget, and rope, to continue for an arbitrarily long period of time and with a wide range of potential activities. It will likely take a significant amount of combined internal and international pressure comes to bear before they are forced to call the war over and stop.
As far as specific goals - at the very least, there seems to be a systematic search for and dismantling of large underground facilities and tunnels, that Hamas and other organizations have built up over 20+ years. The IDF seems to be following a pattern of brutal bomb, drone attack, underground and urban combat, killing thousands of soldiers (most recent estimates are at 10000+ dead or captured combatants, and with close to 2000 of those listed as captured). It's impossible to estimate what percentage of the underground facilities have been destroyed so far, or how many are left - no one seems to know for sure how many there are or where to find them all. It seems likely that Israel is leaning heavily on captives and on its intelligence resources to, in real time, systematically scan each area, find and then eradicate the operational and military facilities - including any in the west bank. Estimates have something like 30-40% of all above ground buildings in Gaza destroyed, so far.
As far as political pressure to stop - conservative estimates are at a minimum of around 15000 palestinian civilians dead, with more than half the fatalities being under 18. There seems to be recent, rapidly increasing pressure on Israel to stop the ground offensive. While the US and others are not calling for an explicit cease fire, they are more and more aggressively calling for a stop to the civilian death toll. EU based pressure is complex, but follows similar broad strokes as US pressure - initially starting as pressure towards a ceasefire or end to civilian casualties. For the last 10-15 years, EU has been the primary source of aid to cover the cost of housing and infrastructure in Gaza (including significant funding for Israeli owned construction firms and companies to do the work). Billions of dollars' worth of infrastructure, built via primarily EU provided foreign aid, is being levelled by the IDF, and that part of the narrative seems to be getting more air time in the EU than in the US. Also, with Turkey/Israel relations worsening and attacks from Hezbollah/Lebanon in the north of Israel intensifying, news in the EU is seeing more talk about avoiding an escalation of the conflict than what's coming from the US. For context, Turkey could have been a candidate for brokering some sort of peace or path towards an end of the war, after the Egyptian led negotiations collapsed - but that seems less likely to happen now.
Also related to political pressure - Israel is aggressively preventing any kind of aid from going into the region, when it thinks it might be used in support of the war. They have been using an algorithm I think of as "detain on first transgression" at the border. At the first sign that a truck carries something that could theoretically be used to manufacture weapons or support war infrastructure (eg a single large pipe that could be an ingredient in a rocket, or a solar panel stored on the roof of the truck), the entire truck is sidelined or detained. This approach is extremely unpopular internationally and there has been constant pressure on the Israeli government to allow more aid in.
While there is overwhelming support, internally, for Israel to continue the war until the destruction of Hamas (polling at close to 90%), it's unclear what that means in practice, and internal pressure to stop the civilian casualties is mounting. Pre-war protests included slogans demanding a stop to the subjugation of the palestinian people; some are starting to question whether the war is just about destroying Hamas in the current format and at this point.
Israel's government is debating how to respond to all of this pressure, both internally and with foreign diplomats, this week. Blinken and others are in the region right now, meeting and acting as messengers and go betweens between all involved. The initial Israeli position seems to be that they've mostly achieved their objectives in the North, and aid and reconstruction can start there. In the south, their initial pitch seems to be to continue for as long as necessary, implicitly attempting to do the same thing(s) as in the North, but potentially slower, more methodically, and with fewer casualties and brutality. Specifics and final details are still up in the air and likely won't be updated publicly until, at the earliest, this weekend, but probably next week.
Related - South Africa presented it's case that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians today, with rebuttals scheduled for tomorrow. While very visible and having a lot of public attention and interest, it's unclear what, if anything, directly practical can come of this lawsuit. ICJ lawsuits are not enforceable, and any consequent political pressure is likely to come after some of the decision making has finished.
For additional context - Israel was at a turning point internally before the war started, with some calling the state close to civil war. PM Netaniahu is facing criminal charges, and the trial is on hold while the war is going on. Support for him to keep his job post war is polling at around 15%. Many government decision makers, including the PM, are seen have a vested interest in continuing the war for as long as possible
This is obviously false, there are numerous photos and videos of hundreds of aid trucks rolling into Gaza (and Hamas taking over them and shooting at residents trying to get to them before Hamas does), and there are Jordanians doing air supply drops (obviously with Israel approval). It is true that Israel limits the amount of supplies and the kind of supplies, because they know (and it is true) that Hamas is going to control and benefit from them, but it is absolutely false that Israel is preventing "any kind of aid" from going into Gaza.
The original statement was:
So I think both my original, and your take are 100% true - I don't believe there is a contradiction. Even if I steelman your point, I don't see a contradiction. Say, for the sake of exercise (this extremely simplified and abstracted, so don't take cheap shots against the simplification; I think is close enough to reality get my point across though):
Assuming (for illustration; this is a model of what's going on that helps make the problem visible. The truth is different, but not in ways which invalidate this logic) 100 trucks try to cross each day, that's 10 held back each day, and held back trucks are never released - that would be around 1000 trucks stuck at the border by now. 1000 trucks is more than 50% of the entire trucking capacity for Egypt. Looks like Egypt has ballpark 1850 trucks available for all transportation needs in the country
Now try doing something like the above with the real numbers and estimates, and the more complicated truth of what's actually happening with trucks @ border. You should be able to more easily see the problem
So I think that all of the following statements could (trivially) be all be true at the same time (exercise for the reader to figure out if they are):
If you assume this is Moloch at work, you'll quickly see that the issue can be addressed as a coordination problem. So there are multiple very very easy ways to make the algorithm less aggressive or more effectively work within its limits - for example:
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