A war with no accredited war correspondents

We have become so used to having wars via CNN, BBC, The Times, the New York Times and the myriads of other media outlets sending reporters to be attached to military units to inform the world of what is happening. But this latest war, Israel's offensive in Gaza, is effectivey being carried out in a news blackout. Most of the time reporters are having to make intelligent assumptions about what the Israeli Defence Forces are doing. Apart from the briefest of updates from IDF spokesmen and the occasional thundering speech by Benyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, the most detail is coming from Hamas and that, for obvious reasons, cannot be relied on. We know there are now scores of Israeli tanks inside Gaza, aiming to encircle Gaza City where Hamas has its command headquarters buried under a hospital but very little else has been revealed apart from the relentless daily and nightly airstrikes. Now we are told there have been exchanges of gunfire between IDF troops and Hamas in the tunnels, the so-called Gaza Metro. But are these just minor skirmishes or is the IDF really going to go full ahead with flooding the tunnels with special forces and combat engineering units? Some of the tunnels have low ceilings and are narrow, making it difficult to pass through quickly, let alone safely. If this was in the Iraq War there would by now have been breathless reports from TV, radio and newspaper war correspondents about the underground firefights. But this is a war carried out in secrecy.

Should tunnel warfare in Gaza be avoided?

Operation Swords of Iron, Israel’s codename for the retaliatory military strikes against Hamas in Gaza, underscores the tactics used so far to meet the stated objective which is the total elimination of the terrorist-designated organisation. This is not a shock-and-awe, full-scale invasion ending in regime-change, like the US-led coalition high-intensity offensive against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003. It’s a phased, focused, tactical battle to remove an enemy skilled, experienced and armed for urban warfare. The current night raids by infantry and special forces units, backed by land, sea and air bombardment, described as the second phase of the operation, is likely to be followed by the deployment of a significantly larger number of troops and tanks to try and seal off northern Gaza. The element of surprise, normally crucial for successful warfare, was not available for the Israeli defence forces at the start of the operation, because Hamas expected and had planned for retaliation. So, the key to success for Israel’s military commanders will be to adopt tactics which Hamas is not anticipating. This might rule out sending thousands of Israeli soldiers down the 300-mile stretch of layered tunnels to seek and destroy the Hamas strongholds which are buried up to 80 metres deep beneath the concrete foundations of many of Gaza’s largest buildings, including hospitals, schools and mosques. Hamas will have planned for tunnel warfare and will have built up the capabilities to counter an infusion of Israeli troops armed with all the latest weaponry and special forces combat skills. Israel in recent days has received advice from some of the most experienced urban warfare specialists in the world, one of whom, Lieutenant-General James “Jim” Glynn of the US Marine Corps, spent four days providing unique insights into the challenges of finding and killing the enemy in a packed urban environment, below and above ground. Before the Israeli action began, there were 9,000 Palestinian residents n Gaza City for every square kilometre, similar in density to places such as Fallujah in Iraq where Glynn fought as a combat commander in 2004. Glynn has now returned to the US, but the lessons he learned in Fallujah will have been invaluable to the Israelis. This is not a war where bunker-busting bombs dropped by Israeli aircraft will clear Gaza of its tunnel complex. Israel claims to have destroyed 150 tunnels with such bombs but most of the underground “Gaza Metro” is not reachable or targetable from the air because of where they are concealed. The Hamas tunnels also house the 200 or so hostages, so Israeli special forces will be inhibited from using explosive devices to clear tunnels unless they have specific intelligence of the location of the kidnapped civilians. “Hamas is counting on us entering every bunker and every tunnel with tweezers in order to exact a heavy bloody price from us,” Naphtali Bennett, former Israeli prime minister, has said. He has proposed imposing a siege on northern Gaza, “to dry up and suffocate the Hamas terrorists in the tunnels until they are forced out”. While this might make practical, casualty-avoiding sense, it’s likely that Hamas will have taken this possibility into account and may have moved some of their leadership and weaponry to southern Gaza, to hide beneath the more than one million Palestinians urged by Israel to evacuate from the north.

How will the Israel/Hamas war end?

This war has been building up for so long it is difficult to see how or when it will come to an end. In Israel's view it will end only when Hamas has been totally eliminated. It took the mighty US-led coalition five years to defeat the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq but the Isis ideology lives to this day with several franchises existing and operating in different parts of the world. The territory Israel has to contend with is much smaller. The Gaza Strip from end to end is only 25 miles long by just over six miles wide. But Gaza city and the north are densely packed urban areas while the south is more agricultural. But the challenge to defeat and eliminate Hamas is almost as complex as it was for the US coalition to eradicate Isis. However, for geopolitical and humanitarian reasons, the defeat of Hamas cannot take five years. Benjamin Netanyahu talks of it being a long war ahead, but I doubt the world at large will allow five years of war in a place as tiny as Gaza. There will be growing pressures for a ceasefire and for an accommodation. But the reality is, Israel will not and cannot agree to any deal with Hamas that allows them to survive as rulers of Gaza, able to reconstitute its weaponry and threaten Israel again in the future. So as of now, there is no end solution in sight.

