Water seems to be back.
https://www.axios.com/2023/10/15/israel-resumes-water-supply-to-southern-gaza-after-us-pressure
NY Times claims that they have three IDF sources who say that the invasion was meant to start over the weekend:
If the NY Times is correct, the restoration of water now makes sense - the intent would have been to wait for the ground assault but with that being delayed that became impossible.
It also gives more time for the Gazans to fill up all their containers with water while they still can.
Although there are also reports that while in some sense the water has been restored there are still problems with getting it out of the taps due to other infrastructure damage, which is plausible.
That and they cut up water pipes to make rockets.
The “they” being Hamas, I believe.
Indeed.
This may not be the thread for this comment, but there was an article in I think the NYT interviewing Israelis, who, besides what they feel about Hamas, are enraged at Netanyahu, who has kept a distinctly low profile since the attack.They feel that he is to blame for the lapses in security and the state of unreadiness, among other things. There is a sense that they are having to do without leadership right now. This is not the boon for Netanyahu some posters imagine. In fact I won’t be at all surprised if he does not survive politically.
Yeah, that’s being discussed in the discussion thread
I hope this does not duplicate thread since I have not read all of them, but here is a Times article about how Hamas seemed to have had perfect intelligence on Israeli security arrangements. Heads should roll over this:
Perfect intelligence or not, the military bases described in that article were right next to the Gaza Strip, hardly invisible, and it sounds like they were attacked with overwhelming force. The article does make it sound like there was no comprehensive plan in place to respond to such attacks in a timely manner beyond sending in some “retired generals”, though, so who knows what was known about that.
One common drill in military training is as the unit is entering its exercise the trainer cadre declares “bang - the CO is dead: what do you do now?” The point being that you should be able to continue the engagement even if you get voids in the chain of command. In modern times, you should also be drilling “zap - half the remote network has gone dark: what must you do NOW?”
But that presumes you are preparing for that. The expectation apparently was that any action on the ground would likely be a one- or two- point hit-and-run raid or carbomb type strike where you could dispatch backup and in the time it took to get there at worst you’d lose two or three people at the gate, sad but “manageable”. Not a broad ground offensive.
The United Nations: “Responding to the rapidly escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza…”
The European Commission: “…which has led to a disastrous humanitarian situation for the people of Gaza…”
Meanwhile, Jews protest outside the White House:
The planning and precision of this attack is almost at the level of Special Forces. Paraglider attacks sounds like a high risk operation that Hollywood dreams up. Paragliders would be great targets if Israeli sentrys had spotted them.
The training camps must be found and destroyed.
I’m concerned what Israeli soldiers will face inside Gaza. There could be highly sophisticated defenses that will be costly to over come.
About 2000 U.S. troops told to prepare for deployment in response to this war.
Of course. Hamas knew what the result of their attack would be.
I wonder if they have some huge bobby trap, perhaps a dirty bomb that would take out most of Gaza and a good piece of Israel.
One also wonders if there was inside help - a few IDF traitors who had been feeding intel to Hamas for a long time about base vulnerabilities and security loopholes.
That is certainly a possibility
Almost certainly not: if they had a dirty bomb, they would’ve set it off in Israel ten days ago and not have kept it in Gaza.
If they set off a dirty bomb would anyone necessarily have noticed? Is checking for radiation after a conventional explosion standard procedure?
I sort of expect that militaries keep an eye for NBC attacks but I don’t actually know, I’m just a civilian.
