How is the Gaza war working out for Israel?

Special How is the Gaza war working out for Israel?
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Israel’s military operation in Gaza has drawn public condemnation, with members of the UN Security Council recently demanding an immediate ceasefire. (AP)
Special How is the Gaza war working out for Israel?
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Israeli soldiers stand next to a tank during a military operation in the north of the Gaza Strip on December 19, 2023. (AFP)
Special How is the Gaza war working out for Israel?
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Smoke rises following an Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, on Dec. 16, 2023. (AP)
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Updated 22 December 2023
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How is the Gaza war working out for Israel?

How is the Gaza war working out for Israel?
  • With hostages still in captivity and Hamas commanders at large, some think IDF has failed to achieve its objectives
  • Global support for Israel’s actions has steadily ebbed, with even ally US voicing concern over civilian harm

LONDON: It is now 10 weeks since the Israel Defense Forces mounted their first raids against Gaza in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel.

“We are striking our enemies with unprecedented might,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israelis in a televised address on Friday, Oct. 13.

However, things quickly began to go wrong for the much-vaunted IDF and operation “Swords of Iron.”




Palestinians salvage belongings from the destroyed Al-Gatshan family building after an Israeli strike in Nusseirat refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, on Dec. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

The world, which until that moment had felt only sympathy for Israel after the slaughter of its civilians during the Hamas-led rampage, was suddenly confronted with an alternative, equally disturbing narrative.

Television screens were filled with footage of weeping, wounded Palestinian children, and scenes of destruction across Gaza.

Since then, global support for Israel’s actions in Gaza has steadily ebbed away, with even the US, its greatest ally, becoming increasingly alarmed at the cost to civilians of the disproportionate use of force.

And, even as the IDF has doubled down on the ferocity of its response, it is failing to achieve many of its stated objectives.

Very few top Hamas commanders have been captured or killed, and only some of the hostages taken by the group on Oct. 7 have been released — and these thanks only to mediation efforts by Qatar and Egypt.




Smoke rises following an Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, on Dec. 16, 2023. (AP)

Worse, Israel appears to have lost sight of the principle of proportionate reciprocal justice, enshrined in the Hebrew Bible as “an eye for an eye.”

The latest figures show that on Oct. 7 Hamas killed a total of 1,139 people — 695 of them Israeli civilians, including 36 children, 373 members of the security forces, and 71 foreigners.

According to the latest figures released by the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, more than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed, of whom around 70 percent are women and children. 

The UN reports that many others “are missing, presumably buried under the rubble.”

Indeed, critics say the war in Gaza has exposed “Swords of Iron” to be less a precision tool and more an indiscriminately wielded blunt instrument.

That impression was reinforced on Dec. 15 when jittery IDF soldiers gunned down three Israeli hostages who approached them, calling for help in Hebrew and waving a white cloth.

On Dec. 19, Asa Kasher, an Israeli philosopher and the lead author of the IDF’s code of ethics, spoke out about the killings. “You don’t even have to kill a terrorist if he comes towards you with his hands raised,” he told journalists.




Prof. Asa Kasher (middle), together with Prof. Shikma Bressler (left) and General Uri Sagi, attend a meeting in Haifa on October 24, 2023, to talk about leadership in war time, amid Israel's war on Gaza. (Shutterstock)

“A fighter from Tsahal (the IDF) must know that he is a soldier of Israel, and that this makes him a defender of the sanctity of human life.”

But asked about the loss of civilian life in Gaza, Kasher told Arab News: “Israel is not losing the moral high ground. The world lacks a proper understanding of how a military force acts on grounds of proportionality considerations. Causing collateral damage is possible without violating any law or custom.”

And yet what appears to be the IDF’s disregard for the sanctity of life in Gaza is proving discomforting for many of Israel’s Western allies.

At the outset, the Biden administration backed Israel unreservedly. But even during a visit to Tel Aviv on Oct. 19, shortly after the Hamas attack, Biden had a word of warning for the Israeli government.




US President Joe Biden (L) meets with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on October 18, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP/File)

Israel’s “rage,” he said, was understandable. “But I caution this: While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the US. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”

The US government has ratcheted up its criticism ever since. In a speech on Nov. 18, Biden said that while “we stand firmly with the Israeli people,” he was “heartbroken by the images out of Gaza and the deaths of many thousands of civilians, including children. Every innocent Palestinian life lost is a tragedy.”

And, even as the world’s attention has been focused on events in Gaza, on Dec. 5 the US condemned the activities of Israeli settlers in the West Bank where, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 300 attacks on Palestinians, including at least eight murders, have been recorded since Oct. 7.

