October 272, 2023, "The War"

My 211th post on The War

Today’s Image

During operations in Rafah, IDF soldiers came across this board game which then nicknames “Snakes and Ladders”. From the images it would seem that “Snakes & Rockets” might be more appropriate. I wondered what Hasbro Toy Company would have to say since they own the board game, “Chutes and Ladders”. But after some research I learned that the game was originally called “Snakes and Ladders” and it originated in India as the game “Moksha Patam”. It was brought into the Western world back in the late 19th Century. In any case this version is clearly a jihadi variant of the game, using rockets and mortars instead of ladders. The images on all the landing squares are of buildings and monuments inside Israel.

I recommend you visit this web page where you can see a short video, images and a description of what the IDF is finding during its patrols in Rafah. In nearly every home they are finding weapons including RPGs, grenades, explosives, ammunition magazines and more. Many of the homes are booby trapped, to a much larger extent than what they found in Khan Younis and Gaza City. Hamas combatants had more time to set up these traps and learned from what worked and what didn’t work from earlier in The War.

Gaza Rockets

No rockets were fired from Gaza in the past 96 hours.

Casualties

The IDF announced that Sgt. Eyal Shynes - 19 (Z’’L) was killed in action during fighting in Rafah today. Altogether 316 IDF soldiers have been killed during battles in Gaza since the launch of The War.

Gaza Operations

The operation launched a day ago in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City increased in intensity. Infantry and tanks have now entered the neighborhood, killing dozens of Hamas combatants who were using UNRWA schools and nearby facilities for staging operations against IDF troops.

The IDF also struck Hamas combatants who were hiding inside a building inside one of the central Gaza humanitarian zones. The IDF worked in advance to evacuate civilians from the vicinity of the building, using aerial surveillance to ensure civilians were gone before bombing the facility with light arms that would limit damage to the building and not those around it.

There is anecdotal evidence coming in from reports of IDF soldiers in the field that they are starting to see young teen age boys toting RPGs hoping to target IDF soldiers. This, in my opinion, is mixed news. First it would suggest that Hamas’s regular forces are being depleted as they are being killed or seriously injured. BUT, it means that they are trying to train young teens to fight. Giving someone an RPG with a day’s training on how to aim, pull the trigger and reload does not build an effective fighting force, much less a guerrilla force. Most likely, these young boys will be killed before they can do any serious harm.

I could not find a version of the article in English, but in the Hebrew version of the main Israeli Paper, Yediot Ahranot, one of their military analysts provided a thorough summary of what is going on inside Rafah. If you can read Hebrew, you will find it here. Even if you can’t read Hebrew, you can see the photos of all the fruit and vegetables accumulating inside Gaza. So far the IDF has uncovered 25 tunnels that traverse the border with Egypt underground. They expect to find more. Most of them exit inside Gaza around the western side of the city of Rafah. None have been destroyed yet. Because the IDF took 3 months to enter Rafah and provided Hamas ample advanced notice, the terrorist group had the time to rig the tunnels, their entrances and nearby facilities with many, many explosives. The IDF commanders in the area estimate that it will take another six months to complete their probes inside the tunnels and only then will they start blowing them up. And they are still not convinced that they found everything.

In the same article the author documents pallets and creates of fresh fruit and vegetables making their way into Gaza from Israel now. The challenge that remains is how to prevent these goods from reaching Hamas’ warehouses where they will deploy to their own combatants and then sell what is left on the black market. The IDF is getting more clever about this. They are posting snipers at strategic places along the routes travelled by the aid trucks to try and prevent armed gangs and Hamas from commandeering the trucks. My guess is that we are going to see an expansion of such activities as the main problem now is not how much aid is making its way into Gaza, but how it gets distributed.

Also, now that the IDF controls the border area with Egypt, Philadelphi Corridor, they are going to start declaring cease fire periods along this route so the aid trucks can move directly into the humanitarian corridor along the sea.

The article also reports that Egyptian troops have been moved a few km from their side of the border. As you might remember, there were some skirmishes in the early days of fighting in Rafah and a few Egyptians troops were killed in error - not sure if bullets came from terrorist combatants or IDF. So moving the Egyptian soldiers further away reduces any possibility of errant bullets. And since the Rafah border crossing is currently dormant, there is no need for troops to be stationed there.

The IDF estimates that they have eliminated more than 800 Hamas combatants so far during fighting in Rafah. That is about one brigade. The other three brigades that were positioned there escaped to Khan Younis, Gaza City and some blended into the civilian population in the humanitarian corridors. There are only 3-4 neighborhoods remaining in Rafah that have not been entered by the IDF, including the northwestern neighborhood of Tel al-Sultan. Since this is a major exit point for the main tunnels traversing the Egyptian border, heavy fighting can be expected to take place there in the coming days.

Sheesh… after reading this in Hebrew the newspaper finally posted it in English - here.

Lebanon Operations

All in all, Hezbollah launched more than 40 rockets yesterday at northern Israel. Early this morning Israeli fighter jets struck several Hezbollah buildings including those sites from where the rockets were fired.

