Nikola electric truck recall price tag $61.8M

Alan Adler
Thu, November 2, 2023 

Nikola reserved $61.8 million to cover the cost of recalling 209 battery-electric trucks. 

(Photo courtesy of ABC15/Phoenix)

Nikola Corp. has set aside $61.8 million to replace the batteries in its recalled electric trucks. The company expects to begin returning repaired trucks to customers in the first quarter.

The accrued liability in third-quarter earnings includes the estimated cost to reengineer, validate and retrofit the 209 recalled battery-electric trucks with an alternative battery pack. Nikola did not identify the supplier.

“Upon further investigation, it was determined that the compromise of the battery packs was not limited to only the coolant manifold,” Nikola said in a news release. “As a result, our team has decided to replace the Romeo packs on existing customer battery-electric trucks with an alternative solution.”

Unlike most safety recalls where the supplier of the defective component contributes to the recall cost, Nikola owned Romeo Power. Therefore, it bears the recall costs alone.
Recall cash spend should be less than accrual

Nikola expects to spend less than the accrual. Selling off the remaining battery-electric trucks in inventory should bring in $13 million. Nikola expects another $10.7 million coming from accounts receivable. That means spending $38.1 million over the next nine to 12 months. The company has said it will assemble battery-electric trucks as orders are received.

Nikola in June liquidated Romeo. Its assets were sold to Mullen Automotive. Nikola reported a $101 million loss from discontinued operations during the quarter.

Despite the recall, Nikola said it received an order for 47 battery-electric trucks from one dealer in Q3.

Nikola shipped three trucks, bought back seven and built no new units during the quarter. It reported negative revenue of $1.7 million. The startup lost $425.8 million, or 50 cents a share. That compared to a loss of $236.2 million, or 54 cents, a year ago. However, following the recent doubling of authorized shares, Nikola had 857.2 million outstanding shares compared to 438.4 million a year ago.

The company improved its cash and equivalents to $362.8 million, mostly through the sales of new equity. The money is sufficient to cover the recall expense and run the business into 2024, CFO Stacy Pasterick said on a call with analysts.

Nikola focusing on selling fuel cell trucks in California

Nikola began producing fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) on Sept. 28. It has 277 nonbinding orders from 35 customers.

“We think the competition is well behind us and believe there is white space for us to capture market share with the introduction of the Advanced Clean Fleets Rule,” CEO Steve Girsky said.

The company is mining business based on California voucher programs that cut up to $288,000 from the price of a fuel cell truck for a large fleet and up to $408,000 for a small fleet of 20 or fewer trucks.

“We are driving forward, capitalizing on our first-mover advantage with our hydrogen fuel cell electric truck and laying the foundation for the ‘hydrogen highway’ starting in California,” Girsky said.

Nikola has mobile fueling and availability of hydrogen fuel to last into the first quarter of 2024. It has slowed plans for mobile fuelers to conserve costs and because early customers are using less fuel than expected. Startup infrastructure developer Voltera is Nikola’s partner in planning eight hydrogen fueling stations at sites it is developing in California.

Nikola sees tailwinds from the adoption of zero-emissions vehicles, specifically in California, where all new drayage trucks registered with the California Air Resources Board beginning Jan. 1, 2024, must emit zero tailpipe emissions.
So far, so good

Nikola said its Tre FCEV Class 8 truck accounts for 96% of the California’s Hybrid and Zero-Emission Truck and Bus Voucher Incentives Project (HVIP) for fuel cell trucks through last Friday. Its battery-electric trucks are listed in 50% of Class 8 vouchers issued.

More than 30,000 trucks operating in California ports will eventually need to be replaced.

“We believe this represents a significant opportunity for Nikola in the near term and are well on our way to capturing market share,” the company said.

Panama lawmakers scrap plan to annul copper mine concession

Valentine Hilaire and Elida Moreno
Thu, November 2, 2023 

View of the Cobre Panama mine, of Canadian First Quantum Minerals, in Donoso, Panama, December 6, 2022.

 REUTERS/Aris Martíne

By Valentine Hilaire and Elida Moreno

(Reuters) - Lawmakers in Panama scratched provisions from a proposed bill that would cancel a recently approved mining concession extending the life of a controversial but lucrative copper mine by at least two decades, legislators told Reuters on Thursday.

