Meanwhile on the International front....

https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentar...ial-next-steps-for-the-hostage-situation.html

What will happen to the Israeli hostages held by Hamas? Their lives hang in the balance but both Israel and Hamas view the conflict as existential—there is little room for compromise.

Intense fighting continues, and a mass rescue is unlikely. As a condition for renewal of negotiations, Hamas demands a complete and unlimited cessation of Israeli military activity. Israel remains unwilling to accept a lasting cease-fire, fearing it will lead to protracted hostage negotiations and leave Hamas in place.

The outcome will of course depend on circumstances. Here are five scenarios—not predictions or prescriptions, but an assessment of alternate futures to consider.

 

Israel Intensifies Offensive in Gaza Refugee Camps

TEL AVIV—Israeli forces intensified their ground offensive in refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip, as fighting continued to drive Palestinian civilians into shrinking and overcrowded areas in search of safety.

Since the launch of its military operation in October, Israel has struck several refugee camps in Gaza as it seeks to eradicate Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist group that launched a bloody attack on Israel on Oct. 7. On Tuesday, Israel’s top general, Herzi Halevi, said “the war will continue for many more months,” given the complexity of uprooting Hamas.

After striking targets near the Maghazi camp earlier in the week, Israel on Wednesday instructed civilians living in the camps of Bureij and Nusairat to flee to a second central Gazan town, Deir al-Balah.

However, fighting continued in Deir al-Balah, and the Israeli military said it would only suspend hostilities in one of its neighborhoods for four hours starting Wednesday morning to allow civilians to leave.

 

For all I know you do this already, but I think you’d be on to something with a morning Substack that aggregates all of this in a more elegant package for wider consumption. Now that I get what you’re trying for with the machine gun style I can see the ingredients.

 

A Palestinian Poet’s Perilous Journey Out of Gaza

When the war comes to Gaza, my wife and I do not want to leave. We want to be with our parents and brothers and sisters, and we know that to leave Gaza is to leave them. Even when the border with Egypt opens to people with foreign passports, like our three-year-old son, Mostafa, we stay. Our apartment in Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, is on the third floor. My brothers live above and below us, and my parents live on the ground floor. My father cares for chickens and rabbits in the garden. I have a library filled with books that I love.

Then Israel drops flyers on our neighborhood, warning us to evacuate, and we crowd into a borrowed two-bedroom apartment in the Jabalia refugee camp. Soon, we learn that a bomb has destroyed our house. Air strikes also rain down on the camp, killing dozens of people within a hundred metres of our door. Over time, our parents stop telling us to stay.

 

Israel-Hamas War: Israeli Warning Raises Prospect of a Broader War

As Israel pounded targets in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, a member of the country’s war cabinet threatened action on a second front, along the northern border with Lebanon, where the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah has fired rocket barrages into Israel.

“The stopwatch for a diplomatic solution is running out,” Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet and former defense minister, told reporters Wednesday. “If the world and the Lebanese government don’t act in order to prevent the firing on Israel’s northern residents, and to distance Hezbollah from the border, the I.D.F. will do it,” he said, referring to Israel’s military.

 

Gift link to Wall Street Journal

How an Israeli Airstrike on a Hamas Commander Also Killed Scores of Civilians

The alley-like streets and closely spaced buildings of the Block 6 neighborhood in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp were packed with people the afternoon of Oct. 31. Some stood in a long line at the local bakery. Others were crammed more tightly than usual into tiny apartments.

Many had ignored or were unable to heed repeated calls from the Israeli military to evacuate farther south to avoid its approaching troops and aerial bombardment, believing they were relatively secure deep inside the sprawling, densely populated camp.

“We were at home, with many relatives and even people we never met before, seeking refuge with us in a place that was safe,” recalled resident Mohammad Tabaq, 27.

Around 3:30 p.m., Israeli warplanes dropped multiple large bombs in a tight pattern on the neighborhood. The explosions leveled an entire rectangular block, leaving deep craters where more than a dozen buildings had stood, satellite photos show.

The strike killed Ibrahim Biari, Hamas’s battalion commander for Jabalia, who Israeli intelligence believed was directing a nearby battle, and dozens of other militants, according to the Israeli military. But it also left the bodies of at least 126 people in the rubble, one of the deadliest attacks of the Gaza war, according to Airwars, a nonprofit affiliated with the University of London that investigates civilian casualties in conflict zones.

The decision to bomb an urban neighborhood packed with people in the middle of the afternoon to kill an enemy commander signaled early in the war that Israel was willing to use overwhelming force against Hamas’s leadership, even if it meant risking large numbers of civilian casualties.

 

Israel-Gaza war live: ‘Simply not enough food’ in Gaza and 40% of population at risk of famine, UN refugee agency says | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian

Israel + Gaza | World | The Guardian

Israel widens offensive in central Gaza as Netanyahu refuses to discuss postwar plan

The Israeli military expanded its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip to the densely populated urban refugee camps in the central part of the territory as the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was reported to have refused requests from security officials to make plans for control of Gaza after the war with Hamas ends.

 

Netanyahu better be careful what country he flies over if it is a member of the ICC. His jet will be forced to land and he'll be on a one-way bus to The Hague.

 

So basically, the "Spackler?"

 

Israel-Gaza war live: Hamas delegation due in Cairo to look at Egyptian ceasefire proposal | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian

A Hamas delegation is due in Cairo on Friday to look at an Egyptian plan for a ceasefire that would end the war in Gaza, a Hamas official said.

The plan was put last week to officials of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which is also battling Israeli forces in the territory.

Sources close to Hamas say Cairo’s three-stage plan provides for renewable ceasefires, a staggered release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israel, and ultimately a ceasefire to end the war sparked by the deadly 7 October attack on Israel, Agence France-Presse reports.

It also provides for a Palestinian government of technocrats after talks involving “all Palestinian factions”, which would be responsible for governing and rebuilding in postwar Gaza.