The Big Story
The United States is pressing Israel to delay its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, according to reports in The New York Times, The Times of Israel, and elsewhere. The reason for the delay remains unclear. Multiple sources, on both the U.S. and Israeli sides, have claimed that the United States wants more time to negotiate the release of some of the more than 220 hostages still held by Hamas—negotiations that were given added urgency on Friday, when the terror group freed two U.S. citizens, before releasing two Israelis on Monday. Scattered reports in Israeli media, however, suggest that Washington wants Israel to wait until it can move more U.S. military assets into the region, amid a spate of attacks on U.S. military targets by Iranian proxies and widespread fears that the Israeli invasion could trigger a regional war. Four Israeli officials who spoke to The New York Times said they “don’t know the reason why” the operation has repeatedly been put off.
The “why” is less important than the brute fact that these delays are bad news for Israel. As Aaron MacLean puts it on X:
In other words, the sympathy that Israel garnered after the Oct. 7 attacks already shows signs of abating, and Israel has so far failed to capitalize on that brief window of opportunity with a successful counterattack. Meanwhile, massive anti-Israel protests are springing up in cities across the West, the international media is shifting its focus to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and the left flank of the Democratic Party is increasing its agitation for a U.S.-brokered cease-fire. Each day brings new stories of internal resistance within the Biden administration to the White House’s public “support” for Israel. These pressures will only intensify once the invasion starts. An American press that was eager to run with the lurid, Hamas-sourced blood libel about an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza hospital will have no shortage of real gore to display when the IDF is engaged in bloody, street-to-street combat in an operation that even optimistic analysts suggest could grind on for months.
Tablet argued in July that U.S. aid to Israel had outlived its usefulness and become a kind of “golden handcuff”—a tool for Washington to prevent Israel from pursuing its own core interests, while fueling pathological conspiracy theories in the United States. A few months ago, the response to the Tablet essay was overwhelmingly concentrated in the United States, but that may be changing. “When American Jewish intellectuals publicly debated earlier this year whether US military aid is good for Israel or not, Israelis largely ignored it,” Israel-based reporter Lahav Harkov wrote on Sunday, adding, “Now, Israelis are finding the debate very relevant—and realizing they may be having it too late.”
Read more here: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/end-american-aid-israel
And here: https://twitter.com/LahavHarkov/status/1715964502951219664
IN THE BACK PAGES: The Scroll’s comprehensive guide to siege warfare
→Quote of the Day: “The repeated delays [in commencing Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza] also reflect a growing tension between Mr. [Benjamin] Netanyahu and Mr. [Yoav] Gallant, his defense minister, who supports a broad military operation that would also include Hezbollah, the powerful militia in Lebanon.”
That’s from The New York Times report on U.S.-Israeli negotiations over Israel’s pending invasion of Gaza. Many analysts have argued that an Israeli strike against Hezbollah in Lebanon would be critical for Israel’s ability to reestablish deterrence against Hamas and Hezbollah’s shared patron, Iran. The United States has opposed such a move on the grounds that it would risk igniting a broader regional war, though there have been conflicting reports on whether Israel favors a limited operation in Gaza or a broader retaliation against Iran’s more valuable assets in the region.
Read more here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/22/us/politics/us-hostages-israel-gaza.html
→U.S. President Joe Biden indicated Monday that he could be open to a cease-fire if Hamas releases all of its hostages. Asked at a White House briefing if he would support a potential “hostages-for-cease-fire” deal, the president said, “We should have those hostages released and then we can talk.” A State Department spokesman said earlier in the day that the U.S. was opposed to any cease-fire on the grounds that it would allow Hamas to recover its strength. Given the president’s history of off-the-cuff remarks, it was unclear if he was confused about his own government’s policy, or stating an actual policy that has not been acknowledged in public.
Read more here: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/biden-says-he-may-support-gaza-ceasefire-after-all-hostages-released/
→Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians are refusing to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, citing fears that they will not be allowed to return. Israel has repeatedly urged civilians to flee to the south of Gaza, where it has pledged to create “safe zones” and allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. These calls have been resisted by Hamas, which has claimed that they are a pretext for ethnic cleansing and permanent displacement—and which seeks to maximize Palestinian civilian casualties in order to turn global opinion against Israel. Israeli military operations—including the IDF’s current bombing campaign and its expected ground invasion—are concentrated in northern Gaza, which houses the vast majority of Hamas’ military infrastructure.
Read more here: https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/palestinians-gaza-israel-bombing-d838b23d
→Following months of bitter debate and protests in Israel, in which military exemptions for religious Jews had been a touchpoint, there has been a substantial surge in Haredi men volunteering for the military since the start of the current war. Monday morning, at least 150 Haredi men, primarily from the Lithuanian component of ultra-Orthodoxy, arrived at the Tel Hashomer recruitment center as they prepared to enter the IDF. According to Ynet News, since the Hamas attack Oct. 7, the IDF has received more than 3,000 inquiries from Haredi men about enlistment, and 2,100 have filled out application forms. Frequent antagonist to the Haredi community, member of the Knesset Avigdor Lieberman, said the surge in enlistment “undoubtedly warms the heart and testifies to the strength of Israeli society.”
