Israel is still waging war more than three weeks after the Hamas mass terror invasion without a clear idea of what a ground war will look like. How much leeway and time does Israel think it has to destroy Hamas?
I find it revolting that the Palestinian fanboys who proudly proclaim
"they love death" when Hamas slaughtered, raped, and kidnapped Jews in
the October 7th terror invasion suddenly moan and shed tears begging for
a ceasefire when the Israelis resolve to do some serious killing of
terrorists.
Gaza terrorists continue to fire rockets at Israeli civilian targets as Israel tests the waters with expanded raids and bridgeheads inside Gaza for a ground war. The scope of the ground missions is expanding:
The Israel Defense Forces pushed further into the northern Gaza Strip overnight and on Monday, engaging in a series of battles with Hamas terrorists and killing dozens of them, the military said.
By midmorning, Palestinian witnesses said Israeli tanks were on the outskirts of Gaza City and had blocked a key road linking northern Gaza to the south.
The mental gymnastics of Hamas is astounding:
Hamas also said it was engaged in “heavy fighting… with the invading occupation force” in northern Gaza.
An "occupation" force needs to invade? As I wise man once observed, I don't think that word means what they think it means.
That blockage of a key road seems like a tank raid. For now.
Let's keep in mind the rules of war on proportionality. Also, remember the practical issue of the potential for the false compassion of restraining military operations to spare civilians needless deaths in lawful military operations.
This discussion of urban warfare--called "sieges" for the purpose of the author's work--includes a summary of the rules of war on protecting civilians near the end. The author tentatively concludes:
Israel will make mistakes and unintentionally hurt innocent civilians. That is certainly one of the most unfortunate aspects of armed conflict. Nevertheless, Israel and the Israel Defense Forces appear to be judiciously applying combat power against military targets, while adhering to the tenets of international humanitarian law.
He rightly observes that civilian casualties are inevitable despite the rules of war. Which is why I consider one of the main benefits of fighting under the rules of war to be the protection of your own soldiers fighting and killing in an inherently violent endeavor (mind you, I was a reservist Signal Corps soldier and was never deployed let alone saw combat). Fighting by the rules allows them a better chance of coming home as soldiers who did their duty and not as killing machines. That is possible because they did what is expected to avoid civilian casualties while carrying out lawful military missions in defense of their country.
Israel can't avoid the urban fight in this war as I advocated for the U.S. Army as a general rule, in Army magazine recently. So Israel will have to fight in conditions where its enemies will have certain advantages that nullify Israel's technology and training to a great extent as I highlighted as a lesson of Iraq's invasion of Iran in 1980 (in this 1997 ILW paper):
The demonstration that troops apparently hopelessly outclassed can make a good showing - even if they have to do nothing more complicated than die in place in their bunkers - is useful. Iran's ill-coordinated light infantry forces were stubborn obstacles to Iraq's ambitions when deployed in the cities of Khuzestan. Fighting a determined foe block by block and house by house as the Iraqis did in Khorramshahr would force our Army to play by our enemy's rules. Although it is possible that information dominance could extend our superiority in open warfare to urban areas, that breakthrough has not happened. We must not forget that urban conditions may limit our technological and training advantages, lest we experience our own Khorramshahr debacle one day.Israel will face that challenge. Hopefully it won't endure casualties to the extent that it can be called a debacle.
And also, tick tock:
Iraq's Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on the Iraqi government and lawmakers on Friday to close the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in response to Washington's "unfettered support" for Israel.
I have never wavered from my belief that Sadr is a threat to Iraq and America. Bad things can happen--around Israel and in the wider world--the longer it takes Israel to complete its large-scale combat operations inside Gaza. Israel may think nothing is more important than taking the time to crush Hamas properly. But I guarantee America and other powers think otherwise.
But face it, it is insane to suggest that Israel is required to sustain the enemy during a war. The dilemma is that Hamas will take humanitarian aid intended for civilians. How international law addresses the legality of denying terrorists supplies and the requirement not to destroy the means of life others provide for civilians is unclear.
Israel gets clear responsibility when it holds the terrain the people are in. Until then, Hamas is welcome to surrender any moment the hardships of the civilians they claim to fight for bother the Hamas leadership in their Qatar luxury hotels and houses in the West.
Exit question: If Israel's refusal to supply its enemy with humanitarian supplies is "collective punishment," what do you call OPEC's oil embargo on countries that had supported Israel in the 1973 war? Asking for a friend.
