Heads of UN Agencies Call for Israeli Ceasefire
The laws of armed conflict aren't designed for this war.
BBC News live blog (“UN agencies call for immediate ceasefire in rare statement“):
The heads of all major UN agencies have issued a rare joint statement calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” saying “enough is enough”.
“For almost a month, the world has been watching the unfolding situation in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory in shock and horror at the spiralling numbers of lives lost and torn apart,” the UN bosses say.
The heads of organisation including UNICEF, the WHO, the World Food Programme – as well as charities such as Save the Children – described the “horrific” loss of life on both sides, and demand the unconditional release of hostages taken by Hamas during its 7 October attacks.
The statement continues:
“However, the horrific killings of even more civilians in Gaza is an outrage, as is cutting off 2.2 million Palestinians from food, water, medicine, electricity and fuel.”
The statement adds that 88 people working for UNRWA, the agency focussed on Palestinian refugees, had been killed since 7 October, the highest number of UN fatalities “ever recorded in a single conflict”
While the statement is careful to condemn Hamas for its atrocities and to call for them to release their hostages, this is clearly aimed at Israel. After all, Hamas wins if there’s a ceasefire. And Hamas doesn’t much care about the opinion of the world community, so likely won’t feel any pressure to release hostages.
WaPo (“As Gaza death toll soars, secrecy shrouds Israel’s targeting process“):
The Israeli airstrikes that hit the Jabalya refugee camp on Oct. 31 sent buildings tumbling down on families displaced from across the besieged enclave. More than 110 people were killed, many of them women and children crushed beneath the rubble, doctors said.
The Israeli military said the operation achieved its aim.
“We were focused on our target,” Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces said Monday, referring to Ibrahim Biari, a high-ranking Hamas commander. “We know that he was killed.”
Since the conflict began, nearly 10,000 Palestinians have already been killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, as the IDF presses for the destruction of the Hamas militant group that rules the enclave. Although Israeli officials insist that each strike is subject to legal approval, experts say the rules of engagement, which are classified, appear to include a higher threshold for civilian casualties than in previous rounds of fighting.
“There was always a conscious effort to limit the amount of civilian casualties in the few occasions that we have struck in areas where we knew that there would be civilian casualties,” said Jonathan Conricus, the international spokesman for the IDF. He would not comment on whether Israel has changed its rules of engagement and accused Hamas of inflating the death toll.
While I am instinctively suspicious of casualty numbers provided by either side of a conflict—and especially one that doubles as a terrorist organization—Hamas’ projections in earlier conflict have tended to closely mirror those of international organizations doing independent monitoring. That said, it’s really tough for even disinterested parties to accurately count casualties while the fighting is this intense.
Regardless, the quandary that we’ve focused on for the last month—the dichotomy between international humanitarian law and a fight between a modern nation-state and a terrorist group hiding among a civilian population—remains fraught.
“Essentially, the laws of armed conflict strike a balance” between the military advantage of the attack and the expected harm to civilians, said Pnina Sharvit Baruch, a former IDF legal adviser.
“The higher the military advantage, the higher harm to civilians would still be considered proportionate,” she said, describing Israel’s logic, saying that any harm to civilians is collateral, not intentional.
The consequences of those calculations are spread across the floors of Gaza’s hospitals and morgues. Entire families have been killed; infants are buried with their parents in mass graves. Strikes have hit water towers and bakeries, schools and ambulances. Human rights groups have flagged a growing number of strikes as potential war crimes and urged an international investigation.
In comments last month, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, said that every military decision-maker in the conflict should be “on clear notice that they will be required to justify every strike against every civilian object.”
International law requires militaries to make clear distinctions between civilians and militants, and to take all possible precautions to prevent civilian harm. The principle of proportionality prohibits armies from inflicting civilian casualties that are “excessive” in relation to the direct military advantage anticipated at the time of the strike.
It is an inexact standard that requires a full investigation, a difficult task in an active war zone. How Israel is selecting its targets is shrouded in secrecy, making it extremely hard for experts to judge their legality. U.S. officials say they do not know exactly how IDF commanders are assessing the threshold for civilian casualties — even as they publicly urge Israel to minimize the death of innocents.
That Israel is not sharing its targeting strategy is hardly shocking. It would be strange to expect otherwise. While we might expect them to be more transparent about their rules of engagement the nature of the adversary makes that more problematic: “Oh, they won’t bomb if we hide among civilians at a 10-to-1 ratio? Well, then . . . .”