The fate of the Cobre Panama mine, which accounts for 1% of global copper output and is operated by a local unit of Canadian miner First Quantum, has been roiled by street protesters opposed to the project over the past couple weeks.

Two independent lawmakers, Edison Broce and Juan Diego Vasquez, told Reuters that the proposed legislation will not include annulment of the concession.

The bill now focuses on enshrining into law an indefinite nationwide ban on all new mining concessions, which goes further than a similarly focused decree ordered last Friday by President Laurentino Cortizo.

Protesters have expressed concerns over the contract signed by the government and the company late last month, arguing it is tainted by corruption and too favorable to the Canadian miner, as well as harmful to the environment.

The fight over the future of the mine has caused shares of First Quantum to shed nearly half their value in recent days.

Under the terms of the renewed contract, the miner would pay a minimum of $375 million annually to the government in return for two decades of continued operations with the option to extend them another 20 years.

Last Sunday, Cortizo called for a referendum to give the public a say on the contract's future, but lawmakers are still debating legislation that would authorize the vote.

The Supreme Court is considering several challenges to the contract, and may ultimately decide its legal validity.

But if lawmakers reverse course and seek to end the contract via legislation, that could open the door to international arbitration, according to legal experts.

(Reporting by Valentine Hilaire; Additional reporting by Elida Moreno and Divya Rajagopal; Editing by Brendan O'Boyle)

CANADA
Hedge Fund Executive’s Sudden Death Exposes a Firm Deep in Trouble

Derek Decloet, Layan Odeh, Esteban Duarte and Christine Dobby
Thu, November 2, 2023




(Bloomberg) -- The bonhomie was flowing inside the Great Banking Hall in Toronto as the city’s hedge fund barons arrived to toast their success and themselves.

Among the guests of honor on that Tuesday night last month: Chris Callahan, whose firm was to be celebrated for top-notch performance.

He didn’t show. A little more than a week later, he was dead.

Friends and associates are stunned. And, to the industry’s shock, authorities are in the process of untangling what happened to the young trader and his once-high-flying investment firm.

Officials haven’t disclosed a cause of death — police say it wasn’t suspicious in nature — but Callahan’s sudden passing has led to a widening investigation into what appears to be tens of millions of dollars in losses at his Traynor Ridge Capital Inc.

What’s only now becoming clear is that Callahan’s firm found itself in deep trouble in October.

Even as Traynor Ridge was scheduled to be feted at the annual Canadian Hedge Fund Awards, it was already sinking under the weight of bad bets on cannabis and energy companies, according to people with knowledge of the events.

An assortment of trades left three brokerage firms holding the bag for nearly C$100 million ($72 million) in potential losses, according to the Ontario Securities Commission. Regulators are probing the matter and one market-maker, Virtu Financial Inc., has filed suit to recover its losses, while Callahan’s friends and former colleagues mourn.

Echelon Wealth Partners Inc., a Canadian money manager and capital markets firm with more than C$8 billion in assets under management and administration, was one of those caught, having made trades for Traynor that it couldn’t settle.

Echelon — which hired Callahan soon after he graduated from university in 2014 — quickly sold those positions and is no longer exposed, Chief Strategy Officer Dominic Chow said, declining to discuss the details of the trades or say how large they were. Callahan’s age couldn’t immediately be confirmed.

Affluent investors who helped Traynor Ridge grow from a startup to more than C$120 million in assets under management have their money stuck in limbo, for now. Securities regulators in Ontario have prohibited trading by the fund, which they say appears to be in “serious financial difficulty.” Even if it were allowed to trade, Callahan’s death has left no one in charge — he was Traynor’s “ultimate designated person,” its only director and shareholder as well as its chief compliance officer, according to regulators.

Topping the list of those who are stuck are customers of Westcourt Capital Corp., a Toronto advisory firm that connects the wealthy with hedge funds, real estate opportunities and other private investments not available to the masses.

Westcourt’s clients, who typically have more than C$10 million in assets, represented the majority of the money managed by Callahan’s fund, David Kaufman, who founded Westcourt and is its chair and co-chief executive officer, told Bloomberg News in an email.

Key to Traynor’s fundraising success was William Chyz, a finance executive Callahan hired in 2021 and who was in a position to know Westcourt’s client base — because he’d spent almost nine years there, according to his LinkedIn profile. Chyz did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

But Callahan’s early performance undoubtedly helped, too.