That said, Israel will get zero credit for relenting under what I assume is American pressure:
Israel originally imposed a total blockade on food, water, medicine, and fuel deliveries into Gaza, but later allowed humanitarian aid convoys — not including fuel — to bring supplies in from Egypt, and has resumed some of its water supply. In peacetime, Israel provides some nine percent of the coastal enclave’s water supply.
That "peacetime" practice also negates that whole pre-October 7 propaganda that Israel had Gaza under "siege", eh?
UPDATE: The history of Palestinians rejecting a homeland without first exterminating Jews from the river to the sea.
UPDATE: Remember the curious incident of the Arab street that did not rage in the night.
UPDATE: Dumb and Dumber.
UPDATE: An ISW update on the war.
UPDATE: I assume at least some of the corvettes have missile defense capabilities despite their small size: "Israel deployed warships to the Red Sea on Wednesday after Yemen’s Houthis declared war and launched a ballistic missile at an Israeli city."
UPDATE: And now for something completely different:
UPDATE: The issue of proportionality is tough to define when enemies hide behind civilians.
If Israel calculates it will kill 100 civilians used as human shields in the process of killing a major commander behind the October 7th terror invasion, I'd guess that's perfectly consistent. But a thousand? That gets tough. Especially if there were circumstances beyond the control or knowledge of the Israelis (like substandard construction or stored weapons).
If Israel figures it will kill 100 civilians to kill a Hamas clerk-typist, I'd say it is probably not justified. But 10? Maybe? Probably? But it may depend on whether the amount of force used was necessary--that is, proportional--to kill that target rather than the outcome.
I imagine you have the complicating factor of whether Hamas hid
behind the civilians. Which is absolutely a war crime. Or whether the cause of sub-standard construction
that caused casualties beyond what was expected because Hamas took the
needed building materials. Or put the weapons where the civilians are,
causing secondary explosions. Again, a war crime. All those would increase the casualties. But I'm reasonably sure that if Hamas takes actions that put civilians
in danger, that it isn't an Israeli license to kill. Using force proportional to the need to achieve the objective still rules their actions.
I'm not sure how Israel's right to conduct military operations notwithstanding expected civilian casualties interacts with Hamas' responsibility not to put civilians in the line of fire. That's the kind of Israeli calculation that has to take place in real time. That's why we used lawyers in the war on terror. I have no idea if we'd have the time for that extra level of review during large-scale conventional warfare.
Mind you, I'm not a lawyer--either civilian or military. I'm just trying to think through the complications in the real world when one side wants to obey the rules of war and the other does not.
UPDATE: Just a thought, but couldn't Israel's government get away with anything it does to destroy Hamas by blaming the attacks on its "militant wing" (the IDF)? I mean, Hamas gets that kind of a pass every day.
UPDATE: From a DOD briefing:
And oh by the way you know, the Laws of War that do highlight that if a nonmilitary facility is now employed by military forces it does become a legitimate target. And so again you know, there will be constant discussions.
It is clear that a civilian target becomes a military target if used as a military facility. That was clear. But I still think Israel has to judge whether anticipated civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure is worth the military objective sought with a particular attack. I can't imagine that enemy war crime of hiding behind civilians creates a free-fire zone.
UPDATE: The reason for the pro-Hamas contradictions become clear when you understand that the Hamas supporters want Israel to sit and take it while their jihadi enemies get better and better at killing Israelis.
UPDATE: Hezbollah's leader made his anticipated speech on the Hamas decision to wage war on Israel. Executive Summary: You Hamas guys are great. Your success is pretty impressive considering we had nothing at all to do with it. Good luck with your war. I wasn't prepared to predict whether Hezbollah would jump in. But I did say they'd been bloodied fighting Israel and more recently keeping Syria's Assad in power. So I didn't assume they'd jump in.
UPDATE: I'm reading and hearing more good information on the rules of war lately. This is a new phenomenon since I've been blogging. This article makes clear something I assumed was true:
It is a war crime to use civilians’ presence to shield a particular military target from attack. Israel has claimed that Hamas operates from within hospitals and other civilian buildings as a way to protect itself. Hamas denies doing so.
But whether Hamas does or doesn’t use civilians as human shields, Israel’s legal responsibility to protect those civilians remains the same: It cannot disproportionately harm them, or target them directly.
Just because one side commits a war crime by using human shields doesn't mean the other side can't commit a war crime by killing "too many" civilians in the process of attacking a lawful target. Both sides can be guilty in a single incident.