The Israelis have significantly reduced the number of airstrikes in recent days, a possible sign that the U.S. message is getting through, one senior State Department official told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive talks. The official added that strikes were still causing dramatic casualties.
Maybe! Or maybe they’ve hit their preliminary targets and are now down to more precision targets. Or, now that the ground invasion is on, they don’t want to blow up their own soldiers.
In the Jabalya attack, which took out an entire residential block, the Israeli military suggested it was carefully planned to target a senior Hamas figure in the tunnels below the refugee camp.
“And we struck it and it was taken out and dozens of Hamas operatives were killed with him,” Conricus said. “Of course, it’s sad and regrettable that civilians are killed, but it is a legitimate military target.”
In calculating the risk to civilians, military planners could reasonably have assessed that the number of casualties would be in the hundreds, experts say.
“The Jabalya strike, because it was a planned attack, shows that Israel must have a tolerance for civilian casualties which is orders of magnitude greater than that that was used by, say, the U.S. Air Force in the war against ISIS,” said Mark Lattimer, executive director of the Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights.
Well . . . yes? While ISIS killed some American citizens in the Middle East, they weren’t based in, say, Mexico and launching missile attacks on Texas. That surely influenced our calculus.
On Oct. 14, just a week into the war, the Israeli air force said it had dropped 6,000 bombs on Hamas targets in Gaza. By contrast, a little more than 7,300 bombs were dropped on Afghanistan by the U.S.-led coalition in all of 2019, the heaviest year of aerial bombardment there.
I’m honestly surprised there were 7300 bombable targets left in Afghanistan in 2019. But, presumably, forces entrenched in hardened bunkers require more bombs. I’m just not sure how useful a metric it is for assessing discrimination.
The IDF has since provided only sporadic updates on the number of strikes conducted.
I can’t imagine why.
Another U.S. administration official told The Post the Israeli calculus about acceptable levels of civilian casualties was clearly different from that of the United States, but insisted there was a robust process in place to assess each strike. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about sensitive conversations.
“U.S. interlocutors who are professionals on this issue of deconfliction and conduct of campaigns have had these discussions” with their Israeli counterparts, the senior State Department official said.
The United States provides the Israeli army with military and intelligence support, and is therefore required by the Geneva Conventions to ensure that bombing raids in Gaza do not breach international law.
I must confess not being familiar with that aspect of the laws of armed conflict. But it’s not at all obvious to me how much control we have over IDF targeting decisions.
On Sunday, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari appeared to foreshadow the possibility of targeting major hospitals, citing their alleged use by militants to fire on Israeli forces. He described medical facilities as a “key part of [Hamas’s] war machine” and urged that they be evacuated.
Medical relief organizations and doctors inside the hospitals have repeatedly emphasized that they cannot comply. The facilities are packed with hundreds of people, some of them on life support, as well as newborns in incubators. Thousands of displaced residents are also sleeping on hospital grounds, believing them to be safer than the ruined neighborhoods they fled.
This is obviously quite fraught. But, again, Hamas is guilty of perfidy, using the fact that hospitals are protected under LOAC to their military advantage. Whether that gives Israel the right to target the hospitals really depends on the degree to which this is taking place.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has framed the fight against militants in existential terms. The group and its infrastructure — spread among Gaza’s population of more than 2 million civilians — can and will be destroyed, he has said.
Baruch said the savagery of Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on Israel, which killed more than 1,400 people, gives Israel greater latitude under international law to act in self-defense: “Those standards say, we understand that you might be attacked so viciously that the only way to defend yourself is to use a lot of force and unfortunately harm civilians because there is no other way.”
But the principle of proportionality remains unchanged, experts say.
Hagari laid out on Sunday the number of warnings that Israeli forces have issued to Palestinian civilians to evacuate areas under bombardment: 1,524,000 fliers dropped from the sky, almost 6 million messages sent to cellphones and 20,000 phone calls.
But Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. With the exits sealed to all but foreign nationals and a small number of wounded Palestinians — and bombs falling across the enclave — there is no meaningful place for civilians to escape.
IHL/LOAC evolved over centuries, almost entirely in the context of Christian scholars and Western great powers negotiating mutually acceptable rules, usually in the aftermath of horrific state-on-state conflicts. They’re simply harder to apply outside that context. If one or more parties to the conflict are non-state actors or otherwise don’t hold themselves, at least in spirit, to the rules it becomes difficult, indeed, for the other actors to balance these realities.