This morning Israeli artillery bombarded southern Lebanon according to Lebanese media.

Hospitals in Israel’s north have been told to stock up their blood banks and prepare to move patients to underground care facilities that have been built over the years in anticipation of severe attacks coming from Hezbollah.

According to reports on NBC News, the US State Department is readying plans to evacuate American citizens from Lebanon should fighting between Israel and Hezbollah intensify.

Yemen Operations

British Naval forces operating around the Red Sea report receiving a distress signal from a commercial container ship saying it was coming under drone attack. At this time I do not have more to report.

Aid

COGAT, short for the IDF’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, posted on its web site that 250 aid trucks entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Egypt in the south, northern border crossings with Israel and by the floating pier. Pallets of aid from the equivalent of 118 trucks were picked up by the NGO aid organizations for distribution.

The IDF has had to position snipers in the vicinity of the pallets of aid on the Gaza side as both Hamas and other criminal organizations attempt to steal the aid.

As I mentioned previously, the IDF has now opened the Kerem Shalom border crossing that bridges Gaza-Israel-Egypt to passage by Gazans authorized by Egypt. Yesterday, about 70 injured children and sick elderly passed through the crossing into Egypt seeking needed medical attention by hospitals in Egypt and those abroad.

Politics/Protests

The talk of elections is in the air here.. not US elections, but Israeli elections. Lots of interviews, lots of polling and lots of “what ifs”. As I had predicted back in February, the issue that is likely to bring this government down is the ongoing exemption of the ultra-orthodox sector from serving in the IDF. And tensions are mounting. Earlier this week the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that, in essence, it has lost its patience with the Government who was years overdue coming up with proper legislation that would prove that the treatment of young men in the ultra-orthodox sector was no different from the rest of the population. After many years of postponing this because the Government could not get a bill that would pass the parliament, the courts gave an ultimatum that they had to see the passed legislation by the end of April 2024. When that date passed they lost their patience and ruled in a 9 to 0 unanimous decision that the Government must immediately start drafting the ultra-orthodox. The court also ruled, at the same time, that the generous funding allowances granted by the government to those ultra-orthodox yeshivot (a school for studying Talmud-Torah) would cease to those schools that refuse to send their students to serve.

In the meantime the Government is working on creating legislation supposedly intended to address the impatience of the Supreme Court. The current bill, which is in review by the Knesset Defense Committee, headed by veteran (and sane) Likud MK Yuli Edelstein announced that whatever legislation his committee passes on to a vote must meet a broad consensus within Parliament. This is code for it must also be agreed to by the opposition, or at least some of the parties. This is contrary to commitments made by Prime Minister Netanyahu to his coalition parties - Shas and United Torah Judaism - which represent the ultra-orthodox. So far, Defence Minister Gallant and Economy Minister Barkat have announced that they will not support the current bill without widespread support. Now Minister Edelstein. It will only take one more vote to block the bill.

But it gets worse for the Government. Much of Likud’s core support comes from the periphery of the country, cities and towns outside the Merkaz areas defined by Tel Aviv, its suburbs and the coastal areas stretching up to Haifa. Mayors from the towns, including Beer Sheva, are telling their fellow Likud members in the Knesset that it is preposterous to be diverting funds from their towns to the ultra-orthodox Yeshivot. Their towns have been hit hard by the forced evacuations in the north due to Hezbollah rockets and in the south due to Hamas. They, rightfully, need those funds to rebuild. So even the rank and file of Likud is getting pressured to listen to its voting members in the periphery of the country.

And if the ultra-orthodox parties do not get the money they were promised or are not exempted from serving in the IDF, they will leave the Government and it will fall, forcing new elections. Prime Minister Netanyahu is known for being the magician that finds amazingly creative ways for keeping a coalition of disparate parties together in a Government. But it is hard for me to see how he can work his way through this one. The country has been hit by the most brutal attack in 50 years and no one wants to hear anything about draft exemptions for the ultra-orthodox. I have friends serving in reserves who have been called up no less than three times since the outbreak of The War. They have to kiss their spouses and children goodbye, leave their work or university studies in order to serve their country. While the ultra-orthodox sit and study without even working…. I do not see how Netanyahu survives this….

International

The UN Security Council passed a resolution yesterday, unanimously, condemning the Houthis for disrupting international maritime shipping. Russia, China and Algeria abstained, I presume to show support for Iran.

The EU just elected Estonia’s Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, as the new EU “Foreign Minister” replacing that brilliant predecessor, Josep Borrell, who I will miss dearly (Not!).

Apparently several European countries have requested that the ICC postpone any decision on issuing arrest warrants against Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant until they have had a chance to submit briefs as “friends of the court”. This is expected to postpone, and possibly stop, the issuance of any arrest warrants for at least a month.

It would seem that Yoav Gallant’s mission to the USA accomplished much of what he set out to accomplish. Primarily he targeted getting the slow down in arms shipments from the USA to return to the previous flow. For the moment he seems to have succeeded.

And In Your Copious Spare Time…

• You might read this article that summarizes the views of three Israeli military analysts on what to expect regarding any possible war with Hezbollah.