I agree with
all of that...Originally Posted by Rex Brynen
Cordesman is like many other would be military experts scattered about. They're annoying to me because of their penchant for stating the obvious and assuming that only they saw or see it and their tendency to state their position or view as being the only rational possibility. Those things and their propensity for judgmental statements calls both their objectivity and their expertise into question.
Everyone has a right to an opinion and to state it; their willingness to do so publicly does not accord 'expert' status so most of those folks IMO are letting their egos get wa-a-a-ay ahead of their capability. Most annoying are those with a few years service who think they've got all the answers. I've been around things militaire since I was born and I learn things every day; mostly how much I do NOT know...
and that -- I've sort of given up on the media worldwide. Either they were this bad when I was much younger and I just didn't realize or they have totally fallen apart in the last forty years. Don't know which but I'm inclined to believe the latter.That being said, I can't say that the Israeli media (parts of which are usually very good) has particularly good job in assessing what is going on right now, in large part because of the natural wartime rally-around-the-flag effect.
The Arab media has been even worse.
The raw superficiality and ignorance they continually display is scary...
I guess it's not a surprise that I agree with Cordesman's analysis, if not his tone, since I was questioning Israeli strategy earlier in the thread. From what little quality information is available, it seems like the IDF is performing pretty well overall, so it appears to me the disconnect is at the policy/strategy level. That various Israeli political figures are publicly saying different things doesn't inspire much confidence that there is a unity of effort at the top.
Noticed that.
Bad as a bunch of Merikuns...
Haaretz - 03:45 13/01/2009
ANALYSIS / Neither Israel nor Hamas can be choosy
By Amir Oren
...
The main goal, which dictated the operation's logic in its aerial phase and ground phase so far, was deterrence - to convince Hamas to refrain from shooting its rockets for a very long time. The image of solid American support builds deterrence no less than the taking of a fortified objective in some God-forsaken neighborhood.
...
And what will happen when the forces roll southward in a firestorm, followed by bulldozers that will mow down hundreds of houses on the Philadelphi route to put an end to the tunnels? Israel will be quickly tossed out of both south and north, losing diplomatic assets in the process.
Israel, a proud country with solid yet flexible principles, is prepared to conduct indirect talks with Hamas, as long as they are not defined as indirect talks a la Turkey-Syria. The bride will meet with the Egyptian matchmaker, Omar Suleiman, not only without the groom, but on a different day. But it is likely that a match, albeit loveless, will result, since neither side can be choosy.
The chances of persuading Hamas to stop the rocket fire is high: The rate of firing has fallen continually, from 80 to 60 to 40 to 20. And the chances of it signing a pledge to stop smuggling is low. Israel will have to take what it can get, not as little compared with before December 27, but less than it had hoped.
Iran: Cold calculations in Gaza, By Kamal Nazer Yasin. ISN Security Watch, 13 Jan 2009.
Whoever the War Nerd is (believed by some to be Dr. John Dolan), imo, they use an excellent literary device to deliver astute and timely analysis.An Iranian academic who follows these developments found this statement significant. “It [the statement] is unusual in many ways more than one,” he told ISN Security Watch on condition of anonymity.
“First it is only one grade lower than an official fatwa. Secondly, it is uncommonly emotional and full of pathos. Third, about 70 percent of it is devoted to attacking Arab political and religious leaders. Fourth, the ayatollah speaks with the authority of the leader of all Muslims as opposed to Shias or some Shias.”
The War Nerd: Hamas Ain’t No Hezbollah, By Gary Brecher. The eXiled, January 6th, 2009.
War Nerd: Rules in the Era of Squeamishness, By Gary Brecher. The eXiled, January 12th, 2009.The Israelis attacked now because of two non-military cycles: the news cycle and the presidential cycle. This was like a war by an astrologer: the stars had to be in exactly the right position before the Apaches could start blasting and the Merkavas could roll.
When you live in a lull like we do, you think everything’s happening for the first time, when what you really have is the same plays called with different rules. What made me realize that was this article I saw in the Israeli paper Haaretz that summed up a US Army report on the 2006 war between the IDF and Hezbollah. According to this report, Hezbollah had scored some kind of tactical breakthrough by fighting almost like a conventional army, fighting from bunkers instead of relying on mobile warfare. They claimed this was a first in history, a “non-state actor” fighting a successful conventional war.