The United States, for example, hewed closer to LOAC when fighting the Northern Vietnamese Army and the Iraqi Army than it did the Viet Cong and Al Qaeda in Iraq. While, as a technical matter, the same rules applied, as a practical matter, no country, regardless of its theoretical commitment to IHL, is going to subject its forces to exponentially greater risk fighting fair when the other side wantonly disregards the rules.
Caught in the middle, of course, are innocent women and children who are not party to the conflict but merely trapped by geography. Israel is making considerable effort to at least warn them—which is being taken advantage of by Hamas fighters—but, as we’ve noted all along, there’s really no place for them to go. Egypt has very limited interest in taking in more refugees and even the ostensible safe zones in the south of Gaza aren’t all that safe—and getting there is fraught with danger as well.
As Israel’s list of pre-vetted strike locations is depleted, the emphasis of its air campaign is shifting to so-called dynamic targeting, where decisions are made relatively quickly — an approach that has led to higher civilian casualties in other air wars, including those by the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
That change would have “stark implications for civilian harm,” said Marc Garlasco, a former defense intelligence analyst. “When you switch to dynamic targeting you are doing a much more rapid collateral damage assessment and you are not able to take as many precautions.”
That’s absolutely right. Our various drone and special operations missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the counter-ISIL fight demonstrated this repeatedly. Innocents will be killed in these operations, pretty much without fail. And whether taking out the number 7 guy on the Hamas organizational chart is militarily proportionate to that is highly debatable. This isn’t a wargame with pre-scripted matrixes.
Israel may also be blinder than in previous periods, experts say, as hundreds of thousands of civilians shelter in new locations, sometimes moving several times a week in search of safety.
“In the first days of the war, the Israelis will know a lot. They’ll know about patterns of life, they can do good collateral damage estimates,” said Michael Schmitt, a professor of international law at the University of Reading who served 20 years in the U.S. Air Force as a judge advocate.
“At this point in the war room, those thresholds would be necessarily a bit lower than they were on day one.”
There are also questions about the strength of the intelligence being used to choose targets inside Gaza, less than a month after thousands of Hamas militants launched a devastating surprise attack on Israeli soil.
“It calls into question how good the IDF’s intelligence is, and that bears on both targeting implementation on the front end but also on assessments of incidental harm to civilians and civilian objects,” said Brian Finucane, a Crisis Group senior adviser who has advised the U.S. government on counterterrorism and the use of military force.
Again, this was true for the United States during much of the GWOT era. While the notion we would simply kill “military-aged males” on sight was grossly exaggerated, the targeting was necessarily imperfect for the same reasons.
With unrest gripping the occupied West Bank and missiles flying along its border with Lebanon, Israel’s monitoring assets may also be stretched thin, said Schmitt. “The calculation goes: I’ve got to watch the north. I’ve got to watch all these other areas. So I can’t allocate all my resources to Gaza.”
For the most part, the United States did not have to deal with this worry during GWOT. While Israel may well be acting more aggressively and harshly than IHL/LOAC requires, they’re doing it against the backdrop of an active war against its homeland. That a massive campaign against Hamas very much comes across as collective punishment—lumping all Palestinians into one bucket—it’s not at all obvious to me that we wouldn’t do much the same under those conditions.
Proportionate is that which is necessary to end the threat to Israel for 40 years. Anything less is to make the deaths of the Israeli soldiers and the Palestinian civilians a waste of lives.
There are very few refugees in Gaza. To meet the UN definition of a refugee, the person would have to be over 75 years old. Everyone else was born in Gaza, not displaced. Refugee status is not inheritable. No doubt the UN “leaders” will be working to change that.
The UN needs to be move to a more central location among the global states and not in NYC where it is only close to the US, Canada and Cuba
6,000 bombs, Hamas claims 10,000 dead, in a famously densely-populated area. So Israel is killing 0.6 people per bomb. And being accused of ‘indiscriminate’ bombing, and ‘genocide.’ Rather an inefficient genocide, judging by the numbers. It’s almost like Israel is trying not to kill civilians.
I chuckled at the sobriety and understatement here. My jaw still is on the floor from a Hamas spokesperson denying that the Oct. 7 horror intended to kill Israeli civilians. The Hamas barbarians have no credibility, so we don’t yet know how many civilian dead there are in Gaza.
We already kinda did. Did not Operation Iraqi Freedom’s tenor of collective punishment fuel the insurgency that strengthened ISIS/ISIL — until the more surgical tactics of Operation Inherent Resolve?
