Tragedy and Folly

It gets lost in the myriad headlines at the moment about Rafah, weapons cut offs, Biden, horrific civilian loss of life etc. But there’s a short piece in the Times of Israel this afternoon that captures a dimension of what’s happening right now in Israel that is mostly off the radar in the US. The piece is about a reported blow up between Netanyahu and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi. Specifically it has the latter telling Netanyahu that because he refuses to make diplomatic arrangements for post-war government of Gaza the IDF is having to go back to fight again in areas it already took over. In some cases they’re having to go back and fight for the same ground a third time!

(Here’s another article in Haaretz (sub req) on how the IDF is now going back into northern Gaza, which they conquered back in the fall. Privately the IDF says Hamas has reestablished control there because there’s no day after plan, which is a diplomatic to-do item. If you blow it up and leave why wouldn’t they just go back?)

Netanyahu refuses to do that because there’s really no way to so without blowing up his governing coalition. But without some plan, the Israeli army is reduced to doing something like pushing water up a hill with its hands. The article is replete with examples of heads of the army or intelligence services trying to get someone to give them a strategy, or actually more than a strategy, just a goal. And it has Netanyahu getting mad because they’re going to the Defense Minister, himself a former high level IDF general. It’s not even a question of disagreeing on strategy really – that’s for the political leadership to decide. It’s refusing to come up with any strategy at all.

Cutting the Spigot

What was first communicated by reports of a slowdown in weapons transfers and then confirmed in leaks has now been brought into the open: Joe Biden is saying he will cut off the supply of heavy munitions (big bombs from the sky) if Israel goes ahead with a major ground incursion into Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, which is both the last refuge of Hamas’ intact battalions and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians who have fled other parts of the strip over the last six months. This is in addition to the city’s normal civilian population.

I have seen some commentators who have absolutely no love for Netanyahu saying this undercuts whatever leverage Israel has in the hostage negotiations by depriving them of the threat to go into Rafah in force. There’s likely something to that. But it is basically a certainty that this move was absolutely the final straw for the U.S. It had been insisting and insisting and insisting not to do this without a plan to evacuate the city, and the Israeli government is saying too bad. We’re doing it. Biden had the choice to make his words meaningless or put down his foot. When you’re supplying the weapons, your foot comes down very hard.

Dark Horse?

One person I didn’t mention yesterday in the Trump VP veepstakes was Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. There are various boxes Sanders doesn’t check. But the thing with Sanders is that she’s a bully, and a good bully, by which I mean she’s an effective bully. She’s nasty. She’s not nice. These are all major pluses for a Trump VP.