I'm not convinced that the interpretation of "collective punishment" is accurate given it is perfectly legal to cut off the supplies of enemy combatants--Hamas and their fellow terrorists. That conflicts with provisions to not cut off supplies to civilians. But given the parasitic nature of Hamas and the civilians around it, how do those contradictory rules interact?
And how does the refusal of Hamas to allow evacuations and the refusal of Egypt to let Gaza refugees enter Egypt affect what Israel can and can't do in the combat zone?
These contradictory aspects might not collide in a large country but are unavoidable in dense and small Gaza. Is that really supposed to create a legal advantage for Hamas to attack Israel and then hide behind the civilian shield?
UPDATE: Well, on the surface: "Israel Defense Forces Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Israeli troops have encircled Gaza City." What about the tunnels? Or maybe those are cut off, too.
UPDATE: Is Israel going to slow operations under American pressure for humanitarian purposes? Or could the isolation of Gaza City mean that a slower pace was part of the plan all along?
UPDATE: A ceasefire is the wrong way to end the bloodshed:
In reality, there is an extraordinarily simple way to expedite the end of all hostilities in Gaza: Hamas releases all hostages taken on Oct. 7 and unconditionally surrenders to Israel, just as Germany and Japan unconditionally surrendered to the Allied Powers to end World War II. If Hamas did that, the war would end tomorrow. There would be no further casualties. The conversation would instead shift to what the Gaza Strip will look like once freed from Hamas' jackboot.
This is what I've been saying. I guess it depends on whether you want to end the current suffering or you want to save Hamas to inflict more gruesome deaths on Israelis.
UPDATE: An ISW update on the war.
UPDATE: A battle for urbanized Gaza will be bloody. Will Israel's "sponge bomb" allow Israel to largely nullify the Hamas tunnels? And while I've wondered if Israel will only fully clear northeastern Gaza, Israel seems determined to do what it takes to clear all Gaza:
When Israel is ready to conquer Gaza’s southern half, they will order civilians there to move to tent cities in adjacent areas of southern Israel. An Israeli general announced this several weeks ago. Hamas is unlikely to allow this, which will be tough for the civilians but some will probably survive and be cared for by Israeli medics and civil affairs personnel. The US did the same concerning stay-behind German civilians in the 1945 Battle of Aachen, and stay-behind Sunni Arab civilians in the 2004 second battle of Fallujah.
Interesting. I hadn't heard that announcement.
UPDATE: What does Israel do with this position?
The Israel Defense Forces have declared that they have Gaza City — historically the largest population center in the Gaza Strip — surrounded. With Israeli forces on three sides inside or outside the northern Gaza Strip and the Mediterranean Sea on the other, they basically have placed a state of siege over the war-torn city. As a result, Hamas and any other militants there are cut off from surface resupply and a situation where any tunnels connecting to areas outside the cordon can be identified and destroyed is set in place.
And will Hamas attack to break the isolation? Is that what Israel wants? Dig in and kill off attacking terrorists?
Also, as Enterprise transits the Red Sea to head to the Arabian Sea, I sure hope American destroyers and cruisers are standing by with anti-missile defenses up and running. And it would be nice if the Saudis were ready to bomb Houthi missile launchers in Yemen.
UPDATE: I think I've been going down a rabbit hole on thinking about what a proportional attack against an enemy target surrounded by human shields would be. Getting back to basics allows Israel to destroy those lawful targets despite higher civilian casualties caused by the presence of human shields.
Recall the training I received as a new soldier to only use the force needed to achieve the military objective without needlessly causing damage or casualties to civilians. If Israel uses a small bomb that takes out the military target rather than using a larger bomb, even high civilian casualties become lawful, no?
You still have the issue of whether the lawful target is an enemy commander or a clerk-typist to justify the civilian casualties. But even that might not apply when you consider the clerk-typist may be transmitting orders that kill your soldiers or collect human shields.
Still, Israel should get the benefit of the doubt that it tries to minimize enemy civilian casualties in contrast to Hamas and its fellow jihadis who focus on maximizing civilian casualties--both their enemy's and their own people's.
UPDATE: Raising human shields to an art under Gaza City's largest hospital:
As Israel’s invasion of Gaza looms, the Israel Defense Forces has outlined the need to destroy Hamas’ 300-mile-long tunnel network, which allegedly runs beneath several medical facilities including Al Shifa and connects to the terrorists’ key command center there.
IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari named Al Shifa as the base of several underground hubs collectively used by Hamas’ leadership.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
