The Israelis are the only people in the world I can imagine whose youth are cunning/battle-wise enough to throw back grenades that are tossed at them as their reflexive action.
Everybody else’s civilians in that situation is just curl up “We’re fucked.”
Sooo now half the population of Gaza has been instructed to flee into the southern half of Gaza, on what seems to be a deliberately ambiguous timetable – maybe 24 hours? Or not?
I’m trying to hold out hope here but it seems like every news update is worse than the last and I can’t even imagine what good news would look like at this point.
I read today about a Palestinian man who was killed by airstrikes along with his family. His last Facebook post was “I forgive you all. Please forgive me”. A good sentiment to sign off for the night on. Take care of yourselves and hug your kids.
“Huge numbers” is relative - the US went apeshit when 3,000 people out of 330 million were killed. At least 1500 Gazans have been killed out of a population of 2.4 million, a much higher number proportionally. When does the number become “huge” for Gaza?
When the hospitals stop functioning a lot more people in Gaza will die. Again, when does the number become “huge” for Gaza?
Yep, basically. Keep in mind that a lot of the streets in Gaza are full of debris and rubble which makes getting through somewhere between difficult and impossible on foot, much less in a vehicle. If you could even find gas for a vehicle. Good luck with that.
Indeed. Now Hamas is telling that northern half of Gaza to not leave their homes or else.
I know the Israeli government doesn’t care, but when are the pro-Palestinians outside the region going to wise up and figure out that Hamas is not a good thing and as far as they’re concerned civilian Palestinians exist only to be human shields and cannon fodder?
I said it in the other thread, but it belongs here. The median age in Gaza is 18. Half the people which been ordered to flee are children and teens. What the fuck are they supposed to do?
Well, yeah. If Gazans leave their homes before the Israelis come in, Hamas loses their biggest advantage - a willingness to hide behind their own civilians.
If Israel could say something like, “Hey, Gazans: we’re returning water and electricity to the Southern half of Gaza, and we’ll set up guarded compounds for Red Cross/Red Crescent/Doctors Without Borders”, it’d go a really long way toward making the forced evacuation much more humane. Sure, the soldiers guarding the compounds would be in danger–but if it decreased Hamas’s human shields and camouflage, it might end up being safer for soldiers as a whole.
Israel isn’t in control of north or south Gaza yet. What you’re suggesting would require Israel to invade first, conquer the south, and then let people slowly cross into Israeli-held territory.
That actually doesn’t sound like all that bad an idea to me - the biggest issue with it is that Hamas would undoubtedly kill all the hostages on broadcast as soon as Israel invaded the south of Gaza, and I don’t know if Israel’s government could survive that politically if they were doing something that didn’t even have a chance of helping the hostages at the time (such as storming the south of Gaza where the hostages aren’t).
Other practical concerns include Hamas killing Palestinians rather than letting them flee into Israeli territory, or Hamas firing rockets into the refugee camps in Israeli held terriitory to punish ‘collaborators’, neither of which are things Israel could do anything to stop in this scenario.
You know, losing the next election is not as bad as bulldozing a quarter million prepubescent children to death.
Serious question: didn’t Hamas threaten to livestream executions of a hostage every time IDF bombed a dwelling? I don’t think they’ve followed through on that, and I wonder why not. The worst, and IMO likeliest, reason is that there are no living hostages.
That’s not what I mean by the government not surviving. If Israel did something like invade South Gaza only while the hostages in the city proper were murdered on television, I don’t think this government would be allowed to carry out the rest of the war. The Unity Government would fall immediately.
Anyways, there is a big excluded middle there. Israel isn’t going to kill a quarter of a million children.
Civilians being in Gaza when Israel invades is a problem. It makes operating a lot harder because you don’t want to kill civilians, which means you have to take actions that expose you to much more risk, meaning you lose more troops, and in the end some civilians die anyways. It’s a total mess and a total shitshow, terrible for absolutely everyone involved except Hamas.
