canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
I wrote the other day about the Gaza ceasefire deal negotiated between Israel and Hamas. I heard about it on Wednesday around lunchtime in California when President Biden announced it in a press conference. The deal was brokered by negotiators from the US, Egypt, and Qatar, and had been in the works for 8 months. By the time I posted that blog about it 24 hours later there were already trouble signs that the deal might fall apart before it even took effect. Now, despite wobbling it looks like it will begin Sunday morning at 0630 local time in Israel.

What have been the wobbles? Well, first, the deal had to be approved by Israel's cabinet. They set a date of Friday, then pushed it to Saturday, raising worries they might kill it with delays. A vote on Saturday would've pushed implementation of the terms out past Sunday. The cabinet moved the vote back up to Friday.

Not all of Israel's cabinet support the ceasefire. The far right components of prime minister Netanyahu's ruling coalition are opposed. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said he and members of his party would resign if the ceasefire passed, weakening Netanyahu's coalition possibly to the point of losing majority. That's why I noted yesterday that Netanyahu strengthening his majority recently was crucial to him finally agreeing to ceasefire terms that have been on the table for 8 months. Ben Gvir softened his stance, though, and withdrew his threat to resign even though he and fellow party member Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich voted against the agreement. Ministers of some other far-right parties are opposed, too, though they are only observers, not full voting members, of  the Security Cabinet.

The ceasefire agreement also faces threats from, well, not-ceasing fire. Israel has claimed Palestinian fighters are still launching attacks, justifying it launching attacks in return with tanks and airstrikes. And Houthi rebels in Yemen continue to fire missiles at Israel. Still, Israeli military units seem to be forming up to begin withdrawing on Monday morning, and authorities are working on details of exactly which imprisoned Palestinians will be released in exchange for freed hostages.

At this point we're only a few hours from 0630 Sunday morning in Gaza. Despite the wobbliness the ceasefire seems to remain on track. Of course, even once it begins it remains at risk. Not only is Israel likely to continue responding militarily to any armed provocation but the details of phases 2 and 3 of the plan are not yet hammered out. The agreement acknowledges a return to war if the two sides cannot come to terms.


canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
In the news yesterday was announced a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. The deal, brokered by the US, Qatar, and Egypt, would see Israeli hostages held in Gaza returned and a number of Palestinian prisoners in Israel released in the first of three phases. The first phase would also involve Israel withdrawing its troops from most of Gaza and allowing humanitarian aid to flood in. Example news coverage: CNN.com article, 15 Jan 2025.

One might wonder while hearing this objectively good news, Why now? What took so long? This war, now in its 16th month, was instigated by Hamas's surprise October 7 attack on Israel killing 1,400 people and taking as hostages over 100 people, most of whom were civilians. One ceasefire was attempted over a year ago; it lasted less than a week. And the framework agreed to yesterday is one US negotiators in the Biden administration first proposed last May. They've been working on getting acceptance for 8 months.

So why now? Why after 16 months of grinding war and significant humanitarian crisis, and after 8 months of negotiation on the same framework? Well, first, such negotiations are never fast. The sides have got to fight it out until their positions, and future possibilities, become clear enough. Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously said, with slight paraphrasing, "War is diplomacy by other means." But still, why now? What changed recently to get the parties to shift their form of diplomacy from guns and bombs to words and handshakes? To me it's three things:

1. Hamas's military support has been significantly degraded. Destroying Hamas's own means of making war and launching terrorist attacks has a constant in the conflict since its start. Even six months ago a lot of it had been destroyed... and what was left was very well hidden. But what's really changed in the past few months is that Hamas's allies have suffered major losses. Hezbollah lost hundreds of its leaders in a carefully orchestrated, intelligence-driven attack by Israel a few months ago. You may remember that as the one with the exploding pagers. And walkie-talkies. Then last month rebels swiftly ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad, who fled to Russia. The common denominator behind all three of these— Hamas, Hezbollah, Assad— is that they've been propped up by Iran. Iran has lost significant resources and international standing as its clients have been beaten. Plus, tough international sanctions against Iran have continued to bite. The bottom line of Iran having fewer proxies and less money to throw at them is that Hamas military leaders now no longer see themselves being as capable of achieving anything, even their leaders' personal survival, through continued war.

2. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is in a stronger position domestically. It's been charged many times over the past umpteen months that one reason Israel reached a ceasefire agreement is because it doesn't want one. While that statement on its face may seem like a tautology, what it's pointing to is Netanyahu's precarious position in Israeli politics. He's been clinging onto power by a small margin and will face prosecution on corruption charges once he's no longer in power. Thus he's kept the country in a state of war, many allege, because the active war blunts his opponents' push to remove him. And he's held onto a slim governing majority that includes far-right parties that are war-mongers. With recent successes such as that exploding-pager victory over Hezbollah, and Assad's fall in Syria, Netanyahu is enjoying broader support at him. He finally has enough political margin to risk crossing his far-right coalition members.

