Houthis are pushing their luck

The Houthis had got away with their outrageous barrage of drones and cruise missiles and ballistic missiles flying over the Red Sea from Yemen on a regular basis in the last two months. Today the impunity they had enjoyed - apart from losing most of them by being shot down by US warships - has ended. Three of the four boats the Houthis had sent to harrass and fire on a commercial tanker in the Red Sea were blasted out of the water by US armed helicopters operating from the carrier, USS Dwight D Eisenhower, and another warship. This was the first time the US had struck back at the Houthis and should serve as a warning to the Islamic, Iran-backed rebels, that in future any time they threaten commercial shipping they are going to get zapped. It's about time. The Houthis have played an extraordinary role in this developing Middle East war, firing off missiles and drones whenever they want and getting nothing in return. They seem to have an inexhaustible supply of missiles, thanks to Iran. But perhaps the strike-back by the US Navy today will make them think twice about their targeting of commercial shipping.

There has to be a post-Hamas peaceful future for the Palestinians

By the sound of it, Binyamin Netanyahu is putting all his efforts into destroying Hamas in Gaza, along with much of Gaza's infrastructure, and is not thinking of what should happen after the war comes to an end. In fact, the only way he is going to win this war is if he designs a twin-track policy: eliminating Hamas but also coming up with a brilliant new solution for the Palestinian people which will mean giving up parts of Israeli territory to create a proper country to be called the Democratic Republic of Palestine. Only then will Netanyahu be granted a decent legacy. Right now, if he were to fall under a bus, his legacy would focus solely on how he destroyed Gaza and its people in revenge for the Hamas October 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis, how his complacency led to that massacre and how his alignment with extreme right wingers produced the most radically conservative and dangerous cabinet in Israel's history. But if he were to come out with a visionary idea about a new future for the Palestinians and made solemn pledges to hand over territory for their new nation state, Netanyahu would be given credit and praise, and there would be new optimism for the suffering Palestinian people. So far, he has shown absolutely no interest in creating this sort of legacy for himself which means he will be booted out of office in ignominy and the Palestinians will continue to face a bleak future.

Trump's future rests with the US Constitution

The way the US works is that everything in the end depends on the interpretation of the Constitution which was written in 1798 and amended 27 times, the last time in 1992. It's the Bible for the courts. Donald Trump will probaby become the next president of the United States unless the interpretation of the constitution by the US Supreme Court rules otherwise. Since three of the judges on the supreme court were appointed by Trump he ha a pretty good chance of winning all the rulings that are going to be coming out of the court over the next few months, not least the one expected on whether Colorado and Maine have the right to ban Trump's name from appearing on the ballot for the primaries next year. The huge debate going on since the Colorado and Maine decisions, the former by the state supreme court and the latter by the state secretary, will guarantee that Trump will get more publicity than all the other presidential candidates put together, and that may not do him any harm at all. He loves being the centre of attention. Other Republican candidates will hardly get a look in. Yes, it's Trump all the way from now on.

The trauma of October 7 for Israel has changed the country for ever

Reading more appalling descriptions in The New York Times today of what happened on October 7 when Hamas terrorists raped, brutalised and murdered hundreds of girls and women, it is impossible not to conclude that Israel will never be the same nation again. What those girls and women suffered that day cannot and must not ever ever be forgotten by the whole of the rest of the world. For Israel, the trauma will never go away, but whatever happens in Gaza over the next few months, those responsible for ordering and carrying out the butchery of these girls and women should be found and identified. There are so many witnesses to the horrific attacks on October 7, as well as masses of video evidence, that no one can doubt that the aim of the Hamas terrorists was to brutalise the whole of Israel. It is difficult to see how Israel can ever feel safe again, even if a large proportion of the Hamas organisation is eliminated. This is exactly what Hamas, backed by Iran, wanted - to destroy every Israeli's peace of mind. It may have been on a much smaller scale than the al-Qaeda hijacked-planes attack on September 11, 2001. But the October 7 slaughter of 1,200 Israelis and other nationalities was magnified even beyond the horror of 9/11 by the mass raping, torturing and killing of so many Israeli girls and women.

Where are the top Hamas leaders on Israel's Most Wanted list?

Everyone in Gaza knows who Israel is hunting for, but do any of them know where they are? The top two on Israel's Most Wanted list are Yahya Sinwar, Hamas leader in Gaza, and Mohammed Deif, head of the Hamas military wing, the Qassam Brigades. The latest flyers dropped all over Gaza by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), offering bounties for their capture, claim Hamas is finished, and using an Arabic folk phrase, say the Hamas leaders can no longer fry an egg. In fact, Hamas is putting up a helluva fight when confronted by the IDF. The casualty statistics are bleak: Israel claims to have killed around 8,000 Hamas fighters and has acknowledged that 162 IDF soldiers have died.The fact that Israel is admitting the war could go on for months indicates that the military objective of wiping out Hamas is not going to be easy and may well be totally unrealistic. To reach this goal in Gaza alone would mean the killing or capturing of around 4,000 fighters. So, to put it bluntly, that's 32,000 to go. Then there's the Hamas organisation in Qatar and elements in several other places, such as the West Bank and Lebanon. Are they all to be eliminated as well? Sinwar and Deif are still functioning as the top leaders but even if they were to be killed or captured, other leaders will be ready to step in. This is the way such organisations work. Al-Qaeda, for example, has lost many leaders in the past but others have been appointed. Those IDF flyers, I fear, are somewhat premature. If the IDF does find Sinwar and Deif, will Israel claim a major victory and start thinking of ending the war or will it just be a spur to continue until all 40,000 Hamas members have been annihilated?