The war in Gaza could last for months

So mighty are the challenges facing the Israeli Defence Forces in defeating and eliminating Hamas in Gaza, the war is likely to last for months or longer. It also means that Israeli troops will have to occupy Gaza, even if they manage to destroy the whole Hamas network, because the Strip cannot be left ungoverned and ungovernable. A replacement administration will have to be found and who will want to take over a destroyed country and an angry population? Destroying all the hundreds if not thousands of tunnels will take for ever. So this is a longlasting war, and the longer it goes on the more difficult it will be for Israel to extract itself from Gaza. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu knows this which is why it has begun the retaliatory fightback with such hesitation. Not from the air because there have been non-stop bombing raids, but on the ground. No war can be won from the air, so if Hamas is going to be defeated and destroyed as an organisation, Israeli troops are going to have to take on the job which means there will be multiple casualties. It's going to be a huge tragedy with massively dangerous and unpredictable consequences for the region and for the world.

Israel and its sponge bomb method of blocking tunnels

The Israeli military has devised a way of blocking off some of the multiple tunnels dug by Hamas under Gaza by firing “sponge bombs”, consisting of a chemical compound which forms a rapidly hardening foam. While the Israeli defence forces will need to engage in close combat in the tunnel network, the sponge-bomb foam will seal off the smaller entrances along the way, preventing ambushes by Hamas. Sponge bombs were not designed to destroy tunnels but to reduce the odds for the Israeli soldiers by filling up at least some of them with the hardened foam to ease their path down the so-called Gaza Metro. “The threat of Hamas tunnels will be one of the most significant challenges to contend with,” John Spencer of the Modern War Institute at the US West Point Military Academy, said during a discussion on the issue this month. “Many miles of these tunnels crisscross below the surface of Gaza, some as deep as 230ft underground, and collectively they offer Hamas fighters the means to protect themselves against the Israeli offensive, manoeuvre undetected below the surface and launch attacks before returning to the security of the tunnels,” he said. “Is it feasible to seal them? Can they be destroyed with bunker-buster munitions or other explosives? Are there other ways to render them unusable?” he asked. The sponge-bomb concept is one of the devices expected to be used to seal gaps where Hamas members might be hiding and to help flush them out while attempting to rescue the 200 or so hostages still being held in the tunnel complex that stretches for hundreds of miles. The innovative form of defensive warfare will only play a small part in meeting the threats posed by the layers of tunnels. But IDF soldiers have tried out the sponge-bomb technique at the Tze’Elim army base near the border with Gaza where there is a mock tunnel system for training exercises. The use of sponge bombs is not without risk. The chemical-based foam can be hazardous to work with , and some Israeli soldiers have lost their sight through mishandling during training, The Telegraph reported.

How Hamas rule in Gaza has been disastrous for Palestinians

One can ony feel desperately sorry for the 2.2 million Paestininans living in Gaza. They made the mistake of voting in Hamas to rule the Strip but now have every reason to blame them for the appalling disaster that has befallen them. One thing that has become clear is that instead of spending money to improve the lives and livelihoods of the Palestinian people, Hamas has diverted all the funds they could muster into building weapons laboratories, constructing tunnels to hide in, and spending their time and energy into plotting a terrorist strike against Israel. Never mind the Palestinian people who needed food and jobs and social care. Gaza, as all commentators are saying, is now hell on earth. It is being steadily destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in the hunt for Hamas hideouts and the people are all cooped up in southern Gaza in the hope of saving their lives. One woman on TV the other night said she was living with more than 40 people in one house. The so-called two-state solution under which Israel and Palestine would exist as two separate nations has been a dream for decades but now seems further away than ever. The future for the Palestinian people is grim.

Nothing is going to stop a massive Israeli invasion of Gaza

There is no question the invasion of Gaza has been delayed, even nearly called off possibly, but the remark by the secretary-general of the United Nations, which effectively said that Hamas's action in slaughtering more than 1,000 Israelis in cold blood, including women and children, was not carried out "in a vacuum" but was brought on by years of Israel's blockading of Gaza, will surely finally give Benjamin Netanyahu the extra incentive and motivation to go ahead with a massive ground offensive. The words of Antonio Guterres will put fire in the bellies of every Israeli soldier lining up on the Gaza border. Neither the US nor Britain has called for a ceasefire because they recognise that Israel has the right to defend itself and take revenge on Hamas. So it's going to happen, partly thanks to the UN chief's unwise selection of words. Whether a ground invasion will then lead to a much wider regional conflict we have no way of knowing. But the UN chief's statement has underlined the divisions around the world about Israel and the manner in which it has had to protect itself over the years and act against its enemies living all round its borders. Antonio Guterres needs a lesson in history.

The release or rescue of the 220 hostages in Gaza has to be the number one priority

Everything now depends on what happens to the 220 Israeli and foreign hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza. A full-scale ground invasion by the Israeli army won't solve the hostage crisis. It might make it worse. But of course this is exactly why the Hamas terrorist group took hostages because they knew it would complicate Israel's offensive plans. The handful of hostages released on health grounds is all part of the Hamas plan, to try and win support around the world, to try and show that they have compassion in their hearts. The grisly videos relased by the Israeli Defence Force of Hamas terrorists murdering and terrifying Israelis in their day of slaughter on October 7 demonstrate that whatever compassion they might have is purely for tactical reasons. The hostage crisis is now the top priority but Hamas will exploit it to their advantage. This is what terrorists do. In the end Israeli commandos will launch more and more raids to find and release the hostages but judging by the images of the narrow tunnels under Gaza where most of the hostages are probably being held, the risk of high casualties, both among the hostages themselves and the Israeli troops involved seems unavoidable.