That seems unlikely. This whole cold blooded discussion of the laws of armed combat seems inadequate to the situation. Even a distraction.
We would. But there seems to be consensus that we acted stupidly after 9/11.
Israel has a right to defend itself. Israel has a right to defend itself stupidly. As their friend, basically their only friend, we will support them. But perhaps we should discourage them from following our example and acting stupidly. It’s a given that they will do what they are doing now. They may even succeed in “defeating” Hamas, at least to the extent Hamas disappears as an overt organization. The question is what happens next. If they restore something like the status quo ante even JKB recognizes this will happen again.
@Michael Reynolds:
If Israel wants the world to believe that, then Israel should accede to Biden’s demand Israel stop sanctioning, funding, and protecting its settler terrorists in the West Bank — who are busy killing Palestinians with impunity, backed by the IDF.
@JKB:
Then after Hamas is defeated, Israel might move on to a) bombing Netanyahu and Likud offices, and b) tearing down its illegal West Bank settlements while recommitting to a two-state solution. The threat is coming from inside the house.
@JKB: The UN disagrees, considering those born to refugees to be refugees themselves because they lack a homeland. The children of Gaza are not Israelis, so they are similarly stateless.
@DK:
155 dead on the West Bank, no breakdown as to whether it was settlers or legitimate terrorist targets. 500 dead in the US from mass shootings just this year so far, and we are not under attack from terrorists who burn children alive.
Failing to make your indiscriminate/genocide case in Gaza you shift to the West Bank, and fail again. You are the queen of bullshit whataboutism.
The overall strategy is questionable as well. If the stated objective is true, that the goal is to eliminate Hamas and Hamas is hiding in the population, the only way to root them out completely will be with the help of some portion of that population.
It’s important to note that the casualty numbers also include Gaza civilians killed by Hamas, either intentionally or mistakenly.
Does that include Hamas decision makers? Will the ICC indict and request the extradition of Hamas leadership living in Qatar and Turkey?
The reality is that specific ROE are always classified for reasons that should be obvious.
We went through this in both Iraq and Afghanistan where there was the same kind of “controversy” about ROE and whether it should be public.
Yes, Israel is changing to dynamic targeting and also close air support, now that IDF ground forces are inside Gaza.
Bombs in Afghanistan in 2019 were almost entirely CAS (close air support), most of which were made in support of the Afghan army. The comparison to what’s going on now in Gaza is not really comparable. That said, 6k weapons in a week is a lot.
I don’t know about Israel, but the US eventually utilized a lot of lawyers in many targeting and strike decisions.
My guess is that Israel plans to take out Hamas infrastructure under hospitals with ground forces. It’s really the only way to clear out Hamas without destroying the hospitals.
It’s been amazing to me the extent to which many on the pro-Hamas or anti-Israel side specifically do not want to allow civilians to leave.
As previously noted, I expect the Israeli Air Force will shift to supporting ground operations. Some of that will be CAS, some will be dynamic targeting based on intelligence from the ground forces.
The other side of that coin is that Hamas’ continuing rocket attacks – deliberately aimed at civilian areas – is also “collective punishment” to say nothing of Hamas murdering anyone – even Arabs and foreigners – in their 10/7 massacre.
The best way to protect civilians to to get them out of the war zone. Egypt won’t allow that and even many who ostensibly support the Palestinian cause and care about civilian casualties also don’t want that.
This is a huge contrast with, for example, Syria, where the civilian casualties were much, much worse, despite the fact that civilians could flee to other countries.
Being able to ignore the rules whenever the rules are inconvenient defeats the purpose of having these rules in the first place.
Iraq was already more than bad enough. Following that up by purposefully looking the other way when your ally (again) breaks the rules only strengthens the perception that the US was never serious about international law in the first place.
There will be a real price to pay the next time a geostrategic foe decides to go on an adventure.
Example: The West Is Losing the Global South Over Gaza
@drj:
Well, no. As noted in the OP, the rules were put in place among civilized nations to govern war among themselves. The we make a real effort to follow them even when fighting a foe who wantonly disregards them is very much evidence of good intent.
The enforcement of international law against great powers depends on willing compliance. Russia is blatantly disregarding LOAC in Ukraine and, as a consequence, is a pariah state. But we’re not going to be able to haul Putin before the ICJ unless a successor government agrees to hand him over.