Putin loses another warship

Another Russian warship "destroyed" by the Ukrainians, using a Storm Shadow cruise missile. As one Ukrainian military wag put it, Russia's Black Sea Fleet is getting smaller and smaller. I wonder whether this is bothering Putin or whether he just shrugs his shoulders, knowing that in the end he is going to win. But in fact if the Ukrainians do manage to pick off warships of the Black Sea Fleet on a relatively freqent rate, Putin is going to find probaby the most important fleet on his books has been emasculated. Shouldn't that bother him? After the loss of the Moskva, the Black Sea Fleet's flagship warship in April last year, Putin has been on notice that Kyiv is determined to target and destroy whatever it can pinpoint with its long-range missiles, especially in Black Sea Fleet ports and throughout Crimea. Will this change the way Putin is fighting the war in Ukraine? Will it make him think about negotiating a settlement? I doubt it.

Biden and Netanyahu don't mention The Word

In a long conversation on the phone Joe Biden and Binyamin Netanyahu talked in detail about the war in Gaza but no mention of the word that the Israeli leader dislikes more than any other word in the dictionary - ceasefire. From an Israeli military point of view, a ceasefire now would make no sense because the mission is only half completed, if that. The Israel Defence Forces claim they have most of northern Gaza under control. So there's a mass of fighting to do in the south still. A ceasefire would be a huge bonus to Hamas, especially since the IDF has failed so far to eliminate any of the top leadership of the terrorist-designated group. But it's probaby true to say that the rest of the world, including the US, would like a ceasefire, if only for the release of more hostages and a calming-down of the mass bombardments which have destroyed so much of Gaza. But Biden presumbaly knew that if he urged Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire he would get short-shrift from the Israeli leader. So Biden's only alternative was to plead for a different style of fighting to reduce the appalling toll of deaths and injuries among the Palestinian civilians. This might force the IDF to drop airstrikes and go for the option which will cause more casualties among the Israeli soldiers - a full-scale assault down the tunnels in the south. The IDF has avoided ths so far because of the risks but it may now become the only option.

Does Putin really want a ceasefire?

There are new reports that despite all his public bravura about how well the war in Ukraine is going for the Russian troops, President Putin is actually ready for a ceasefire deal, provided, of course, he can hang on to the territory he has managed to seize in the last two years. There is a report in The New York Times quoting Russian sources saying this is how Putin is thinking at the moment. But I don't believe a word of it. I don't think Putin is ready, let alone, willing to negotiate with his Ukranian counterpart, President Zelensky. He doesn't even recognise Zelensky as a human being worthy of doing business with. Putin claims he is happy with what has been achieved so far but I'm pretty sure he wants not just to hang on the territory Russia currenty occupies but he is determined to get more. Most important for him, he wants the whole of Ukraine to feel it has been defeated and subjugated and as a result will be for ever neutralised as a sovereign state. And he also wants the West to suffer humiliation. After the billions and billions of dollars spent on helping Ukraine to fight his troops, Putin would like to see the look of defeat in the eyes of the Nato leaders. This would truly make his day. So,the idea that Putin is seeking a way out now after two years just doesn't stand up. He is prepared to carry on for ever, and let Ukraine and the West go hang.

Hamas working to a long-planned strategy

The announcement by Hamas leaders that they will not release any more hostages until Israel stops fighting is all part of a carefully worked-out strategy. The kidnap of Israelis on October 7 was all about giving Hamas leverage on the assumption that Israel would go to war following that terrible day of killings and rapes. Now after two months of Israeli bombardment, it is clear the Hamas leaders decided it was time to move to the next stage in their plan: obstruct all attempts to release more hostages to place maximum pressure on Israel to stop the war. From their underground bunkers they will have been monitoring the worldwide outcry against the killing of so many Palestinian civilians and judged that it would meet their objectives by calling a halt to any more hostage releases. The Hamas strategy places the Tel Aviv government in a hugely challenging dilemma. With more and more protests emerging in Israel over the hostage crisis, Binyamin Netanyahu cannot for ever say that the war has to go on and that is the overriding priority. That is his position at the moment and many Israelis agree with him. But if this goes on for months and there are no more hostage releases, that priority may have to change. This, again, is the Hamas strategy. It could decide whether the Israeli objective of annihilating Hamas is beyond reach.

