Today’s Image
Welcome to Pallywood!! In Israel, this is what we call images, videos that come out of either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas which are all staged. In some cases they are outright faked, such as showing Syrian Refugees from the Civil War and labelling them as Palestinian Arabs. Or when they show bodies covered in sheets, only to find off camera one or more of those bodies actually move. In this instance you are looking at a swarm of “Hamas al-Qassam” brigade combatants surrounding Romi Gonen as she appears to be exiting a Hamas vehicle during her release this past Sunday. First, I point out that none of these masked combatants look like they are victims of a “genocide”. All look quite healthy and fit. Their uniforms are clean as well as their masks. No doubt they staged this photo and tried their best to show that they are still in charge and a force to be dealt with. Looking at this photo you might think that there were thousands of Hamas forces there at the hostage release site in Gaza. However, Gazans who are not particularly fond of Hamas posted this photo below of the same event.
Now you see that there are a several hundred attendees and most are civilians. Again, no one is starving of malnutrition despite what the US University Students will have you think. You will see more of this as Hamas tries to project its image to the world as a force that has fully recovered and able to fight once again. I will write more about this below. Here you will a more detailed analysis of what transpired on BBC. The correspondent put the total number of people at the site at around 1,100 noting that most were just passing by.
Casualties
The IDF reports that it suffered one casualty yesterday, Sgt. First Class (Res.) Eviatar Ben Yehuda - 31 (Z’’L) who died when his vehicle ran over an Improvised Explosive Device IED that was planted by terrorists operating in Northern Samaria (West Bank).
Rockets & Missiles & Drones
No rockets, missiles or drones were fired at Israel in the past 3 days.
My View - Did Israel Win or did Israel Lose?
As many of you have read, President Trump’s Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff applied unexpected pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “close the deal” during a tense meeting that took place on Saturday January 11, breaking the Sabbath, in the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem. You can read more details here in case this is “news” to you. This old fashioned arm twisting came as a surprise over here. The terms that the Prime Minister was “forced” to accept has caused many here to claim that “we lost” and Israel was forced to capitulate without achieving one of its goals to eliminate Hamas as a governing power in Gaza. It is fair to say that more than 90+% of the Israeli population is in favor of securing the release of these 33 hostages (most alive, some dead). But there are sharp divisions over whether we should have agreed to release nearly 200 extreme terrorists convicted and incarcerated in Israeli prisons in exchange. And, moreover, whether we can/should resume battling Hamas before proceeding to one of the future phases of “The Deal”.
Hamas is going to do whatever it can to project the image that it is still in charge in Gaza. The photos I posted above are just one example of the facade they will put up. The reality is that the IDF has decimated their fighting forces. Destroyed, killed, took captive about 80-85% of their fighting forces. As many point out, Hamas will just rebuild its fighting forces. Perhaps, but it won’t be so easy. It will be forced to recruit from within the male population below the age of 16. There are an estimated 300,000 males under the age of 16 in Gaza so they have a large reservoir from which to recruit. But Hamas will need a means for paying the population. There are claims that it has already started this effort. But it won’t be so simple to train them and it takes time. They will also need to be equipped with arms. The IDF destroyed much of the arms, however there are at least two regions of Gaza that have largely gone untouched - Nusseirat and Deir al-Balah. Some claim that there is at least one neighborhood in Gaza City that was also left in touch and that some Hamas forces have regrouped in Khan Younis. Most likely there are tunnel networks largely intact underneath Nusseirat and Deir al-Balah. It is entirely likely that Hamas has maintained some of its arms hidden inside these tunnels. It is estimated that the IDF has destroyed somewhere between 50-65% of the tunnels running inside Gaza. In some of the other tunnels they just sealed entrances. I was told that there are not enough explosives in the world to destroy all the tunnels.
The IDF found arms and tunnel entrances inside nearly every building they entered inside Gaza - including hospitals, schools, mosques and residences. Arms were hidden inside children bedrooms, even inside their beds. Many homes were found with tunnel entrances hidden under children beds. As a consequence of this and the many battles fought in and around these civilian buildings many, many have been destroyed. I have seen estimates nearing 70-75% of the buildings in Gaza either destroyed or damaged to the point where they should not be occupied.