Will the Israel/Hamas war boost Biden's chances of winning the 2024 election?

It sounds cynical but in foreign policy, as well as with domestic issues, everything has political repercussions for those involved in the decision-making. Thus, the disastrous Israeli intelligence failure to spot Hamas plotting the attacks on October 7 could eventually be the downfall of Benjamin Netanyahu. But could Joe Biden's strong but cautionary support towards Israel following the Hamas atrocities boost his second-term presidency hopes? It's too early to predict but Biden's approach so far would seem to be both practical and sensible. In other words, he has given his full support for Israel's determination to eliminate Hamas, including by a ground invasion but he has appealed for the Israeli military to be as selective as possible and not to indiscriminately bomb and shell Gaza, packed as it is with more than two million Palestinian people, men, women and children, albeit the majority of them supposedly taking shelter in the "safer" south. Provided Israel abides by Biden's wishes, then when the war comes to an end it may well help Biden to win the 2024 election. But many civilians in Gaza have already died as a result of persistent Israeli bombing, so there is no guarantee that the Biden appeal will play a part in actually saving lives. Bombing from the air, even with precision-guided bombs, inevitably kills civilians. That is the bitter message of every war. So if the retaliatory strikes by Israel against Hamas lead to thousands of civilian deaths, Biden might well lose the 2024 election.

Is a wider war in the Middle East unavoidable?

If Israel goes ahead with its threatened/promised ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza, will this make it inevitable that it will then become a wider and even more dangerous Middle East conflict with more countries and anti-Israel factions joining in? By the sound of the warnings from Iran and others, it would seem this cannot be avoided which means the US will become heavily involved. It would, in other words, be a calamity for the region. But is it inevitable? Does Iran really want to clash in direct conflict with Israel and the United States. Iran would lose. The ayatollahs will be weighing all this up and I can't see them wanting to get involved in a full-scale war. Far more likely is that the Quds Force, the 5,000-strong overseas wing of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will mount a series of attacks on American troops in Iraq and elsewhere to try and divert US attention away from the Israel/Gaza war. There have alredy been rocket attacks. The Pentagon seems to have come to that conclusion because one aircraft carrier, the USS Dwight D Eisenhower, bound for the eastern Mediterranean has been diverted to the Gulf region, and anti-missile batteries have also been sent to the area to protect against missiles from Iran. Hezbollah, fanatically anti-Israel, will not be able to rerist the temptation to attack Israel in force from the north to join Hamas but even they might be cautious about launching a massive missile attack because they know Israel will retaliate on a huge scale. Despite being caught by surprise by the Hamas strikes on October 7, the Israeli military capabilities should never be underestimated by Israel's enemies. So I suspect Tehran and Hezbollah and other potential anti-Israel factions will be thinking carefully about far to get involved.

How did Biden send long-range missiles to Ukraine in secret?

The good time to make momentous decisions is when the world is looking elsewhere. Thus, Joe Biden decided, after months and months of reluctant deliberations, to send the US Army's ATACMS long-range missiles to Ukraine in total secrecy, and he got away with it. The first we knew that these missiles had arrived was when the Ukrainian military fired them at a Russian airbase in Moscow-occupied eastern Ukraine, and President Zelensky confirmed that he had at last got the missiles he had been demanding for as long as anyone can remember. In the past it was relatively easy to check what the Pentagon was about to send to Ukraine because the US defence department very helpfully provided a full list which they made public. ATACMS was definitely not on the last list distributed by email to interested people, like reporters.The acronym stands for Army Tactical Missile System, and the version delivered to Ukraine which launches missiles packed with cluster bomblets has a range of just over 100 miles. The other versions which have missiles with explosive warheads can reach closer to 200 miles. The world was diverted by the Hamas atrocities and Israel's response, so the ATACMS shipment slipped through the net. The Pentagon hasn't said how many they have sent but it's being suggested the number is only about 20, so Ukraine will have to be very selective about what targets they hit. But the first one launched hit an airbase with lots of helicopters on the runways and satellite images indicated they destroyed most of them, with cluster munitions scattering all over the place, some of them failng to detonate. No doubt ATACMS will now feature on every future list and, as Zelensky always pointed out, they could make a big difference in the war.

Biden's words to Israel were wise

President Joe Biden was speaking from experience when he sympathised with Israel's feeling of rage at the atrocities and massacres caused by Hamas nearly a week ago but then urged them not to let that rage consume them. He was thinking of 9/11. He is right. Every military decision taken by Israel's government in seeking revenge on Hamas has to be tempered by a full awareness of what can be achieved by a ground-force invasion. Rage will not help to achieve results, it will only lead to higher casualties and possibly failure. Israel has every right to punish Hamas for what happened last week but the Tel Aviv government should beware of four-star generals who promise to obliterate Hamas. One retired four-star general, American, not Israeli, has warned of the consequences of a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza. General David Petraeus who commanded US and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan learned first hand how difficult it is to fight a counter-insurgency war. He warned that Hamas would resort to suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices and all the paraphernalia of a homegrown terrorist organisation which knows its urban territory, above and below ground, better than any foreign forces ranged against them. This is what the Israeli military will face if they invade Gaza. After the atrocities, there was so much rage in Israel that an invasion must have seemed like the only solution. But a rushed operation could be fatal. Biden's wise words should be taken into account.