US warships versus the Houthis

More military firepower has been deployed in the last few weeks in the Red Sea by America than at any time in the last few decades, defence sources said. America is trying to stop the crisis in the Red Sea from escalating into a full-blown regional war that could drag Saudi Arabia and Iran into conflict. The US has spent tens of millions in the last fortnight to block attempts by Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen from provoking other players in the Middle East. The USS Dwight D Eisenhower carrier strike group, now in the Gulf of Aden, and an extra guided-missile destroyer, USS Laboon, which has just arrived in the Red Sea, will now also play key roles if there is any decision by President Biden to launch retaliatory attacks on Houthi targets. While the US is shooting down Houthi drones fired at Israel to avenge its war against Hamas, the Pentagon insists that the US is not engaged in armed conflict with the Houthis. But Washington has been trying to shoot down Houthi drones and missiles to prevent them hitting commercial shipping. The cost of the defensive action is spiralling. While the Houthis are launching drones that will have cost $1,000-$2,000 each, the US Navy warships engaged in knocking them out of the sky are believed to have fired, among other weapon systems, the short-range, anti-ballistic missile weapon, called Standard SM-3 which costs more than $11 million each. The costs are being absorbed because the US knows the alternative, a much wider war, would require significantly increased funding from a budget already under strain from backing Israel and Ukraine. In recent weeks, the Red Sea and Suez Canal have become such a danger zone for container ships and other merchant vessels that all the major shipping lines have had to reroute around Africa. Alternative transit options have also been reduced because of the continuing drought conditions affecting water levels in the Panama Canal. The US Navy currently has three destroyers close to the Bab el Mandeb Strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. They are the USS Carney, USS Mason and USS Thomas Hudner. All of them have intercepted cruise missiles, short-range ballistic missiles and large numbers of Iranian-made Shahed armed drones. At the weekend, USS Carney shot down 14 drones launched from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. The US on Tuesday announced the establishment of a new international maritime force to protect ships transiting the Red Sea. Under Operation Prosperity Guardian, up to 19 nations are expected to be involved in sending ships. Bahrain, host nation of the US Fifth Fleet, has so far been identified as the only country joining the new force from the Gulf nations. Some US defence sources suggested the almost daily drone and cruise missile strikes across the Red Sea by the Houthis were a deliberate attempt to entice a military response by the Americans. The Pentagon said that so far the movement of warships into the region had not been affected by the challenges in the Suez Canal and Panama Canal. For those shipping companies with vessels queuing up to enter the Suez Canal, the presence of US warships, as well as the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Diamond and French frigate, FS Languedoc, has prevented wholesale closure of the canal.

Biden avoiding war with Houthis

The Pentagon has sent aircraft carriers, destroyers, fighter aircraft and Tomahawk cruise missiles to the Middle East but is desperately trying to avoid a war. There is enough firepower on the warships and additional weaponry on the US base in nearby Djibouti to launch widescale strikes on the Houthi militants in Yemen who have been firing daily drones and cruise missiles across the Red Sea ever since Israel began its military operation against Hamas in Gaza. However, no authority has been given by President Biden to take any action other than to shoot down the drones and missiles at huge expense – more than $1 million a shot. The reason is simple. The US wants to contain the war between Israel and Hamas and prevent he conflict becoming a regional security crisis that would lead to a conflagration involving the Houthis, Iran, Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and possibly other parties. The Pentagon has drawn up target lists for attacking Houthi military facilities but contingency planning is a long way from a political decision by the White House to go to war with the Yemeni rebels who are armed and funded by Tehran. The US naval forces sent to the eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea, including two aircraft carrier battle groups, were deployed to act as a deterrent to the Houthis and Iran. But the presence of so much firepower has failed to stop the persistent attacks on commercial shipping, and rocket strikes by Iran-backed Islamic militias on American troop positions in Iraq and Syria. As a result, there is a war of sorts going on between the US and the Houthis and, by linkage, with Iran. But with the Houthis it’s purely defensive and with Iran it has involved limited airstrikes on the militia forces in Iraq and Syria. The next step for the US, striking Houthi targets in Yemen and even military facilities in Iran connected with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, would run the risk of inflaming the whole Middle East region and undermining any hopes of bringing the war in Gaza to an end in the near future. The US would also be on its own. While 19 countries have signed up for the maritime patrol mission to protect commercial shipping in the Red Sea, none would get involved in a war with the Houthis. Saudi Arabia, not a participant in the new Operation Prosperity Guardian maritime force, led a coalition of nine countries in airstrikes against the Houthis for eight years but recently forged a fragile peace agreement . Riyadh would not want to put that at risk by joining with the Americans in new retaliatory strikes on the Houthis. So, at present, the US has good reason to stick with the current policy of protecting commercial shipping and shooting down anything coming from Yemen but holding off from striking Houthi targets.

