On a total disaster – Patrick Kingsley in NYT:

‘When Israel broke its cease-fire with Hamas in March and returned to all-out war in Gaza, the country’s leaders said that the new military campaign and blockade on food would force Hamas to release more Israeli hostages in exchange for fewer Israeli concessions.
Four months later, that campaign is now increasingly perceived, in Israel and beyond, as a strategic, diplomatic and humanitarian failure, especially as starvation rises in Gaza.
In the last four months, Israeli troops have advanced farther into Gaza, mostly recapturing areas they relinquished earlier in the war. They recovered the bodies of eight slain hostages; killed more Hamas leaders, including the group’s top military commander, Muhammad Sinwar; and destroyed more of Hamas’s underground tunnel network.’

(…)

‘“I have to use these words: total failure,” said Michael Milstein, an Israeli analyst and former military intelligence officer. “We are no closer to achieving our main war goal — to erase the military and the governmental capacities of Hamas — and Hamas has not become more flexible. We find ourselves right now in a total disaster.”’

(…)

‘The outcome has resulted in a rare level of censure from Israel’s allies. Key partners like Britain and Germany called for the war to end. France said it would recognize a Palestinian state. The secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres, called the situation “a moral crisis that challenges the global conscience.” Before Israel started the blockade and broke the truce, Palestinians in Gaza were already suffering some of the worst conditions in a century of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. A vast majority of the population was displaced and most of the buildings in the territory were damaged, according to the United Nations.’

(…)

‘A New York Times investigation has found that Mr. Netanyahu has dragged out the war partly for political reasons, in order to avoid upsetting key far-right partners who threatened their resignation if the war ended. Mr. Netanyahu denies the accusation, saying he has continued the war in the Israeli national interest.’

(…)

‘Israel needs to “strategically regroup, formulate a plan to defeat Hamas and provide a regionally and internationally acceptable solution for the future of the Gaza Strip,” said Mr. Conricus, an analyst for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a research group in Washington.’

Read the article here.

Strategically regroup? It might be too late for that.

October 7 was a disaster.

The Israeli response was a second disaster.

We cannot expect people to learn from history; history is not a lesson in morality or in waging war.

But the refusal to lean from 9/11 reveals a stubbornness that is beyond comprehension.

The genocide in Gaza will hunt Israel for decades.

But maybe then, there will be a future for the people in Gaza. And for the Israelis.