Well, of course it’s not new at all. What’s new is the squeamish, namby-pamby set of rules that operate since 1945. Those rules are why Hezbollah was able to win. Unless you understand that, you won’t understand how wars work these days.That’s why Hezbollah’s bunker strategy seemed so brilliant; under the new rules it works. If you don’t understand how the rules have changed, you’ll never get anywhere applying Stalingrad rules to Lebanon news.
I thought it was rather shallow analysis, with the pithy no-holds-barred writing style obscuring a lot of technical weaknesses in the analysis.
On the basic point he makes: yes, contemporary public opinion is far more sensitive to civilian casualties, making it much more difficult to slaughter innocents as part of your post-WWII COIN strategy. The IDF could certainly be doing far more damage than it is in Gaza because of the political imperative of keeping civilian casulaties down.
That being said:
1) Hamas is not Hizbullah in terms of military performance, but part of the reason for that is something that Gary Brecher (War Nerd) doesn't mention at all: Hizbullah was far, far better armed, especially with ATGMs and RPGs. Hamas has very few of these, and is largely fighting with small arms and improvised explosives. (The other reasons he mentions are also valid, such as strategic depth).
2) While Gaza City is very densely populated, it is not the most densely populated place on earth (an erroneous claim that is often made). Many third world cities are just as densely populated, if not more so.
3) A key constraint on Israeli use of force is not just (Western) public reaction to civilian casualties, but the ramifications of Israeli actions for the broader Middle East. Large-scale mass killing of civilians could fatally destabilize the PA and Jordan, and even compromise the Egyptian government.
He's especially wrong in suggesting that the current operation shifts the Hamas-Fateh competition in the latter's favour. On the contrary, it has made President Abbas and the PA look like Israeli stooges, which is never much of a support-winner in Palestinian politics.
Alternative viewpoints
The Target is Iran: Israel's Latest Gamble May Backfire By Muriel Mirak-Weissbach: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=11747
The Battle for Oil & the War on GAZA & British Gaz!??War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza's Offshore Gas Fields by Michel Chossudovsky:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=11680
Maybe odd, way left of centre arguments, but I suspect articles like these are being circulated as proof of a conspiracy. No time to check the origins of the website, perhaps Rex can comment as it appears to be Canadian.
davidbfpo
Yes, Michel Chossudovsky is into conspiracy theories, as is the Centre for Research on Globalization in a big way. Among the articles posted there are those questioning whether al-Qa'ida was really responsible for 9/11, whether the WTC really collapsed because of an aircraft strike, etc. To quote from the blurb from Chossudovsky's book America's War on Terrorism:
'nuff said.In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky's 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by "Islamic terrorists". Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.
The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.
According to Chossudovsky, the "war on terrorism" is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The "war on terrorism" is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the "New World Order", dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.
September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington's agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.
Born again hard, Rex. - not that you ever were not. We might not always agree, but your commentary and analysis stands in a league of it's own.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
What do you think Tel Aviv estimated Hamas to be in 1987, or even after Mehola Junction? The momentum for disengagement after Oslo was so great that even Netanyahu came to Wye River. Hell, even as the Second Intifada finally tore down Oslo Sharon of all people found time to disengage from Lebanon, Gaza and form Kadima. By then, Israel had already accepted de facto Palestinian statehood and was fighting a war that was ten times more destructive than the fight in the eighties. Let's face it, the IDF didn't destroy Hamas twenty years ago because Tel Aviv saw Hamas as a nuisance--more to Fatah than to Israel. And seeing as how long it took the rest of the world to take the Islamists seriously, can you blame them?
Cut off the lifeline to armed groups in the territories and watch as both infighting and Quixotism wear them down. Israel and the occupied territories are small enough that Tel Aviv can and does take care of business along her lines of control. The Egyptians, Jordanians and Lebanese--out of not least a clear sense of political and literal self-preservation--either don't at all or only intermittently so. The intractable part is identifying participants acceptable to all parties, and by intractable I mean with the Turks probably out of the game there's probably no one left.I get worried when policymakers start throwing around the idea of an "international presence" without any sense as to whether the mandate and mission are actually feasible.
PH Cannady
Correlate Systems
By the time of the suicide bombings of the 1990s, there is no doubt that Israel saw Hamas as its primary armed threat in the West Bank/Gaza.
Barak, not Sharon, disengaged from Lebanon in 2000.
