Post 3 of 3: The end game of the urban warfare in Gaza by use of firepower
8. A crucial goal of terror organizations is getting the stronger adversary to overreact, so as to ensure loss of legitimacy.
(a) Like Akido, terrorist organizations are using their enemy’s punch against them — this happened after 9-11 with America, where they invaded Afghanistan and also resorted to using torture on captured detainees that were brought to the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp or better known as Gitmo. Rather than work from existing models, Bush, Cheney, and Addington sought to radically reshape the structure, method, and purposes of trials undertaken in the name of this nebulous global war. Norms designed to protect the dignitary rights of the accused and processes designed to instill confidence in the fairness of verdicts could all be jettisoned as “not practicable” at Gitmo.
(b) History has more than vindicated Nuremberg; how it will treat the Guantánamo military commissions is another matter. Bush’s experiment with military commissions produced a record of unseemly missteps that frustrated the cause of justice and damaged America’s standing abroad. Basic questions of procedure led to rancorous debates among commission members. Prosecutors labored aimlessly without adequate leadership, institutional support, or legal tools, stymied by the CIA’s steadfast refusal to share evidence.
(c) With its 2006 decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the US Supreme Court brought down the entire shoddy edifice, declaring Bush’s military commissions in violation of both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions (and leading Donald Rumsfeld to quip, “So I’m going to go down in history as the only Secretary of Defense to have lost a case against a terrorist?”).
(d) Gitmo allows hearsay, violate rights of confrontation, theoretically permit certain coerced statements to be used as evidence — the most troublesome aspect of the government’s case against detainees oddly tends to get overlooked. Like many other detainees, Abd al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed Abdu al-Nashiri was subjected to “enhanced interrogation” — stress positions, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, and other forms of degradation. But as one of the highest-ranking Al Qaeda figures in custody, detainees like Nashiri also came in for special treatment. Gitmo became the symbol for the loss of the American government’s moral right to lead the free world.
(e) If Hamas retains the capability to fire hundreds of rockets on Israel, per day, the IDF is justified in hunting Hamas in Gaza. Currently, the number of rockets fired by Hamas on Israel per week of the war.
- Week 1: 3,523
- Week 2: 818
- Week 3: 795
- Week 4: 579
- Week 5: 386
- Week 6: 234
9. My sympathy for Israel is not unlimited, especially if (i) thousands of innocent Gazan civilians keep dying beyond end-Feb 2024; and (ii) Israel fails to address real concerns about IHL, with regards to the delivery of aid to civilians in Gaza. Unjust as it seems to many in Israel, the IDF needs to wrap up the fighting in Gaza, at some point. For me, this must occur before widespread out break of diseases like cholera, from lack of sanitation.
(a) I appeal to Gazans to provide information to the IDF to enable the rescues of some hostages in phase 5 and 6 of Operation Swords of Iron — if those who oppose Hamas give the Israeli public no hope, the IDF will not stop bombing in their conduct of urban and tunnel warfare, to the dismay of the Biden administration. At some point in late Nov 2024, there needs to be a multi-day pause in bombing for aid to enter the hardest hit parts of Gaza (and I don’t mean Gaza city).
(b) Hamas is reaping the benefit of the civilian collateral damage to gain sympathy to their core Islamist audience that is global — their goal is to drag out the war. If the IDF is to retain its honour, this war in Gaza must end by Feb 2024, and there is an unspoken clock running.
(c) I join the call of the Israeli opposition (led by Yair Lapid), for the immediate ouster of Prime Minister Netanyahu. He proposes to join a "reconstruction govt" led by Likud, the largest party, under a new party leader. I see Netanyahu as the largest obstacle to a durable ceasefire in early or mid-2024. And the only country that can slightly modify Israel’s war plans is the US.
(d) If the Israeli public want continued support in 2024 for a durable peace, they must act to assure the world that the IDF is seen as part of the solution by the US DoD and not part of the problem. And the IDF cannot remain a moral army, if it is led by an immoral man like Netanyahu and the crazy members of his right-wing coalition.
10. For us to understand the strategy of Hamas, as a cult of death, there are 2 of the 3 myths identified by Nicholas Kristof (writing in the NYT on 15 Nov 2023), that we need to address, on the conditions needed for a durable ceasefire:
One, that Palestinians can be put off indefinitely, strung along by Israel, the US and the Arab countries. This is still Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cynical strategy, & the Israeli right-wing’s way of avoiding a Palestinian state. It worked for a time. But with the progress made by the Abraham Accords, this pressure cooker bomb has exploded. Israel needs a pragmatic acknowledgment of it’s own interests to give hope by moving towards a 2 stage solution, acceptable to mainstream Israeli society (and ignore the forever war, right wing factions of the Israeli government).
Two, while Hamas only understands violence — Hamas and Palestinians are not the same, just as violent and criminal settlers in the West Bank do not represent all Israelis. Each side has dehumanized the other, but people are complex and neither side is monolithic — Israelis are not the same as Prime Minister Netanyahu, and Palestinians are not the same as Hamas.