The laws of physics prove Israel didn't bomb the hospital

The laws of physics and real-time mobile phone videos helped the Israeli defence force to prove its case that the explosion which led to hundreds of deaths at the hospital in Gaza was not caused by an airstrike launched from Israel. All the satellite and mobile phone images proved that the rocket responsible for the conflagration at the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital was ground-launched, not air-launched, according to Paul Beaver, a British defence analyst. “You can tell from the plume of smoke that’s clearly visible in the images that it has come from a ground-launched rocket,” he said. “The Israeli air force has been using precision-guided bombs, not dumb [unguided] bombs on Gaza and these weapons don’t generate a plume, and anyway the rocket was going the wrong way. The laws of physics are on the Israelis’ side,” he said. From the images, Beaver said, it was evident that the rocket had malfunctioned and the “unspent fuel” was what caused the explosion, not the impact of the rocket itself. The Israelis had the technical expertise to track the trajectory and coordinates of the malfunctioning rocket, he said, to make their case. “You also have to ask why the Israelis would attack a hospital just as President Biden was about to land in Israel, it makes no sense,” Beaver said. The US will also have been in a position to support Israel’s claim that it wasn’t responsible for the hospital strike. “The US has systems to identify every ignition launch of a missile or a powerful aircraft or a natural gas blow-off,” a former senior Pentagon official said. “Our intelligence thus has the data to confirm if there was a missile launch on a timeline that matches the explosion at the hospital seconds later,” he said. “Separately, Israel has a record of every aircraft mission and where bombs were released on that same timeline. These two data points can be quickly compared,” he said. "Israel would have had infra-red and optical observation over Gaza to make sure they know where every rocket is coming from in Gaza," Fabian Hinz, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies said.

Israel invasion of Gaza could be the worst possible option

Invading Gaza and destroying Hamas would have been the sole option on Benjamin Netanyahu's to-do list after the atrocities committed by the terrorist-designated organisation which rules Gaza. But the more I think of it the more I feel an invasion followed by occupation for months, maybe years, would be counter-productive and potentially disastrous for Israel. It's probably exactly what Hamas and its backer, Iran, and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon want and it would draw Israel into a much wider regional conflict. The US would then be forced to get involved militarily and all of a sudden there is a full-scale regional war. Hamas will have prepared for an Israeli invasion and they know Gaza and its cramped streets and alleyways better than the Israelis, and, more importantly, they have a vast network underground from where they can launch attacks on Israeli troops. The Hamas military headquarters is under the Dar al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. That fact alone adds to the immense challenge Israeli troops will face if they want to avoid causing hundreds of civilian casualties. Can you imagine the negative headlines if they besiege the hospital and try to launch an assault on the underground Hamas HQ? But even if Israel were to succeed in destroying much of the Hamas network, occupation of Gaza for any length of time would be a disaster, for military, diplomatic and humanitarian reasons. So, all in all, Netanyahu and his national coalition war cabinet should focus on trying to rescue the 150 or so hostages and leave the invasion force revving its engines on the border as a warning to Hamas of what will happen if they refuse to negotiate the release of the hostages. But I expect this is wishful thinking. Netanyahu has promised a land, sea and air invasion and that's probaby what we're going to get in the next few days. I fear it won't end well.

Could Israel turn to laser weapons for shooting down drones?

Israel may rush into production a high-energy laser weapon to help counter the mass strikes by Hamas using short and medium-range rockets, artillery and drones. Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system has been in constant use since the Hamas offensive began nine days ago, and has successfully destroyed a significant proportion of the rockets. However, the simultaneous drone and mortar attacks launched from Gaza have put Iron Dome under stress. The laser air-defence weapon called Iron Beam has been successfully tested although it’s not due to become operational until next year or 2025. The 100-kilowatt directed-energy laser weapon, developed by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, has been designed to destroy rockets, artillery, mortars and drones with intense heat. Rafael also developed the Iron Dome and the David’s Sling system which was designed for intercepting long-range tactical ballistic missiles at low altitude. In the past, the US and other countries, including Israel, have turned to weapons still under development for emergency combat use. A laser defence system would be considerably cheaper, although the effectiveness of directed-energy weapons can vary depending on weather and atmospheric conditions. Local reports from the region that the Iron Beam laser weapon has already been used against Hamas rockets have proved to be inaccurate. However, Yehoshua Kalisky of Tel Aviv university’s Institute for National Security Studies told the Telegraph: “The laser works. The only problem that I see is to integrate it into all the early warning systems. [But] I think it will be operational very soon.” Israel has led the way in devising weapons to combat the new range of threats posed by increasingly sophisticated airborne systems. Kinetic systems, such as the anti-missile rockets designed for Israel’s Iron Dome, are expensive and not always capable of confronting multiple strikes. Laser weapons have a number of advantages. The burning laser travels at the speed of light and is unlimited, unlike the Iron Dome whose launchers have to be reloaded to maintain a constant interception capability. The cost of each laser intercept is estimated to be around $3.5, compared with about $60,000 for an Iron Dome missile interceptor. Rafael has developed two weapon systems: the Iron Beam which can hit a target from a distance of a few hundred metres up to several kilometres, and the Lite Beam, a 7.5 kilowatt laser interceptor capable of neutralising drones and ground targets such as improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from up to 200 metres away. Rafael says the first proven prototype of the Lite Beam is already available. The Iron Dome and Iron Beam systems are intended to work in tandem as part of a layered air-defence shield. If Israel manages to get Iron Beam into operational service for the war with Hamas, it will significantly reduce the cost of countering the rocket and drone strikes from Gaza.