The polls on Biden are mostly dire

It's fairly traditional for the incumbent president of the United States to experience poor polling mid-stream and/or as the next election approaches. But Joe Biden is getting really bad poll results, suggesting that he is not only running behind Donald Trump but also, in some states, Nikki Haley who looks like she is going to grab the Number Two slot in the Republican race for the White House. Biden dismisses the polls, saying the media are not looking at all the polls, just the poor ones. But I suspect the polling figures are pretty accurate. US voters are worried about going for a president who will be into his mid-80s when he's done after a second term. But Biden has a big plus in his favour and that, bizarrely, is his age because with age comes long experience. It could be argued that Trump has the experience becasuse of hs four years in the White House, but if Trump fails to get the Republican nomination because of all the charges against him or because voters might feel he would be a dictator, not a democracy-loving leader, then the alternatives would all be far less experienced than Biden. And let's look at what might be coming in the next four-to-five years to challenge the man or woman in the White House: a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, another war in the Middle East, nuclear sabre-rattling by North Korea, upheaval in Europe as countries struggle to cope with mass illegal immigration, climate-change disasters, more aggression from President Putin, and another pandemic. Someone with huge experience in the toughest job in the world would be vital. So I guess that might mean there is hope for Biden, despite the polls. But Trump still looks an odds-on bet.

Israel told again to stop killing civilians

Lloyd Austin, US Defence Secretary, is the latest American official to plead with Israel to stop killing so many civilians in Gaza. Israel is now getting almost daily calls and appeals from around the world to stop adding to the appalling toll of civilian deaths, now totalling more than 18,000, according to the Gaza health ministry which is controlled by Hamas. The answer from Israel is always the same. If it was that easy and straightforward to just send troops in to isolate and eliminate Hamas fighters, they would have done it a long time ago. But, as the Israeli gvernment tells its frequent visitors from the US and Europe, Hamas is deliberately hiding among civilians and civilian buildings, so it's inevitable that innocent Palestinians are dying. It's a Catch-22 for the Israeli troops and it's definitely a tragic Catch-22 for the Palestinian people who are caught in the middle and have nowhere truly safe to go. I doubt Austin will get any promises from Israel, other than a pledge to focus as much as possible on targeting visible Hamas fighters rather than buildings below which they believe Hamas is hiding. This has been the dilemma for Israel ever since they launched their retaliatory strikes on Hamas after the October 7 terrorist massacre. Austin arrived im Israel as Hamas claimed more than 100 Palestinians had been killed north of Gaza City. This horrific death toll I fear is going to continue whetever Austin and others say because the Israel Defence Forces are nowhere near finishing the job of eliminating Hamas.

Only one Israeli hostage has been rescued so far after ten weeks

One hundred of the 240 hostages seized by Hamas on October 7 have been released. But only one has been rescued in a military operation. It is an extraordinary statistic. The Israeli security and intellligence service have a legendary reputation for rescuing hostages and tracking down their captors. But in this war, the obstacles are clearly greater than they have ever encountered before, yet they must surely be planning further rescue missions. The one successful mission took place towards the end of October. Private Ori Megidish who had been serving with an army observation unit on the border with Gaza when Hamas burst through the fences on October 7. Among the locations where they murdered and raped and kidnapped was the Nahal Oz base where she worked. But remarkably, in a secret mission involving the Israel Defence Forces and the Shin Bet security service, she was found and rescued and returned home. No details have emerged since abut how she was rescued. But with her knowledge as an observation specialist, she was able to pass on vital details about Hamas and its strongholds. But since that successful mission there has been no word of any other bids to free hostages other than through negotiations with Hamas via the Qatari government as mediators. The IDF had the chance of rescuing three more hostages when they suddenly emerged - escaped? But, tragically, they were assessed to be Hamas fighters and were shot dead by an IDF soldier. So the hostage-rescue list still has only one name on it.

Israel on mission impossible to eliminate Hamas

Is Israel engaged in a “mission impossible” in Gaza? The stated aim of Operation Swords of Iron is to annihilate Hamas, but after more than two months of fighting and bombardment, that military objective would seem to be unrealistic. With the firepower and combat experience at its disposal, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) will have started the full-scale war confident of its ability to destroy a terror organisation of 30,000-40,000 members, all within a strictly limited territorial area. However, as the world watched in increasing horror, it became clear that the only option open to the IDF for reaching the Hamas fighters operating underground was to bomb everything above them. In the process, more than 18,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, have been killed. Israel claims around a third – more than 5,000 - were “enemy combatants”. The history of warfare in recent decades has demonstrated that initial military objectives can be overblown or beyond reach or, in some cases, subject to mission creep. The US-led war against the Islamic State (Isis) was in many respects a successful mission, although it took four years. In September, 2014, President Obama, in an address from the White House declared his intention to “degrade and ultimately destroy” Isis. In December, 2018, President Trump claimed Isis had been defeated. And yet, five years later, the Isis ideology remains a potent threat in many parts of the world . The terrorist organisation’s affiliated franchises are operating in Syria, Iraq and throughout Africa, especially Mozambique, Burkino Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Mali, as well as in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It took the US-led coalition 20 years to accept that its overall objective of converting Afghanistan into a democratic nation capable of defending itself without outside help was a mission too far. The Taleban, only ever about 80,000-strong, was initially routed in 2001, but came back from their hideouts in Pakistan to challenge the western-backed Kabul government. In 20 years of war, the US-led mission had multiple objectives. But the priority ones were to ensure al-Qaeda could never again enjoy a safe haven in Afghanistan, that the Taleban movement be wiped out and the Afghan security forces trained and equipped to withstand all future challenges. In the two decades it took for the Taleban to return to power, after the collapse of the Afghan army, and watch their western enemies hastily withdrawing, more than 48,000 Afghan civilians were killed. In the war in Gaza, the IDF has systematically bombed the buildings highlighted on a comprehensive target list of locations where Hamas has been known to operate from in the past and during the current conflict. Yet Hamas is still operating as a fighting unit, it is holding about 130 hostages as a permanent brake on IDF combat missions, and the killing of so many civilians may now compel Israel’s war cabinet, under pressure from Washington, to change its tactics from wholesale bombardment to precision assaults by special forces. Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, warned two weeks ago that Israel risked “strategic defeat” if Palestinian civilians were not protected. He was criticised by Senator Lindsey Graham, a leading Republican hawk. Graham called him naive. However, the fate of Palestinian civilians is now at the heart of Washington’s concerns about the way Israel is prosecuting the war. A tactical victory, such as the killing of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, and the elimination of his command structure, could prove to be a false dawn if the ideology of the terrorist-designated organisation spreads throughout the civilian population, and a new generation of fighters emerges.