Hamas somehow thinks that either the Gulf States, the USA, the EU, Turkey, Iran or Qatar are going to invest in rehabilitating Gaza. I doubt it. First you have to ask yourselves who would provide the financing to rebuild Gaza knowing that Hamas is in charge, will certainly launch another attack on Israel when it can after which Israel will once again go in and level the place? The Gulf States won’t, nor will the USA or the EU. Turkey is going to be too busy trying to dominate the civilian rebuilding in Syria. Iran doesn’t invest in infrastructure of its proxies only in arming them. Moreover, if President Trump does what most of us expect, Iran will not have the wherewithal to financially help anyone, including its own population. That leaves Qatar with its massive wealth. It is certainly possible that they will foot the bill, as they aggressively support The Muslim Brotherhood and every other form of Sunni Jihadi - ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas and all their offshoots. But, I somehow suspect that this will be blocked by President Trump. The USA has a lot of leverage over Qatar since they maintain one of their main military bases in that small country. If the USA threatens to move it, Qatar is vulnerable to being taken over as its population is only 200,000 and it has no army to speak of.
Moreover, most of the income generated by residents of Gaza came from remittances of those who worked inside Israel. What do you think are the odds that Israel would ever contemplate hiring them again? My estimate is 0%. Since the start of the war Israel has put together a massive effort to import foreign workers from Eastern Europe and India. I do not think that many of the Gazans will find employment inside Israel again. Where will these people work and what will sustain the economy in Gaza other than those who foolishly provide these people aid? Because of UNRWA the Arabs living in Gaza and those living in Judea/Samaria (West Bank) are on welfare doles for perpetuity since they are all classified as refugees. There is nothing produced, other than improvised weapons and terrorists, by those within the framework of UNRWA that anyone in the world wants to buy. However, I do hear that leather shoes made in Hebron are sold in some parts of the Middle East. Think about it, because these people and their descendants are treated like permanent refugees and live off donations from foreign countries they are not motivated to produce anything that anyone outside their little world would buy. And the only tourists they get are far left Europeans who come to support their revolutionary brothers.
So given this background, what makes Hamas think that anyone is going to provide funding to reconstruct Gaza leaving them in charge?? Some inside Hamas are talking about handing over governance to the kleptocracy called the Palestinian Authority. Their thinking is that, like in Lebanon, the PA will be on the hook of governing while they will be in charge of the armed resistance. Well that arrangement is working out real well (not!) in Lebanon. And more importantly the PA is regularly threatened by Hamas in Judea/Samaria (West Bank). Gun fights broke out in Jenin in the past two weeks between these two forces.
At this moment it is not clear whether IDF forces will re-enter Gaza to continue fighting or not. Without a clear end game in mind, fighting is going to be more like “whack a mole” which only leads to IDF casualties. And until all the hostages are out, it is hard for the IDF to go into the remaining areas to clean them out without risking the lives of the hostages.
So what does the end game look like?? I don’t know. If I did I would stand in line for the Nobel Prize, right behind President Trump. But I do know this…. There is no easy “sugar daddy” that is going to stand up and contribute the $15-20B that will be needed to rebuild Gaza. And Israel is not going to employ anyone in Gaza unless they are an informant. No income, no hope, no money…. as long as Hamas governs and as long as they remain an armed force there.
And the dilemma of Israel is that President Trump is going to apply enormous pressure on Israel to provide a role for the corrupt Palestinian Authority, which can’t run the Arab Society in Judea/Samaria (West Bank) much less Gaza. It took only 2 years from when Israel evacuated Gaza until Hamas overthrew the PA that was ruling Gaza back in 2007. It would probably take less than 2 years this time. The reason that Trump will apply this pressure is that he wants to “make a deal” with Saudi Arabia in order to get his Nobel Prize. And to do a deal with Saudi Arabia Israel needs to show how there is a path to a Palestinian State. This will only work if a path is shown with many conditions along the way including - no rockets, no terror, no killing for a long and sustained period of time. That hasn’t happened in more than 100 years. Why would it happen now?
So it is time to circle back to the questions I asked at the beginning of this monologue - Did we win or not? Remember, our goals as set in early October are/were:
Recover the hostages,
Destroy Hamas’s ability to fight as an organized fighting force,
Eliminate Hamas as a governing authority in Gaza and
Return displaced Israeli residents to the north (this one was added back in September, 2024 and resulted in the highly successful offensive against Hezbollah).
