Today’s Image
Welcome to “Hellywood”. I just made that term up. Hezbollah is at it again. They just published this video, again with background music, of their Imad 4 underground missile launching facility that they built in Lebanon. You can watch the video on their X.com channel here. You can also see it here and read more details about their tunnel network. I do not know if the IDF was aware that this facility existed. But they are aware of the sophistication that Hezbollah employed in building their tunnel system. Back in 2021, residents along the northern border complained about the sound of digging going on. Before this the IDF largely ignored their complaints. But then the IDF started digging and found a series of tunnels that crossed into Israel. You can read more here. I do not know what strategy Israel has for dealing with these tunnels. To damage them, the IAF will need access to bunker busting bombs, which they have.
Disclaimer
I reported on Wednesday of last week of a major cyber attack on Iran’s banks. Apparently I, along with many others, fell into wishful thinking as it is apparently fake news. Sorry, I try my best to confirm these reports. You can read more here.
Gaza Rockets
One rocket was fired on Friday from Gaza aimed at the Israeli border town of Nirim. There have been no rockets fired from Gaza landing in Israel for the past two days.
Casualties
The IDF reported two casualties yesterday resulting from close quarters combat in the central area of Gaza: Maj. Yotam Itzhak - 34 (Z’’L) and Warr. Officer Mordechai Yosef Ben Shoam - 34 (Z’’L). And today a security guard (civilian) was killed, Gidon Perl - 38 (Z’’L) as a results of a terrorist from Judea/Samaria (West Bank) attacking him with a hammer.
I was in Tel Aviv at my apartment today. When a military helicopter comes into the city, I hear the engine and can see the helipad at the Ichilov Hospital which is just across the street. One member of the Division’s Paratroopers brigade was seriously wounded and that must have been him they were bringing in for treatment.
Gaza Operations
The IDF reports that it has been active in Khan Younis again, focussing on the southern portion of the City. Recent rocket fire came from this area. In just a few days of operations the IDF’s 98th Division, which has become famous here in Israel, has succeeded in locating and destroying not only rocket launching sites, but several other facilities used for storing arms and organizing Hamas operations. In the course of this, dozens of Hamas combatants have been killed. The search for more tunnels is ongoing as well.
Lebanon Operations
In what is becoming a recurring pattern, this afternoon Hezbollah launched a barrage of 20 rockets this afternoon at the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona. Most of the rockets were intercepted. There were no reports of injuries. Then after locating the origin of the firing, Israeli fighter jets launched missile that destroyed the launchers.
Earlier in the day an IDF drone struck several Hezbollah facilities in the southern Lebanese town of Chebaa, including weapons storage facilities and a staging facility.
Lebanon has a severe power plant issue as there are now very frequent power outages. There is, apparently, not enough funds to pay the state electric company to cover the fuel costs. Israel has been supplying Lebanon natural gas via pipelines to Egypt. Technically, to avoid admitting that Israel is providing Lebanon fuel, Israel sells the gas to Egypt and then Egypt sells it to Lebanon via pipes going through Jordan. If you take a look at a map you will see how ridiculous all this is. Israel’s gas fields are much closer to Lebanon. But, apparently much of that fuel has stopped since Lebanon is not paying its bills to Egypt, which is also broke and a nearly failed state. So Algeria, which has plenty of gas, appears to have agreed to provide fuel to Lebanon.
On the same day that this news item appears, the head of Lebanon’s Government’s National Emergency Committee claimed in an interview that Lebanon has enough food reserves to last four months and enough fuel to last four weeks in the event of a war. Doesn’t seem consistent with the need to import fuel from Algeria to keep their power plants running.
Yemen Operations
It has been 30 days since the IDF struck Yemen’s port of Al-Hodeidah. Since then there has not been a single missile or drone fired at Israel from Yemen. Prior to July 20th, either the IDF or US CENTCOM took down over 200 aerial projectiles fired at Israel by the Houthis. The one exception was the drone that entered Tel Aviv on July 19th, killing one civilian. I guess that deterrence works. Although, should Iran launch an attack soon on Israel, we all expect the Houthis to join the effort as part of the “axis of resistance”.