Exploiting Inefficiencies

Callahan marketed himself as a trader who was able to exploit “inefficiencies” in public markets. His biography on Traynor’s website reads: “Chris has been involved in hundreds of merger and convertible arbitrage investments along with having significant experience in event-driven special situations.”

Traynor’s flagship TR1 Fund was sold as a market-neutral fund that aimed to make money regardless of the overall direction of equity and bond prices.

“We employ arbitrage strategies for the most part. These are strategies that generate returns off specific defined events occurring as opposed to what the broader markets are doing,” Callahan said during an event put on by a Canadian hedge fund group in May. “What I saw was a strong opportunity to focus a smaller capital base on a variety of deals that actually had a really strong risk-adjusted return. And really what that means is that in our view, the deals are mispriced.”

It seemed to work, at first. Just as the fund opened its doors, Covid-19 was beginning to spread around the globe, causing a wave of panic in markets and a stock market crash in February and March of 2020.

Callahan eked out small gains in both of those months and much larger ones as equity prices recovered and the global economy began the long, halting process of reopening from the initial shutdown. Traynor ended its first year up almost 40%, and followed that with a 24% return in 2021, according to a document prepared by Bank of Montreal’s prime brokerage services desk.

Callahan continued to outperform last year, dodging a historic correction on equities and bonds to post a return of just under 1%, the document says. But the fund suffered its worst losing streak — three straight down months from May through July — and was down 3.2% for the year as of September, according to the document.

Then came October.

Traynor Ridge was active in small-cap securities, trading convertible bonds in relatively illiquid companies, along with preferred shares and cannabis stocks, according to people with knowledge of the fund’s strategy. It also invested in blank-check companies, the people said.

Failed Trades

It’s not clear how things went south so quickly. But at some point in the middle of October, Callahan was making trades that it appears the fund didn’t have the money to back up.

Over a period of weeks, Traynor Ridge made dozens of “failed trades,” according to a lawsuit filed Monday by Virtu, a market-making firm that has been doing business with the fund since its inception.

Before last month, all of the trades Traynor Ridge made through Virtu were allocated to its accounts at CIBC World Markets Inc., one of the hedge fund’s prime brokers. The fund also did business with the prime brokerage divisions of Bank of Montreal and Toronto-Dominion Bank, according to documents seen by Bloomberg. Spokespeople for all three banks declined to comment.

Prime brokers help hedge funds with services such as loans, borrowing securities and cash management. When a fund makes a trade, it’s required to instruct its prime brokers to release money or securities to settle it. In Canada, that happens two business days after the trade, Virtu said.

Virtu contacted CIBC to ask about Callahan’s trades. Officials with the bank said they didn’t have any instructions about them. On Oct. 23, at 6:34 p.m. Toronto time, Virtu emailed Callahan and Gianluca Curcuruto, an analyst at Traynor, telling them it would begin selling the securities the next day and that the fund would be on the hook for any losses, according to court documents.

Position Dump

Brokers began to dump the fund’s positions, which included at least three cannabis companies — Curaleaf Holdings Inc., Cresco Labs Inc. and Cannabist Company Holdings Inc. — and a tiny energy exploration company named Trillion Energy International Inc., said the people, who spoke on condition they not be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The shares of all four companies had already tumbled hard amid a broader swoon in the stock market. Now they crashed: Cannabist shares plunged 48% in Toronto over four trading sessions beginning Oct. 24, while Curaleaf and Cresco each dropped more than 20%.

Virtu said in the court filing that it’s lost more than C$5 million in resolving Traynor’s failed trades so far and it expects that number to rise.

“Traynor Ridge was a client of Virtu. We are working with our client and regulators to help resolve the misconduct that took place at Traynor,” Andrew Smith, a spokesperson at Virtu, said via email. “Our exposure was not material. We are keeping the principals at Traynor Ridge in our thoughts and prayers at this difficult time for them.”

KPMG, the auditor on the fund, declined to comment.

Governance Concerns

While the regulators’ investigation may bring more definitive conclusions, the structure of Traynor Ridge — in which Callahan held all of the most critical roles — has caught the eye of corporate governance and finance experts.

