Blinkov has excellent analysis of all wars and military situations. He provides coverage of the military situation for Israel and Gaza.
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Hamas is to blame for this attack, but Israel is to blame for the casualties. The Israeli army dropped the ball big time. Hamas personnel shouldn’t have made it past the fence. Israel became over confident and complacent. They removed boots on the ground, and replaced them with unmanned electronic surveillance systems that were easily neutralized. The Israeli navy performed far more effectively.
The analyst is unknowledgeable and not intelligent. The troop numbers are not so important. Israel has developed its own means to deal with the Gazan fighting environment, Sensors and radars that the can find people in buildings, As well as dogs trained to do the same. Israel has developed bombs and explosives to destroy tunnels from the air. Armored vehicles are going to be protected by active defense system. what it is getting from the US in quantities is bunker busting bombs. On the other side it seems that in this round Hamas has improved Russian RPG designs so that sometimes they can penetrate active armored systems . Hamas by now has them by the droves. Hamas has also started using drones. We will see how it will all play at such a scale!
Golda Meir’s 1973 essay “Israel in search of a lasting peace” is worth rereading following the Hamas attack and Israel’s progressing counterattack. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/israel/israel-search -lasting-peace-golda-meir
Prime Minister Netanyahu is no Golda Meir. He bears significant responsibility for the present crisis and demonstrates no capacity to resolve it. He needs to answer to the people of Israel and to Palestinians, why the many signs of the coming attack were ignored while Israel seems to be aware of detailed movement of people in Iran. Was Netanyahu waiting for a suitable cause to attack Hamas to eliminate it?
It would be best that Netanyahu and other extremists in the present government of Israel resign. They have demonstrated no capacity to resolve the present crisis. Resolution cannot come from the occupation of Gaza.
Needed is leadership that can address the issues raised by Golda Meir in 1973. With progress on the Abraham Accords and potential rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel the opportunity has opened to resolve multiple issues. Genuine leadership from Israel could lead to action to close the refugee camps housing Palestinians by giving the residents decent permanent housing in territory equipped for rapid economic growth that generates good well-paying jobs for Palestinians.
Hamas might not be interested in foresight but presumably their Iranian bosses have some kind of plan or goal.
When you put people int uncomfortable cage with intermittent food water and medical aid periodically attach them, they will try and get out and will use whatever amount of violence needed to get and stay out.
Gasza was a tourist destination 30 years ago. Since then israel pulled its solders out and Imposed strict boarder restrictions in 2001. And Egypt doesn’t want a war with Israel so the same boarder restrictions exist on the border with Egypt. Additionally Israel has imposed a sea blockade. Israel literally turned Gaza into prison. Initially the restrictions were not that sever but have been continuously been tightened since then.
There was once a thriving fishing industry there but now it doesn’t exist. If a fisherman travels more than 5 miles from shore they will be arrested and sent back to Gaza and the boat confiscated. Originally food and building materials flowed freely across the boarder but only a few years later most building materials could not be imported. The Palestinian authority and economy in the city then collapsed and Hamas moved in in 2007. Since then getting anything in to Gaza other than vegetables fuel water and medical supplies extremely difficult. So the violence that has happened was predictable and inevitable.
Since Israel annexed Palestine in 1967 they have never accepted the people that were living on that land. They treat the Palestinians badly and don’t allow them to vote for anyone in the Israeli government And the Palestinian authority Israel set up doesn’t have the resources they need. And their land and home have routinely confiscated fore new Jewish settlement.settlements. Israel needs to leave all of Palestinian land or make them fully a part of Israel. But Israel goernment doesn’t want to do either.
