In answer to my curiosity about what a “Quint” is, and whether it’s like the G7 or Five Eyes, yes – it’s understood to refer to the NATO Quint.
Yeah it is:
Over the coming days, we will remain united and coordinated, together as allies, and as common friends of Israel, to ensure Israel is able to defend itself, and to ultimately set the conditions for a peaceful and integrated Middle East region.
Seems to give Israel carte blanche to do what they need to solve this as they see fit. The gloves are off.
Summary: we strongly support Israel. There is no excuse for terrorism. We support Israel’s defense. We recognize the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, but reject the idea that Hamas represents Palestinians or their aspirations. We will act as allies to Israel, abd believe this is working towards peace.
That’s an admirably unambiguous statement.
I suspect it was accompanied by a less formally worded back channel message to Iran: If you like missiles, we have plenty. We can send you some.
Meanwhile, from the other side, the president of the Palestinian Authority is calling on the UN to intervene in what he termed “Israeli aggression” in Gaza.
It’s in the rolling CNN updates so I’m not sure I can link to it, but here’s an extract (posted by CNN less than an hour ago):
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on the United Nations to take immediate action against the continued “Israeli aggression” toward Palestinians.
Abbas made the remarks on a phone call with UN Secretary-General António Guterres, according to the state news agency WAFA.
Abbas called on the UN to "immediately intervene to stop the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people, particularly in the Gaza Strip,” WAFA reported on Monday.
The Palestinian president emphasized the urgent need for medical and relief aid in Gaza, drawing attention to the looming humanitarian crisis. He urged the UN to “uphold its responsibilities as recognized by international legitimacy and ensure protection for the Palestinian people.”
Israel: “Okay. We’ll pause missile strikes and our ground offensive while you hand over every Israeli and other nationals Hamas took as hostages, unharmed, AND expel all Hamas members currently hiding in Gaza to the Israeli authorities. Do that and we wont continue the bombardment and siege of Gaza. You have until the day after tomorrow to comply.”
Yes!
I need more characters, so I will elaborate and agree with this message.
Uh, you do realize the President of the PA has no power to do any of that, right? What little authority he has applies only in the West Bank. In Gaza, Hamas isn’t “hiding”, they’re running the government (such as it is).
Hamas’ position is that they won’t negotiate about hostages until after Israel calls a cease fire. I doubt they’re deluded enough to think that will happen, so apparently they’re looking forward to more civilian deaths they can exploit for propaganda purposes.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know. But my statement is equally absurd as Abbas’.
Is there any information on how Israel missed this?
The Mossad is considered one of the finest intelligence agencies on the planet and, one would think, they would have loads of informants in Gaza.
But they completely missed this (as did the US and everyone else).
It is hard to believe such a large operation, with so many missiles (5,000?) and people engaged to attack was utterly missed.
Yet, here we are and it does seem to have been completely missed. That is another kind of scary to add to the pile.
“This is Israel’s 9/11. Not since 1973 has there been such a catastrophic intelligence failure in Israel,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, who worked for 26 years for the CIA, where he specialized in counterterrorism, the Middle East and South Asia.
Israel’s intelligence services have long been seen as some of the most capable in the world, with an array of human intelligence, eavesdropping and other technical means blanketing the West Bank and Gaza.
“It is almost inconceivable how they missed this,” said Polymeropoulos. - SOURCE
In short: Israel was aware of the presence of most of the hardware and attack vectors but thought that they were just intended for random badgering, disconnected from one another.
Of course, the article comes from an Islamic side news source (probably UAE funded) so there’s some potential that there’s no such colonel and the article was written to sow doubt towards Bibi.
Not related to your question but also worth a read:
According to the New York Times, the Israeli military has mobilized at least 300,000 reserves, which does not sound like preparation for a cease-fire. I would not like to predict precise scenarios except I feel like a fair bet is it won’t be nice for any of the parties involved.
Netanyahu apparently redirected their efforts, and those of at least some of the military, towards dealing with internal dissent, particularly the nationwide protests of his planned bastardisation of the judiciary.
Fortunately, this appears to be untrue. Per Snopes, it was likely filmed in Syria in 2015 and it’s a dad playing a prank on his kids who were playing in the chicken coop.
Terrorists can fail again and again and keep trying.
A nation’s security/intelligence has to be successful every single time. Make a mistake, miss something, and this is what can happen.
One feature of terrorists failing is that they might learn from each failure and get better at operational security and sneaking around.
There are a lot of theories floating around, from incompetence to replacing experience people with political appointees to political interference to wag-the-dog to outside help for Hamas to Hamas just improving that much. I suspect a combination of factors were at work.
Is anyone calling this the Second Yom Kippur War, or is this just going to go down in history as “the October 2023 Hamas attack?”
Yes, I know, not the same day as Yom Kippur, but very close.
2023 Hamas Attack works pretty well.
Sure, it’s almost exactly 50 years since the 1973 Yom Kippur war by the calendar we use, but the attack actually occurred on Shemini Atzeret on the Jewish Calendar, at the end of the multi-day holiday of Sukkot, and continuing into Simchat Torah, so I can see where the Israelis wouldn’t automatically call it the Second Yom Kippur War because it wasn’t Yom Kippur.
OK, here’s the Hamas Head of Political and International Relations asserting that no Israeli civilians have been killed. Those people were all soldiers. Of course, a lot depends on how you define “soldier”. I don’t think his definition and my definition are the same at all.
I tried to post in-line but it wouldn’t let me. I’m not entirely sure why sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t.