Who needs friends like Viktor Orban?

Hungary, like all the other eastern European former Soviet satellite nations, was desperate to join Nato when the Soviet Union collapsed. The country joined the western alliance in 1999. But all the gratitude and relief shown by the then Hungarian government when they were accepted as Nato members has all gone to rot now because the prime minister, Viktor Orban who is about as dictatorial as you can get and loves Vladimir Putin, wants to screw up Nato's policy of helping Ukraine to fight the Russian invaders. It beats me how you can have a member of the alliance who seems intent on thwarting everything the alliance stands for. Orban stepped in and refused to allow billions of dollars of EU aid to be sent to Kyiv and vowed to continue blocking it in the future. He has decided apparently that Ukraine can't defeat Russia, so what's the point of pouring more money down the big black hole. So, thanks to this Soviet-era-looking politician, Ukraine is going to struggle like mad to survive the winter against an increasingly confident Russian force which is under orders from Putin to stay put in Ukraine whatever happens. Perhaps Orban will receive a special honour from Putin - Hero of the Russian Federation.

Putin says he is winning in Ukraine

Vladimir Putin carried out his now legendary annual press conference today which went on for hours. There is no question that he sounds in an ebullient mood. He believes he is winning in Ukraine and says he has no interest in any peace settlement until he has achieved all of his military ohjectives, one of which is denazification whatever that means. It sounds like a reason for Putin never to give up in Ukraine but to plough on for ever. The fact that he thinks he is winning is worrying but also probably true. Apart from the battlefield stalemate which is likely to last all winter, Putin will be loving reading about the disenchantment in the Republican party in the US Congress. Everything Putin had planned for is now happening. The great 50-nation coalition helping Ukraine is beginning to fall apart, largely because Kyiv has failed to win back much territory. So the dream of driving every Russian soldier out of Ukraine and back over the border into Russia is getting more and more unrealistic. And if the US and its European partners start to waver over sending more munitions, the result will mean victory for Putin and disastrous defeat for Zelensky. Ukraine cannot survive without western help. So we have genuinely reached a pivotal moment in the war in Ukraine. If the West cold-shoulders Kyiv, Putin will be able to claim a victory and will be an ever-present danger to other countries in the region.

Climate deal on fossil fuels is great but.....

Of course the agreement to move away from fossil fuels altogether and focus on renewable energy is terrific progress, and the fact that it was the UAE's oil minister who managed and orchestrated the decision at the climate summit in Dubai makes it somehow more poignant. But there are so many buts. First of all, it's non-binding, and second it's "transitioning" away from, rather than abandoning for ever. So oil and gas and coal are going to be with us for some time, perhaps a long time. It's only noble words in a multi-nation-signed document. How many nations' leaders will go back to their capitals and start immediately "transitioning" from oil and gas and coal to wind and tidal and solar etc? I doubt any will. Rather, they will return with the good news that the world has made a big decision and then get on with anything and everything else, especially how to save their economies. Going renewable means a huge gigantic investment and industrial revolution and few countries, if any, can afford it right now. So great news but.....

Gaza and Ukraine wars will never end

Even if there were to be agreed ceasefires and an end to killing and destruction, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine are never going to be wrapped up all neatly and satisfactorily. If there is a ceasefire deal in Gaza - very unlikely I have to say - Gaza will be a territory filled with displaced people and destroyed homes and eternal resentment against Israel. If there is a deal between Kyiv and Moscow - also pretty unlikely although it may be forced on Zelensky by the Republicans in US Congress - Ukraine will be a smaller nation and will NEVER feel safe again. So, in that sense, the wars will be with them for ever even when the occupying troops have left. Gaza will be in an immeasurably worst state because after the last bomb has been dropped the 2.3 million Palestinian people will have nowhere to go. The war will also never go away for the devastated Israeli families who lost loved ones and their homes and had daughters and mothers raped and family members kidnapped on that terrible October 7 day. Their suffering will not stop once the fighting stops. Wars never end neatly. There is always agony and suffering and anger and hatred for ever.

