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Weekly Israel-Hamas war megathread - week of May 27
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant Israel-Hamas war content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
Please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
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Dozens reported killed in Israeli strike on Rafah
These scenes out of Rafah are horrific, I have accidentally come across many images I wish I could unsee. I have said before here and say again, the continuation of this "war" is a political choice and has nothing to do, at this point, about Israeli security. How does any of this make Israel more secure? It does not.
And the longer this goes on, the more of their last bits of goodwill in the West gets burned through. I'm not expecting the millennials or Gen Z to ever forget these actions. Given how many of us also have Muslim friends and the feelings of guilt surrounding WW2 and the Holocaust are more and more in the past, and we've never experienced the many wars Israel had in the last century out of their own self determination... They are strongly setting themselves up for isolation in the future. And the longer this goes on, the earlier that 'future' will arrive for them.
Israel has all but guaranteed generational loss of support. Though I doubt they understand the severity of the long term consequences. If anything, it feels like they're hell bent on revenge.
Given the recent shootings that involved the IDF and Egyptian forces, this may well end up being the spark this very year to cause an Afro-Eurasian 'belt of instability', given the coups in Africa, the situation in the Middle-East, and even conflicts in Asia like the Myanmar civil war.
I really hope I'm wrong about the last part. But given how France's grip on their 'former colonies' in Africa is fading, Russia is weakened, this conflict and more, the situation is very ripe for this. :| Not sure if I'd really call it a 'World War' in the conventional sense, but it may well be bloody enough to count as one.
Man I hope I've never been so wrong about a comment I'm posting...
As much as I don't want those images flashing at me when I close my eyes, I'm grateful they were documented. It was never about Israeli security, it was and is about Israeli expansion. Their leaders rhetoric conflates safety with conquering, they've been showing maps that expand beyond their actual territory since well before this started.
124 hostages are still in Gaza. Israel isn't going to stop until Hamas is gone. Casualties are truly a tragedy, but they aren't conducting military operations for no reason. Hamas knew this would happen, but they truly don't care about the people of Gaza. They're all martyrs to their "cause".
That’s a rather specific number. Maybe this is a dumb question, but do we know they’re still alive? Is there any recent information about them at all?
Hamas occasionally releases sketchy videos of them but it's impossible to know their actual condition. There have been times when Hamas has released videos of hostages as if they were alive but were found already dead.
I recognize this is a morbid question, but if getting all the hostages back is one of the ostensible goals of this whole thing, but they may be dead or never found, where does it end? Does it end when Hamas says there's no more living hostages in their control? Does it end when there's no one left alive in the areas that Israel controls? What's the actual end condition for this whole thing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war_hostage_crisis
I can't answer your specific question on when does it end, but if Israel believes there are still living hostages they will obviously continue to do whatever they can to retrieve them.
Serious question: Is there anything at all that Israel could do to the people of Palestine that you would not excuse?
I'm not the person you questioned, but let me ask you a question in return:
Assuming Israel decided to surrender and unilaterally leave Gaza. They negotiate some deal where they release a large number of people who have previously murdered Israelis in exchange for civilians kidnapped from their homes, and a some soldiers who have not been treated as prisoners of war like the Geneva convention requires. They participate in negotiating towards progesss on the process of creating a Palestinian state the Oslo Accords were supposed to accomplish with the PA. The negotiations are making progress, with Israel willing to make difficult concessions, including the forced removal of most settlements from the West Bank.
Should Hamas / PIJ / some other opposed group repeat October 7th in that scenario, what response would Israel be permitted, to you? Keep in mind that 10/7 occurred during a previous ceasefire, and there are almost certainly members of Hamas and other groups in Gaza who want every Jew in Israel dead, and so would still be willing to attack in such a scenario.
War is awful. Particularly when your opponent is a functionally unelected body that does not care about it's civilian population. Particularly when waged between two groups who have good reason to hate and dehumanize each other from decades of deaths.
Israel clearly tries to limit civilian casualties. I can't prove that's because anyone actually care about Palestinian lives, but the strike that started this discussion was a targeted attack on specific high level officers with a precision munition. From what I understand recovered fragments of the bomb support the precision claim.
Israel claims that the fire was set off by a secondary explosion - - the strike was a distance outside the tent camp, and the fire spread. Tragic, but it cannot be proven that it was foreseeable. In general it's frustrating to me to see these sort of articles , and then see the information drip out over the following days that the details are not nearly as damning as the original headlines. Of course, far fewer people actually read the follow up.