IDF General
The new head of IDF Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder was sworn in today. The previous head of IDF Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, resigned taking responsibility for some of the failures that led to the October 7 attack. So far, Haliva is the only person to resign and take responsibility.
Aid
One case of polio has been reported in Gaza. Not long ago it was stated that many of the children in Gaza were inoculated against polio in the early days of the war. Perhaps those reports were not accurate. Regardless, the World Health Organization brought more than 1 million anti-polio vaccines into Gaza in order to inoculate the children. But, they insist that they need a sustained ceasefire of weeks in order to administer the vaccines. Personally, I do not see how the ceasefire is necessary. Nurses should be able to administer the vaccines in the improvised clinics/hospitals that were set up in Gaza. But maybe I am missing something… But COGAT issued a statement today announcing that since the onset of the war, it has facilitated enough polio vaccine into Gaza to inoculate more than 2 million people against polio. You can read more here.
Recently, Israel’s COGAT facilitated the evacuation of children and other patients needing urgent care to hospitals in Jordan. The operations involved the cooperation of US CENTCOM and the government of The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. You can read more here.
COGAT reports that only 13 aid trucks entered Gaza yesterday, all from the northern border crossing with Israel. There remain the equivalent of 500 trucks of aid still sitting inside the Gaza staging areas. There are reports that the frequency of armed attacks on aid convoys inside Gaza has declined considerably. Not sure of the reason. It could be the IDF’s policy of posting snipers along the routes.
Politics/Protests
Earlier today, Minister Avigdor Lieberman testified in front of an independent civilian commission that is investigating the non IDF direct issues pertaining to the October 7 attack. Lieberman is the head of the Israel Beitanu party which holds 6 seats in the 120 seat Knesset. He was a Minister in previous governments, including Minister of Defense between 2016 and 2018, when Netanyahu was Prime Minister. In his testimony, Lieberman stated that early in his tenure he wrote an 11 page document that he claims warns of the probability of an attack just like that on October 7. He presented the report to Prime Minister Netanyahu, the head of Military Intelligence and Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot. He also discussed it publicly as part of interviews in Israeli newspapers. Eisenkot, by the way, was recently participating in the War Cabinet and publicly criticizing the Prime Minister and Defense Minister Gallant. Recently, Prime Minister Netanyahu released his autobiography, “Bibi: My Story”. In it he proudly writes about this saying that he stopped the reckless and aggressive demands of Defense Minister Lieberman. Lieberman was succeeded in his Defense Minister role by Naftali Bennet who served from 2019-2020. Bennett also pushed for a more aggressive role. As early as 2016, prior to serving as Defense Minister, Bennett took public a report issued by the State Comptroller at the time which documented how Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Chief of Staff Benny Gantz were ignoring the growing threats of Hamas’s tunnels leading up to the 2014 IDF incursion into Gaza, Operation Cast Lead. In his autobiography, Netanyahu also boasted of the fact that he ignored the boisterous and aggressive approach of Bennett. Like Eisekot, Gantz was also a member of the War Cabinet until recently. And both have been extremely critical of Netanyahu.
By the way, this civilian commission is not the official government appointed full commission of inquiry. There are rumors, as reported here, that the Prime Minister is set to announce the establishment of an official board of inquiry.
Last Friday there was a terrible incident in Judea/Samaria (West Bank) when several extremist Israelis engaged in a riot in an Arab village in the West Bank, Jit. One Arab man was killed and fires were set to several vehicles. You can read more here. While such a thing is not common and one could not call it rampant, it is happening more frequently under this government. Internal, and a lot of external, pressure is coming to bear for the IDF to take a more active role in dealing with this lawlessness. There are three problems, related to the current government, that are exacerbating this problem:
Right wing extremists have prominent positions in this government. They have publicly condemned the attacks as they are outside the law. But, it is not clear how committed they are to stop it;
The Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir oversees the police force as part of his responsibilities. There is a bit of conflict of interest in this regard.
And Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, as part of his conditions for joining the government demanded that more of the oversight in Judea/Samaria (West Bank) be delegated to civilian control, rather than the IDF. But, again, this is a conflict of interest since the oversight is not independent, respecting the rights of all parties concerned.