When the chief investment officer is also the chief compliance officer, “then you have a profound web of conflicts of interest,” said Jon Aikman, a lawyer who is an adjunct faculty member at Queen’s University — the school where Callahan graduated with an economics degree before launching his career in finance.

For his part, Callahan appeared to believe that his firm was sound, having passed the test of regulators. Canadian regulators put hedge funds through a rigorous process before registering them, he said during that industry event in May.

“It’s a high standard,” he said, “and you have to make sure that your structure and your firm is up to that high standard.”

--With assistance from David Gillen.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

Amid war, some Palestinians rage against another target: Their own rulers

Nabih Bulos
Wed, November 1, 2023 

Residents of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, comb through rubble in the aftermath of an Oct. 22 Israeli airstrike on a local mosque. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)


Even amid the terrible destruction that has transformed parts of Jenin into pits of jumbled masonry, the bullet-pocked tower of the Palestinian government headquarters stands out — not for the relatively light damage it sustained but for who caused it.

Whereas homes in this West Bank city have been demolished by Israeli troops, roads have been churned up by Israeli bulldozers and storefronts have been disfigured by Israeli gunfire, the offices of the Sultah, or Palestinian Authority, were attacked by Palestinians themselves during a noisy protest over Israel's bombardment of Gaza.

Disgusted with the authority's inability to protect its own people or stand up to Israel, militants in the crowd aimed their bullets at the government compound after its security forces tried to break up the demonstration.


"The Sultah started firing live rounds at us to stop it, so the guys fired back," said Abu Hamzeh, a bulky 37-year-old fighter with the Jenin Brigade, a cross-factional Palestinian resistance group that includes members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah.

Palestinian fighters escort the funeral procession for Mohammad Abu Aabed, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Al Ansar Mosque in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, on Oct. 22. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

His comrade in arms beside him, hand on the butt of a weathered-looking M4 rifle, warned of Palestinians' growing anger with their nominal rulers alongside their antipathy toward Israel.

"When things get beyond the limit, it's a problem," said Abu Mohammad, 33. "When you pressure us, there will be an explosion. We're facing both Israel and the Sultah."

Read more: Airstrikes flatten blocks of Gaza refugee camp, bringing rage, grief and a perilous new phase of war

Since Oct. 7, when Hamas launched its multipronged cross-border attack on southern Israel, killing some 1,400 people and capturing more than 200 others, the Israeli government has stepped up what it calls counterterrorism operations across the occupied West Bank alongside its relentless offensive in Gaza. The United Nations says that more than 120 Palestinians, including 33 children, have been killed by Israeli security forces or settlers in the West Bank.

In the last week, restive Jenin, long a militant hotbed, has become the site of near-daily raids involving scores of Israeli soldiers, dozens of armored vehicles and even airstrikes that have killed at least a dozen people, according to Palestinian health officials. Israel says the incursions target terrorists who have attacked Israelis in the past or are planning to do so.

Mourners attend the funeral procession of two men killed in an Israeli airstrike on Al Ansar Mosque in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Although much of their fury is directed at Israel, many in Jenin accuse the Palestinian Authority of abandoning them, saying its leaders are more concerned with their own survival and its security forces with pursuing Palestinian armed groups at Israel's behest than they are with protecting Palestinian lives.

"When Palestinian Authority security personnel withdraw from the streets, people here start stocking up because they believe an Israeli incursion will soon follow," said Mustafa Sheta, who heads the Freedom Theater in Jenin's refugee camp, echoing a common view that the local security forces are too cozy with their Israeli counterparts.

The Palestinian Authority, which was founded as a proto-state administration as a result of the 1993 Oslo peace accords, manifests itself mainly as a sprawling bureaucracy across the West Bank, where it has limited powers. In Gaza it has none, after the violent ouster there of its ruling party, Fatah, in 2007 by Hamas, its top rival.

Read more: A stone, a bullet, a burial. A Palestinian boy's death in the West Bank signals wider unrest

As yet, there does not seem to be any movement to drive out Fatah and the Palestinian Authority from the West Bank as well, which would create a dangerous power vacuum.

But disenchantment with the authority — its weakness, inefficiency and corruption scandals — has been brewing for years. And the idea that Fatah and the authority could reestablish control in Gaza if Israel succeeds in its goal of extirpating Hamas seems ludicrous to many Palestinians, who consider Mahmoud Abbas, the authority's octogenarian president, as moribund as the administration he heads. Although Palestinian Authority presidents serve a four-year term, Abbas was voted into office in 2005 and has not held an election since.

