Orientul Mijlociu

The world has looked on with shock and horror at the Jewish bombardment of innocent civilians in Palestine over the last few days. Apparently even Israel thinks their actions are indefensible, since on May 15th, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) destroyed a building housing the Associated Press (AP) and other media outlets in Gaza with the intention of stopping images of Palestinian suffering from reaching the rest of the world. Following the attack on the AP, Israel stepped up its bombing of civilian targets, killing dozens of Palestinians with airstrikes on populated streets.

How the Security Establishment Could Have Underestimated the Hamas Threat

Hamas’s devastating terrorist attack against Israel has unleashed the most violent and serious conflict the country has seen in half a century. Already, at least 1,000 Israelis (and 14 U.S. citizens) have been killed. It is an astronomical number for such a small country—equivalent to 30,000 Americans. About 2,900 more Israelis have been injured and an estimated 150 others, including toddlers, grandmothers, and foreign nationals, have been taken hostage. Meanwhile, at least 900 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip, and another 4,500 have been injured.

America Must Prevail on Its Ally to Step Back From the Brink

In the early morning of October 13, the Israeli military issued a warning to the 1.2 million Palestinians of northern Gaza: they must evacuate within 24 hours, in advance of a probable ground invasion. Such an Israeli assault would have the avowed goal of ending Hamas as an organization in retaliation for its shocking October 7 surprise attack into southern Israel, where it massacred over 1,000 Israeli citizens and seized over a hundred hostages.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows that a ground operation is highly risky and complicated, but might have no other options.

Israel will never be the same after Oct. 7, 2023. The invasion of its territory and slaughter and abduction of its civilians has awakened Israel’s deepest existential fears. Scenes of armed men leading away women, children and the elderly have invariably evoked memories of the Holocaust even among third-generation Israelis who never experienced those horrors.

The Israel Defense Forces says it has killed a senior member of the Hamas terror group in an overnight airstrike in the Gaza Strip.

The strike, targeting a headquarters from which the terror group managed its aerial activity, kills Murad Abu Murad, the head of Hamas’s aerial array, according to the IDF.

An October 11, 2023 op-ed in the Iranian website Asr-e Iran called on regime officials, hinting at the ideological extremists among them, to rein in their feelings and not to speak out regarding Iran’s connection to the “Hamas-Israel conflict” for fear of harming Iranian national interests. The article recommended that they not deviate from the official line set out by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei the previous day, on October 10, according to which Iran is proud of the Palestinian resistance that carried out the attack on Israel and encourages it to continue, but that Iran was not involved in it.

Since Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on Saturday, neighbouring Egypt has been fast to assert its position as a non-violent peacemaker.

Cairo has urged both sides to de-escalate, with President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi voicing the need for a fair two-state solution and prioritising domestic security by keeping the Sinai-Gaza border closed.