I'm not saying that Israel is perfectly ethical and that all of its military's choices are justified. Honestly, I suspect that Israel would have navigated this war better without Netanyahu at the helm, and with the far right elements in the government gone. That in some number of cases, a different government might have made choices that caused fewer civilian deaths in exchange for less damage to Hamas. But there is no way of knowing whether I am correct or not -- it's possible that it would actually have caused the war to progesss more slowly, and thus more deaths. Or that whatever Knesset coalition tried to run a more conservative war wouldn't have collapsed and ended up with an even stronger far right running the show.
But what I can say is my own observation, which is that for large portions of outlets the media response I see to Israel's actions seems to start with the assumption that every civilian death was purposeful and never the result of a mistake or miscalculation. The fog of war is a very real thing. No one is omniscient. There are very few comparable conflicts to this one to compare casualties to -- Gazas density, terror tunnels, young average age, geography preventing civilians from fleeing, Hamas's practice of operating in or adjacent to civilian sites... Personally, my conclusion is that minimizing civilian deaths while making progress towards military goals must be an enormously difficult task.
But to get back on topic, from what I see, once you consider that they are a democracy, Israel's leadership is almost as backed into a corner as Hamas is. Sure, they could technically stop at any time, but the first priority of any democracy must be to guarantee the safety of their citizens in their homes. Culturally, the safe return of the hostages is incredibly important to Israelis (to Jews in general, in part for religious reasons) , and right now, Hamas is unwilling to do that without the release of murderers in exchange. That is a red line and for good reason: Sinwar, the primary organizer of 10/7 was released in a similar prior exchange. Israel rightly views a mass murderer release as likely to result in future terrorist attacks, obviously not permissable. So their only choice is to keep fighting in order to try and force Hamas into a position where they are willing to release the hostages under different terms.
So to an Israeli point of view right now: they can continue to fight the war and try to minimize civilian death, because the alternative is waving the green flag for another 10/7. Not every actor in their government necessarily cares about minimizing death in Gaza, but US requirements for their assistance are definite incentives to try, and I do think there are many Israelis who want nothing more than peace, just as many Palestinians do. I can only hope that some day, citizens on both sides will want peace enough to fight their own governments to give up on some of the blockers to the process and hash something out. I don't think it's likely.
This got very rambly. Sorry. I try not to argue here and when I inevitably fail, it all tends to spill out.
Not to mitigate away from all your other points, it's difficult for me to truly believe that given the reports of aid convoys being attacked by extremist settlers in the west bank, and the IDF just standing by. As well as the large amount of videos shared by IDF soldiers containing several incriminating details that are too many too mention.
At the same time, of course, you are correct that Israel can't exactly ignore the October 7th attacks, and the hostages. Though I doubt this war will help. If anything, Hamas functions closer to an insurgency - and attacking insurgencies head on tends to strengthen them. I don't expect many Palestinians to forgive Israel for this, which may well make Hamas far more stronger in the future. :|
It's such a mess, and I hate how there doesn't really seem to be a clear solution...
At this point can we agree that Israel has done anything but "ignore October 7th" and has gone so far beyond a resonable response that it's odd that we're still accepting that as an answer to why Israel is still there.
I'm not sure how that's logical while living hostages are still in Rafa and all over Gaza
The Israeli policy of carpet bombing doesn't really seem like a viable strategy for returning hostages home. And the math of 100 lives for another 20,000 isn't calculous I want to get behind.
I'm curious to know as a theoretical exercise, if someone came into your house and took a family member hostage, what would your limits be?
I'll take Wikipedia's hostage to death ratio for this:
252 hostages taken from Israel
36,171 deaths in Gaza
That means 143 Gazan deaths per hostage.
Would you be okay with 143 deaths to save your family member? Keep in mind some of them are Hamas militants, and some of them are civilians.
I don't think you're wrong to say 143 deaths are not worth your family member, but I also think it's unfair to say that the latter is completely unreasonable.
Israel wanting to protect its citizens and wanting to get back its citizens understanding that there will be causalities isn't a completely asinine decision.
If there were no hostages in Gaza and they were actively bombing civilian areas I would understand your take more. But that's simply not the case.
I realize I'm posting while emotional which is never good. Just highlighting and trying to take a step back and try not to go into internet argument mode.