The world waits for Israel's big push

As the world waits for Israel to mount a land, sea and air attack on Gaza, it has to be assumed that Hamas is making preparations, too. Already they are setting up obstructions to prevent desperate Palestinians from leaving northern Gaza for the south. Huge numbers of Palestinians stuck on their way to the "safer" area in the south will complicate Israel's advance. Israel has promised to avoid civilian casualties as far as is possible and the whole world has urged restraint. But war is war. Israel has its objectives and intends to carry them out and whatever obstacles Hamas puts in the way, Israeli ground forces will attempt to get round them. Civilians are going to die. It's tragic and inevitable. The greatest test for Israeli special forces will be to find and eliminate Hamas who are hiding underground in the huge number of tunnels that run under Gaza where the hostages will be held. This isn't urban warfare. This is tunnel warfare and lessons learned from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan to the 2014 war in Gaza will tell the Israelis that this sort of combat has more dangers than almost any other form of warfare. There are no guarantees that Israel will be able to achieve all of its objectives, despite the immense experience and skills of the Israeli army.

Israel will start to lose support

Wnen Hamas invaded Israel and committed the most appalling massacres and atrocities, the world, with the exception of a few pro-terrorism countries, such as Iran, were aghast and sympathised with the Israelis. The danger now is that if Israel goes ahead with a full-scale invasion of Gaza and destroys buildings throughout the Strip in the search for Hamas hideouts and strongholds and arms factories, that sympathy will fade. Already Israeli airtsrikes have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, many of them civilians. A wholesale slaughter by Israeli forces in revenge operations against Hamas will very quickly change the way the world feels about the latest war to hit the planet. Israel knows this but the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, now temporarily run by a coalition national war cabinet, is not going to give up until Hamas no longer exists. I doubt even the full force of the Israeli army can eliminate every Hamas member but in the course of trying, civilians are going to die in large numbers and then the world may turn against Israel, especially if the killing and destruction continue for months. This of course is what Hamas and its backers, Iran, want. Hamas started the atrocities knowing that Israel would fight back. Hamas doesn't care what the world thinks but the fact is if the world turns against Israel because of the intensity of the revenge attacks, terrorism will win. That would be the worst possible outcome.

Israel aims to eliminate Hamas from the planet

Israel has said that Hamas must be treated like Isis and be annihilated. After the atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel, the murder of whole families and the slaughter of 260 people at the music festival in southern Israel, that sentiment is understandable. But at what cost for the Palestinian people who have the misfortune of living in Gaza, most of them packed into the city of Gaza? If Israel invades Gaza as seems unavoidable they are going to kill hundreds if not thousands of civilians. It is inevitable because unless every Palestinian leaves home and shelters somewhere safe - where is safe in Gaza? - they will be caught up in artillery fire, tank fire, air strikes and the whole panoply of war. Israel has warned more than a million Palestinians in the north of Gaza to go to the south but an evacuation on that scale is surely never going to happen. But so determined is Israel to kill every Hamas member that it will be impossible to avoid what the West likes to call collateral damage. The elimination of Isis by the US-led coalition and Iraqi forces led to up to 10,000 civilian casualties, according to the most modest of estimates. Attacking Gaza City to kill Hamas fighters will be like when the Iraqi army, backed by US airstrikes, launched an offensive against Mosul to rid the northern Iraqi city of Isis fighters. The city was reduced in many parts to rubble. Isis was defeated in Mosul but thousands of Iraqis who stayed in their homes died, too. Is this what Israel is planning to do in Gaza? The US has called for restraint but if the objective is to wipe Hamas from the planet, restraint is not going to be part of the Israeli army's rules of engagement. Hamas is a despicable, inhuman organisation designated as terrorists by the US and many others. But I fear for and sympathise with the poor Palestinian people who have Hamas as their rulers.

Could there be a hostage-rescue plan in the making?

More than 2,000 US Marines have been put on alert as fears grow for the safety of American hostages taken by Hamas from Israel to Gaza. The US 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit which is trained for special operations has been withdrawn from an exercise in Kuwait and ordered to return to their ships only 48 hours after disembarking. The 2,400 Marines are now on board the USS Bataan, a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, and USS Carter Hall, a dock landing vessel. Their sudden departure from Kuwait was linked to “emerging events” in Israel and Gaza, although there was no official confirmation the two ships would be joining the US aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R Ford which is already positioned in the eastern Mediterranean. An unknown number of Americans are among the 150 hostages seized by Hamas, although at least 17 people with dual Israeli/American citizenship are still missing. President Biden has announced he is committed to rescuing the hostages. The 26th marine unit whose troops were among the first to deploy to Kabul to help in the evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies in August, 2021, is a crisis response force. If the marines were to be used in a hostage-rescue operation in Gaza they would face an almost insurmountable challenge unless there was specific intelligence of where the hostages are being held. It’s likely they are being detained in multiple locations spread throughout Gaza. “This isn’t just like any other hostage situation, this is an active war zone, and so getting granular information that you can act on is going to be that much harder,” John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, told CNN. Pentagon and FBI specialists are already in Israel, assisting with hostage-rescue contingency plans.