But it’s not impossible to conduct boots-on-the-ground military operations in an area with civilians. Just much harder.
Israel is going to have to do just that. They know they have to do just that; it’s gonna be absolutely fucking horrible for Palestinians and for Israelis.
Telling the civilians to leave doesn’t give Hamas any real advantage, beyond the time you give them. And presumably Israel still needs some time to prepare as well. You also need to tell groups like the UN to move, so they can set up operations in the south to receive people. And some civilians will certainly leave, Hamas instructions or no.
But that doesn’t mean that once the time is up Israel will just turn Gaza to rubble or storm inside and kill everyone like Hamas likes to do. The fact that the evacuation order will not be obeyed in full will mean that Israel has to do that much more complicated and costly “urban warfare with civilians” rather than “urban warfare in an evacuated city”.
From your fingers to God’s eyes.
Honestly, the hostages being dead may well not be the worst possibility. If there are fates worse than death, Hamas captivity has gotta be up there. That being said - there is pretty solid evidence (video footage, phone location devices pinging Gaza, etc) that they did take a bunch of living people into Gaza, potentially between 100 and 150. And I doubt they would have killed them all already, at least without publicizing it. They are terrorists, and if you kill alone in Gaza, you don’t cause any terror.
I think it’s more likely that the person who made that threat didn’t actually have the authority to make that decision, and the Hamas higher-ups are saving those videos for when the troops roll in.
If Israel did, I think the government would fall. Just as it would if they ignored the fate of the hostages.
Both of those actions are just too far out of line with what most Israelis view their country as being.
I really, really hope you’re right. I really hope the IDF fights the war with full respect for civilian lives, that they turn the water back on in time to avoid killing thousands of people through dehydration and disease, that they establish humanitarian corridors for evacuation, that they enable aid groups to provide care for Gaza residents/refugees.
I’m just not hearing any of that happening in news accounts. Mostly I’m getting my news from NPR and Washington Post, and it’s very possible I’m missing coverage of these activities; it’s also possible that the activities are being carried out secretly. But from what I’m reading and hearing, there’s an epically awful humanitarian catastrophe coming in the next 48 hours.
If History is any indicator, 10 Palestinian civilians will die for every Israeli killed. I’m not saying that’s an official Israeli policy, but that’s how it almost always shakes out.
Human Rights Watch confirmed in a statement released Thursday that white phosphorus was used over the Gaza City port on Wednesday, after interviewing two witnesses who noted the stifling smell of white phosphorus. The organization also analyzed video of the event and identified airburst 155mm white phosphorus artillery projectiles were used in the strike. They condemned the use of the chemical, which can severely burn people and set fire to civilian structures, in such a densely populated area.
“Any time that white phosphorus is used in crowded civilian areas, it poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering,” said Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch in a statement Thursday.
Israel uses white phosphorus in Gaza, video shows
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-uses-white-phosphorus-in-gaza-video-shows/ar-AA1i84Zv
[Msn.com unpaywalled repost of Washington Post article.]
Here’s something that just came out.
The United States is working to establish safe areas inside the Gaza Strip where civilians under siege by Israel’s military offensive can find protection, a senior State Department official said.
U.S. officials declined to criticize an order by Israel urging the entire population of the northern Gaza Strip, about 1.1 million people, to move south within 24 hours. But they said Washington is seeking to work with Israel, the International Committee of the Red Cross and United Nations relief agencies to establish the safe zones, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.
That’s hopeful.
As General Omar Bradley famously said: “Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics.”
If I can momentarily suspend my focus on the horrors of this situation, I think about this. My last career was in Planning & Logistics. The mere notion of evacuating over a million Gazans is pretty overwhelming.
I don’t want this to be taken the wrong way, but the international community’s outrage over anything tends to dissipate pretty quickly and then focus on the next unrelated thing in the world. So Israel may be banking on the fact that even if many thousands of Palestinians die, the rest of the world will screech for a week or month at most and then go right back to Ukraine/China/economy/US politics/whatever.