I hope they are able to crush Hamas without too many civilian casualties.
I suspect Hamas is too heavily woven into the fabric of Gaza for this to happen without Israel occupying the area. If that’s the case then they need to oversee the Palestinians along the lines of the Marshal Plan.
For comparison, Israel is about the size of New Jersey, both in land and in population
Israel: 9.2m people, 22,100 square kilometers.
New Jersey: 9.0m people, 22,600 square kilometers.
So a death in any random part of Israel is much closer to home to EVERYONE ELSE than a death in, say, Texas is to someone in California or Florida.
It seems likely that Hamas fully anticipated Israel’s occupation of Gaza. Creating new hostility within the Palestinian community is part of Hamas plan. Israel has to react and root out Hamas. This isn’t going to end well for any faction.
Hamas will have a plan to withdraw key leaders and assets. They’ll take significant losses but its something they’ve anticipated.
You think Hamas leadership roughs it out with the peasants in Gaza? Nah, they’re in a mansion in Qatar. The bleeding and the dying is for the rank and file, the leadership has been nice and safe the whole time.
I agree. This is a well planned attack to force a harsh reaction by Israel.
The massacre at the music festival is exceptionally appalling even beyond all the other horrors. Maybe because it’s so identifiable to those of us in the west, or maybe because most of the attendees were young, but maybe most of all because it was so completely innocent and non-political and exposes the mindless brutality of the attackers.
Israel has announced the complete closure of Gaza, cutting off food, water, and electricity. I can’t blame them, though it’s impossible to make impartial moral judgments about collateral damage.
There’s a censored video of a dead woman being hoisted and carried n the air by the terrorists. It speaks volumes about the monstrous mindset of Hamas.
If Iran was hoping to break up normalizing Arab-Israeli relations, it is critical that this effort fails.
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Israel is pounding the hell out of Gaza this morning. There are giant smoke/dust clouds all over the place and probably 20-30 hits in the last two hours.
Yahoo puts the death toll at nearly 1,200.
Just … soul-crushing.
130 targets in gaza in 3 hours. also helicopters are on the israel/lebanon border.
An interesting twist:
More activity on the Lebanon border. It appears to be either “rogue” elements or a token show of support for Hamas:
[Ignore the preview - it goes directly to the story I’m talking about]
Summary: Around 6 men cross the border near Dhayra. 2 killed, 3 wounded, 1 escaped. Some mortars fired and were counter-batteried by Israel. No mention of any Israeli damage or causalities.
Trump’s leak was about a laptop bomb:
Its major impact was to reveal the identity of an asset in ISIS.
I’m unaware of any claim that it had anything to do with Iron Dome and Newsweek doesn’t seem to suggest that they have any source saying otherwise, just that they’re speculating rather than looking back to see what was reported, earlier.
I recall an interview with Netanyahu I saw recently where he remarked how much he like Trump.