As Israel pursues its punishing ground offensive in Gaza and the casualties mount, the Palestinian Authority's impotence only comes into sharper relief. On Tuesday, in response to reports that Israel had bombed the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza, Palestinian groups called for protests and a West Bank-wide strike Wednesday.

Palestinian fighters' weapons sit inside a home in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank. A Palestinian fighter displays items he dug out of the rubble in the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on a mosque in Jenin. A view of the Jenin refugee camp. Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times

Israel remains in de facto control of the West Bank and coordinates with the Palestinian Authority's security apparatus to stop Palestinian militant attacks, either through the authority's security personnel or through its own operations — a deeply unpopular policy that critics say reduces the authority to little more than Israel's guard dog.

There was a time when the Palestinian Authority represented hope for Jenin. In 2008, six years after Israel demolished vast swaths of the city during the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, Jenin was seen as a model of Palestinian-Israeli cooperation, in matters of both security and economic investment that would bring peace through prosperity. Even former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, then the defense minister, called it a "great success" that, "done right, we think could become an example."

Residents examine the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on the Al Ansar Mosque. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Few believe that now, especially not in the Jenin refugee camp, a decrepit neighborhood running up a steep hill, whose 14,000 residents are refugees and their descendants from the 1948 "Nakba" — "catastrophe" in Arabic — referring to the mass displacement of Arabs that accompanied Israel's independence.

The camp, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the West Bank, is steeped in the culture of resistance against Israel's occupation. At night, residents place metal hedgehogs at the camp's entrances to stymie armored vehicles, while keeping a close eye on anyone coming in, for fear of Israeli undercover agents. Almost no building is free of a martyr poster, and the cemeteries overflow with those killed in clashes with Israeli troops. Since July, a fourth graveyard has had to be opened.

Sitting in a living room with martyr posters of Abu Mohammad's relatives who were killed while fighting together with the Palestinian security forces they both now revile, Abu Mohammad and Abu Hamzeh — the two men's noms de guerre — complained at length about how the Palestinian Authority's economic policies had plunged people into debt and poverty, forcing them to rely on handouts rather than fight the occupation. The authority's security coordination with Israel they viewed nowadays as nothing less than treason.

Family and members of the community attend the funeral for Mohammad Abu Aabed, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike on the Al Ansar Mosque. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Read more: 'He isn't Winston Churchill.' Despite anger and blame, war buys time for Netanhayu, Israel's unpopular leader

In many ways, the two fighters' lives tracked the trajectory of the souring relationship between the Palestinian Authority and the people it ostensibly governs.

Both had once been members of the security apparatus for years before Israel's suspicions of militant links led to their being imprisoned — Abu Mohammad by Israel, Abu Hamzeh by the Palestinian Authority — and then fired from their jobs. Faced with few prospects and a new ultranationalist Israeli government they see as intent on empowering settlers and frustrating hopes of Palestinian nationhood, they joined the Jenin Brigade, making them wanted men in the eyes of Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The group was formed in 2021 with funding from Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad and brings together different armed factions in joint pursuit of the refugee camp's defense.

Samira Salahat pours water onto her son Izz Al-Deen's gravesite to pay her respects at the Jenin cemetery. A cemetery at the Jenin refugee camp. Abla Al Aabed, center, mourns her son, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Jenin. Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times

The rift with the authority had been growing for some time, the two men said, but the chasm had never been as wide as now, with Israel's military giving settlers free rein and mounting a security dragnet that has killed scores of Palestinians in the West Bank since Hamas' Oct. 7 incursion.

"I'll throw away my gun, but come protect me," Abu Mohammad said, in a challenge to the Palestinian Authority. "Stop them from entering my home, beating my mother, wife and children, and I'll throw away the gun."

Failing that, he added, the authority should move out of fighters' way rather than help Israel neutralize them.

"If anyone — Muslim, Arab, Christian, Jew — comes near the weapon I use to fight the Israelis, I'll kill him," he said.

Abu Hamzeh issued his own warning to the Palestinian Authority and its forces.

