The war in Gaza is now very complex

I don't know how long the Israelis thought their war in Gaza would last but I bet it wouldn't have been longer than three months. But now there are so many additional complexities that it looks like it could go on for much longer. In other words, well into next year. The war has to be seen from multiple perspectives: more fighting between Israel and Hamas in the north and then switching to the south; the humanitarian disaster which is getting worse by the day; the herding of Palestinian citizens to alleged places of safety in some patch of territory in the south, away from the expected fighting in that part of Gaza; the releaase of more hostages; diplomatic/political to-and-froing between Washington and Tel Aviv; and world opinion. All these factors have to be taken into account by Binyamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet over the next few weeks. They are all so interlinked, Netanyahu has to guage how one element will impact on the other elements as he makes decisions. For all these reasons, this terrible war could go on for a long time. With the Ukraine/Russsia war looking to go on for ever, Joe Biden will have very little time to campaign to beat Donald Trump in the November election next year.

Will Israel be allowed to finish the job?

As negotiations get underway for more pauses in the fghting in Gaza for the release of other hostages, it has to be asked: will Israel be able or allowed to actually finish what they started, the elimination of Hamas, rulers of Gaza? As each negotiation starts and finishes, that objective looks less and less likely. The reason is obvious. Gaza and the rest of the world, especially the US, are getting more and more accustomed to ceasefires and basically want them to continue for ever to help the Palestinians recover from the seven weeks of airstrikes and artillery bombardment, to receive humanitarian aid, and just to survive. If Israel approves one more negotiated hostage-release and then goes ahead with all-out war to kill as many Hamas fighters as possible and destroy their infrastructure in the south, they will face the risk of being condemned by the rest of the world. Hamas leaders knew this was how it would work out as soon as they started to release hostages. The more hostages released the more difficult it will be for Israel to restart the fighting because Hamas will hang on to just enough hostages to deter Israel from launching an attack in southern Gaza. It's a clever and deadly strategy. I don't see how Israel is going to win this one.

Trucks away!

China has begun launching “trucks” from its new-generation aircraft carrier to test an advanced electromagnetic system for catapulting fighter jets into the air. The Chinese navy has copied the US by turning to an electromagnetic-powered catapult for its third carrier, the Fujian. The two other carriers in its fleet, the Liaoning and Shandong, use a ski jump at the end of the deck for launching aircraft. China’s navy has also turned to the technique used by the US for testing the new catapult by launching what are called trucks instead of aircraft for the first series of launches, to avoid the risk of losing fighter jets. The trucks are purpose-built sleds on four wheels loaded with up to 30,000lbs in weights which can be recovered from shallow waters and used again. The catapult system and truck launches are identical to the equipment used for the US Navy’s new class of nuclear-powered carriers, the first of which, USS Gerald R Ford, is currently off Gaza in the eastern Mediterranean. All the other American carries use steam-driven catapults. Electromagnetic catapult systems need less manpower to operate. Each three-second launch consumes about 100 million watts of electricity. The truck-launches from the Fujian, also known as Type 003, have appeared on video images. They demonstrate that the new carrier is now approaching the final stages of its development at the Jiangnan shipyard in Shanghai before it carries out sea trials and enters operational service, expected in 2025. A naval version of China’s J-35 stealth fighter is being developed to operate from the Fujian. The construction of multiple carriers is a key part of Beijing’s ambition to have a navy capable of competing with the US for global reach and power projection. Apart from the Gerald R Ford carrier operating off Gaza, the US Navy currently as the USS Dwight D Eisenhower in the Middle East region. Yesterday the carrier, with its steam-driven catapult system, entered the Gulf waterway after passing through the narrow Strait of Hormuz. The carrier was sent to the Gulf after an increasing number of rocket and missile attacks by Iran-backed militia against US troops in Iraq and Syria.

Israel wants the October 7 planner

Probably more than anything, Israel wants to get to and eliminate the man who planned the October 7 atrocities on Israeli soil. Yahya Sinwar is the Hamas political leader in Gaza and is on Israel's Most Wanted list. He is believed to be in a bunker in southern Gaza, possibly under the city of Khan Yunis. Either he was initially underground in one of the many tunnels under Gaza City and then moved south, also through tunnels, or he has always been in southern Gaza, knowing that the Israel Defence Forces would start their campaign by hammering the north. Several Hamas leaders are known to have been killed in the north during Israeli airstrikes. Sinwar is said to have not only planned the October 7 brutalities and massacres but is also now the chief strategist behind the drip-drip hostage releases to get as many jailed Palestinians out of Israeli prisons as possible. He will no doubt also be involved in regrouping his Hamas fighters and preparing them for whatever Israel has in store once the war gets going again, if it ever does. It is estimated that Hamas may have lost between 1,000 and 1,500 members since the Israeli counter-attack began. He will still have more than 35,000, and possiby closer to 40,000, fighters left to destribute around Gaza. So as soon as the Israel Defence Forces gets the green light from Binyamin Netanhyahu to continue the war, Sinwar will have a target on his back. But because Hamas is largely operating from underground, we may never know whether Sinwar is alive or dead.