It's Bibi Netanyahu versus Yahya Sinwar

The war in Gaza is not going to stop until Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of Israel, finds and kills his Number 1 enemy, Yahya Sinwar, leader of Hamas. It has become a totemic battle for Netanyahu. Israeli troops are hunting for the Hamas leader but have yet to pinpoint him. It seems they thought he was in a bunker below the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, but so far they have failed to find him. They surrounded the Hamas headquaters in northern Gaza, but he wasn't there either. Netanyahu mentions him all the time, so it's clear the Israeli prime minister will never consider calling off the war until his troops have either captured or killed Sinwar. The trouble with this obsession with getting the man who planned the horrific massacres and rapes in Israel on Octber 7 is that the remaining 137 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza might never be released. Hamas has already said that the hostages could all die unless Israel returns to negotiating a ceasefire. While one can understand Israel's determination to eliminate Sinwar and his cohorts, the rescue of these hostages should be the priority.

The Sixty-Five Day War. So far

And tomorrow it will be the Sixty-Six Day War. Despite all the claimed reports that Washington has told Tel Avv it wants the war in Gaza wrapped up and finished by the end of this year, it looks far more likely that it will still be going on well in to 2024. How will the Palestinian civilians be able to cope with an extended war when they are already being shunted into a corner of southern Gaza to escape the constant airstrikes and tank shellings? Hamas is putting up fierce resistance, so the chances of the fighting ending with total elimination of the terrorist-designated organisation or, alternatively, mass surrender, seems remote. So Tel Aviv, backed by an increasingly worried United States, will keep going, and that means beyond-belief suffering for the Palestinian people. They have never had their own nation, their own sovereignty, their own strong and secure borders. What's more they have had the gravest misfortune of being ruled by the Hamas terror oganisation since June 2007 which has led to this appalling war. What hope is there for them?

Putin is no longer losing in Ukraine

Putin has not won a strategic victory in Ukraine on the battlefield. But if the US-led coalition of 50 nations helping Kyiv starts to fall apart, then the Russian president will have won a strategic pressure victory against the West. It would be a mighty blow for Putin which might well give him new ideas and ambitions for his next six-year term in office. The war in Ukraine has effectively ground to a halt with neither side gaining or losing anything of consequence. The much-promoted Ukrainian counter-offensive has largely failed and now that winter has set in, the territorial stalemate will be fixed in mud and snow and misery. Putin, not for the first time, will be very pleased with himself. When he launched his so-called special military operation, it became apparent that his military chiefs had planned the invasion so badly that no one had properly thought out how to keep the Russian forces fed, watered and fuelled. I suppose they believed it would all be over so quickly it wasn't necessary to set up a logistical back-up. Thus, tanks and other armoured vehicles ran out of gas and presented shooting targets for the Ukrainians. The West held its breath and became convinced that Russia was facing a humiliating defeat which would be good for democracy, good for Ukraine, and good for the planet. But Russia survived and started fighting back and then dug in, and that's how it has been ever since. I doubt 2024 will be a good year for Ukraine or for the West.

Putin says he would like to be president again please!

So the biggest surprise of the week is that after a long and careful assesssment, Vladimir Putin has decided that he has a pretty good chance of winning the election next March and has announced he will be standing in order to remain the Russian boss for another six years. How Rishi Sunak must be glowing with envy. Putin knows he is going to win because the main opposition politician is in jail and no one else will dare to stand against him. So it's a fait accompli or whatever the equivalent is in Russian. Sunak on the other hand has such a tiny chance of winning the next election that he must already be planning his future a long way away from 10 Downing Street. There are so many things going wrong, in particular his extraordinary immigration policy under which unsuitable asylum seekers are sent to Rwanda, that the general picture coming out of Downing Street is mayhem. But, even though his war in Ukraine hasn't been going too well, Putin seems to be able to rise above it all and can look forward to another six years and is no doubt wondering whether to move on from Ukraine and start annoying Poland and the Baltic nations. Bizarre thing to say, but perhaps Donald Trump might be the only one who can stop him!

Russian spy chief says Ukraine is America's second Vietnam!

Now we really know what the Kremlin thinks about the massive US financial involvement in the war in Ukraine. Sergei Naryshkin, chief of the Russian SVR intelligence service, has proclaimed that Ukraine will be America's second Vietnam, draining endless resources without achieving anything. He may well be right but surely Ukraine could also be Russia's Vietnam. Thousands and thousands of soldiers dying in a war the Russians can never win outright. Maybe Moscow will have its Saigon moment, pulling everyone out by helocopter from the rooftops in a panic evacuation. Either way, Naryshkin knows how to use propaganda to undermine the enemy - America in this case. Unfortunately, it is true that the amount of money being spent on propping up Ukraine's ability to defend itself against the Russian invaders is already staggering and it will go on and on as long as both sides refuse to consider a deal. I see that Lord Cameron, the back-to-the-future UK foreign secretary, is the latest western official to warn that if the funds dry up for Kyiv, Putin will just march into Poland and the Baltics. I don't see that argument because Putin knows that if he invades any country which is a member of the Nato alliance, it will lead to a full-scale war which Russia would lose. He is not winning in Ukraine but at least he thinks he has achieved some territorial advantange. If his troops invaded Poland, Putin would gain nothing except more bodybags.