Sharon's disengagement from Gaza was not intended, I believe, to lay the groundwork for the establishment of a Palestinian state any time soon, but the opposite—to relieve the demographic and political pressures on Israel, especially with regard to territorial concession in the West Bank. As Sharon's Chief of Staff, Dov Weisglass, explained it in 2004:
The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.
The American term is to "park conveniently." The disengagement plan makes it possible for Israel to "park conveniently" in an interim situation that distances us as far as possible from political pressure. It legitimizes our contention that there is no negotiating with the Palestinians.
The shift to the kind of operation we're seeing now ("a Lebanon-style retaliatory strategy" as one then-member of the Israeli NSC said to me in 2005) was foreseen. Using disengagement to push responsibility for Gaza on to Egypt was also discussed at the time (which helps to explain why the Egyptians are being so cautious about opening Rafah).
Meaning what, in this case? Almost everything dual-use is already barred from Gaza, as are quite a few things that aren't. Commercial food imports are so restricted and unemployment so high (largely because of trade restrictions) that even before the ceasefire broke down, more than half of Gaza's population depended on UN food-hand-outs. In some areas of Gaza one-third of children show signs of physical stunting—something that only appears after prolonged malnourishment, and which was previously quite rare in Gaza.
Moreover, the strength of radical rejectionist groups in the territories is largely a function of the larger political context—at the heyday of the Oslo process, Hamas has been reduced to single-digit support in some polls. While a large part of their resurgence can be attributed to corruption and incompetence within Fateh as well as Arafat's tacit encouragement of the disaster that was the second intifada, much is also due to Israeli actions (extensive mobility restrictions and massive settlement expansion, even in the "good days" of the mid and 1990s), the poor handling of negotiations by the Clinton administration in 2000, and subsquent missteps in US and Western diplomacy since then.
Gaza opinion survey
Near East Consulting did a telephone survey in Gaza on 29-30 December, after Israel air strikes had started but before the ground operation commenced.
While the results need to be read with some caution (landlines were down in north Gaza at the time, and polling in wartime is a tricky thing), but the results are interesting:
Is Hamas correct in not renewing the ceasefire agreement?
No 60%
Yes 40%
Do you support missile attacks (against Israel)?
No 46%
Yes 54%
(Does the military confrontation make) Hamas stronger or weaker?
Stronger 47%
Weaker 41%
(Does the military confrontation make) Fateh stronger or weaker?
Stronger 37%
Weaker 38%
Which faction do you support most?
Fateh 27.9%
Hamas 13.8%
Others 7.7%
None 50.5%
The "none of the above" response probably partly reflects caution at answering questions on the phone (although polling is very common in the Palestinian territories), but also reflects a profound disillusionment with the current quality of Palestinian leadership.
Other (pre-war) polling can be found on the excellent PCPSR website.
the debate in Israel
Combine a citizen-army, the frequent transition from military roles to political leadership, and a very active and free-wheeling press in israel and you get strategic and operational debates conducted through the media, coupled with constant leaks.
Indeed, the problem was so severe in the 2006 Hizbullah war that the IDF chief of staff barred senior IDF officers from using their cellphones during the current Gaza campaign.
Apparently its not working
Haaretz - 15:45 14/01/2009
Top Israel defense officials back immediate Gaza truce
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent
This sounds rather like a Barak-authorized leak, since the Defence Minister is currently arguing that PM Olmert risks the gains of the Gaza operation by over-extending it, rather than declaring victory and accepting a ceasefire (while retaliating against any further Hamas rocket attacks).Senior defense establishment officials believe that Israel should strive to reach an immediate cease-fire with Hamas, and not expand its offensive against the Palestinian Islamist group in Gaza.
During meetings of the Israel Defense Forces General Staff and of the heads of the state's other security branches, officials have said that Israel achieved several days ago all that it possibly could in Gaza.
The officials expressed reservations about launching the third phase of Operation Cast Lead, preferring for it to remain a threat at this stage.
As far as I am concerned, Gaza is Egypt. The West Bank was ceded from Jordanian control by his Highness King Hussein. Something I have never forgiven for, and nor would the members of my family, whom he knew well, and had they lived to see it. If he wished to give a homeland to the Palestinians (which I have no problem with) he should not have quit the act in the way he did.
I will freely admit that actually have a bit of a problem with the restriction of foods stuff. It does not sit well with me, and has never been adequately explained to my satisfaction.
