03-13-2024, 10:11 AM
Israel bombed an aid distribution centre in Rafah, killing 5. They also killed 2 each in a raid in Ramallah, West Bank, and in a Jenin camp operation with heavy equipment, and 17 in Khan Younis. Supposedly, if this ends the way Israel wants it to, they are setting up the Fatah/PLO intel chief Rajah as the new Palestinian leader, who will succeed Abbas. Of course, the Israelis are going to flat out refuse to acknowledge Hamas as a political power. The purportedly envisioned Palestinian entity would be purged of all terrorists and militants, arms, and hate groups. It would recognize Israel. Israel would maintain a new border crossing base with Rgypt, so the Palestinians would have no way to build tunnels to Egypt, or have any above-ground contact with Egypt that doesn't pass IDF checkpoints.
De-militarization and de-radicalization are goals, all post-Hamas. Obviously a lot has to happen first, and it has to limit Palestinian casualties. It sounds like a fairy-tale expectation, but Israel, not just Netanyahu, is committed to it, regardless of what Biden or the international community think of it. So, it's going to depend upon how many Palestinians die, whether or not the mass of Palestinians in Rafah and all South Gaza can survive, and the absence of any state-level actors attacking Israel. The plan won't change even if state-level actors go to war against Israel, in theory, because Rajah and Fatah (Rajah at least) are going along with the Israeli plan.
Meanwhile, the US is still pushing for a six-week ceasefire, and some form of negotiated settlement for remaining hostages, aid to Palestinians, medical supply access, and institutional access for humanitarian assistance groups, all the time holding off the Israelis from attacking Rafah. How is this supposed to occur? Israel is not going to allow Hamas to stay in its tunnels only to emerge again. They are going into Rafah. Heck, they just bombed a UNWRA aid centre because they thought Hamas had members there. The only way casualties could held under some vacuous threshold (as Biden has expressed is a "red line") is the masses themselves go somewhere. Where are they going to go? To camps, but is not Hamas congnizant of this? They would send members into the community mix, so as to survive this crisis as an organization, not flee into Egypt, where IDF checkpoints have to be passed, after all the tunnels are demolished.
The back-and-forth shellings between the IDF and Hezbollah continue along the Northern border, with attacks hitting on both sides. It would appear that Hezbollah also has some form of vacuous "red line" that hasn't been crossed yet, being the time when Hezbollah would launch thousands of heavy missiles into Israel, which of course would bring a full scale war between Lebanon and Israel, which would escalate to include regional state-level actors. It is avoidable, only if the IDF's operations in Rafah walk a tightrope and diplomacy efforts hold off a large regional war.
This could all happen, but only theoretically, where Gaza is rebuilt, where the Palestinian leadership acknowledges Israel, including its de-mil and de-rad of the entire Palestinian cause. It's asking more of the Palestinians than they've ever delivered, because it's essentially the total abandonment of armed resistance to the Israeli occuptation, anywhere. Now, many, even myself, have thought for decades that the Palestinians should have already done this. In truth, they did, but it was long ago now, in a different world, before Hamas rose, while Rabin and Arafat were alive, before 9.11, before Saddam's overthrow, etc.
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