“We have underscored to the Israeli government the need to do more to hold accountable extremist settlers who have committed violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank,” said Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, as Washington imposed unprecedented travel bans on extremist settlers.

Five days later, on Dec. 12, Biden made his strongest public criticism yet.




Pro-Palestine Jewish activists gather in New York City's Grand Central Station to participate in a Global Strike for Gaza on December 18, 2023. (Getty Images/AFP)

After Oct. 7, he said, Israel had the support of the US and most of the world, but “they’re starting to lose that support by (the) indiscriminate bombing that takes place.”

The president also directly attacked the Israeli cabinet. Netanyahu “has to change this government,” he said. “This government in Israel is making it very difficult.”

It is not even certain that Israel is winning the war. A survey carried out in Gaza and the West Bank between Nov. 22 and Dec. 2 found that support for Hamas is actually rising.

The poll, by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, also found that 90 percent want to see the resignation of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in effect undermining Netanyahu’s divide-and-conquer policy aimed at preventing a two-state solution.




Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas (C) holds hands with Belgium's Prime Minister Alexander De Croo (R) and Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez during their meeting in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on November 23, 2023. (POOL / AFP)

Regardless of whether it is winning the war, in the eyes of the world, Israel is most definitely losing the moral high ground.

On Dec. 6, international concern about the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza led Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary-general, to invoke Article 99 of the UN Charter for the first time in his six-year tenure, to appeal to the Security Council to “help avert a humanitarian catastrophe and appeal for a humanitarian ceasefire to be declared.”

The 15-member council was due to vote on Dec. 18 on a resolution, drafted by the UAE, calling for an “urgent suspension of hostilities” and expressing “deep concern at the dire and rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation” in Gaza, and its “grave impact” on civilians.

The vote has been repeatedly delayed amid negotiations to accommodate Washington’s concerns — itself a breakthrough as previously the US would have vetoed such a resolution out of hand.




US Deputy Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood (2nd R) raises his hand during a United Nations Security Council after the vote about a ceasefire in Gaza at UN headquarters in New York on December 8, 2023. (AFP/File)

And as the debate at the UN continues, the extent of the world’s opprobrium is becoming ever more evident.

On Tuesday, Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, pleading on behalf of “the victims of the indiscriminate Israeli actions,” pointed out that Israel had dropped some 29,000 bombs on Gaza, similar to the total number dropped on Iraq in the whole of 2003 by the US and UK.

For Mohamed Issa Abushahab, the UAE’s permanent representative to the UN, the fact that 2023 had already been the deadliest year in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “should be a wakeup call that the current status quo cannot be allowed to continue, and this starts with the current situation in Gaza.”

Other countries, including China, France, Brazil and the UK, have lined up to express similar sentiments.

However, senior members of Israel’s political and military establishment continue to robustly reject criticism of the IDF’s tactics in Gaza.

“The IDF is performing very well in Gaza,” Colonel (res.) Gabi Siboni of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security told Arab News. 




Israeli soldiers are seen during a ground operation in the northern Gaza Strip on Dec. 15, 2023. (AP)

Contrary to international criticism, he said “the IDF is conducting operations very strictly according to the norms of international law — I know that first hand.

“The IDF is having to fight in a situation where the civilian population is held hostage by Hamas, but is doing its best even in that extreme situation to minimize the collateral damage in Gaza.”

Siboni, a colonel in the IDF reserve who took part in all of Israel’s wars since the mid-1970s and now serves as a consultant to the IDF, also dismissed claims about the number of Palestinian casualties as propaganda.

“These numbers have nothing to do with reality,” he said. “These are Hamas numbers. The ministry of health in Gaza is a Hamas entity, so I don’t know why people even bother quoting them.”

But he makes a bleak prediction.

“Nobody should imagine that there will be a position where we put a flag on top of a hill and say: ‘Okay, we won, and now Gaza will be peaceful and safe.’ It will not happen.

“The reality is that we are going to be fighting in Gaza for years to come, until we eliminate the Hamas presence to make sure that what happened on Oct. 7 will not happen again.”

It is a prediction that ties in with Netanyahu’s own warning on Oct. 13 — that “this is only the beginning.”

But Israel’s disproportionate response to the Hamas attack of Oct. 7 may yet prove to be the beginning of the end for the government of the Israeli leader who once enjoyed a reputation as “Mr Security.”