First, the hostages. On October 7, 2023 Hamas abducted 251 people - mostly civilians. In addition, Hamas has been holding 4 hostages since 2014 - 2 alive and 2 dead. As of December 2, 2024 154 hostages have been released or rescued. That leaves 97 hostages taken in 2023 and 4 hostages held by Hamas since 2014, 101 in total. Of the 101, the IDF is confident that 37 are no longer alive - 2 of those held since 2014 and 35 of those taken in 2023. That means that there are 64 hostages believed to be alive. In Phase 1 of “The Deal” Israel expects to receive 33 hostages. The government is not saying publicly how many are alive, but I will guess that of the 33 there are probably 26 alive and 7 dead. So if I am right, after Phase 1 there will be 64 hostages remaining in Gaza of which about 34 are likely alive, nearly all men below the age of 55. I believe that depending on the price set, in terms of how many bloodthirsty terrorists must be released from prison for these hostages, will determine if there is a Phase 2 to “this deal”. Hamas will likely demand that Israel empty its prisons. I don’t see how this government could accept that or how any other government could sell that proposition to the Israeli public. Since it has been shown that 80% of the released terrorists return to their trade, this would result in massive dead Israelis in the future. So regarding the first goal, Israel recovered about 85% of the living hostages after the conclusion of Phase 1. If Hamas sets the price too high, I do not see how we can move to a Phase 2.
The second goal, is Hamas still an organized fighting force? The IDF has destroyed - killed, seriously injured or taken captive - about 90% of the estimated fighting forces constituting the Al-Qassem & Nukba, Hamas’s fighting forces. What you see in the streets now are the remnants of that “army” along with young, untrained boys under the age of 17 recruited since the war started. Remember, there are 300,000 males under the age of 17 to recruit from. The IDF estimates that it has outright destroyed about 60% of the tunnels in Gaza. I am guessing that they have sealed up about another 15-25%. Those could be reactivated by Hamas with a modest amount of work. and of course there are probably 15-20% of the tunnels still in use. I have no clue what percentage of the rocket arsenal built by Hamas has been destroyed. But if much of anything remains, we would have seen ongoing rocket fire for the past 2 months of the war. I would guess that less than 15% of the arsenal remains… whatever still exists underground in Deir al-Balah, Nusseirat and Khan Yunis. To actually take out 100% of Hamas’s fighting force, rockets and tunnels is an impossible task. Netanyahu’s bravado aside it was never feasible to expect that. What enabled the allies in WW2 to extract a full surrender of Nazi Germany and then Imperialist Japan was their out of control massive bombing of civilians - Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. In today’s world order conducting such massive indiscriminate bombing and killing of civilians by a member of the Western World is an impossibility. Despite what Minister of Knesset Itamar Ben Gvir (member of the extremist Otzma Yehudit Party, no longer in the coalition) says or thinks, there is no way that the IDF can either eliminate 100% of Hamas’s fighting ability nor extract terms of surrender without massive carpet bombing of Gaza and the killing of many, many civilians. It just can’t happen. I would argue that at this point in time Hamas is no longer an effective, organized fighting force. This is not to say that with an ability to resupply arms and a year for training their new recruits that they couldn’t return as an effective fighting force. They could.
So that leads us to the third goal of eliminating Hamas as a governing power in Gaza. Again, without the ability to bring Hamas to the point of full surrender, which will never happen, one cannot militarily accomplish the removal of Hamas as a governing power. The Israeli Government attempted to enable some of the clans in Gaza to assert control in parts of the area, particularly when it came to aid distribution. However, the experiment failed since Hamas retained enough firepower to kill/threaten key members of these clans. Moreover, I believe that one will only trade one evil for another. These clans are just fancy names for organized crime families. And while they theoretically could assert some control over the population, it would just be a matter of time until the crime spilled over into Israel. But, I think that it is possible to remove Hamas as a governing power through means other than military. Despite the videos, images, etc. that Hamas is trying to portray, it is a spent force. Could it amount another October 7 like attack now? I don’t think so. But they could, given time and money, try again. But it is not likely that Israel would be caught off guard again like last time. The key to truly achieving the goals of this war is what happens when the fighting stops. So far, except for Hamas spokesmen (as well as Iran and its proxies) I have not heard a single government, or not government entity call for Hamas to rule Gaza when the fighting stops. IF (and this is a big IF) this status holds then it is hard to see how Hamas can reconstitute itself. To rebuild itself and rebuild Gaza there will be a need for a massive amount of aid. I just don’t see how anyone is going to provide that aid knowing that Hamas is still in charge. Maybe I am naive, or maybe one or more of the USA, EU, Gulf States will cave and capitulate to the terrorists. But I just don’t see it.