Hamas has huge arsenal of weapons

Hamas has built up a vast range of missiles, rockets and suicide drones from its own covert workshops hidden in the overcrowded city of Gaza but with Iranian technical assistance and smuggled Iran-supplied parts. The militant Hamas military wing had to forego its longstanding smuggling system for Iranian weaponry when a combination effort by Israel, Egypt and Sudan closed down the well-used route. The smuggling route went from Tehran to Sudan by ship, then to warehouses in Khartoum run by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, and finally through 1,200 secretly-dug tunnels under the Sinai Peninsula border into Gaza. Most of the tunnels were destroyed by Egypt between 2013 and 2014. As a result, although Hamas had begun building its own basic rocket, the Qassam 1, as far back as 2001, the main effort switched to domestically-produced weaponry. Smuggling still continues but Hamas uses the so-called “ship-to-shore” route with Iranian freighters or fishing vessels dropping sealed capsules into the sea to be picked up by Hamas frogmen in boats which have to evade the watchful eyes of the Israeli navy. However, Hamas created its own missile research and development facilities located in different parts of the Gaza Strip. Israel has successfully destroyed some of them with airstrikes. But the rocket production line in Gaza has survived, and the inventory has increased in both quality and quantity. The arsenal of weapons is estimated to total between 7,000 and 10,000 rockets and munition-carrying drones, with launch ranges varying from just a few miles to more than 150 miles. Some of them have an Iranian imprint such as the Fajr-3 and Fajr-5. Russian-made Grad rockets are among the mix of home-grown and foreign weaponry. Fabian Hinz, a missile expert at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, highlighted two rockets which he said demonstrated the progress Hamas had made in the last two years: the R-160 with a range of about 100 miles, and the Ayyash-250 with a range of 155 miles. “They don’t need that sort of range [Gaza to Jerusalem is just 48 miles) but it may be about prestige. Hamas has also demonstrated the dramatic improvements they have made in terms of missile quantity and launch rate,” he said. The one riddle is why there has been no evidence yet of Hamas developing or acquiring precision-guided systems. Hinz said Iran was working closely with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon to develop precision-guided missiles but it wasn’t clear whether Tehran had also collaborated with Hamas to develop the same systems. It would require smuggling guidance kits to Gaza for fitting in the workshops. “Maybe Iran has supplied these kits but Hamas has chosen to hold them back for the moment,” he said. Compared with the more advanced weaponry developed by Hezbollah, Hinz said the Hamas rockets were largely “low-tech”. This is underlined by the appearance of the first Hamas air-defence system, the Mubar-1. It has no guidance system and it looks like it uses a basic artillery rocket to try and hit incoming Israeli aircraft or drones.

Israel's Iron Dome defence comes under pressure

Israel’s famed Iron Dome anti-missile system intended to protect the country from short-range rocket attacks was overwhelmed and outwitted by new tactics deployed by the Hamas militant group in Gaza. Hamas had learned lessons from numerous rocket attacks against Israel in the past when the Iron Dome system effectively destroyed nearly every missile fired from Gaza. This time, Hamas had two tactics: to shower targets in Israeli with thousands of rockets all at once and to back up the strikes with mortar attacks and explosive-laden drones. Iron Dome couldn’t cope with so many missiles at the same time, reportedly up to 5,000, and the system wasn’t designed to be as effective against mortar rockets and low-flying drones. Multiple mortars and drones were launched in the attacks and they were more challenging for the Iron Dome system to locate and target. Iron Dome has been upgraded and remains one of the world’s most successful defences against short-range rockets but like all attempts to design the perfect shield against enemy attacks, the system is not infallible. Developed by Rafael Advanced Defence Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries in partnership with the US, Iron Dome became operational in 2011 and since then has intercepted and destroyed thousands of rockets fired by Hamas in Gaza and by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The system’s radar and command and control centre can detect the route, trajectory and potential target of an incoming rocket. It was designed to shoot down rockets with a range of more than 40 miles. If the target of individual rockets is judged by artificial intelligence equipment to pose no threat to urban areas, they can be left to land harmlessly in a field. However, each truck-towed Iron Dome system has to be reloaded to ensure a continuous intercept capability. The reloading proved to be a weakness when Israel was confronted with the onslaught of 5,000 missiles. A significant proportion of the rockets was destroyed in mid-air but with so many launched at once from multiple directions, Iron Dome struggled to ensure the claimed 90 per cent hit rate achieved in past strikes. Iron Dome was designed specifically for the short-range rocket threat posed by Hamas and Hezbollah. In one incident in 2019, for example, almost 120 rockets were fired from Gaza in a single hour on the city of Ashdod but only one got past Iron Dome interceptors. For longer range rockets, of the sort stocked by Hezbollah, Israel has to rely on other systems: David’s Sling and Arrow-2 interceptors can target medium-to-long-range missiles, and Arrow-3 can intercept ballistic missiles fired from a distance of up to 1,500 miles. The biggest concern for Israel and its integrated anti-missile system will be if Hezbollah joins Hamas in full-scale attacks. Hezbollah has a massive arsenal of long-range rockets, kamikaze drones, cruise missiles and artillery rockets. Even the most advanced integrated anti-missile system of the sort operated by Israel would face an unprecedented challenge if both designated terrorist organisations, each backed by Iran, joined forces.