 


Syrian state news agency reports Israeli strike in Aleppo region

Syrian state news agency reports Israeli strike in Aleppo region
Updated 09 November 2024
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Syrian state news agency reports Israeli strike in Aleppo region

Syrian state news agency reports Israeli strike in Aleppo region
  • The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported that the strikes had targeted military installations

 

DAMASCUS: Syrian state media reported an Israeli strike Saturday on the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib that injured soldiers and caused damage.
“At around 00:45 after midnight, the Israeli army launched an air aggression from the direction of southeast Aleppo, targeting a number of sites in the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib,” the official SANA news agency said.
The report added that the attack had “resulted in the injury of a number of soldiers and some material losses,” without providing further details.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported the strikes had targeted military installations.
The war monitor also said members of the Iranian revolutionary guards and pro-Tehran factions were based in the area.
Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Hezbollah.
The Israeli military has intensified its strikes on Syria since it launched its war on Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on the strikes but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence in Syria.
 

 


 


UN probe says women, children comprise the majority of Gaza war dead

UN probe says women, children comprise the majority of Gaza war dead
Updated 09 November 2024
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UN probe says women, children comprise the majority of Gaza war dead

UN probe says women, children comprise the majority of Gaza war dead
  • The report detailed a raft of violations of international law since Oct. 7

GENEVA: The UN on Friday condemned the staggering number of civilians killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, with women and children comprising nearly 70 percent of the thousands of fatalities it had managed to verify.
In a fresh report, slammed by Israel, the United Nations human rights office (OHCHR) detailed a raft of violations of international law since Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 attack in Israel sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.
Many could amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly even “genocide,” it warned, demanding international efforts to prevent “atrocity crimes” and ensure accountability.
“Civilians in Gaza have borne the brunt of the attacks, including through the initial ‘complete siege’ of Gaza by Israeli forces,” the UN said.
“Conduct by Israeli forces has caused unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness and disease.”
It pointed to “the Israeli government’s continuing unlawful failures to allow, facilitate and ensure the entry of humanitarian aid, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and repeated mass displacement.”
Israel’s mission to the UN in Geneva “categorically” rejected the report, decrying “the inherent obsession of OHCHR with the demonization of Israel.”
“Gaza is now a rubble-strewn landscape,” Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN rights office’s activities in the Palestinian territories, said via video-link from Amman.
“Within this dystopia of destruction and devastation, those alive are left injured, displaced and starving.”
Friday’s report also found that Hamas and other armed groups had committed widespread violations that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, including seizing hostages, killings, torture and sexual violence.
Those violations, it said, were especially committed in connection with the October 7, 2023 attack, which resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly of civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
The report also tackled the contentious issue of the proportion of civilians among the nearly 43,500 people killed in Gaza so far, according to the health ministry in the Palestinian territory.
UN agencies have been relying on death tolls provided by the authorities in Hamas-run Gaza due to lack of access. This has sparked harsh criticism from Israel but the UN has repeatedly said the figures are reliable.
The rights office said it had now managed to verify around 10,000 of the more than 34,500 people reportedly killed during the first six months of the war.
“We have so far found close to 70 percent to be children and women,” Sunghay said, highlighting the stringent verification methodology that requires at least three separate sources.
He said the findings indicated “a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.”
He said 4,700 of the verified fatalities were children and 2,461 were women.
The rights office found that about 80 percent of all the verified deaths in Gaza had occurred in Israeli attacks on residential buildings or similar housing.
Children between the ages of five and nine made up the largest group of victims, with the youngest victim a one-day-old boy and the oldest a 97-year-old woman, it said.
Israel says its operations in Gaza target militants and are in line with international law.
But Friday’s report stressed that the verified deaths largely Gaza’s demographic makeup rather than that of combatants.
This, it said, clearly “raises concerns regarding compliance with the principle of distinction and reflect an apparent failure to take all feasible precautions to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life.”
UN rights chief Volker Turk called on all countries to work to halt the violations and to ensure accountability, including through universal jurisdiction.
“It is essential that there is due reckoning with respect to the allegations of serious violations of international law through credible and impartial judicial bodies,” he said.
“The violence must stop immediately, the hostages and those arbitrarily detained must be released, and we must focus on flooding Gaza with humanitarian aid.”


