UKH

Question for the military experts.

The Iran backed rebels hit a ship and the US strike at a leader in Iraq with the precision of a surgeon. Basically taking out a car killing the three occupants and barely a smudge elsewhere.

Hamas commit atrocities in Israel and Israel wage war with entire Gaza Strip, levelling almost everything and killing 00000s of people, many women and children.

I know that there are complexities with tunnelling and human shields - and this might be the simple answer - but given the sophistication of the IDF and the US-supplied tools at their disposal, why has the IDF not been able to more surgical in its offence over Hamas? 

It doesn’t seem like human shields are a factor for Israel! I suspect the reason they’ve not been more surgical is because they don’t want to. It is apparent that this is now a genocidal offensive by Israel whatever the original intention. 

You’d be forgiven for thinking the IDF actually had quite a different mandate.  

Leaving aside the problems posed by tunnels and the mixing of Hamas with civilians in an insanely densely populated urban environment, America's military adventurism almost always has a strategic aim rather than being about ethnic cleansing underpinned by ethnic, religious and national supremacy.

After the first month of the assault on Gaza apparently just over 50% of the bombs used were of the dumb variety according to a US Gov report.Probably easier using them to cause maximum destruction cheaply.

Hitting a single car in the middle of a desert is pretty simple.

Hitting at least 30,000 Hamas fighters in a densely populated urban area, where Hamas will be hiding in tunnels and under hospitals is a completely different thing. Once Israel went for a full on invasion, rather than the odd surgical strike, large numbers of civilian casualties were inevitable.

Israel is showing an absolute disregard for civilian casualties, in fact it seems like they are deliberately targeting them in a number of verifiable incidents. However it would naive to think any army in close combat with a heavily armed adversary would follow the same rules of engagement as we'd expect from a peacekeeping force.

I think we've been conditioned to believe the myth of absolute precision in war and very small numbers of civilian casualties. What we're seeing is the actual reality of war, and it hasn't changed for centuries, only the weapons have got more effective.

I’m not a military expert but I guess half the answer is one of scale. You can pour huge intelligence resources into tracking and targeting one or more people, but Hamas have (I guess) thousands of people and hundreds of tunnels. And I think I read somewhere that Israel are using dumb bombs as they don’t have nearly enough smart munitions.

The other half of the answer, as people have pointed out, is because those in power in Israel don’t seem to have an interest in being surgical 

To an extent but there are more direct comparisons such as Fallujah. Still very brutal and destructive but nothing like Gaza.

Yes. I think post-creation of the UN, we've also been conditioned to think that war crimes, atrocities and mass murder were the purview of terrorists, rogue dictatorships or bad apples. Few have any problem, rightly so imho, of recognising the Russian armed forces for what they are, but Israel are nominally 'one of us.' Yugoslavia was a wake up call for me that the Geneva convention carried as much weight as No Overnight Parking sign.

How effective and 'clean' are the US kills really, you hear about the ones that went well.

That said, the 'war' in Gaza looks like collective punishment at best. I'm sure it's impossible to fight a war in Gaza without making a horrible mess but we're past that.

Jk

Fallujah was a single town, approx 2,000 to 3,000 insurgents, approx 50,000 civilians.

Gaza has approx 30,000 Hamas, 2 million inhabitants (maybe half a million left in Gaza city?).

US claimed approx 1,200 to 1,500 dead insurgents and a similar number captured. Red Cross estimated 800 civilian deaths, but Iraqi NGOs claim it could be 4,000 to 6,000. (Figures from wikipedia).

Scale up the deaths in Fallujah by an order of magnitude for population size, and the death rates are probably close to those in Gaza.

Civilians in Fallujah had the rest of Iraq to escape to, although there were reports of fighting age males being not allowed out. Israel has let next to no Gazans leave. From what I remember much of Fallujah was levelled though, perhaps just less civilians there to get killed.

Large scale on the ground incursion into highly populated area with opposing forces deeply entrenched underground and in and around civilian population - large civilian casualties unavoidable.

The IDF do have procedures to minimise civilian casualties, but how much those are being followed we just don't know. But even if they were followed 100% I'm sure the civilian casualties would still be shockingly large. For arguments sake, lets say the IDF are following them 50% of the time (whatever that means). We have no idea how many fewer casualties there would be if they followed those procedures 100% of the time; similarly we have no idea how many more casualties there would have been if they followed those procedures 0% of the time.