I understand what you mean, and on a personal level I don't expect anyone with family members that are hostages to agree with my calculous. It's hard to be objective when there is so much personal loss on the line. But it's also an odd argument to say "how many innocent people on the street would you kill to get to the people that stole your family member?" Because unless you think the children currently being bombed are guilty, then that's how that question is being asked. My answer would be, I'm not going to kill a whole bunch of innocent people to hope that I might kill one that hurt or kidnapped my loved ones. We don't tolerate that sort of thing as a society.
I believe that this is where governments are important. The hostages Hamas has are innocent, but by the IDF's own, very generous, calculation (saying every man from 16 on is an active combatant) they still have killed over innocent 16,000 civilians as well. To your own point, those deaths will radicalize the entire families of all of those killed.
To that end he Israeli government isn't 'protecting' their citizens by conducting this invasion, particularly in the total war fashion they are proceeding in. I think this is a cut off my nose to spite my face situation that will come back to bite Israel quite hard in terms of general support and stoking the flames of extremism within Gaza. This is where I would ask you to rethink your perspective on the invasion. That this isn't a case of familial vigilantism, that the majority of the folks being killed within these limits are innocent, and that the damage being done is only forwarding the cause of the perpetrators of October 7th.
I feel that 100%.
My main point with the hypothetical was around saving the hostage, not to inflict pain for revenge.
I think that's a very fair point and something that is of concern for the future.
On this point, I think it's also important to flip the point-of-view. It's easy to say Israel is doing too much causing all these deaths, but I'd argue Hamas has just as much to blame for all the death. Obviously they poked the bear which caused Israel to go into Gaza. But beyond that, they maintain control of the hostages despite what Israel is doing. If they wanted to stop the casualties, they could release the hostages. Instead of building infrastructure for shelters, like Israel has for their own citizens, they funnel their money into weapons and tunnels. I know that Israel is far more wealthier than Hamas, but Hamas prioritizing attacking Israel (and spending lots of money doing it) over protecting its citizens makes it clear that a lot of these deaths could have been avoided based on their actions alone.
I've mentioned this a few times in various threads on this post, it's fair to criticize Israel for how they are dealing with this insanely complex situation. But all I see is what Israel is doing wrong and not what Hamas is doing wrong which to me is the crux of all these issues. And that's why Israel's commitment to removing Hamas isn't so confusing to me.
Awesome, I appreciate how you're approaching the discussion.
Totally, but the point still stands. If I was going around killing a bunch of random people to get someone back society still wouldn't stand for it. Killing innocents - and orders of magnitudes more - in the pursuit of hostages isn't a zero sum game. I think if the question was "would you be ok if 10,000 innocent Israelis were killed to get back 100 hostages?" the answer from Israel would be different.
I think the reason that the Israeli government is being targeted over Hamas is that, at least for me being a US citizen, we are actively supporting Israel's action and have levels to pull to try and stop it. At this point, while the hostages are still in danger if they are alive; I don't think Israel at large is in danger of another October 7th type attack right now. Also, outside of direct combat there are still options for diplomacy to recover hostages. So the campaign currently being waged doesn't feel like a recovery campaign, its focus has been maximum destruction.
I'd argue Israel is doing the same thing. If they wanted to protect their citizens we know what works. Provide stability and opportunity within Gaza. The Marshall Plan took literal Nazi's and turned them into modern day Germany. Israel and the US have an opportunity to do the same here. Continued bombings mean we're going to experience a true genocide or an even more embitterment/radicalization/call for conflict against Israel.
I saw Biden also mention this in his plan for a ceasefire, but I'm not sure how one can measure such a thing. It's not like they officially state what they are and aren't capable of and expose what resources they have. We don't even really know where all their tunnels are as new ones are continuously discovered.
I'm curious, in your opinion, do you think this is a possibility while Hamas is in power and believes Israel shouldn't be a country? If you were in Israel's shoes, does it make sense to loosen your grip over an enemy that wants to destroy you? I love the idea of Gazans and Israelis living side-by-side, and many on both sides want this to happen, but there are also those who want to target and kill Israelis no matter how much freedom they get because they fundamentally don't think Israel and Israelis should exist. How do you deal with such a problem?
I think Hamas is just less capable of anything at the moment because Gaza is effectively decimated. It's also under the tightest surveillance I'd wager it's ever been under. Lastly, the IDF controls the vast majority of the area. Regardless of whatever tunnels are left, there has been so much destruction there just isn't much of anything.