After Hamas rejection of hostage deal, US asked Qatar to expel the group

After Hamas rejection of hostage deal, US asked Qatar to expel the group
Updated 09 November 2024
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After Hamas rejection of hostage deal, US asked Qatar to expel the group

After Hamas rejection of hostage deal, US asked Qatar to expel the group
  • Negotiators from Israel’s Mossad spy agency have repeatedly met mediators in Doha over the last year and Qatari government officials have shuttled back-and-forth to Hamas leaders in the political office

WASHINGTON/DOHA: The US has told Qatar that the presence of Hamas in Doha is no longer acceptable in the weeks since the Palestinian militant group rejected the latest proposal to achieve a ceasefire and a hostage deal, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday.
“After rejecting repeated proposals to release hostages, its leaders should no longer be welcome in the capitals of any American partner. We made that clear to Qatar following Hamas’s rejection weeks ago of another hostage release proposal,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Qatar then made the demand to Hamas leaders about 10 days ago, the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said. Washington has been in touch with Qatar over when to close the political office of Hamas, and it told Doha that now was the time following the group’s rejection of the recent proposal.
Three Hamas officials denied Qatar had told Hamas leaders they were no longer welcome in the country.
Qatar, alongside the US and Egypt, has played a major role in rounds of so-far fruitless talks to broker a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages the militant group is holding in the enclave.
The latest round of Doha talks in mid-October failed to reach a ceasefire, with Hamas rejecting a short-term ceasefire proposal.
The spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for confirmation or comment.
Last year, a senior US official said Qatar had told Washington it was open to
reconsidering the presence of Hamas
in the country once the Gaza war was over.
This came after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken
told leaders
in Qatar and elsewhere in the region that there could be “no more business as usual” with Hamas after the group led the Oct. 7 attacks on Southern Israel.
Qatar, an influential Gulf state designated as major non-NATO ally by Washington, has hosted Hamas’ political leaders since 2012 as part of an agreement with the US Doha has come under criticism from within the US and Israel over its ties to Hamas since Oct. 7.
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani has said repeatedly over the last year that the Hamas office exists in Doha to allow negotiations with the group and that as long as the channel remained useful Qatar would allow the Hamas office to remain open.
Negotiators from Israel’s Mossad spy agency have repeatedly met mediators in Doha over the last year and Qatari government officials have shuttled back-and-forth to Hamas leaders in the political office.

 

 


US defense chief holds first call with new Israeli counterpart

US defense chief holds first call with new Israeli counterpart
Updated 09 November 2024
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US defense chief holds first call with new Israeli counterpart

US defense chief holds first call with new Israeli counterpart
  • Katz was sworn in before parliament the previous day
  • The US defense chief also discussed “the need to improve the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza“

WASHINGTON: US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin discussed Lebanon and Gaza on Friday in his first call with his new Israeli counterpart Israel Katz, the Pentagon said.
Katz was sworn in before parliament the previous day, after his predecessor’s shock dismissal by the prime minister over a breakdown in trust during the war in Gaza — a conflict that began with a devastating Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.
Austin “held an introductory call today with the new Israeli minister of defense, Israel Katz, and congratulated him on his recent appointment,” Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said in a statement.
He told Katz that Washington is committed to a deal that allows Lebanese and Israeli citizens displaced by more than a year of cross-border violence to return to their homes, as well as to the return of hostages seized by Palestinian militant group Hamas, Ryder said.
The US defense chief also discussed “the need to improve the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza,” after he and Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israel in a letter earlier this month that it needed to allow more aid into the small war-wracked coastal territory.


Palestinian leader tells Trump ready to work for Gaza peace

Mahmud Abbas told Donald Trump he was ready to work toward a “just and comprehensive peace” in Gaza. (Reuters)
Mahmud Abbas told Donald Trump he was ready to work toward a “just and comprehensive peace” in Gaza. (Reuters)
Updated 09 November 2024
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Palestinian leader tells Trump ready to work for Gaza peace

Mahmud Abbas told Donald Trump he was ready to work toward a “just and comprehensive peace” in Gaza. (Reuters)

RAMALLAH: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas expressed readiness to work toward a “just and comprehensive peace” in Gaza during a phone call with US President-elect Donald Trump on Friday, his office said.
Trump’s victory came with the Middle East in turmoil after the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, triggered by the unprecedented attack on Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Congratulating Trump on his victory, Abbas expressed “readiness to work with President Trump to achieve a just and comprehensive peace based on international legitimacy,” his office said in a statement.
It said that Trump also assured Abbas that he will work to end the war.
“President Trump stressed that he will work to stop the war, and his readiness to work with president Abbas and the concerned parties in the region and the world to make peace in the region.”
While Trump struck a note of peace during his campaign, he also touted his status as Israel’s strongest ally, even going so far as to promise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he would “finish the job” against Hamas in Gaza.