→Support for Israel has surged among Democratic voters in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, according to several recent polls. Despite large anti-Israel demonstrations across the country and elite progressive support for the Palestinian cause, polling suggests that the vast majority of Americans, including Democrats, still back the Jewish state. An Oct. 12-13 CNN poll found that 70% of respondents, and 68% of Democratic respondents, thought Israel’s military response in Gaza was fully or partially justified. An Oct. 7-9 Fox News poll found that 68% of Americans side more with the Israelis versus 18% with the Palestinians—a nine-percentage-point spike since 2021. For Democrats, those numbers were 59% and 25%, respectively. And an Oct. 12-16 poll from Quinnipiac found that more than three-fourths of Americans believe that supporting Israel is in the national interest, including 84% of Republicans, 76% of Democrats, and 74% of Independents.
Read more here: https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-sneak-peek-61db25f6-6263-4d2c-a56b-72ea4cda0b32.html
→Turkey is cooling its relations with Hamas and restraining its rhetoric on Israel’s campaign in Gaza, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attempts to repair ties with Israel, the United States, and Europe, according to a report in Al-Monitor. Hamas leaders are reportedly upset with Ankara’s tepid support for their war against Israel, which has been limited to both calls from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for Israel to stop its “genocide” in Gaza and attempts by Ankara to position itself as a mediator between the West and the Iranian-led “resistance” bloc, which includes Hamas and Hezbollah. Turkish journalist Fehim Tastekin reports, citing two Palestinian sources, that Ankara asked Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh to leave the country following the Oct. 7 attacks, although the Turkish government has denied the allegation.
Prior to the current outbreak of fighting, Erdogan had been seeking to improve bilateral ties with Israel, meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September and inviting him to visit Ankara—part of a broader push to repair relations with Israel and the U.S.-allied Gulf states that deteriorated due to Ankara’s support for Islamist groups during the Arab Spring. There are also, as Tastekin notes, domestic reasons for Ankara’s conciliatory posture. “The usage value of the Palestinian cause in [Turkey’s] domestic politics has been decreasing. With the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, popular sentiment against Islamist groups has grown, eroding tolerance for the use of violence by Palestinian groups.”
Read more here: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/10/eying-gaza-mediator-role-turkey-cools-hamas-ties-erdogan-restrains-rhetoric#ixzz8GxaG9W2l
TODAY IN TABLET:
Why Egypt Leaves Palestinians in Gaza to Die, by Samuel Tadros
The Jewish state has long been a useful villain in Egyptian conspiracy theories. Now that might be backfiring on Egyptians and Gazans at once.
Where Are You People? by Katya Kazakina
The art world's deafening silence after the Hamas attack in Israel
Birthright Worked, by Alana Dizik
Spending 10 days ‘on the bus’ almost 20 years ago made me feel connected to Israel for the first time. Following the Hamas attack this month, I realized how much that sense of connection has endured.
SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.
Last week Tablet ran a penetrating essay on the similarities between the U.S.-Iraqi operation to destroy the Islamic State in Mosul and Israel’s expected offensive against Hamas in Gaza. The essay, written by a veteran of the military operation in Mosul, could be summed up thusly: urban combat is hell but it can still comply with the laws of war.
Today, The Scroll offers a more comprehensive guide to the laws, humanitarian concerns, and military operational considerations governing siege warfare that was compiled from comments provided by numerous scholars and military and legal experts.
What is siege warfare?
Siege warfare has existed for thousands of years, and in modern times, armies have employed siege tactics in Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere. The primary function of a siege is to cut off the enemy from all possible supplies and necessities until the enemy capitulates following some mixture of encirclement and bombardment. Sieges can be an effective tool for bringing an otherwise protracted conflict to a close, sparing each side from what would otherwise be a bloody and costly invasion.
Most military analysts agree that sieges work only if the enemy is fully isolated—there can be no provision of any resources and no access to any communication channels. The isolation must be both physical and strategic. To otherwise relax this standard is to prolong the siege, which inevitably produces the very protracted conflict that the siege intends to avoid. Because of this requirement, from the standpoint of Israel, the success of its siege of Gaza will largely depend upon Israel’s ability to monitor activity on Gaza’s border with Egypt, which poses the greatest risk of being porous.
The conduct of sieges is governed by the law of armed conflict, as codified in the Hague and Geneva conventions. The Hague Convention governs general wartime conduct, while the Geneva Convention regulates the treatment of civilians during wartime. Both conventions include instructions on how sieges may be conducted and feature a series of limitations that must be adhered to, should a state seek to besiege an enemy.
Perhaps the best known prohibition, as spelled out in the Geneva Convention, is that a siege may not be instituted if its purpose is to starve the civilian population. Contemporary literature has rejected the proposition that incidental starvation of the civilian population renders a siege unlawful, though there is an ongoing debate on this question.