It’s Israel’s turn to get revenge for the attacks in October, which were revenge for atrocities in the past. Next time it will be Hamas or another arab group attacking for revenge over the current bombings of Gaza. Then Israel will revenge attack those who attacked them for attacking Gaza.
How do gang/mob wars ever end? Eventually, enough radicalized people die that the remaining population is tired of war and opens a dialog instead of cheap revenge.
We are hundreds of years from that day, because new folks are being radicalized with every bomb and every school child burned alive.
But we can choose whether we wish to be involved.
@James Joyner:
And prior to Ukraine, Russia brutally intervened in the Syrian civil war on behalf of the Assad government. What was the price paid there? Where were all the people who now demand Israel conduct an “immaculate retaliation” when that slaughter was occurring?
If one wants to compare and contrast, one can look no further and compare the operations and tactics of the Russian and Syrian air forces in Syria compared to what Israel is doing. It’s night and day.
@James Joyner:
This is simply not true. IHR and the LOAC are both applicable here (both explicitly apply to non-international armed conflicts).
More importantly, that’s also not how the rest of the world is seeing it. From the piece I linked:
Which leads to this conclusion:
Special pleading won’t change that.
@Andy: Honestly, I think Russian atrocities in Syria just got subsumed under the atrocities committed by the regimes and ISIL. There was so much chaos there that the world quit paying attention.
@drj: I think a fundamental problem with LOAC is the attempt to separate jus ad bellum and jus in bello. When a country illegally invades another, as Russia did in Ukraine, the way it fights once engaged and the way the defender fights should not be judged equally. Because none of Russia’s military goals were legitimate to begin with, any killing of civilians fails the test of proportionality. That’s not the case here, as Israel has every right to respond to an outrageous attack on its territory by the forces of the Hamas-governed territory of Gaza. Israel still owes a duty of discrimination, but the question of proportionality now matters as targeting Hamas is absolutely legitimate.
@Andy:
IOW risking the lives of Israeli soldiers in order to avoid civilian casualties. Because that’s how you do genocide.
@Tony W:
If you want a better humanitarian outcome you’d best hope we stay involved. Right now Israel and the Saudis et al hope we stay involved. Without the US giving Israel some cover their tactics might well be more severe. There is no peace deal without the US – not just for Israel’s sake, but for the Gulf and broader ME. Israel has more than a few crazies, some in government, and they have nuclear weapons. We need the US to stay in the game.
@drj:
Oh noes! Brazil does not approve? But where does Angola stand?
The Global South is generally meant to be South America, Africa and in some versions, China and Southeast Asia. No one GAF about South America or Africa, and China could not care less about whether we or Israel obey international law in the ME, they’re interested in oil and our ability to turn the spigot on and off.
@Andy:
Very well done.
I believe Israel could earn a lot of Brownie points by taking in at least some of the civis, that is, by evacing them to temp camps in Israel. Perhaps simply opening up another avenue for aid through Israel. Treat them as victims of Hamas rather than allies.
Pretending the only way aid can get to those people is through Egypt is BS, anyway.
@Michael Reynolds:
Lol you’re desperately trying to justify Israel thumbing its nose at the Biden administration with a terroristic illegal settlement campaign that has been claiming Palestinian lives for years — which destroys your case that Israel both cares about civilian life and can do no wrong…
…by changing the subject to an irrelevant non-sequitor reference to mass shootings in the US and falsely claiming that I’ve ever used the word “genocide” in reference to Israel’s actions. And then in the next breath, you pontifacte about bs whataboutism? Haha.
You’re just a washed-up crank — on top of your blatant hypocrisy and usual barrage of disinformation.
The problem with a ceasefire, and the implied (seldom openly stated) continuity of Hamas control over Gaza is that Israel has now been shown fully that neither deterrence nor “taming by responsibility” will serve to prevent Hamas attacks.
And that Israels intelligence/surveillance is insufficient to detect impending attacks reliably.
The logical consequence is that if Hamas remains able to freely use the Gaza Strip as a controlled base, Israel will move to a policy of preemptive strikes on any detected Hamas operations whatsoever, while intensifying blockade.
This will not permit any stabilisation of the social/political position in Gaza. It will almost certainly rule out any installation of a non-Hamas governance in Gaza. And any chance of the PLA being able to negotiate with even a post-Netanyahu Israel.
Those who were calling for Hamas to be a negotiation partner as “legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people” but are now saying “Hamas are not reperesentative of the Palestionains of Gaza” will soon revert to their previous line, I suspect.
The problem being, there is zero chance of Israelis of any political persuasion considering that acceptable.