I think deploying something of a Marshall Plan would either need to be directed by a third party group (the UN, an agreed upon neighbor (maybe Jordan considering it's ties to both the US and interest in Palestinian stability), or some neutral third party power. It's going to require excessive amounts of funding, same as the Marshall Plan, aimed a rebuilding the transit and building infrastructure that has been destroyed. On top of that training and jobs programs - where folks who are given scholarships to study and live abroad are then supplied with capital and aid to start businesses locally after graduation. We need to de-radicalize the people the IDF has spent the last 8 months (and 75 years) radicalizing, and the best way to do that is by letting them experience other cultures, see a hope of a better future (both capacity and funding), and a viable road towards self determination. All of this can still occur with Israel manning their boarder, business/infrastructure operations being overseen and checked by the 3rd party group, and overtime Gaza starting to regain more and more self determination and hopefully eventually remove the need for the walls, surveillance, and guards. This also relies on Israel halting the expansion of illegal settlements, reducing the number of antagonizing /violent interactions with the IDF and Palestinians, and a cultural shift within Israel away from theocracy.
As much as folks talk about how much the bordering countries hate Israel, I think a talking point that isn't addressed is just how many Palestinian refugees are in Lebanon (400k +), Syria (500k +), Jordan(2M +), and Egypt (50k +). Many still live in refugee camps (take a quick taxi ride out of the Beirut airport for an example in Lebanon or into Wadi Araba in Jordan) and those populations tax what are already unstable social structures. It is incredibly jarring just how often you come across the camps. I worked in Jordan for much of 2011 (a spicy time for the region) and there were already camps at 3 of the 5 sites we worked at and they were in the middle of no where!
As to Hamas, it's hard to define an amorphous organization. I worked in Pakistan alongside many self proclaimed "good taliban", who were in all honesty just farmers, shop keepers, teachers... anyone really who lived in the area. Hamas gained support because of the terrible conditions that Gaza has been kept in for decades. If you were to change that - and again initially under very strict control like we did in Germany - I don't think it would take long for opinions and allegiances to change.
To my understanding, none of the peace plans that are under serious consideration leave Hamas as an organization in control of anything. The Palestinian Authority seems to be the organization of choice, and in fact it's undergone some changes in leadership recently to make it more acceptable as a governmental authority for Palestine.
Are Palestinians given the same amount of revenge multiplier for their deaths as not unreasonable? On the other hand, we should demand that civilized states act with more reason and restraint than a 143:1 ratio. Military action by states are not really comparable to what a single family might do.
By this logic, if this response is not completely unreasonable, how do we catagorize the response from the Palestinians after decades of oppression?
What I am saying is just that these sort of revenge logic just leaves everyone dead in the end. There is no reasonable at this scale.
It's not "revenge" if they are trying to get back hostages.
If that’s the case then how is Hamas’ first attack not also covered under this stance you’ve taken? Hamas has been pretty public about their reasons for their attacks and, while I do not support their actions and do not want to come off as an apologist for them, they have stated that their actions were to provoke the return of Palestinian “hostages” which Israel claims to have captured as criminals but have been shown to be both non-criminals or who are supposedly criminals but whose detainment is unspecified and indefinite.
I think it’s troubling that people seem to ignore Israel’s prior actions while simultaneously ignoring that this current response is just creating the next version of Hamas, whatever that looks like.
Edit: Source for the indefinite detainment claim from the AP - https://apnews.com/article/israel-detention-jails-palestinians-west-bank-793a3b2a1ce8439d08756da8c63e5435
Simply because when Israel attacks it's to kill Hamas militants and there are civilian casualties because of it. On October 7th, Hamas went to the music festivals to kill civilians. The music festival is not where prisoners are held. If Hamas attacked the prisons in hopes of releasing the prisoners your take would make sense but that's not what happened.
Israel has killed people before Oct. 7th. They used phosphorus grenades against crowds of Palestinians which would be considered a war crime but is not prosecuted because Palestine isn’t recognized as a country with a military force at war. Please don’t pretend like Israel only attacks to kill Hamas militants. That’s so far removed from the reality of the situation and also ignores the complete control of Palestine’s resources that Israel has held back from its residents.