3. The President Trump Wildcard. One thing I wondered right away when I heard news of the ceasefire agreement yesterday morning was why this thing negotiated by President Biden's envoys was coming to fruition only in the last few days of his administration. Was "Get it done before Trump comes in" a factor? Indeed, president-elect Trump claimed credit for the agreement on his Truth Social media platform even before President Biden announced it officially in a news conference. But did Trump really do anything? I'd say yes and no. No, he didn't participate in the negotiations directly. His people were involved at the very end, as part of the Biden team's commitment to a smooth handover— something, I'll note, Trump and his team absolutely did not do in January 2020— but they certainly weren't involved in the 8 months of negotiating it took to get to yesterday's agreement. And Trump's personal contribution was his fear factor. As he's signaled unconditional support for Israel throughout his campaign, called for even tougher actions against Hamas, and rejected all concerns about humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Hamas's leadership had to realize that making a deal under Biden was their last, best chance.

Update: Even as I posted this journal entry, the ceasefire deal was already getting wobbly with threatened resignations from Netanyahu's coalition and ongoing attacks.


canyonwalker: Uh-oh, physics (Wile E. Coyote)
Yesterday it was in the news that thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah terrorists and allies exploded in Lebanon. Today I awoke to news that hundreds of walkie-talkies used by the same group had exploded. This coordinated walkie-talkie attack came one day after the coordinated pager attack.

News stories have updated the injury toll throughout the day as reports have rolled in. The latest I've seen is that Lebanon's health ministry reports 14 people had been killed and 450 injured on Wednesday, while the death toll from Tuesday's pager explosions rose to 12, including two children, with nearly 3,000 injured. (Source: Reuters article, 18 Sep 2024.) Meanwhile, an investigative reporter in Israel, Ronen Bergman, has written that he thinks the death toll is actually much higher. (Source: The Times of Israel article, 18 Sep 2024.)

These attacks will certainly have members of terrorist group Hezbollah looking at all their electronic devices with concern and fear. Already they switched from cell phones to pagers months ago after the group warned its members that Israel was able to spy on them through their cellphones. Many members, particularly those responsible for managing operations, also were issued walkie-talkies. Tuesday their pagers blew up, Wednesday their two-way radios. What'll they use next, carrier pigeons? And how soon before we read about exploding pigeons?

canyonwalker: Uh-oh, physics (Wile E. Coyote)
It's in the news today that members of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah were targeted in a coordinated attack using exploding pagers. Yes, pagers, the small devices a lot of people clipped to their belts or put in their pockets back in the 1980s and early 90s to display phone numbers or extremely short messages from people who called. As of this evening (US time) it's reported that 9 people died and nearly 3,000 were injured.

When I saw an early version of the story this morning my immediate reaction was to chuckle— in disbelief. The idea of an exploding pager sounded ridiculous... and also a bit quaint. It reminded me of the story that the CIA in the 1960s tried to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar. It's debatable that attack even occurred. I mean, exploding cigars where a joke decades ago.  I remember seeing ads in the back pages of magazines aimed at kids for mail-order novelties such as exploding cigars, joy buzzers, and spicy bubblegum.

But this attack actually happened. And it's not a novelty toy.

It got me thinking right away: whoever is responsible for this— Lebanon and Iran point their fingers squarely at Israel— put a lot of planning into this. They would have had to compromise the supply chain all the way back to manufacturing. I mean, it's not like standard pagers come preloaded with explosives that a simple computer hacker could trigger. When Hezbollah ordered thousands of pagers some months ago, the responsible party would have had to 1) find out about the order, 2) design an exploding mechanism, and 3) infiltrate/take over the manufacture to insert the explosive and trigger, before 4) the thousands of pagers are shipped. Subsequent reporting says that the pagers were manufactured by a European company licensed by a Taiwanese electronics brand.

BTW, why were thousands of Hezbollah members using pagers? It's reported that back in February the terrorist group's leaders urged its members to stop using cell phones for communication as it believe Israeli intelligence could track their phones. That's also part of why Israel is suspected of responsibility for the exploding pager plot.