Moving to a solution is going to require the elimination of Hamas as the dominant political force in Gaza, otherwise the ongoing warfare is going to render it impossible for either side to negotiate meaningfully.
And the end of Netanyahu: but that is pretty much inevitable.
The only thing, ironically, that might save the Likud/kahanite coalition ascendancy, is the survival of Hamas, an ongoing “siege war” and negotiations being impossible.
There are suggestions that Israel might make a deal with the PLA re. the West Bank while Gaza is somehow set aside as a Hamas-ruled kettle. This totally overlooks the fragile political position of Abbas/Fatah even in the West Bank, and the potential for Hamas (and Hezbollah) to wreck any such negotiations.
@drj:
Frankly, the “global South” is a joke.
There are numerous countries that can be categorised as “non-Western”.
Other than that, they have very little in common.
Generally speaking, they follow the interests of their internal politics and/or calculations of their international interests.
One of the most outspoken supporters of Israel happens to be India.
A “global South” absent India is… what, precisely?
@DK:
You are increasingly incoherent and of course, dishonest: I opposed the settlers and Likud before you learned there was a Middle East. And I’ll send you $1000 right now, today, if you can show me where I ever suggested Israel can do no wrong.
Your view is that if some portion of the Israeli electorate does bad things, that’s all Israelis, right? Sort of reverse Lot: if you can find one evil Jew. . . Not a standard you’d apply to any other nation, certainly not to the US, it’s a special carve-out for Jews who can either be all perfect or all evil. If there’s an innocent in Gaza all Gazans are innocent, whereas some bad Israelis make all Israelis evil. Very nuanced of you. Not at all a double standard.
Show us where the rabbi hurt you. Did someone make you eat gefilte fish? Is that it?
@JohnSF:
That is a great comment about the realities of the situation.
@JohnSF:
Indeed. A fact recognized by everyone but college sophomores who want to bring peace to the ME by rescuing terrorists who are absolutely opposed to peace.
@dazedandconfused:
That’s something I would personally support, but I also know that Israel won’t do it. And that’s not unusual – enemies generally don’t allow such things along a front line.
And, of course, it assumes that Gazans would want to be in camps on Israeli territory controlled by Israel. Civilians generally prefer to flee to countries that are not party to the conflict and in this case, Egypt would be the only option, even if it was just a transit point.
@Andy:
*blushes*
*doffs hat*
*attempts to bow graciously (fails due to clumsiness)*
More seriously: its best to consider the political realities, and how they interact with the extremely unpleasant military situation.
@dazedandconfused: You might have a point about the possibility of Israel offering a controlled temporary evacuation of Gaza into the Israeli Negev.
But there’s a massive political problem in Israel re this:
They’d be evacuating Palestinians through/into the kibbutzim areas devastated by the Hamas slaughter of 7 October.
Unpopular enough in itself.
Now, consider, if just a few Hamas fighters infiltrated, and got loose…
Realistically, Egypt is the only answer.
But Egypt is for now dead set against it, for a variety of reasons.
Even when Egypt controlled Gaza, 1948 to 1967, it would not allow free movement between the Strip and Egypt proper.
@Michael Reynolds:
As someone else pointed out yesterday, you can’t make a case based on facts, which is why once your lies are exposed — as they are here by multiple commenters every day — you angrily retreat into childish, profane tantrums and ham-fisted accusations of antisemitism (even though you don’t really care at all about Jews, merely using the tactic as a shield against your stupidity). Every time, every day. *yawn*
You’re just like Trump: a dried-up pathological liar well past your sell-by date. I’ll give you $1000 if you can show where I accused Israel of “genocide” or made any statement about “all Israelis” or “all Jews” or “all Gazans.” Better yet, don’t waste your time trying to find that which isn’t there.
I don’t subscribe to zero sum, “all” or nothing, either/or thinking. Because, even at half your age, I have twice your maturity and — unlike you — are capable of altering my opinions to accept nuance and complexity.
Arc you going senile? Need to start dementia treatment? Is that it? It’s obviously too late for you to grow up, maybe just have some Ovaltine and go to bed.
@Michael Reynolds:
There you have it. Michael Reynolds in a nutshell.
Contrary to you, though, I would want them at our side when China starts eyeing Taiwan. And I would like them, as well as India, to side with us against Russia right now.
In both cases, it would make a genuine difference.
