Israel's military campaign in Gaza seen as among the most destructive in recent history, experts say
JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history.
In just over two months, the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group.
The Israeli military has said little about what kinds of bombs and artillery it is using in Gaza. But from blast fragments found on-site and analyses of strike footage, experts are confident that the vast majority of bombs dropped on the besieged enclave are U.S.-made. They say the weapons include 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) “bunker-busters” that have killed hundreds in densely populated areas.
With the Palestinian death toll in Gaza surpassing 20,000, the international community is calling for a cease-fire. Israel vows to press ahead, saying it wants to destroy Hamas’ military capabilities following the militant group’s Oct. 7 cross-border rampage that triggered the war, in which it killed 1,200 people and took 240 others hostage.
The Biden administration has quietly continued to supply arms to Israel. Last week, however, President Joe Biden publicly acknowledged that Israel was losing international legitimacy for what he called its “indiscriminate bombing.”
Here’s a look at what is known so far about Israel’s campaign on Gaza.
HOW MUCH DESTRUCTION IS THERE IN GAZA?
Israel’s offensive has destroyed over two-thirds of all structures in northern Gaza and a quarter of buildings in the southern area of Khan Younis, according to an analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by Corey Scher of the CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University, experts in mapping damage during wartime.
The percentage of damaged buildings in the Khan Younis area nearly doubled in just the first two weeks of Israel’s southern offensive, they said.
That includes tens of thousands of homes as well as schools, hospitals, mosques and stores. U.N. monitors have said that about 70% of school buildings across Gaza have been damaged. At least 56 damaged schools served as shelters for displaced civilians. Israeli strikes damaged 110 mosques and three churches, the monitors said.
Israel holds Hamas responsible for civilian deaths by embedding militants in civilian infrastructure. Those sites also shelter multitudes of Palestinians who have fled under Israeli evacuation orders.
“Gaza is now a different color from space. It’s a different texture,” said Scher, who has worked with Van Den Hoek to map destruction across several war zones, from Aleppo to Mariupol.
HOW DOES THE DESTRUCTION STACK UP HISTORICALLY?
By some measures, destruction in Gaza has outpaced Allied bombings of Germany during World War II.
Between 1942 and 1945, the allies attacked 51 major German cities and towns, destroying about 40-50% of their urban areas, said Robert Pape, a U.S. military historian. Pape said this amounted to 10% of buildings across Germany, compared to over 33% across Gaza, a densely populated territory of just 140 square miles (360 square kilometers).
“Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history,” said Pape. “It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.”
The U.S.-led coalition’s 2017 assault to expel the Islamic State group from the Iraqi city of Mosul was considered one of the most intense attacks on a city in generations. That nine-month battle killed around 10,000 civilians, a third of them from coalition bombardment, according an Associated Press investigation at the time.
During the 2014-2017 campaign to defeat IS in Iraq, the coalition carried out nearly 15,000 strikes across the country, according to Airwars, a London-based independent group that tracks recent conflicts. By comparison, the Israeli military said last week it has conducted 22,000 strikes in Gaza.
WHAT TYPES OF BOMBS ARE BEING USED?
The Israeli military has not specified what it is using. It says every strike is cleared by legal advisers to make sure it complies with international law.
“We choose the right munition for each target — so it doesn’t cause unnecessary damage,” said the army’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.
Weapons experts have been able to draw conclusions by analyzing blast fragments found on-site, satellite images and videos circulated on social media. They say the findings offer only a peek into the full scope of the air war.
So far, fragments of American-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) bombs and smaller diameter bombs have been found in Gaza, according to Brian Castner, a weapons investigator with Amnesty International.
The JDAM bombs include precision-guided 1,000- and 2,000-pound (450-kilogram and 900-kilogram) “bunker-busters.”
“It turns earth to liquid,” said Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon defense official and a war crimes investigator for the U.N. “It pancakes entire buildings.”
He said the explosion of a 2,000-pound bomb in the open means “instant death” for anyone within about 30 meters (100 feet). Lethal fragmentation can extend for up to 365 meters (1,200 feet).
In an Oct. 31 strike on the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya, experts say a 2,000-pound bomb killed over 100 civilians.
Experts have also identified fragments of SPICE (Smart, Precise Impact, Cost-Effective) 2000-pound bombs, which are fitted with a GPS guidance system to make targeting more precise. Castner said the bombs are produced by the Israeli defense giant Rafael, but a recent State Department release first obtained by The New York Times showed some of the technology had been produced in the United States.
The Israeli military is also dropping unguided “dumb” bombs. Several experts pointed to two photos posted to social media by the Israeli Air Force at the start of the war showing fighter jets stocked with unguided bombs.
IS THE STRATEGY WORKING?
Israel says it has two goals: destroy Hamas and rescue the 129 hostages still held by militants.
Eleven weeks into the war, Israel says it has destroyed many Hamas sites and hundreds of tunnel shafts and has killed 7,000 Hamas fighters out of an estimated 30,000-40,000. Israeli leaders say intense military pressure is the only way to free more hostages.