So to me, the argument is not about how carefully or not the IDF are proceeding, it's more about should they have gone for this type of war when the outcome was highly foreseeable, and that brings it back more into the political arena rather than the military one.

I think Netanyahu has backed himself into a corner with his "we will not stop until we totally destroy Hamas". It means that anything short of that will be seen as failure, and that puts pressure on carrying on just to "avoid" that failure and makes it harder to accept a cease-fire. That's also really poor politics; he should never have made his rhetoric so un-flexible that he ended up in a position that doesn't allow choice of action without political failure.

Also, complete destruction is just not a feasible military objective. I'm sure it would be technically achievable within Gaza (with how many more casualties then?) but what about Hamas outside which ends up seeping back, etc.

None of this bodes well for either side; the repercussions on the Palestinian population of Gaza are immediate and obvious. The repercussions on Israel and Israelis will be longer term and less obvious, but they will happen.

Egypt's hardly letting any leave either - I suspect that's largely down to not wanting to make Israel's "job" easier, which it would do - and the rest is likely because they don't want loads of Palestinians in Egypt which they consider would be destabilising.

But I'm just making a technical point here, doesn't affect the point you were making that Gazans are effectively trapped.

Yep, agreed. When I used to follow it more closely 10 years and more ago, even then the Sinai was very unstable and the various governments in Cairo didn't have full security control over the region. They seem to think that significant numbers of Palestinian refugees would further destabilise it - but it does rather show there is nothing left of when Egypt was the centre of Pan-Arabism.

I don't know how much it is a factor still, but Hamas comes out of the Muslim Brotherhood tradition, so whilst the MB were in power in Egypt, they had support and help from there. But after the military overthrew the Morsi government, I don't think there is any love lost between the Egyptian state and Hamas.

Mosul in 2016/17?  is another example.I think there were meant to be 3500 Isis fighters there.Victory in Mosul against Isis involved extensive bombing 100000 Iraqi troops and 10000 + civilians deaths.

Since the 2013 ousting of Mohammed Morsi - Egypt's first democratically elected president - and his replacement by a military dictatorship under Abdel al Sisi, the country has become very much beholden to the USA and Israel. The Sinai peninsula is the epicentre of American/Israeli strategic control as it is a major arms smuggling route.

If anyone wants evidence of the extent of Egypt's submission, open Google Earth, go to the Egyptian side of the Rafah border and look at all the buildings that have been demolished at Israel's request - over several kilometres there are practically no buildings left standing. With Google Earth Pro you can go back through the records and see that most of this destruction started after the 2014 Gaza/Israel war when Sisi was already in power. Morsi, of course, went on to die in an Egyptian prison in 2019.

Sisi has said he will not allow Israel to expel the Gazans and has even threatened to suspend the Egypt/Israel peace treaty if it tries, but it is unclear how much leverage he has on this. If the US stops supporting the Sisi presidency militarily and economically, he may not be able to hold onto power.

And that is the "rules-based order" in a nutshell!

I seem to recall that the hit was in the middle of Baghdad which made it all the more surgical, more like keyhole surgery in the centre of the brain considering nobody else had a scratch.

Jewish tour guides long before the war were giving out maps of Israel that don't show Palestine. I feel like that's the answer to your question 

I'm always curious where these number come from. The Israeli intelligence services failed to spot tens of thousands of concrete slabs, coming in over years, used to support the tunnels. I expect they are much easier to identify than if that bloke over there is a wrong 'un.

I'm also under the possibly incorrect impression that Hamas was the local government. So the bin men, would be considered Hamas, even if they didn't take up arms. Netanyahu, supported Hamas, as part of a divide an rule strategy*, so perhaps they kept a register. I doubt that the fighting arm of Hamas, will have a single list of names and addresses they would share. We also have to contend with the deliberate disinformation spread by both sides as to how big a threat they are.

What we do know is that ~1000 Israeli's died in the initial attack. Which is an atrocity. We also know that ~30,000 Palestinians have died. Which is an atrocity. There are no winners here.  