Also, according to Israel’s own forces, Hamas did not target or plan to attack the music festival. They weren’t even aware of its existence until they came upon IDF soldiers at the border.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-18/ty-article/.premium/israeli-security-establishment-hamas-likely-didnt-have-prior-knowledge-of-nova-festival/0000018b-e2ee-d168-a3ef-f7fe8ca20000
How do these deaths get back the hostages, though? If instead of using bombs and bullets Israel was just lining people up and walking them into some sort of death machine under the assumption that some number of the people they walked into the machine were enemy soldiers, how many people could they walk into the machine with the putative goal of getting back the hostages before you questioned the connection between getting back particular people and the dead people in the machine?
Israel has been recovering hostages, so it is at least somewhat effective. Whether it's the most effective I have no idea that's far from my expertise.
That Israel has been killing civilians and also recovering hostages does not mean that those two things are actually linked in any real way. Causation vs correlation, you know?
Sure, but killing Hamas militants surely does result in recovering hostages.
That doesn't necessarily follow. If people are being killed a dozen miles from the hostages there's no specific reason that their deaths are resulting in recovering hostages, right? If it was a targeted thing, sending teams of special operations personnel in to rescue the hostages, sure. But even the attacks aren't a targeted thing, even setting aside the famine that has been caused.
I'm not saying you're wrong, But you just saying that surely the deaths advance the goal without providing any of the intermediate steps of the logic is really not compelling at all.
Killing Hamas militants and destroying weapons depots weakens their entire operation, making it easier to recover hostages. The problem with only sending ground troops is that they would be up against the full force of Hamas, not a weakened one. Israel has lost a lot of soldiers going into Gaza, but it would probably be much more if they didn't do aerial strikes.
So far, only three hostages have been recovered through direct action by the IDF. The majority of the returned hostages were returned in exchange for prisoners taken by the IDF. So it doesn't seem like killing anyone has, to date, been an effective tool for hostage recovery.
The snippet you are grabbing this from literally states that airstrikes were part of the mission:
That being said, I am personally surprised that only 3 hostages are listed on there. I know that the IDF has recovered other hostages, but it seems they are hostages that have passed and I don't know if the IDF went in knowing if they were already dead or not (my guess is they had no idea so it would make no difference in the outcome).
Tangential, but the air strikes targeting weapons depots are also to stop missiles coming into Israel which is constantly happening. But if you only want to focus on the hostages then we don't need to dive into that.
Personally, I'm not opposed to airstrikes, if they're targeting identified enemy personnel and avoid civilians. What I am questioning is how useful the majority of them are in the pursuit of hostage recovery. That a few were used during the singular effective living hostage recovery mission doesn't argue for them being broadly useful.
I see that makes sense. I do think that it's impossible at this point to fully understand the effectiveness of airstikes on hostage recovery because:
But I concede, at this current point in time, when it comes specifically to living hostage recovery, it's fair to say there isn't a lot of concrete evidence that airstrikes are helping.
This is just false. The original request to Israel from Hamas states that Hamas is taking hostages specifically because it was the only thing Israel had responded to in the past. Hamas has successfully negotiated prisoner exchanges with Israel in the past. The goal was always to capture high-value Israelis to trade them for “prisoners” that Israel is holding.
At that scale it starts to look like it. If there was a hostage situation and the police killed 143 people that could maybe be tangentially related to the hostage takers, I doubt many will see that as within reason.
That's a good point and points out a big difference between my hypothetical and what has happened in Gaza. Israel doesn't knowingly bomb an area thinking "this will kill 143 people and will save 1 of our hostages". There's so much unknown in war that it's impossible to make those kinds of conclusions.
There's a parallel here with innocent Palestinians and Hamas. Just as Hamas does not truly represent Palestinians, the people who attack convoys do not represent all Israelis. More recently, I've heard of counter protestors protecting the aid as well. I haven't seen any proof of the IDF systematically allowing aid to be destroyed, (though I have heard WhatsApp chats where individuals are leaking aid truck routes). That aid for Gazan civilians must be routed through Israel at all during an active war between them is another of the ways that this situation is an outlier...
You're right that there is no good solution. That so many people are convinced beyond reach that there is an easy option (Israel giving up) is why I try and limit where I kick in my opinion, because battling the whole internet (or even just one forum) is infeasible.
Yeah, that's the nasty part of this cycle. It feeds extremism, and it makes it neigh impossible to truly have good faith negotiations on both sides. Like you, it's also why I tend to not actively discuss the conflict in detail, especially online. It's difficult for me to believe that Israel genuinely tries to minimise casualties but I'm also fully aware that I may be wrong about that due to the insane complexity, fog of war, media bias and more. I don't think I'll ever have a good, nuanced picture of this event in my lifetime.