And it’s not even like Israel would need to cease to exist or anything that dramatic. If that country would follow international law, i.e., quit with the collective punishment and get rid of its illegal West Bank settlements, a political compromise would at least be theoretically possible. Then, we wouldn’t have to constantly provide (hypocritical) diplomatic cover for a country that has elected a Trump-lite for the last twenty tears or so. Even more importantly, we would have a much better chance to protect countries such as Ukraine and Taiwan in the long term.
But you clearly prefer to just kill a bunch of people, regardless of the long-term consequences.
“Me, me, me! I want my emotional gratification now!” That’s you, Michael.
Nice Boomer attitude, by the way. Your opinion regarding the rest of the world is also from 1950, so that checks out.
@James Joyner:
Armenia and Azerbaijan? No one GAF. Yemen? No one GAF. The ongoing wars in Libya and Syria? No one GAF. Ditto the Uighurs in China, the Muslims in India, or everyone in Haiti. Human rights in Saudi Arabia, or Burma or Cuba or Venezuela or Afghanistan? No one GAF. If we could just find a way to blame Jews we’d get millions of column inches and a billion hours of media from people who are totally not anti-semitic, but just happen, coincidentally, only to pay attention to FP when it’s Israel.
@Michael Reynolds:
Why do self-centered people say “no one” when they mean “me”? Lol
What is it with egomaniacs who think their opinions represent everyone?
@drj:
This one statement evokes derisive laughter in any one who knows anything at all about the world. BTW, India supports Israel. So. . . Yeah. You’re ignorant.
For God’s sake, buy a history book. And read it. The world did not spring into existence on October 7th. You just don’t know anything. I’m sure there’s some area here you are not a complete naïf, but FP ain’t it.
@JohnSF:
Now explain to me why the rules-based international order wouldn’t be in their national interest if it wasn’t for “One set of rules for me, and another set of rules for thee.”
Why would anyone but Russia and China want to live in a world where might makes right? Even robust regional powers would not be safe in under such circumstances.
I remember, for instance, that Egypt, Syria, and Morocco were part of the global coalition to liberate Kuwait – just like Argentina, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. (Of course, that was before Bush the Dimmer decided that rules were only for the little countries.)
@Michael Reynolds:
Oh, yeah? You wouldn’t like it if India and a bunch of African countries could be convinced to stop buying Russian oil?
I mean, I get that you are laughing derisively. But that says more about you than me.
@drj:
You think if we reined in Israel that India (which supports Israel) would stop buying Russian oil? And a bunch of corrupt African kleptocracies, too? I mean, really, just stop. I honestly did not grasp the depths of your ignorance. I wouldn’t be so hard on you if I’d known you were this far gone into fantasy.
@DK: @DK: For some people, if they don’t GAF it is the only thing that matters.
@DK:
Are you going to cash in on that $1000 offer? Or you just want to go on demonstrating your cluelessness?
“No one GAF” in the circles that matter in FP because – this will be hard for you to understand – South America has neither money nor power, and not enough oil for anyone to get worked up over. As for African governments, um, which African governments? You’re aware it’s a continent not a country, right?
Foreign Policy is rarely about right or wrong and almost always about strong and weak, rich and poor, resourced and not. There are ‘players’ in FP, and there are bystanders. The US, China, NATO, Russia, India increasingly, Iran unfortunately, these are players. Ecuador? Not a player. Botswana? Not really in the game.
@drj:
That’s a whole bunch of nested negatives there.
A more-or-less rules based order is always to the advantage of those who might otherwise end up getting whacked by the cruddy end of the stick.
See Abyssinia.
Or getting involved in the quarrels of others, for one reason or another.
See Wars, Balkan, various.
Nonetheless, such rules tend to interpreted flexibly when one state wishes to force an issue, and no countervailing Power or coalition is prepared to compel them to desist.
That’s why friendly relations with at least one major Power tend to be cultivated by others.
Might does not MAKE right; but right without might is a frail stick to rest your weight on.
Which is why FDR looked upon the failings of both the Concert and the League, and tried to craft the United Nations as a compromise between legalism and realpolitik in the hope that that legality would temper raw power, and power might find an interest in legality, if only in being less expensive.
Re Kuwait, a lot of countries had there own interests in either seeing Iraq curbed (eg Egypt, Syria, the sheikhdoms various) or in countries not being able to predate upon neighbours with impunity (lots) or just wished to keep on the good side of the US (and to lesser extent the Europeans).
It might be noted that the US, and the West in general, has generally inclined to respect the technical legalities, even when it has tested the limits somewhat.