* https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-...

[breaks own rule on not posting on the internet about trump, israel, cyclists v cars, climate change...].  

Some of the debate reminds me of Just Stop Oil.  If you think the answer is obvious, and especially if it fits on to a banner waved at a demonstration, perhaps you have not thought it all through. 

I think John Oliver does a good job of explaining how complicated all this is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ9PKQbkJv8&t=723s

I believe outsiders all want the killing to stop.  What is less clear is 'how?'. 

I believe outsiders all want the killing to stop.  What is less clear is 'how?'. 

when shooting fish in a barrel stopping shooting is generally the answer. 
No one is seeking an answer to the long term complexity of the Arab-Israeli problem  on a placard but calling for “ceasefire Now” fits nicely on a placard and is the immediate solution to whole sale slaughter of civilians.

Despite protestations to the contrary this one sided military offensive is quite blatantly much more than an offense against Hamas.

In October 2023, a right wing political think tank with a track record of successful influence on Israeli government policy, the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy published a report authored by Amir Weitmann, a governing Likud MP.

A Plan for the Resettlement and Final Rehabilitation in Egypt of the Entire Population of Gaza is a dry economic study of how Egypt and the world could be persuaded to accept the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and how much it would cost. Though an economic study, ominously the report includes this line "The IDF must create the right conditions for the Gazan population to immigrate to Egypt".

At about the same time an Israeli Intelligence Ministry strategy paper dated 13 October 2023 was leaked to an Israeli newspaper and the strategy advocated the same. This strategy is in 4 parts.

1. Order Palestinians in northern Gaza to evacuate south in advance of a ground offensive.
2. Physically clear Palestinians from the land from north to south with a ground offensive and sustained airstrikes.
3. Keep all routes of escape out of Gaza tightly sealed, except for Rafah into Egypt. Make sure traffic lanes to Rafah remain open to allow civilians to be herded there.
4. Israel will help Egypt construct tent cities in the northern Egyptian Sinai Desert to settle the Palestinians who have been permanently expelled from their homes and their land.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/intelligence-ministry-concept-paper-proposes-...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-gaza-palestinians-concept-paper-1.7015...

The Israeli government MP who authored of the Misgav report has explained in an interview how the IDF can create those right conditions for Palestinians to emigrate into Egypt saying it is necessary to "flatten all the buildings in the Strip…systematically from north to south, thereby pushing residents south until a humanitarian crisis arises that Egypt cannot ignore”. He is not a lone hawk, the ICJ judgement against Israel finds that "public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip" is occurring.

And this is exactly what is unfolding. A genocidal slaughter of children and families where 
- 1 in 60 of the population have been violently killed or are missing (presumably under rubble).
- 1 in 32 of the population have been wounded.
- 2 in 3 of the homes and 1 in 2 of the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed.
Schools, hospitals, religious sites, sewage treatment works, have been targeted. It would be consistent with the proposals if the aim in the short term is to make life unlivable in northern Gaza and long term a complete physical and cultural clearance of the Palestinian presence from Gaza.
- A blockade of water, food, medicine, and, electricity.
- Targeting of the healthcare system and healthcare workers to cause a complete breakdown of the healthcare system.
- Targeted assassination of journalists operating in Gaza and their families so that the world will not see the extent of the crimes against humanity that are being committed.
- Propaganda campaign of delegitimising and defunding against UNWRA, the only body capable of organising relief for the mass humanitarian disaster.

All this is entirely consistent with published proposals by influential arms of the Israel government. Mass civilian deaths and suffering on this scale cannot just be by products of war, the aim appears to be to cause terror, starvation, disease, and despair in the civilian population, in order to cause acceptance of the forced displacement of Palestinians out of their land and into Egypt.

Wow! This commentary by John Oliver is one of the most outspoken, yet honest and accurate I have heard about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Can you see any reasons the shooting has not stopped beyond Israel's [assumed] goal of genocide/one state solution/similar sounding words.  If not, then I do not think you have thought it through.

Fair point. A Reuters article stated 40,000 Hamas 'fighters', CIA factbook gives 25 to 30,000. Israel claims to have killed or captured 9,000. 
It's a rough estimate on my part based on numbers in the media, which may have been manipulated up or down.