So as I see it, depending on the price Hamas demands in terms of released terrorists from Israeli prisons the country should move to Phase 2 of “the deal”. If the price is too high we should stop the negotiations and resume fighting. Except for the remaining hostages, about 15% of the original count, we have pretty much accomplished the goals we set out for ourselves. Those that think we can eliminate 100% of Hamas’s forces and bring them to surrender must be on drugs. Fanatics like Hamas this thrive on blood.
Hostages/Ceasefire
Today Hamas announced that it intends to release 4 women this Saturday, the next scheduled hostage/prisoner exchange date. I don’t know for sure, but I believe that most of them will be those female IDF soldiers who were “scouts”. They were doing reconnaissance on October 7 and were taken alive from their base at Nir Oz. If I am right that means that there will be some rather nefarious terrorists released from Israeli prisons in exchange. These men convicted of ruthless, blood curdling crimes. Many families in Israel lost loved ones to these murderers and it is very hard for them to accept this.
Aid
As promised as a part of this deal, more than 600 trucks of aid entered Gaza today. I do not see how they can distribute such massive amounts of aid as there aren’t enough people in Gaza to consume this much. In those photos and images posted by Hamas of the hostage exchange, do you recall how many starving impoverished people you saw?? Genocide my AXX.
IDF/Government
Today Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi informed the nation that he has submitted his resignation and expects to step down from his post on March 6, 2025. He and the Southern Commander of IDF forces (responsible for Gaza and the surrounding area) are both stepping down. Like most good, honest and men of integrity, both said in their resignations that they are to blame for the IDF failures on October 7, 2023. Both are resigning in advance of their full term of service. You can read their statements, translated into English, here. I encourage you to take the 5 minutes to read them. Both stated that the IDF has nearly completed its commission of inquiry into what happened that terrible day and the results will be presented to the top commanders in the coming 1-2 months. They said that some of the conclusions from the inquiry to date are already being incorporated into IDF policies.
Rather than seeing similar letters of resignation from key members of this government there were only hollow statements of “thanks” and good riddance from leaders of this government. Prime Minister Netanyahu has been serving Prime Minister throughout the entire period from 2007 to now, with the exception of 2021. That’s right, he led the country throughout the entire period that Hamas was running Gaza with the exception of 1 year. And to date he claims no responsibility for what happened on October 7 and has done nothing to appoint an independent commission of inquire to determine what went wrong in government policies leading up to October 7 and assign responsibilities. There are those with integrity and there are those without.
And it is worse than this. It is not just this government. Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot are the leaders of the National Unity Party. Both were members of the War Cabinet for a year after the October 7 attack. Both were former Chiefs of Staff and Gantz was also Defense Minister during this period from 2005-2023. Both resisted taking on Hamas and their tunnel infrastructure at critical junctures during their tenure. Their conduct must also be examined as part of an independent commission of inquire which should have started 3 months ago.
And In Your Copious Spare Time…
I read what this guy writes whenever I can. Here is a great analysis of “The Deal” by Khaled Abu Toameh appearing in Gatestone Institute’s media outlet. It is entitled “A Deal That Keeps Hamas in Power is Meaningless”. Toameh is a very bright analyst of Arab affairs in Israel, Gaza, Judea/Samaria (West Bank). He writes with knowledge and authority. You should read it.
And in the same outlet Professor Alan Dershowitz writes that “It Wasn’t a Deal - It Was A Crime”. Another great writer you should read.
Eric. We are desperate for your continued coverage of The War. It's difficult to read "between the lines" in the Press, WSJ included. Zealots of all stripes promote their versions of "the truth", and I, for one, eagerly await your realistic and balanced Substack reports. I visited Israel again in late October-November, and considered purchasing a house as a "just in case" option. I hope that Trump can deliver a smidgeon of what he plans and, even if unpredictability is his trademark, that he can put a halt to the embarrassing lack of world leadership shown during the Biden-Blinken years. Not pressuring Iran, not recognizing that Middle Eastern culture is unlike Western culture, thinking that one can operate with the concept of "win-win" with the vicious dictatorships of every country in the ME...the last four years have been such a disaster. Todah rabah rabah.