Another common prohibition on sieges relates to the provision of food and medicine by the besieging state. Under the Geneva Convention, a besieging state is required to facilitate the passage of food and medicine, but only if such goods can be reliably transported to the needy without diversion to the enemy and without fear that the goods will provide military advantage to the enemy.
Was Israel’s decision to cut off food, water, and energy to the Gaza Strip permitted under international law?
Israel’s decision to stop supplying food, electricity, fuel, and water to the Gaza Strip following Hamas’s terror attack is consistent with international law because sieges are a permissible act of war under both the Geneva and Hague conventions and physical isolation is the primary component of a successful siege. Israel has stated repeatedly that it will resume providing such resources once Gaza turns over the dozens of hostages it kidnapped from Israel, including babies and small children.
Under international law, no matter the action taken, there is a duty to mitigate the risk of civilian death and to ensure that the military gain is proportional to the damage incurred. With regard to adhering to this principle of proportionality, the IDF has a long history of warning Gaza civilians to evacuate before a military action, from knocking on roofs to warn of an imminent attack to distributing pamphlets instructing civilians to evacuate to engaging in phone campaigns.
Conversely, this principle of proportionality accounts for why Hamas so fervently seeks to entrap civilians in Gaza. Hamas has shown no compunctions about instructing civilians to ignore Israeli warnings and stay in their homes, understanding that the global PR war depends on their ability to maximize civilian casualties, as Israel seeks simultaneously to minimize them.
Orde Kittrie, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and professor at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law points out that the “U.S. Department of Defense Law of War Manual deems legal both a siege and a blockade (an operation to prevent all vessels and aircraft from entering or exiting enemy territory).” In addition, he notes, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) considers a blockade legal “so long as the intent of the ‘blockade is to deprive the adversary of supplies needed to conduct hostilities, and not to starve civilians.’” Per the ICRC, “starving enemy forces is unquestionably a legitimate method of warfare.” Kittrie also points to Section 5.20 of the DoD manual (titled “Starvation”), which notes that “it is a legitimate method of war to starve enemy forces.”
The US Military’s DoD manual states that “military action intended to starve enemy forces . . . must not be taken where it is expected to result in incidental harm to the civilian population that is excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated to be gained.” While conducting its operation in Gaza, Israel will need to weigh the incidental harms to the civilian population that failed to evacuate despite orders against the military advantage Israel anticipates from cutting off energy, food, and water supplies.
With regard to electricity, Israel’s provision of electricity is a function of a contractual arrangement that emerged from the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Since Hamas has violated the Oslo Accords, it is unclear, if any, what responsibility Israel would have under international law to continue to supply such electricity. Furthermore, the idea that failing to supply electricity or fuel to an enemy constitutes a “war crime,” considering the fact that millions of people around the world still live without electricity and fuel, is illogical and unsupported under international law.
Why does Israel need to cut off Gaza’s water/ electricity for military and security reasons?
As noted above, the efficacy of a siege depends on creating the conditions of total isolation.
As Sean Watts, a professor in the department of Law at the United States Military Academy at West Point and Geoffrey Corn, a Director of the Center for Military Law and Policy at Texas Tech University School of Law, note, “when an enemy relies on power for a wide array of capabilities, cutting it off, whether by attack or by a non-violent measure, is clearly justified by military necessity.”
Electricity is needed to supply Hamas’ command centers, as well as provide power for its weaponry. As Dr. Elai Rettig of the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University and a researcher at the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies told the Jerusalem Post, “We are not bombing the power plants, which would be collective punishment. We are not taking away the option for them to generate electricity. Israel is temporarily cutting off Gaza’s share [of electricity] for tactical reasons - and using the time to hinder its enemy’s ability to monitor and attack Israeli forces.”
Regarding water and humanitarian aid, the answer is more complicated but still supportive of a siege. Hamas has for years exploited Israel’s transfer of food, water, and energy supplies to power its military capabilities to target Israel. It commandeers supplies and money meant to assist civilians for its terror activities. Indeed, members of Hamas have infiltrated a number of humanitarian organizations within Gaza for this explicit purpose. Under the Geneva Convention, a besieging state is required to facilitate the passage of food and medicine, but only if such goods can be reliably transported to the needy without diversion to the enemy and without fear that the goods will provide military advantage to the enemy. Israel likely will be unable to make such guarantees, given Hamas’ long history of absconding supplies from Gazan civilians. Again, it is important to note that Israel has already restored water supplies to southern Gaza.
And the American Jewish establishment praised Biden for defending Israel's right to eliminate Hamas-Such talk is cheap when you see what Biden has done in oressuring Israel and prevented Israel from accomplishing the eliminartion of Hamas from Gaza
Wish you wouldn't link to articles in NY Times. I understand that there is residual affection for that paper as it positions itself as being important but since we know how inaccurate the reporting is why keep citing it? I stopped reading it years ago - probably after the debacle of their cheering us into Iraq but I had known for many years before that that the reporting on Israel and even on Jews was bordering if not entering antisemitic whelms. If you want to ridicule them fine but treating them as a reliable news source seems puzzling to me at this point.