Concrete, I suspect it arrived in bags and was constructed in situ in the tunnels. Happy to be wrong if someone can show me evidence of slabs arriving pre-formed in Gaza.

Also, building materials were allowed into Gaza to facilitate better buildings etc for Gazans, and a high proportion of those materials were instead used by Hamas for tunnels.

I think the IDF does specify Hamas fighters rather than everyone who is in/connected to Hamas but there must be a significant overlap, how many bin-men are also fighters. No easy answers. No easy solutions.

Those right wing proposals/ideas don't surprise me, but I very much doubt the Israeli government is trying to implement them - the consequences if they were found to be following those "plans" would be huge (and Israel is not a country where it's easy to keep secrets like that).

But, with the current make up of the government, there are no doubt several/many members who would be quite content if the current war achieved those aims.

I remember reading some seemingly authoritative figures from West Point about tunnels. When I searched on the topic, it seems to be rumours about rumours, but from a seemingly authoritative source. Some of the info is from a biased party, reporting on propaganda from another biased party. I appreciate that Hamas wont let Reuters go down there with a tape measure, but it does illustrate some of the confusion around figures and validating information. Add in some lazy journalism, a splash of GenAI, a quick google search and you have 500 words done in time for the deadline.

The network is so vast that the army has dubbed it the "Gaza Metro" and a recent study by US military academy West Point said there were 1,300 tunnels stretching over 500 kilometres (310 miles).

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/israel-deploys-military-ai-gaza-093640140.html

The vast network of tunnels under Gaza has been described as a “veritable city underneath the cities on Gaza’s surface.” The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) colloquially refer to it as the “Gaza metro.” Although it is difficult to determine the precise extent of the tunnel system, in 2021 Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar claimed to have built approximately 1,300 tunnels covering over 300 miles under Gaza.

https://lieber.westpoint.edu/targeting-gazas-tunnels/

Slightly off topic, but has anyone else noticed the nice tiling in some areas, when they show footage of the tunnels?

With ~30,000 dead, that means ~21,000 dead people are not Hamas.

I'm no military expert and slightly off-topic - but talking of shields, I think the IDF, Netanyahu and the Zionist far right are also hiding behind an implied one. A substantial and impervious barrier stretching worldwide, labelled 'antisemitism' which effectively nullifies any criticism of Israel and its military action. A shield strong enough to hide Netanyahu from going way beyond normal justifications of retribution, into what can only be described as the genocide of innocent citizens.

We have to stop conflating Hamas with innocent Palestinians and Netanyahu with ordinary Israelis. On both sides, they are very different.

I've assumed they'd use existing basements and cellars, then tunnel between them to remove the need for digging access shafts or creating obvious cut & backfill trenches above ground.

Any hostage holding areas, barracks or command posts will be in existing buildings, which is where the tiles probably are.

The tunnel roofs appear to be precast concrete, probably large diameter drainage pipes chopped in half longitudinally. Not sure what the ground is like to tunnel through.

Makes sense.

Which then begs the question: What do you do if a bunch of armed men appear in your cellar?

If you say nothing, are you now automatically part of Hamas? If you don't want to be, who would you report it to? If Hamas control the local government, you'd likely be shot. If you report it to the IDF, you may be on the wrong end of a missile.

.  If not, then I do not think you have thought it through
 

care to enlighten us? Without getting too armchair general there is no tactical reason why a ceasefire cant happen now.

Strange Hamas built tunnels for themselves but no air raid shelters for civilians.

I will settle for making a small attempt to enlighten you, no one else.

prefacing by saying I am not fan of anyone getting killed.  But to get to a solution requires at least understanding where the other side is coming from, not simply assuming they are evil incarnate.  

• Hamas [effectively a religious dictatorship] designed this situation precisely to bring civilians into the conflict, thereby showing the rest of the world the cruel unreasonableness of Israel and stopping the burgeoning rapprochement in the region .
• For Israel [theoretically a liberal democracy, although Netanyahu is trying to 'fix' that...] to get rid of Hamas, they are going to have to go after them where they are.
• If Israel does not go after Hamas wherever they are, then they almost certainly get to redo this whole thing over again in x years time. Remember, Hamas does not recognise Israel's right to exist.
• to those of us sitting in our armchairs, the obvious answer is a two state solution [from a lecture I went to ~30 years ago... "the answer is a two state solution, the only question is how many bodies til we get there?"]