Israel has to resolve what to do about the tunnels under Gaza

It has already been eight weeks since the Israel Defence Forces blasted into northern Gaza to start attacking Hamas. Now that the main thrust of their military operation is in southern Gaza, the IDF seems to be accelerating its offensive, with soldiers mounting door-to-door fighting in an attempt to sweep up the majority of Hamas fighters. But at some point the IDF will have to decide what to do about the tunnels and the underground bunkers.In the north they poured concrete into hundreds of tunnel shafts to block them up. But that didn't per se kill Hamas members hiding in the tunnels. They will have just moved further down the network of tunnels. Now the Israelis are talking about flooding all the tunnels with sea water, pumped in from the Mediterranean Sea. But there are two things stopping them from taking this drastic action. First of course are the hostages. The 130 or so left in Hamas hands will be in the deepest and most impenetrable bunkers. Netanhyahu cannot under any circumstances decide to sacrifice the lives of the hostages in order to eliminate all the Hamas fighters down in the tunnels. The second thing stopping the flooding option is the potential damage it would cause to the foundations of every building left standing in Gaza. While tunnels collapsed under the weight of the sea water, the ground structure could be severely affected across the Gaza Strip. So if flooding the tunnels has to be put off for now, is the only other option for IDF troops to storm the tunnels and follow them wherever they go. It's reported that many of the tunnels have been boobytrapped, so a full-scale assault down under Gaza would seem to be far too dangerous. It's a Catch-22 situation which currently is in favour of Hamas.

Where is the world outrage over the Hamas rapes of young Israeli women?

Amidst all the slaughter and kidnapping by Hamas on October 7 which led to the war with Israel in Gaza, scores of Israeli girls and women were brutally and ferociously and horrifically, and often fatally, raped. It was a deliberate weapon of war deployed with maximum terror and violence by the Hamas invaders. Where is the world outrage? The video collated by the Israel Defence Forces, taken from Hamas cameras and local witnesses of the rapes and murders, recorded this outrage in overwhelmingly graphic detail. Brilliant reporters such as Christina Lamb of The Sunday Times, have highlighted the appalling violence used against women on October 7. Everything about wars is horrific for the innocent victims, whether caught in crossfire or as "collateral damage" in airstrikes. Brutalising, murderous rapes are only committed by males who do not ever deserve to be classed as human beings. These poor Israeli girls and women were not collateral damage. They were not victims of an errant bomb. They were deliberately targeted and subjected to the most disgusting and terrifying violence. And it was ordered and approved by the leaders of Hamas. The animals responsible, if they are still alive, should be hunted down and identified for the whole world to see.

Relationship between the US and Israel on tiptoes

From the moment Hamas burst through the border fences and started its horrific onslaugt of murder, rape and hostage-taking, the United States has given Israel totally committed support, includihg hundreds of thousands of munitions to retaliate against the terrorist organisation. Joe Biden said Israel had every right to meet its objective of eliminating Hamas. Now eight weeks later, after more than 15,000 Palestinians have been killed including 6,000 children (according to Hamas), Biden and his administration officials are literally on tiptoes, trying to sound tough on Israel's side but desperate to stop the killing of civilians and destruction of property. So far, since the ceasefire came to an abrupt halt and the Israel Defence Forces renewed its attacks, there has been little sign of restraint on their part. IDF soldiers are moving into every part of Gaza and there are daily airstrikes. For Biden, it's a tricky time. He wants two things which are contradictory, an end to Hamas as rulers of Gaza, but with as little violence as possible. Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, said that if Israel continued to kill civilians it would suffer a strategic defeat. I'm not sure what he means by that. Killing civilians won't encourage the rest of the world to look on Israel with sympathy but is that equivalent to a strategic defeat? I don't think so. A strategic defeat would be if Israel admitted it had failed, pulled its troops out of Gaza and let Hamas get on with doing what it did before, running Gaza and threatening Israel with more attacks. And I seriously doubt that is going to happen. Meanwhile Biden and co seem to be crossing their fingers that Israel will wrap it all up so that the focus can switch to finding a new solution for the Palestinian people. I suspect we are a long way off that right now.

What about the remaining hostages?