Hamas and psychological warfare

Hamas is using every aspect of psychological warfare against the Israelis and it's working. When the current pause in the fighting ends tomorrow, all Hamas has to do is announce that it will start preparing a next list of hostages to be released provided the ceasefire is extended, and when that period comes to an end, to make another statement that it will be willing to consider another 20 or so hostage releases, as long as the ceasefire holds, and then when that finishes to accounce a few more releases etc etc, and drag it out for as long as possible and then say that the final 40, let's say, will remain hostages until Israel agrees to withdraw all troops from Gaza. And guess what, three of the final 40 will be Americans, just to keep the pressure on Washington to restrain the Tel Aviv government. The Israelis know this is what's going to happen, so at some point they will have to make a decision, prosecute the war as planned and hope for the best re the remaining hostages or give up and go home. I can't imagine them doing the latter, so it will become a huge psychological warfare confrontation to see who blinks first.

After the pause in fighting how will Israel continue the war?

After four days of no airstrikes or artillery bombardment in Gaza, there is going to be a huge appetite for a permanent ceasefire. But Israel has vowed to carry on where it left off before the first pause-for-hostage-release ceasefire. But I think it's going to get increasingly difficult for Israel to prosecute the war in southern Gaza in the same way it did in the north for seven weeks. And this is what Hamas is counting on. The strategy is obvious. If Israel starts battering the south and destroying apartment blocks where Hamas is said to be hiding beneath, Hamas will probably announce it will release no more hostages until the bombardment stops. Tel Aviv will then come under huge pressure from the hostage families, as well as from Washington and the world to stop. Then what does Binyamin Netanyahu do? He has committed to eliminating Hamas and has Washington's backing. But reducing southern Gaza towns and cities to rubble would bring worldwide condemnation. As I wrote yesterday, Hamas holds the trump cards because it can play the hostages game for as long as it wants. For Netanyahu to achieve his objective before his own people and the rest of the world turn against him, time is running out.

Hamas holds all the hostage cards

Negotiating with terrorists has always been anathema to successive US administrations. Yet President Biden himself has taken a leading role behind the scenes in forging the agreement between Israel and Hamas , designated a terrorist organisation by the US in 1997, for the release of a first batch of 50 hostages held in underground tunnels in Gaza since October 7. The remaining 190-200 hostages will now be subject to future deals in which Hamas will have the controlling hand, providing their military commanders with maximum leverage over the Israeli government and, as a consequence, also over the US. However this is interpreted, it is not an ideal situation. But it does underline one crucial reality after six weeks of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza: freeing the hostages by military means must have been assessed as too risky both for the hostages and for the Israeli commandos who would have carried out the mission. Doing a deal with Hamas became the only practical option and that is to the Gaza terror organisation’s advantage, something which their leaders would have planned for and anticipated before the October 7 brutal assaults on Israel took place. They may also have anticipated that Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, would come under such pressure to get the hostages released, most of them Israeli citizens, that he would have no alternative but to negotiate, through the good offices of the Qatari government. Hamas can now be expected to exploit the hostages in every which way to try and frustrate and stall and, ultimately, stop the Israel Defence Forces from continuing the attacks in Gaza. Key to this planning would have been the selection of hostages. Hamas grabbed women and children as well as male civilians in order to generate maximum emotional outrage, creating the greatest possible pressure on Tel Aviv, and Washington, to negotiate on their terms. The kidnapping of Israeli soldiers would have been crucial to their thinking. The soldiers are likely to be the last to be released because of the high value placed on each one of them by the Israeli government. It’s classic terrorist pragmatism. In 2011, Israel agreed to release 1,100 Palestinian prisoners, including Yahya Sinwar, the organisation’s current leader in Gaza, in exchange for just one Israeli soldier captured in a cross-border raid in 2006. With up to 40,000 members, according to CIA estimates, including at least 60 currently in Israeli jails, Hamas will attempt to dictate its terms, forcing Israel to agree continuous pauses in the fighting, leading to an eventual permanent ceasefire. The US state department includes in its definition of terrorist activity, “the seizing or detaining and threatening to kill, injure or continuing to detain another individual in order to compel a third person (including a governmental organisation) to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the individual seized or detained”. Political and military reality has forced both Israel and the US to discard this golden rule in dealing with a terrorist-designated organisation.