Utter nonsense. Aside from the simple historical inaccuracies (Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2006, not 2001), this post is completely ignorant of almost anything about the situation in Gaza. The blockade over Gaza isn’t to oppress them, it’s because they’ve shown that they use all available shipping pathways to import weapons and bombs to attack Israel with. If Hamas wanted peace, a blockade wouldn’t be necessary. It’s not cheap for Israel to operate a blockade. Hamas was in Gaza since before 2006, however they became much more relevant when Gazans voted them in in a landslide victory. The violence there is anything but inevitable; Hamas has just never been interested in legitimate negotiations. The Palestinian method has always been to kill Jews and deny them any form of a state, starting in 1948 when they refused to accept a two state solution and instead went to war. There has never been a country of Palestine, because Palestinians never accepted it. Israel does not even occupy Gaza; I’ve noted that they left in 2006. Hamas had every opportunity to make Gaza into the Palestinian State; instead they choose violence against Israel because they’re a bunch of religious fundamentalists.
Oh drop the nonsese.
Palestine never existed as a state.
Israel had every reason to blockade Palestinians because they vow death to their people.
It’s funny tgat you see this same behavior across the Islamic world but idiots like you think Palestinians are doing this as blow back
Steven F is right. All this whining about the recent attacks ignores the over all situation that has gone on for decades. The Israelis have had plenty of time to make peace, instead they have, and still are, slowly gobbling up every bit of land they can. They don’t want peace, and make things so intolerable that eventually the Palestinians will strike out. Then they take more land. They have done the same in West bank for decades. This has been the pattern for a long time. It would not surprise me in the slightest that Netenyahoo knew about the attack and let it happen to try and deport all the Palestinians from Gaza as some have said.
And let’s not forget that the Israelis created Hamas and funded them to fight against the PLO. They have created the whole situation.
Hamas would not be viewed as terrorist if they actually had a strong military. So its going to be relatively easy for Israel to reconquer Gaza– if they desire.
Winning the peace, however, will be much more difficult– especially if Israel decides to be politically correct instead of, finally, making the logical geographic and political decisions it needs to do.
After the war, Israel needs to understand that it will be criticized by many in the international community– no matter what they do. So they might as well do what is most logical in order to protect Israeli citizens and to finally divorce themselves from the Palestinians.
1. Israel needs to incorporate all of Gaza into Israel after the war. Two Palestinian states is two too many.
2. Israel should declare all of the West Bank as the new Palestine. And they should order all Israeli settlements to be removed from the West Bank.
3. Israel needs to apply for NATO membership so that any foreign attacks on Israel from Palestine and other Islamic states will also be an attack on NATO.
NATO membership is something even Ukraine can’t get, since it requires unanimous assent from all members. Peace between Palestinians and Israelis is hostage to other large powers in the region and beyond. Iran has helped orchestrate this Hamas attack in order to scuttle the budding Israeli-Saudi peace deal, which would have left it shut out of the region. So the terror attack was Iran’s desperate sabotage gambit, which has now proven to be successful. It proves that any external power can link up with local forces to overturn any peace, no matter what the locals want.
No plan stands the test of battle. Hamas initial attack was intended to provoke an IDF invasion of Gaza where a well prepared defense has the advantage. Much depends upon how much manpower and what surprises were allocated by Iran, Russia, and Syria both inside Gaza and on the flanks. The attacking urban warfare army suffers four times the attrition of defenders. Israel’s goal of extermination could cost 200,000 Israelis, more or less.
Iran announced it is entering the war. An airlift to Syria and Lebanon is difficult unless Iran planned far in advance. The US pentagon has logistic plans to invade every nation on earth. Iran should at least have made plans for neighboring Lebanon and Syria. Consequently Israel bombed two major airports in Syria. The game is on. Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan have yet to commit.
I would be surprised if Israel loses 2,000 in the Gaza Strip. Now, if the war gets much wider, the numbers could increase, but (I’m no expert) I don’t see those kinds of numbers on the horizon.
There’s an ongoing debate if Hamas’s attack had any foresight at all. Some people, seeking to find a possible endgame for Hamas, assume that since the obvious choice for Israel would be to invade Gaza, that must be what Hamas was looking for. It’s not implausible, but I fall more into the second camp; Hamas is a terrorist organization run by religious fundamentalists. They’ve shown in the past that they don’t really care who many Gazans die as long as they kill Israelis. Quite possibly, this recent attack was merely them following through on one of the goals of their charter; Kill Jews. They don’t usually consider the tactical repercussions of their actions, and this time it might lead to their distruction.