However, while malnourishment may have been rare in Gaza, it was never unheard of, nor is it in the entire Mid East. You can see under fed kids even in Israel.
Rex: I am also unclear as to the situation concerning the provision of water and electricity to Gaza, because to my estimation Gaza seems to get something like 65% of it's electricity and water, from Israel and for free. This is a commonly banded figure amongst the media.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Wilf—The latest figures I have to hand (February 2008) show 126 MW from Israel, 65 MW produced in Gaza, and 17 MW from Egypt—which would put it at around the proportion you cite (61%). The proportion of Gaza-generated electricity used to be somewhat higher, but the IAF bombed Gaza's main generator in June 2006.
The issue of payment is a complicated one. It was never free--the PA paid for electrical and water supplies at times, and at other times the cost was deducted from taxes that Israel collected on the PA's behalf. As of the most recent PA Ministry of Finance reports that I've seen (3rd quarter 2008), the PA was in the process of paying off arrears to the Israeli Electric Company.
Note that it is the PA that pays for this, not the Hamas administration in Gaza. Despite the Fateh-Hamas split, some semi-joint institutions continue to work (the same is true of the Palestinian Water Authority).
I couldn't make this up
Jeruslaem Post
Jan 14, 2009 15:40 | Updated Jan 14, 2009 21:02
Olmert, Barak at odds over ending op
By JPOST.COM STAFF
It seems that the left hand isn't quite sure what the right hand is doing, or vice-versa.
In the meantime...Senior officials close to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed veiled criticism at Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday for his backing of Egypt's truce efforts conducted via Defense Ministry Security-Diplomatic Bureau chief Amos Gilad.
"Hamas senior officials see these images and hear these voices and draw encouragement from the notion that Israel is looking for a way out. We regret the irresponsibility of ministers leaking information regarding their own private initiatives - as high ranking as these ministers may be," officials said.
Earlier on Wednesday, after Gilad's arrival in Cairo was postponed to Thursday, it was widely reported that a potential truce would initially consist of a slowing down of IDF activities followed by a temporary ceasefire and a halt to troop movement into the Gaza Strip. Agreements with Egypt regarding smuggling into the Strip would then be finalized, including the introduction of US monitors, and, after calm has been reached, a full cease-fire would be established and IDF forces would withdraw from Gaza.
In the prime minister's milieu, officials expressed regret that news of the potential draft for a ceasefire had been revealed "on behalf of government ministers, of all sources."
Jerusalem Post
Jan 14, 2009 18:37 | Updated Jan 14, 2009 21:17
Hamas responds 'positively' to Gaza cease-fire proposal
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Hamas announced on Wednesday that it had responded "positively" to the Egyptian cease-fire proposal, but said there were still some differences between the two parties that needed to be addressed.
The Egyptian news agency MENA reported earlier that Hamas had accepted the cease-fire proposal.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit confirmed that Hamas had given a "positive response" regarding the initiative. He said he would relay the Hamas position to Israel on Thursday.
...or that Barak loathes Olmut and their staffs dislike each other. Hardly a position unique to Israel, and only reported in the Israeli press, - like a whole raft of other stories, which the West chooses to ignore.
I don't normally post links on this issue, as I see it as mostly pointless, but this did catch my attention.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...656420,00.html
It makes no mention of the NATO air strikes killings of civilians in Iraq or A'Stan, but perhaps it should.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Could be one explanation for it
Talking out of both sides of your mouth means everyone listening hears something they like
Then again might also mean nobody really knows whats going on
Any man can destroy that which is around him, The rare man is he who can find beauty even in the darkest hours
Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur
Here's another one, from Wired's Danger Room: Video: Inside a Gaza D.I.Y. Rocket Lab
.....watch this remarkable video report from Zouheir Alnajjar, an Algerian-born guerrilla journalist who now lives in the Gaza Strip. In it, a pair of Palestinian militants lead him, blindfolded, into their D.I.Y. rocket-building lab. Then they show him how they make their weapons, out of fertilizer and scrap metal......
most densely populated?
Regarding the "most densely populated" question: What is correct is that Jabalia refugee camp in North Gaza is the most densely populated place on earth, where over 110,000 Palestinian refugees live in an area 1.5 square kilometres. They lost their homes in Southern Palestine (now Southern Israel) in 1948.
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