Among the casualties were a few members of foreign governments, including Iran's ambassador to Lebanon. Speaking of pointing fingers at who's involved in what.... Of course, it's no mystery to anyone who pays attention to Middle East politics that Iran bankrolls Hezbollah terrorism. It's just an example of someone getting caught with their pants down— I mean, pager in hand.

canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
Israel has begun its counterattack against Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip. It follows Hamas's shocking raids on Oct 7 which killed over 1,000 people (figure updated with latest estimates), most of whom were civilians deliberately targeted at a music festival and in their own homes. Unfortunately for Israel, this war is a no-win proposition.

First, not striking back at Hamas is not an option. The Oct. 7 attack was big enough, brazen enough, and barbaric enough that it cannot go unanswered. Moreover, the scope of attack revealed that Hamas has built considerable terrorist war-fighting capability in the Gaza Strip. They have several thousand trained fighters, ample munitions, sophisticated leadership and operational expertise, and training grounds. Israel cannot simply leave this hostile military within its borders untouched.

Clearly Israel must act, militarily. The problem, then, is what degree of success can it achieve by striking back. And that's where it seems there's no reasonable definition of a "win" they can achieve. Consider:

  1. Those thousands of terrorist fighters are not going wear uniforms or guard terrorist bases. They will melt in with the general population. (That's a core fact of terrorism and asymmetric warfare.) Likely many of them were among the first refugees to flee south when Israel warned that it would invade the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

  2. The invasion is hugely damaging to civilians and civilian infrastructure. Israel cut off power and supplies to the Gaza Strip two weeks ago. That's part of isolating and disempowering the terrorists... but it's also created a humanitarian crisis with 1,000,000+ civilian victims.

  3. In addition to the general problem of civilian harm when fighting a war in a densely occupied area, Israel must deal with the fact Hamas hides its war materiel in civilian infrastructure. Past strikes have reveals that guns are stored in hospitals, bombs are kept in schools, and officers meet to make war plans in occupied residential buildings. Thus neutralizing Hamas's war-making capability will mean these places are targets. That not only makes the humanitarian impact worse but will play terribly in the news.

Sadly Israel will find its loses international support the longer it pursues this war.
canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
One week ago Israel was viciously attacked by the terrorist group Hamas, which is also de facto government of the Gaza Strip. Hamas fighters purposefully massacred hundreds of civilians in addition to waging attacks on military targets. Soon thereafter I started seeing the analogy in the news, "10/7 is Israel's 9/11." I was already thinking it myself.

I've also seen some articles where writers highhandedly admonish readers how 10/7 and 9/11 are not alike, because of how al Qaeda was a non-state actor and Hamas is a state actor, or some equally beside-the-point thing like that. There are two big problems with this. First, fuck the finger-wagging man-splaining. Anyone attempting to use asshole style arguments and rub my nose in how smart they are by explaining to me how I've been mistaken the whole time is rarely going to win points with me. Rarely, because it's rarely the case such people are actually right! I will agree with an asshole's point if they are right. But almost invariably assholes are not right, because they are too caught up in their own egos to recognize facts contrary to their prejudices. In this case these finger-waggers are wrong because of problem #2: All analogies fail when you take them too far.

The point of making an analogy is to illustrate how something unfamiliar or simply new, in this case the 10/7 attacks on Israel, is similar in a few keys respects to something much more familiar, like the 9/11 attacks on the US. The key is in a few key respects. An analogy will always— always— break down if you take it too far. The "take it too far" in the case of these contrarian writers is them comparing the different geopolitical positions of Hamas vs. Al Qaeda and arguing that because those two are not the identical the whole comparison is null and void. That's horseshit. Their argument is a logical fallacy (overextending an analogy proves nothing) and an indication of arguing in bad faith.

The point of the analogy between the attacks is not that Hamas and Al Qaeda are the same (except also in some limited regards) but that the impact and consequences of the attacks have, or are likely to have, key similarities. Here are three big similarities I can think of right off the top of my head:

1) The attack killed a huge number of people, proportionately. The 9/11 attacks in the US killed just under 3,000 people, virtually all civilians. The initial death toll in the attacks on Israel was estimated at just over 100 in the hours after the attack. Just that death toll is a comparable loss as the US population in 2001 of 285 million is 30x Israel's population of 9.3 million today. And as the breathtaking scope of the 10/7 attacks became clearer after the first few hours, the death toll increased to over 900. Edit: after several days it was increased to 1,400. That makes 10/7 actually fourteen times as bad as 9/11 in terms of proportionate loss of life.

2) Policy reaction to the attacks will change government and society. The US government implemented sweeping, permanent changes after 9/11. The changes are still all around us in our daily lives. In Israel, this attack is seen as a massive failure of the country's sophisticated and far-reaching intelligence apparatus. What changes in surveillance and security policies will be made? And will this attack ultimately topple the precarious government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Israelis are understandably pulling together in this time of war, but at the same time many are openly criticizing the leadership of Netanyahu— who for years has defined his political brand as his ability to keep Israelis safe from attack better than absolutely anyone else.