Under what circumstances are the remaining 130 or so hostages held underground by Hamas in Gaza going to be released? Right now the war is back in full swing, and Israel's negotiators in Qatar have been withdrawn. So there seems little prospect of a new round of hostage-releases in the near future. This is terrible news for the hostages who are being held in poor conditions and with limited food, and for the hostage families who are getting more and more desperate for the return of their loved ones. As I have written before, Israel cannot advance its battle aims at the same time as negotiate freedom for the men, women and children still being detained. Israel has chosen to return to airstrikes and ground operations, so the war cabinet clearly decided it was time to pummel Hamas for a period, perhaps to encourage them to release hostages. I suspect that's a false logic. Hamas is more likely to drop any plans to free more hostages and will just focus on firing rockets into Israel. This is an organisation designated by the US, UK and others as terrorists. So, like other terrorists, they are not given to acts of humanity. It's not in their DNA. They have only released hostages so far to get a quid pro quo from Israel, ie hundreds of Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails. So Hamas is never going to free more hostages while Israel is launching airstrikes. I fear some of the hostages will never be freed.

Israel's war strategy was guided by the yearning for revenge

Israel has three main objectives in its war with Hamas: revenge for the October 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis, the elimination of Hamas from the planet and the release of all hostages. I think the three objectives conflict with each other. First, you can't have all-out war while the hostages remain. They won't be released if the battle is raging. And the objective of revenge, while totally understandable, is never a good foundation for a properly-orchestrated war. The soldiers go onto battle determined to kill as many Hamas fighters as possible, even when there are a helluva lot of other obstacles in the way, such as innocent civilians, apartment blocks, houses and hospitals. Revenge motivation muddies the brain. So the first few weeks of the Israeli operation against Hamas in Gaza were all about revenge, and the resdult is there for all to see - about 15,000 Palestinian civilians killed, including 6,000 children, and whole buildings demolished, and more than a million people displaced after being ordered out of their homes. When they had got the first rush of revenge out of their system, the Israelis calmed down and started talking about hostage releases. Now, Israel is talking of fighting the war in a different way with more focus and precision. But this is what Israel's commanders should have planned from Day One. Not mass slaughter and destruction for seven weeks, but clinical attacks aimed at the Hamas leadership and keeping the Palestinian people as safe as possible. Israel's war is with Hamas, not with Gaza and not with the Palestinian civilians. But it's all too late. The revege motivation got in the way.

Israel underestimated Hamas

No nation is militarily invincible. The US found this out in Vietnam and Afghanistan, Russia is discovering its vulnerabilities in Ukraine. Israel, however, has proved again and again that on the battlefield it has a deserved reputation for military prowess. In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel defeated three Arab armies, captured and occupied the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan and the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. Taken by surprise when Egypt and Syria launched a joint attack on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur in October 1973, Israel fought them off and in 19 days the Egyptians and Syrians had lost 15,600 men, 440 combat aircraft and 2,250 tanks. Now Israel is facing an enemy which, while incapable of launching a full-scale offensive and lacking the sort of military capabilities to threaten the whole country, is using a combination of underground urban fighting, hostage retention and psychological warfare to put maximum pressure on an opponent with far superior technology, firepower and manpower. The inexplicable intelligence failure prior to the Hamas onslaught over the border on October 7 laid the groundwork for what looked like a hurried operation to try and eliminate the terrorist-designated organisation by mass airstrikes, artillery bombardment and tank warfare. The revelation that the high command of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had received and dismissed a detailed intelligence analysis report, codenamed Jericho Wall, a year before which outlined precisely what Hamas was planning to do, according to The New York Times, has underlined how Tel Aviv totally underestimated the enemy across the border. Israeli intelligence on the underground network beneath Gaza also appears to have been out of date. “The underground tunnel infrastructure is way deeper and more complex than even the Israelis had imagined,” a former senior US defence official told The Times. “So the degree of difficulty of what they are up against is enormous, and because Hamas co-locates so much of its command and operational infrastructure, including rocket manufacturing facilities and arms caches, in civilian buildings, hospitals and religious sites, the optics look terrible for the Israelis,” he said. Responding to these challenges, Israel has dropped more than 20,000 munitions on targets but, by Israeli estimates, have only managed to kill 5,000-10,000 out of Hamas’s total force of around 40,000 “hardened terrorist fighters” over a period of seven weeks. In the process, about 60 per cent of Gaza’s housing stock has either been destroyed or damaged, around 280,000 houses and flats, according to the United Nations. “As they look to the south, the Israelis will have to take a more nuanced and targeted approach,” the former defence official said, reflecting the advice urged on Tel Aviv by the Biden administration. Apart from the international pressure on Israel to temper its air and land bombardments, there are now fresh reasons for a change in tactics. “They have succeeded in compressing the Hamas fighting force into a smaller geographic area in the south which means that Hamas can generate more combat power and inflict more casualties on the IDF,” the former defence official said. “Until now, the Israelis have been pleasantly surprised that they have not suffered more KIA [killed in action], around 70 so far,” he said. “But their stocks of munition are running down and they need reserves for the potential that they might face a conflict on the northern front [Hezbollah in southern Lebanon] as well,” he said. “Understandably, Israelis are enraged over the butchery and barbarism of the Hamas attack on October 7 but there are no easy answers when it comes to destroying Hamas and preventing Israel from ever being attacked like this again,” he said. There is one other challenge for the future. Many former senior US military officers, including those involved in the sieges of Fallujah and Mosul in Iraq, and Raqqa in Syria, have expressed concerns that the Israelis may be creating more terrorists than they are killing.