And that, arguably, Israel has done the same.
If Israel were intent on a genocidal or ethnic cleansing solution to its security issues and internal political debates, it could have done so in the past.
It could do so now.
It has not, and is not.
To be clear: that does not mean Israel has carte blanche in Gaza, or that it has not been both foolish and morally compromised in its West Bank policies this past quarter century.
But those flow from a historical, political and strategic origins that cannot be changed by just a wave of a wand and thinking good thoughts of good will.
@Michael Reynolds:
The irony is that the US actively helped Saudi Arabia and others in the war against the Houthis, not only providing them intelligence and a US-staffed planning cell for strike planning, but also refueling Saudi aircraft with our own tankers, which we stationed in the region.
Can you guess which air force – Saudi Arabia vs Israel – is more competent and also a lot better about not intentionally killing civilians?
To be fair, one reason we were helping the Saudis, particularly with the planning cell, was to try to teach them to be more competent and conduct air operations consistent with Western norms, including the avoidance and minimization of civilian casualties. Let’s just say that the effort to teach the Saudis was a very mixed bag, so mixed, that we eventually pulled the plug.
And let’s not forget there was an air, ground, and naval blockade of Yemen to prevent (drumroll) Iran from supplying the Houthis. Another “open-air prison” that likely contributed to a major famine and outbreaks of cholera.
In relation to that, we (completely justifiably IMO), blew up several coast radar stations after the Houthis started shooting missiles at ships.
Eight years later, there is still fighting, and now the Houthis (as another one of Iran’s proxies) are sending cruise and ballistic missiles into Israel.
While I’m sure we are sharing intel with Israel, we are doing much less to help Israel now than we did with the Saudis, yet the level of outrage is very much different…
@JohnSF:
They have to pick their poison. Pictures reminiscent of the ones before “Restore Hope” coming out of Gaza will also be unpopular. Nearly half of Israelis, according to polls, are calling for a temp cease fire for the humanitarian situation already.
@Andy: Israel is a western-style democracy, we expect such countries to act better than Saudi Arabia. If the Saudis didn’t have oil we would dismiss everything they do as just another third-world country where everything is crazy. We give Israel almost $4 billion a year and they use it to build settlements, and they are directly against US interests. And I always assume that whatever goes on in the settlements is considerably worse than we know about (general rule is that bad things are worse than we think). We know that they have illegal outposts with settlement groups that are paramilitary units who go rogue and sometimes kill Palestinians , I can only imagine how much worse it really is.
@Andy:
I’m not a personal expert on things Yemeni, but I’ve spoken to those who have a reasonable knowledge of the area, and who consider the IRG were up to their armpits in supporting the Houthi groups well before they even seized northern Yemen and embarked on a rather nasty little holy war against the Adenis.
Hence the remarkably rapid “missiling up” of the Houthi arsenal.
The al-Saud are probably not that worried about an Zaidi Imamate festering quietly in northern Yemen (the Wahhabis are probably less sanguine, but they know their place).
An Iranian proxy letting off missiles and sat on the Straits of Bab el Mandeb is another thing entirely.
Unfortunately, the Saudis are militarily incompetent; and Egypt will aim for a high price before it steps in.
@JohnSF:
Oh, I agree completely. I was in the region in 2014, and it was pretty clear the Houthis were getting outside help against Hadi. And you are quite correct about how they suddenly got all these advanced missile systems…
@Michael Reynolds:
I actually don’t know what your demented, off-topic rambling about Africa is about at all. Maybe you’re wandering the streets, lost?
Proving you don’t actually know anyone in the circles that matter in FP. Unlike you, those people are serious people perfectly capable of complex thought and multitasking.
But at least you’ve taken a temporary break from insinuating attention level is all about antisemitism by accidentally admitting strategic and diplomatic value plays the primary role. Progress.
@dazedandconfused:
This is the crux of it all here. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Half a century of equating Palestian = terrorist instead of person who lives under the shadow of them has lead to a cycle of revenge and hate. We’ve seen this all over the Middle East – we raise up the next enemy often by what we do and who we hurt doing it. There’s so much evidence that actions like Israel is taking just lead to future attacks and misery.
If America is to be an ally to Israel, part of it is telling them they’re just setting themselves up for a fall in a few months or years. Hamas is dangerous to you now but don’t create the next Hamas getting rid of the current one. Learn from the mistakes other nations have made and change your approach to one more likely to help everyone in the long run. A military strategy that only pushes out the problem is a bad one and should be pointed out.