The US can do very little to stop Hamas

Sometimes even the greatest military power can't do anything to stop a designated terrorist group from carrying out a major attack. 9/11 proved that. And now with the multi-pronged attack by Hamas against Israel, the US has sent its most advanced aircraft carrier strike force into the eastern Mediterranean to act as a deterrent. But a deterrent to what and to whom? It won't stop Hamas militants from holding on to the Israeli and foreign hostages they seized after invading Israel and it won't stop or deter Hamas still on Israeli territory from carrying on killing and wounding. An American aircraft carrier represents the world's most potent projection of power but all it can do right now is sit menacingly off the coast to remind everyone of the massive air power it has on its flight deck. But there is no way the US is going to intervene in this war, other than supply munitions to the Israelis. And yet this war has the potential for being a much more involving conflict. Iran is already heavily involved, arming and backing Hamas and spoiling for a strategic blow to the US in the Middle East. Tehran will read about the dispatching of the USS Gerald R Ford carrier group and will smile. Tehran also knows there's nothing the mighty supercarrier can really do.

US warns illegal migrants of the dark side of America

The US has always benefited from immigration over the centuries and people from all over the world want to come and live there. It's the nation of the American dream, the nation where a citizen with a non-American background can become president. So of course millions of migrants have been queuing up to cross the Mexican border to start this new golden wonder-life. But so desperate a crisis has the migrant problem become that the State Department has actually put out a video on Facebook which warns would-be American citizens of the grim reality of being an illegal in the US. You will end up on the streets of big cities such as New York and Chicago and San Francisco, the video warns. And as the winter approaches you can expect nothing but freezing cold and no food and downwpours of rain and snow huddled under blankets on the pavements. I don't think the State Department has ever before resorted to such foreboding messages. It probably won't stop the people from trying to enter the US but this is in fact the reality. America's cities are getting crammed full of desperate people begging for food and shelter on the streets. This winter will probably be the worst ever for these great cities. Who is doing anything about it - apart from the State Department with its dire warnings of misery ahead?

How was Israel caught napping?

Any visitor to Israel notices almost on arrival that the country is tiny, wedged in with enemies looking over its borders which is why security is always at a heightened level of alert for potential attacks. Every day Israel is in a state of what one can only call attack-expectancy. So how could the Hamas militants from Gaza have mounted such a huge attack on Israel, not just with thousands of rockets but with ground fighters, heavily armed, who crossed the border and seized villages and hostages and killed dozens and wounded hundreds. How could Israeli intelligence have failed to spot the Hamas invasion build-up and how was it possible that so many of them managed to breach the border without being fired on? What has happened to the famously alert Israeli Defence Force (IDF). And why didn't the Americans spot what was going on from satellite imagery? Is it possible that Israel, including the IDF, had become so overwhelmed and divided by the extremist nature of the new Bibi Netanyahu government - masses of reservist forces had refused to honour their tours of duty out of opposition to Netanyahu's decision to emasculate the Supreme Court - that they had become less alert to the constant dangers facing the country, even perhaps a little complacent out of anger at the new government? Once the latest attacks are over, there are going to be huge repercussions for Netanyahu. He is the prime minister, he will ultimately take the blame and could be toppled once again.

Can Trump save the Republican party?

Donald Trump's offer to take over the job of Speaker of the House of Representatives for 90 days following the ousting of Kevin McCarthy says more about American politics than almost anything else. He sees himself as the saviour of the country but also the saviour of the Republican Party. Presumably he would have fitted being Speaker in between campaigning to be president and appearing in countless trial hearings on the four indictments he is facing. The fact that some Republicans took this possibility seriously shows what state the party is in right now. It's leaderless and clueless. Trump's offer didn't last long because he then gave his backing to Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, a stalwart Trump supporter, to take the Speaker job. You can't get away from Trump, he is everywhere, getting involved in everything, and it's clear the Republican party can't survive without him, or they think they can't survive without him. No other politician in the Republican party has his sort of clout and backing. Never mind that a judge has called him a fraud, that it's alleged he gave away secrets about American nuclear submarines to an Australian billionaire friend, that he allegedly tried to overthrow the election verdict in 2020, that he hoarded classified documents at his residence in Florida etc etc.

Biden builds a wall. What!!!

What a sweet moment for Donald Trump. President Biden announces he is going to build quite a substantial wall to stop migrants coming into the US illegally from Mexico. It won't be on the Trump grand scale but a wall nonetheless. After all the flak Trump got from the Democrats for being so obsessed with building a border wall when he was president it is quite bizarre that Biden has been persuaded that a wall after all is not such a bad idea. The fact is that migration is now one of the biggest political and social issues facing the whole world. America has always had illegals pouring in, just like the United Kingdom has and every European country for decades. But the size of the problem is now huge. The US has never been able to cope with the crisis. Trump failed as well, despite his bigger and better wall programme, and Biden's decision to go for a wall in one section of the Mexican border looks like a cry of desperation. Kamala Harris, the vice president, was given the job by Biden when he became president to sort out the migration problem but she came up with nothing. Thus the wall now. Walls, of course, will not be the answer in the long term. Walls never are. The answer is for the countries where the migrants are coming from to start behaving like proper democracies and give jobs, homes and food to all their citizens, male and female. But in countries such as Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen,that's never going to happen because of militancy, extremism, wars, poverty and political ideology. Those who turn up in Mexico just want a better life in America. Walls aren't going to stop them coming.