• but if neither participant is signing up to a two state solution [there may be a few more willing to do so on the Israeli side, but trust is dropping rapidly and each side has its fanatics], there is not going to be a two state solution, no matter what us comfortable westerners think should happen

So, an awful situation all around.  "Just stop" does not work for oil, it is not looking that good for an existential fight with both sides committed to the others' destruction.

nothing you have said explains why an immediate ceasefire to prevent further civilian casualties can’t happen. 
We all understand it has a long and convoluted history and the politics of any agreements will be long difficult and complex, however non of this is an excuse for continued civilian casualties.

OK, happy to fold my hand.

Because both sides - and by that I mean the people in the decision making positions rather than the plebiscite on either side that may or may not support them - have to want to stop in what to them is an "acceptable manner".

Unfortunately, neither side's "acceptable manner" is the same as what you or I might think obvious from our comfortable armchairs.

Essentially the difficulty of getting a cease-fire is a snapshot of the difficulty in getting to a lasting peace.

Did you read the post!? It's spelled out point by point! Crufely, neither leadership is very interested in one

When some unarmed Israeli hostages attempted to surrender to the Israeli army they were shot dead. That suggests the information to back up claims about who is and is not Hamas amongst the ruins or under the rubble does not exist, they're just unidentified (mostly unarmed?) people getting killed. 

I feel your conflating a peace agreement and resolution to 70 years tortured history and a ceasefire.

A ceasefire doesn't even need an agreement from both sides it literally means cease firing. 

It needs an agreement from both sides that that is desirable. And that isn't there, as highlighted above

Just like Ukraine/Russina war. And now it has been reported that Russia has upped its GDP to around 6.5% on defence spending.

Heaven forbid - ours is just over 2%.Are people not a bit more concerned about what is happening on our European doorstep.

The world is becoming a very cruel place.

There isn’t two traditional sides its asymmetric. On one side you have a internationally recognised government and very well equipped army fighting a terrorist group that is hidden within a dysfunctional and non democratic government (a disfunction that has been encouraged by the Israeli government’s)   with the general population of Palestinians paying the price.

A ceasefire does require an agreement from both sides and for an agreement to be made it would have to be seen as a desired prospect from both sides. There was a 7 day humanitarian ceasefire in late November which was broken, although both sides pointed the finger at the other for breaking it.

At this point Israel will see themselves as having an offensive momentum and a ceasefire would cause them to lose that and give their opponents time to regroup, delaying their objectives. (not going to get into their objectives and not interested in the arguments)

Therefore the only thing they really have to gain is optics; they're not going to win over anyone of a pro-Gaza sentiment, however it may improve how they are seen in the international community which is important as some pro-Israel US politicians are wavering in their support at the moment.

I fully agree. I believe the death toll is considered under-reported, due to not knowing how many people are under rubble. Also, with the widespread disruption and movement, people wont know who is dead, who is missing and who is in a makeshift tent in some other location. I'd also add, that both sides have reasons for under or overestimating how many actual fighters are still in operation.

Yes I know that.  I simply saying that a ceasefire won't happen unless both sides want it, and they don't.  The nature of the two forces isn't really relevant.

I’m pretty sure the 2.5 million Palestinians trapped  in Gazza want the shelling, bombing, death, maiming  and wholesale destruction of their homes and infrastructure to stop.

I'm sure they do, but they're not the ones doing the fighting.

Obviously. But they aren't the ones making the decision. 

The Guardian is reporting that "Egypt is preparing an area at the Gaza border which could accommodate Palestinians in case an Israeli offensive into Rafah prompts an exodus across the frontier, four sources told news agency Reuters, in what they described as a contingency move by Cairo."

The Egyptian government denies the claim, but this may just be to dispel any criticism for as long as possible. This is not looking good.

just the dying

The Israeli government and people want all hostages released. Hamas can't do this without a guaranteed "permanent" ceasefire, as a pause in fighting leaves them with no negotiating power to prevent continued action against them. Difficult, but surely that is the most likely basis for any sort of truce?