But some families of hostages worry that the bombing endangers their loved ones. Hostages released during a weeklong cease-fire last month recounted that their captors moved them from place to place to avoid Israeli bombardment. Hamas has claimed that several hostages died from Israeli bombs, though the claims could not be verified.
The level of destruction is so high because “Hamas is very entrenched within the civilian population,” said Efraim Inbar, head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, a think tank. He also said intense bombardment of Hamas’ tunnels is needed to protect advancing Israeli ground forces from attacks.
Israel accepts Palestinian Authority role in post-war Gaza
Jay Solomon
Thu, December 21, 2023
The News
The Israeli government, for the first time, signaled its willingness to allow the Palestinian Authority to govern the Gaza Strip after military operations against the militant group Hamas cease.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that the PA can’t return to Gaza due to what he says is the organization’s corruption and failure to condemn Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on southern Israel. Netanyahu’s position has increasingly placed him at odds with the Biden administration, which has already begun conferring with the PA’s leadership in the West Bank about its post-war role.
But on Thursday, Netanyahu’s national security advisor outlined a shift in the Israeli government’s position in an editorial published in Elaph, a Saudi Arabia-owned Arabic language news site headquartered in London. The Israeli government’s placement of the piece in Elaph is an effort to communicate directly to Arab governments that are expected to play a central role in financing the reconstruction of Gaza after the war, Middle East officials told Semafor.
“Beyond ensuring the security of our citizens, which we will not compromise on, Israel has no interest in controlling civil affairs in Gaza, and there will need to be a moderate Palestinian governing body that enjoys broad support and legitimacy,” National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi wrote. “It’s not for us to decide who this will be.”
He added: “In its current form, the PA finds this difficult to do, and it will require much work and the assistance of the international community and regional neighbors. We are ready for this effort.”
The PA, and its 88-year-old President Mahmoud Abbas currently run the West Bank but was pushed out of Gaza by Hamas in 2006 following 2006 general elections in the territory. Biden administration officials now say they’d like to see the West Bank and Gaza reunified under a “revitalized” PA leadership as part of a broader post-war process that could resume Arab-Israeli negotiations aimed at creating an independent Palestinian state.
Jay’s view
Despite Netanyahu’s contempt for the PA, Israel is facing the blunt reality of either running Gaza itself after the war or ceding control to Palestinian leadership. U.S. and Arab officials say the PA is by far the best positioned to fill this void. But questions remain about who would lead the organization in Gaza and what steps can be taken to lend it legitimacy among Palestinians there.
The Biden administration is already seeking to identify members of the PA’s security forces who’ve served in Gaza to potentially redeploy there, U.S. officials say. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met Abbas in Ramallah last week to try and promote reforms within the PA that could bolster its capabilities in Gaza and breathe life back into negotiations to create an independent Palestinian state. The PA hasn’t held a presidential election since 2005, and Israeli officials charge that the organization promotes terrorism through its educational programs and financial support for the families of Palestinians convicted of terrorism.
“There are a number of security personnel linked to the Palestinian Authority, which we think might be able to provide some sort of a nucleus in the many months that follow the overall military campaign,” a senior U.S. official said last week. “But this is something we are discussing with the Palestinians, and with the Israelis, and with regional partners. It very much remains a work in progress.”
Arab officials tell Semafor the PA has been holding discussions with Hamas’s political leadership in Qatar about post-war leadership in Gaza. A member of Hamas’s politburo in Doha told The Wall Street Journal this week that Hamas could potentially enter into a joint-leadership structure with Abbas’s political party, Fatah, as part of efforts to create an independent Palestinian state. “We want to establish a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem,” Husam Badran said.
Israel and the U.S. have both ruled out Hamas playing any future leadership role in the Palestinian territories. Netanyahu’s government equates the organization with the Islamic State, or ISIS, and has pledged to completely dismantle its political and military leadership.
The U.S. and Arab governments are looking for new blood to eventually replace Abbas. Among the officials are Hussein al Sheikh, the secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization — the overall representative of the Palestinians, and Mohammed Dahlan, who previously oversaw security in the Gaza Strip before Hamas took power. Recent polls have identified political leader Marwan Barghouti, who’s currently jailed in Israel, as the most popular figure in the West Bank.
The View From Ramallah
Mahmoud Abbas said this week that he’s prepared to initiate reforms in the PA and support the reconstruction of Gaza. But he said his organization’s cooperation is contingent upon meaningful steps being taken to resume the long-stalled Middle East peace process. And he’s called for the convening of an international conference focused on achieving a two-state solution, similar to one promoted by the U.S. and Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
“The problem is not changing (Palestinian) politicians and forming a new government, the problem is the policies of the Israeli government,” Abbas told Reuters last week.
Palestinian leaders also hit back at Netanyahu’s disparagement of Fatah’s or Hama’s leadership. “We say to Netanyahu, it’s not Fatah-istan or Hamas-istan, the name is #Palestine, and it will remain Palestine, regardless of whoever wishes to call it that, tweeted Hussein al Sheikh, the PLO’s general secretary.
Notable
A wartime poll conducted in the Palestinian territories found that 72% of respondents in the West Bank and Gaza believed Hamas was “correct” in launching the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel.
No comments:
Post a Comment