Most Ministers in the government condemned the actions. In a telling statement, far right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a minister in the Defense Ministry in charge of settlement affairs, said the storming of Jit was “not connected in any way to the settlement enterprise or to settlers.”
The State Attorney General Amit Aiman announced that he will be directly overseeing the investigation. One protagonist was arrested so far. Aiman already convened a meeting of senior officials from the Police Force, IDF and Shin Bet to plan out the pursuit of the other guilty parties and work on their prosecution. Reports suggest that there were up to 100 of them.
Despite, the impression of this lawlessness there is progress on bringing justice to some of these incidents. As reported here, while the wheels of justice may grind slowly cases are getting prosecuted. But it is not enough and more must be done to contain this growing problem.
Hostages/Ceasefire
On Thursday, the mediators announced publicly that great progress was made in the negotiations. Since Hamas neither attended nor engaged with the negotiations, what this meant was that Israel made some adjustments to a couple of the current sticking points that made the mediators (Qatar and Egypt) optimistic that Hamas might consider them. But today Hamas came back and said that the modifications were not acceptable and that Israel’s negotiating team was setting “new conditions and demands”. Israel’s negotiating team expressed frustration publicly, saying that their permissible range of terms is tying their hands. It appears that the main sticking point now is the Rafah border, which is the main route for arms smuggling into Gaza from Egypt. Israel’s initial proposal was that it demanded to maintain a presence at the border to be able to inspect good moving across above the ground and monitor potential tunnel digging below the ground. Compromise positions that mediators thought would help bring Hamas to an agreement included one or more of the following:
Israel withdrawing from the border but reserving the right to send the IDF back in when needed,
Or sending the IDF back in after coordinating with Egypt,
Or some form of combined technological solution with international presence.
This is an important issue going forward in order to prevent Hamas from quickly re-arming. This evening Prime Minister Netanyahu warned that if Hamas continues to demand a full Israeli withdrawal there will be “no deal”. The negotiators appear to believe that most of the other issues hold the potential for resolution, but this remains a major block to concluding a deal. Meanwhile, negotiations have moved from Doha, Qatar to Cairo, Egypt.
Since the departures of Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot from the War Cabinet, that body has been dissolved. Instead current key issues related to The War as wells as the negotiations are deliberated and decided by a small team that includes Defence Minister Gallant, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Deputy Prime Minister Aryeh Deri and Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer. Gallant has urged the group to expand the discussions regarding the negotiations to include the full cabinet as he argues that the repercussions extend beyond just the Gaza War. The full cabinet would be required to vote on a deal, but would not be included in the deliberations regarding the negotiation terms.
Because of the crisis in negotiations, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Israel for his ninth visit. He is first meeting with President Isaac Herzog, then tomorrow morning Prime Minister Netanyahu.
International
President for Life of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, informed the Israeli government today of his intention to visit Gaza. I reported on his speech to Turkiye’s Parliament last Thursday when he made this proclamation. But, he is now pushing the Israeli government. I am betting that this is all a bluff. There is a large chance that should he venture into Gaza that he might be killed. You can read more here.
And In Your Copious Spare Time…
And here is a rather upbeat report on the current state of IDF’s operations inside Gaza. One of the main points of the article is something that I have been hammering on for some time. US Military Analysts that have been appearing on the various US TV networks have been continually hammering on their view that Israel is not “winning” the Gaza War. Their arguments go something like:
When the IDF vacates a part of Gaza, Hamas pops right back up. So the IDF cannot win a war like this.
But these “experts” are either just parrots for the Biden Administration’s policy for bringing an end to the war at any cost or are showing an alarming ignorance of urban warfare. As I have said numerous times before, Gaza is not 10,000 miles away from Israel. It is not even 10,000 inches away from Israel. So, we cannot hit them and then retreat (like Afghanistan). We fully expect that IDF troops will need to be send into Gaza for many years to come. Whenever intelligence reports indicate the terrorists growing to be a threat, IDF troops will have to return. At least this author “gets it”.
Time Magazine recently conducted an exclusive interview with Prime Minister Netanyahu inside his office in Jerusalem. Here is a transcript of that interview. Today they published a rather castigating report after investigating the authenticity of the Prime Minister’s claims in that interview. Not very flattering!!!