Before the ground invasion of Gaza
There seems to be some signs at the moment that the Biden Administration may be putting pressure on Netanyahu’s government to delay a full-blown invasion of Gaza. Substantial bombing and military strikes are already underway.
Meanwhile, it’s important for people to remember that it was very clear to the governments involved that the mass evacuation of Palestinians from one section of Gaza to another was completely unrealistic under the conditions in Gaza and was just a cynical ploy to blame the Palestinians who the Israeli campaign kills for their own deaths: we warned them to flee, so it’s their own fault we killed them. There are substantial numbers of internal refugees in Gaza already but they are far from safe.
It’s a fast-changing situation at the moment. But Adnan Nasser observed two days ago:
Immediately after Hamas’ offensive, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war. Now a full-scale invasion of Gaza seems imminent.
Israel’s military command has ordered Palestinians living in the north to evacuate to the other parts of the Gaza Strip within twenty-four hours. It dropped leaflets from the sky to warn people of new air strikes. Once Gaza’s only power station ran out of fuel, people had to use private generators for limited electricity. This has only increased the suffering of the civilians who are now torn between fleeing or remaining in their homes. Israel has imposed a new “complete” blockade from the border crossing and has refused to allow any humanitarian aid into Gaza until its abducted civilians are returned. Early in the fighting, Hamas boasted that it captured over 100 people in its attacks, many of whom are foreigners, including Americans.
Israeli minister of energy and infrastructure Israel Katz stated that no humanitarian aid will be delivered to the besieged territory until Israeli captives are freed.1 [my emphasis]
Yes, Israel is waging war against Palestinian terrorists. And very consciously against Palestinian civilian noncombatants. “Israel agreed to allow water trucks to enter the Gaza Strip via Egypt's Rafah Crossing, but as of Monday [today] that has yet to happen.”2 But the water system also requires fuel and electricity, so sending trucks of water across the border is a long way from delivering it to the population in Gaza, with the added complications the large number of displaced persons creates.
Paul Pillar had this quick take on October 7, the day of the Hamas attack on Israel.
The political consequences in Israel are more predictable than those in the Gaza Strip. Although there will be the usual recriminations over an “intelligence failure” and whether the government should have been better prepared for the attack, the blood-stained escalation of conflict between Israelis and Arabs will, at least in the short term, intensify the extreme right-wing course of the extreme right-wing Israeli government and help to squelch any thoughts about meaningful concessions to the Palestinians. The new war will be a unifying distraction from the government’s controversial judicial overhaul and the corruption case against Netanyahu. In this respect Hamas may have done a political favor for Netanyahu with this attack.3
Marc Lynch at the Foreign Affairs website looks at the rapidly escalating disaster that is unfolding in Gaza:
The impending invasion of Gaza will be a humanitarian, moral, and strategic catastrophe. It will not only badly harm Israel’s long-term security and inflict unfathomable human costs on Palestinians but also threaten core U.S. interests in the Middle East, in Ukraine, and in Washington’s competition with China over the Indo-Pacific order. [my emphasis]
And that is "only" with a war that focuses on Gaza. It's in nobody's interest except for Bin Laden-type jihadists for this to spread into a wider Middle East war.
He also looks at the longer policy context, because history didn't begin a week ago with the unquestionably criminal attack on civilian noncombatants by Hamas on October 7. And he has this to say about this current grimly cynical evacuation order by Netanyahu's government:
And Israel has called on Gaza’s civilians to leave the north within 24 hours. This is an impossible demand. Gazans have nowhere to go. Highways are destroyed, infrastructure is in rubble, there is little remaining electricity or power, and the few hospitals and relief facilities are all in the northern target zone. Even if Gazans wanted to leave the strip, the Rafah crossing to Egypt has been bombed—and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has shown few signs of offering a friendly refuge.
Dan Drezner also cites Lynch’s article and expresses his agreement. But also notes with a tone of grim resignation, “The hard truth, however, is that this is a situation in which folks in the West possess very little agency, and what agency they do possess is difficult to exercise publicly.”4
This Deutsche Welle English segment5 is a decent report on the upcoming invasion of Gaza. features Israeli military spokespeople. The host interrupts several times when she's interviewing an Israeli soldier, presumably offically designated to speak to them. She repeatedly asks him what the goal of the operation is. I'm not sure if there what news value interview like that one has, because the interviewees can't say anything about the military operations that the official spokespeople have already said. And this guy was obviously prepped with kill-kill-kill war slogans.
But how could reporters really expect anything else in this kind of interview?
Nasser, Adnan, (2023): No Escape: Palestinian Civilians are Trapped Inside the Hamas-Israel War. The National Interest 10/13/2023. <https://nationalinterest.org/blog/lebanon-watch/no-escape-palestinian-civilians-are-trapped-inside-hamas-israel-war-206943> (Accessed: 2023-14-10).
Kubovich, Yaniv & Lis, Jonathan (2023): Israel Allows Water Into Gaza Strip via the Rafah Crossing, but No Fuel nor Food. Haaretz 10/16/2023 (5:26 pm IDT) <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-16/ty-article/.premium/israel-allows-water-into-gaza-strip-via-the-rafah-crossing-but-no-fuel-nor-food/0000018b-3809-dd09-a1bf-3aa96cd70000> (Accessed: 2023-16-10).
Pillar, Paul (2023): Why Hamas attacked and what happens next. Responsible Statecraft 10/07/2023. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/hamas-attack-israel/> (Accessed: 2023-14-10).
Drezner, Dan (2023): The Limits of Outside Opinion in Gaza. Drezner's World (Substack) 10/16/2023. (Accessed: 2023-16-10).
Netanyahu: Strikes on Gaza are only the beginning. DW News YouTube channel 10/14/2023. (Accessed: 2023-14-10).