Too many people are interested in making one side the bad party. When the reality is, good and evil are mostly human constructs. And in this situation those constructs break down purely due to aforementioned complexity.
If Israel was deliberately attacking citizen for no reason I would find that inexcusable. But from my perspective that isn't what's happening. To be clear, it doesn't bring me joy to hear about civilians in Gaza being casualties of war, but I refuse to ignore the circumstances that has brought on the situation in Gaza.
It feels like reasonable and rational response has gone out the window from Israel and the IDF. Israel holds more hostages than Hamas, they have killed far more people, they have done extreme generational damage to the infrastructure of the area, they have purposely caused a famine, they have supported land grabs in both Gaza and the West Bank, and yet... it's still reasonable for them to continue? If they were attempting to stop the conflict, like actually negotiating in good faith I might be open to it. But this feels like they found a justification for carnage and expansion that was already desired.
These are prisoners who have committed active crimes against or in Israel. The hostages Hamas holds are civilians who were in Israel, most attending a music festival. There's a massive distinction between the two.
There have been countless times in the history of Israel where negotiations between Hamas and Israel fell through because Hamas wants Israel to completely no longer exist. Hamas's original charter explains this, they don't think any Jews belong in the area.
I think criticizing Israel's approach, especially in hindsight, is fair. But making it seem like Hamas is a reasonable party that wants peaceful negotiations is very far from the truth. And yet Israel has made efforts to try to do that, usually ending up with it biting them in the ass.
Some of the “prisoners” Israel has held are literal children and over 1200 of them (at a minimum that we know of) have been imprisoned and detained without being accused of a crime of being given a trial.
And their newer charter clarifies that they only want to see the occupation ended. Why are you ignoring that?
…I can’t believe that people are goading me into defending Hamas. These people are evil people who have been radicalized by other evil people. How does anyone in their right mind not see that this disproportionate response is only creating the next Hamas before our very eyes?
Just because they've changed what is publically written in their charter doesn't excuse what the original one said. How can you ignore that? If changing what is written in the charter helps them gain support from the west of course they would do that. You don't simply "change your mind" about wanting to exterminate Jews.
I never argued against this point. I'm saying is that it makes sense why Israel will do everything and anything they can to recover their citizens and remove Hamas from the equation.
The old charter is 3 generations removed from the current people in Palestine. Most Palestinians alive today weren’t born when Hamas was elected and that came after that charter. This is like saying “just because they’ve amended their constitution doesn’t excuse what the original said - the US doesn’t believe that women should vote. You don’t simply change your mind about insert whatever position has changed.” And don’t forget that the only reason that language even was in the charter was because of Israel’s actions after funding the Hamas election bid against the PLA and then effectively subjugating all of Palestine.
…by creating even more Hamas soldiers? Do you think that the men and boys who have had their families killed, their homes bombed to nothing, and their entire lives upended by Israel and the IDF are just going to wipe their hands and foreheads and thank Israel for killing Hamas militants? They are far more likely to either become new members of Hamas in retaliation and start this right back up again or they’ll join another group that is radicalized by Israel’s indiscriminate killing and torture.
More Palestinians have died every year than Israelis since the beginning of Israel’s foundation. What circumstances are you referring to specifically?
I was asked about the current war, I'm not sure what you're talking about.
Comment complete. Sorry about that. I originally typo'd and hit post about a quarter of the way through typing.... (please label this off topic)
Israeli spy chief ‘threatened’ ICC prosecutor over war crimes inquiry (The Guardian)
I think it's worth noting here that the Guardian is media-wise more pro-Palestine, though as far as I'm aware they're not ones to make such extreme claims without actual sources.
US military pier temporarily removed from Gaza coast for repairs (Reuters)
The inevitable role of clans in post-conflict stabilization in Gaza (War on the Rocks)
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Note: despite the title, this is essentially Gantz telling Netanyahu for an election.
Israeli centrist party increases pressure on Netanyahu government (Reuters)
From what I can tell, it's far from sure whether parliament will be dissolved and an election called. It is, however, a sign of lack of stability inside Israel. How this will affect Gaza, the West Bank, the region and the world as a whole though, who knows.
Edit: Added source name
‘Opposite of inclusive’: A look inside the increasingly hostile environment for Jewish therapists
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