3) Israel has a rare moment of global support— and may overplay it. Following 9/11 the US had broad international support, including from geopolitical rivals who'd ordinarily condemn US foreign actions, to find and bring to justice the parties responsible. This support backed the invasion of Afghanistan and tolerated, to a certain extent, broad suspicion of Muslim people and Muslim majority countries. The US overplayed its hand, though, in invading Iraq under flimsy pretenses that later proved false— arguably knowingly false— and in violating its own commitments to the international rules of law through actions such as detaining prisoners without charges or trial and using torture. Nevermind that the US's enemies did such things as a matter of course; the US was held by its peers and its own people to a higher standard. Israel faces the same challenge today. This attack was brutal. It violated the rules of war, via its deliberate attack on civilians and taking of hostages. But Israel will lose its moment of international support if it does the same in return. It may seem unfair that it's held to a higher standard, but it's simply a fact that it is. And already its war on Hamas is causing a widespread humanitarian crisis. The 2 million residents of the Gaza Strip have been without power or piped water for several days. Israel is telling 1 million of them to leave ahead of a ground invasion, but where will they go? The borders, including Egypt's border, are all closed.
canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
On Saturday Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, launched significant attacks against Israeli military and civilian targets. They fired hundreds if not thousands of rockets while soldiers attacked several military bases. In the initial round of the attack more than 100 900 Israelis were killed, hundreds more wounded, and many over 100 hostages were taken— both military personnel and civilians mostly civilians, whom Hamas deliberately slaughtered. As fighting continued Saturday and into its second day on Sunday, Israel declared war.

One of the first questions people ask is, "What started this war?" Well, there are different answers one could give to that depending on whether one looks back 2 years, 20 years, 75 years (specifically to 1948), or 1,000 years. Oddly Hamas itself gave an answer that looked back a mere few days: Israelis had defiled the very holy Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. That's what news headlines on Saturday morning repeated.

Let me continue, for the moment, with the argument that the attacks were in response to damaging a holy site. That prompts two questions: 1) You expect me to believe that? An attack of this magnitude clearly was months in the planning. There's no way it was cooked up in two days in response. 2) How was the holy site defiled? A bit of digging beneath the headlines on Saturday morning revealed this ruse for what it is. The defilement was that a few Israelis prayed in the temple. Obviously they were being provocative by doing that but all they did was pray. Though that's obviously not the true cause of Hamas's acts of war on Israel, just think about whether any reasonable person would want to support the side that presents as its justification for war, "Someone prayed to the wrong god, so we killed over 100 900 people and took hostages."

Now, anyone who wasn't proverbially born yesterday, or at least anyone who can grasp that history goes back more than about a week, will spot that Hamas's attack occurred on nearly the 50th anniversary (50 years plus 1 day) of the Yom Kippur War. Likely that's what Hamas was aligning the timing of its attack to.

As for why now, one could look merely at the worsening Israeli-Palestine situation over the past several years and assume things simply came to a head. The increasingly hardline political rule in Israel under PM Netanyahu has made things tough for Palestinians. But there are also significant things afoot outside the borders of Israel and Palestine that affect the situation.

In recent years some Arab countries have normalized political (and economic) relations with Israel. Following the Abraham Accords in 2020-2021, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan normalized ties with Israel. Lately Saudi Arabia has been moving to do the same. If the Middle Eastern economic powerhouse— and custodian of several of Islam's holiest sites— Saudi Arabia were to officially eschew "Death to Israel" as its foreign policy, it would remove a lot of fuel from the fire of supporting Palestinian militants. It could even start a domino effect that brings many other Arab nations toward peace with Israel. The smart money is on Hamas attacking now to derail these moves toward peace.

Edited to add:This geopolitical view also explains Iran's alleged involvement. Hamas's multi-pronged attack indicates a near certainty of external funding and organizational support. Iran has long been involved in propping up Hamas, along with other anti-Israel/anti-secular-rule terror groups. Iran also benefits from derailing rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Iran's economy is failing due to a combination of its own corruption and the weight of US sanctions. It would be further left behind if its rival, Saudi Arabia, were to see an economic boost from trading with Israel.

Update 2: Casualty counts from Hamas's initial attack increased in the following days. It's not assessed that their initial attack killed over 900 Israelis, many of them civilians. Hamas deliberately targeted civilians at parties and homes, busting through doors and slaughtering everyone inside. Over 100 hostages were taken, many of them also civilians.


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