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What happened: Yesterday Israel announced that two people believed taken hostage on October 7 had been killed by Hamas.
- Joshua Loitu Mollel, a 21-year-old agriculture student from Tanzania who had worked in the cow shed at Nachal Oz and was abducted, is thought to have been killed in captivity, while Tal Haimi, a 41-year-old resident of Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak is thought to have been killed on October 7 and his body taken back to the Gaza Strip.
- Elsewhere, First Sgt. (res.) Elisha Levinstern, a 38-year-old resident of Harish who served with the Armored Corps, was killed in action yesterday in the southern Gaza Strip. The IDF death toll stands at 116 since the start of the ground operation.
- Fighting continued yesterday, overnight, and this morning in northern Gaza’s Shejaiya and Jabaliya and in Khan Younis in the south.
- In the northern Strip, the IDF said it had killed “many terrorists”, including in a raid on a school from which Hamas gunmen had shot at them.
- Speaking at a situation assessment meeting last night at Shin Bet headquarters, Prime Minister Netanyahu said that Israel had no option but to destroy Hamas.
- Netanyahu said, “I discern the start of Hamas breaking. I see the start, the start of their recognition that we are resolved and will continue to the end and will destroy them. I don’t think that we have any alternative.”
- White House spokesman John Kirby said that Israel will soon approve the American request to allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom border crossing, which has been closed since October 7.
- Kirby also suggested that some of the steps the Israeli military has taken to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza might go further than what the US would have done if it were in Israel’s place.
- This appears to be an attempt to soften the critique by President Biden who said Israel was losing global support in the war against Hamas due to “indiscriminate bombing” in the Palestinian enclave.
- In the West Bank, an IDF aircraft attacked a squad in Jenin that threw explosive devices and endangered the troops in the course of an operation to arrest wanted men. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that three Palestinians were killed.
- This was the second air attack in the course of the operation that began on Tuesday in Jenin and its refugee camp. The West Bank Health Ministry said that 11 Palestinians have been killed in the past three days as a result of the army’s operations.
- Elsewhere, the US Navy destroyer USS Mason shot a drone launched from a Houthi-controlled area while responding to a call from a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker in the southern Red Sea on December 13, US Central Command said on early Thursday.
Context: According to reports, American officials believe that Israel needs to change the pace and intensity of its air campaign in Gaza before Christmas.
- According to a decision of the Israeli security cabinet, the third stage of the war will entail operations to mop up pockets of resistance by means of raids that are to be conducted by IDF brigades and, if need be, by divisions as well (from the border area where the IDF will deploy).
- These will be complemented by ongoing efforts to destroy Hamas infrastructure and to reach additional deals to free hostages. According to the security cabinet, in the fourth stage of the war, the IDF is to turn civilian control over Gaza to a third party. If that doesn’t happen, Israel will continue to hold onto the territory.
- In an interview with Israeli radio, British Ambassador to Israel Simon Walters clarified the current UK position, saying, “we don’t use that term [ceasefire], we say that the sooner the war ends, the better, but we haven’t called for a ceasefire because we know that the task of destroying Hamas is still not over.”
- Above tactical military decisions, the main disagreement between Israel and the US remains ‘the day after in Gaza’. The Biden administration has said that the Palestinian Authority (PA) should play a major role in the Strip, whereas Netanyahu has ruled that out. Arab allies of the US have said they’ll only get involved in post-war reconstruction if there’s a credible push toward a two-state solution.
- The Israeli media quotes an unnamed senior US official saying that “if Netanyahu wants the Arabs to rebuild Gaza he is going to have to be flexible and agree to the PA’s entry, even if not in the immediate term, but in the longer term. If Netanyahu wants normalisation with Saudi Arabia he’s got to understand that without the PA in Gaza he won’t get anything.”
- Reports suggest that Netanyahu is also coming under pressure from within the Israeli cabinet and security establishment to pay far greater attention to ‘the day after’.
- In parallel, the scale of the PA’s unpopularity in its own West Bank was revealed in fresh polling this week, in which 92 percent called for the resignation of its President Mahmoud Abbas. The poll also showed widespread approval for Hamas’s October 7 attack: 57 percent in Gaza and 82 percent in the West Bank.
- The Israeli government continues to weigh whether to allow entry to Israel of work permit holders from the West Bank. The security and defence establishments support the move, in a bid to prevent the West Bank spiralling into further violence.
Looking ahead: Several senior American officials are arriving in Israel. US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan visited Saudi Arabia on Wednesday to meet with the Crown Prince to discuss the Gaza war and will hold meetings in Israel today and tomorrow.
- On Friday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Brown is scheduled to arrive, and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin is due in Israel on Monday.
- American officials will reportedly discuss the option of another deal to free hostages in exchange for a pause in fighting that would allow for more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.
- The senior American officials visiting Israel are also expected to discuss the situation on the northern border. Israel believes there are three options: reaching an agreement that will force Hezbollah to redeploy roughly seven kilometres from the border, which will allow the residents of northern Israel to return to their homes; a war that is proactively launched by Israel; or an escalation in hostilities that devolves into full-scale war.
PODCAST
Episode 223 | The Military and Diplomatic Timetables
In this episode, Richard Pater speaks to Shalom Lipner. Two months into the war, they discuss the military campaigns in the south and the north as well as the diplomatic front and Israel – US relations. They also speculate on the day after for the Palestinians and inside Israel. Shalom Lipner is a nonresident senior fellow for Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council, and a former veteran of the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, serving seven consecutive Israeli prime ministers over 25 years.Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts
Fathom Articles
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‘I had never witnessed such barbarism before’: Major ‘F’ and the Battle of Holit – Read here
Poem | October | by Adi Keissar – Read here
The ‘Ben Gurion Canal’: A new crazy anti-Israeli conspiracy theory is doing great business on the internet while the social media platforms do nothing – Read here