Trump's rhetoric is getting wilder and angrier

If Donald Trump becomes president again he will enter the White House in an angry and vengeful mood. His rehteoric now is getting increasingly demonic. Yesterday he said shoplifters should be shot. And despite his continual denials, it was confirmed yesterday that he DID say dead soldiers were losers. General John Kelly, an honourable man and Trump's former chief of staff, said he was present when he said it. Every time Trump opens his mouth all the anger spills out. Before appearing at his first trial charged with exaggerating his wealth in his business and property empire, Trump attacked everyone involved including of course the judge. This is Trump on steroids, hating anyone who comes in his way. If this man with a boiling temper overtaking him becomes president, there will be no stopping him. He will be America's most dangerous president. Dangerous for the US, dangerous for the western world, dangerous for the whole world. And yet millions of American citizens are going to vote for him. It is incomprehensible.

Ukraine looks for alternative as the Western arms flow begins to wobble

Ukraine must have known that at some point its Western allies would start to ask questions about sending weapons and funding "for as long as it takes" for the war against Russia. That time has now come. Thanks to the Republicans in the House of Representatives, aid to Ukraine has not been included in the federal budget passed at one minute to midnight last Friday. The Biden administration will find a way around the blockage and will continue to send weapons, for the moment. But Ukraine's President Zelensky knows that if Trump wins the election in November next year, all bets are off. A number of European countries are also beginning to show weariness in spending so much money on Ukraine when the cost of living in their nations is rising steeply. So Zelensky is now drumming up support for collaboration between Ukraine's defence industry and big western companies to go into joint partnership arrangements, with tanks, armoured vehicles, missiles, drones etc being manufactured in Ukraine with Western technical help. This makes a lot of sense in the long term for Ukraine's future security but what Kyiv can't do is retreat from its offensive against the Russian defensive positions because of concern that the ammunition is going to run out. In other words, the US and the coalition of 50 countries have to maintain weapons supplies throughout the winter so that in the New Year Ukraine will be in a much better military position and putting maximum pressue on Moscow. In the meantime the collaborative industries can start up and if the war continues throughout next year, the Kyiv government will become more self-sufficient provided they have the funds to pay for it.

Russia's painted silhouette bombers as decoys against Ukraine drones

Russia has painted silhouettes of Tupolev Tu-95 Bear strategic bombers on a key airbase used in strikes against Ukraine to act as decoys to confuse incoming armed drones, according to new satellite imagery. The Engels-2 base, located about 370 miles northeast of the Ukrainian border, has been targeted on several occasions. The bombers which can carry nuclear weapons have launched cruise missile attacks on Ukraine. In a classic example of Russia’s long-used deception techniques known from the Soviet Union era as “maskirovka”, two of the three Tu-95MS Bear-H bombers are just painted onto the tarmac in a parking bay at the base. To add to the deception, the Russians have piled vehicle tyres onto the wings and fuselage of the fake bombers, copying the method used for the real TU-95s to try and protect them from Ukrainian kamize drones. Russian Su-34 fighter jets have also been protected by tyres positioned on top when parked at bases. The satellite imagery was taken three days ago by Planet Labs, a US company based in San Francisco, and published by The War Zone defence website. Ukraine has increasingly been hitting targets deep inside Russia, and the Engels strategic bomber base in Saratov oblast (region) has been one of several singled out for drone strikes. A Tu-95 bomber was damaged by an armed drone attack at the same base in December last year. In August a Ukrainian drone strike destroyed a long-range supersonic Tu-22M Backfire bomber parked on the tarmac at Soltsy-2 airbase in the Novgorod region south of St Petersburg. Russia’s three bombers used to launch cruise missiles in the war in Ukraine, the Bears, Backfires and Tu-160 Blackjacks, are frequently left out in the open at bases, and not housed in hangars, making them vulnerable to air attacks. As Planet Labs has proven, painted silhouettes of bombers has not fooled satellites which can distinguish between three-dimensional and two-dimensional objects from space. However, Russia’s military have a long tradition of deploying maskirovka, and the Russian air force must have judged it was worth attempting a painted decoy version of the strategic bomber to make drone targeting more challenging. In the first and second world wars, both the Allies and the Axis constructed fake tanks made out of wood to cause confusion. In another form of deception used by Russia prior to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the freighters carrying ballistic missiles in the hold to the Caribbean island had trucks, tractors and combine harvesters on the deck to give the impression agricultural equipment was being shipped to the Cubans.

What's with this guy Matt Gaetz?

The only way to avert a shutdown in the United States was for the Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, to reach a compromise deal with the Democrats. It was inevitable, even though it was really really last minute. Joe Biden signed the deal literally minutes before the midnight deadline. Yet Matt Gaetz, Republican congressman from Florida, hard-right politician, doesn't believe in compromise. He would prefer to have a ruinous government shutdown than give an inch to the Democrats. And because McCarthy was forced to compromise with the Democrats to get the votes to keep the federal budget going until November, Gaetz's only response is to vow to brim down NcCarthy and to unseat him as Speaker of the House. That's what he will be aiming at next week. He will no doubt gather around him a band of similarly extreme Republicans to end McCarthy's speakership. Where is the leadership in the Republican party? Why don't they tell Gaetz to get a life and move on? The US has avoided a shutdown and that surely should be viewed as good news for the nation and good news for Congress. So Gaetz should be a grown-up and stop acting like a very spoilt child.