Residents examine the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on Al Ansar Mosque, where two Palestinians were killed, in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

"We hope our brothers in the security apparatus know the right path against the occupation, because when it comes to the West Bank, Israel will do like it did in Gaza and won't show mercy to anyone, to neither us, Sultah security personnel, women or children," he said.

Although the Jenin refugee camp has long been in Israel's crosshairs, the military's recent raids display a different level of ferocity, residents say.

On Monday, Israel deployed drones, snipers and dozens of armored vehicles, including two bulldozers that tore up streets and infrastructure near the camp, leveled the iconic arched gate over its entrance and destroyed a sculpture commemorating the 2002 Israeli incursion. Four men were killed and nine other people were wounded, Palestinian health authorities said.

Late on Tuesday, Israeli special forces teams surged into Jenin, broke into the house of a top Fatah leader in the city and beat him and his son before taking them into custody, residents said. That was followed by yet another incursion involving bulldozers, drones, snipers, dozens of troops and airstrikes. They withdrew several hours later, leaving three Palestinians dead and a trail of bullet-scarred walls, ripped-up asphalt and destroyed cars.

Family and members of the community attend the funeral of Mohammad Abu Aabed, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, on Oct. 22. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

On Oct. 22, a pair of missiles lanced through the roof of Al Ansar Mosque, blowing up the main hall, shredding two Jenin Brigade fighters and nearly killing a third, witnesses said.

Afterward, said a militant who identified himself only as Ahmad, the Israeli intelligence officer responsible for the area, who goes by the nom de guerre Captain Iyad, called fighters' relatives.

"He phoned up the families of all the guys. Called my wife, told her: 'Ahmad escaped this time. If he doesn't give himself up at 7 a.m., consider him a dead man,'" Ahmad said, a sardonic look on his face because it was already past 8 a.m. when he recounted the story to a Times reporter.

He and other members of the Jenin Brigade expect no mercy from the Israelis, nor any help from the official Palestinian leadership.

"Every one of us knew the moment we carried the rifle we were dead men," he said, adding: "We're not going anywhere."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Column: We don't know how Israel's military is using AI in Gaza, but we should

Brian Merchant
Thu, November 2, 2023 

Smoke and flames rise after Israeli air forces target a shopping center in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7. (Anadolu Agency / Getty Images)

The fog of war has thickened in Gaza, a ground invasion is gathering steam, and aerial bombardments continue at a furious pace. On Tuesday, missiles struck a refugee camp in Jabaliya, where the Israel Defense Forces said a senior Hamas leader was stationed, killing dozens of civilians.

Debate over the crisis rages online and off, yet for all the discourse, there’s one lingering question I haven’t seen widely considered: To what extent is Israel relying on artificial intelligence and automated weapons systems to select and strike targets?

In the first week of its assault alone, the Israeli air force said it had dropped 6,000 bombs across Gaza, a territory that is 140 square miles — one-tenth the size of the smallest U.S. state of Rhode Island — and is among the most densely populated places in the world. There have been many thousand more explosions since then.

Israel commands the most powerful and highest-tech military in the Middle East. Months before the horrific Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, the IDF announced that it was embedding AI into lethal operations. As Bloomberg reported on July 15, earlier this year, the IDF had begun “using artificial intelligence to select targets for air strikes and organize wartime logistics.”

Israeli officials said at the time that the IDF employed an AI recommendation system to choose targets for aerial bombardment, and another model that would then be used to quickly organize ensuing raids. The IDF calls this second system Fire Factory, and, according to Bloomberg, it “uses data about military-approved targets to calculate munition loads, prioritize and assign thousands of targets to aircraft and drones, and propose a schedule.”

In response to a request for comment, an IDF spokesperson declined to discuss the country's military use of AI.

In a year when AI has dominated the headlines around the globe, this element of the conflict has gone curiously under-examined. Given the myriad practical and ethical questions that continue to surround the technology, Israel should be pressed on how it’s deploying AI.

Read more: Column: On social media, the 'fog of war' is a feature, not a bug

“AI systems are notoriously unreliable and brittle, particularly when placed in situations that are different from their training data,” said Paul Scharre, the vice president of the Center for a New American Security and author of “Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.” Scharre said he was not familiar with the details of the specific system the IDF may be using, but that AI and automation that assisted in targeting cycles probably would be used in scenarios like Israel’s hunt for Hamas personnel and materiel in Gaza. The use of AI on the battlefield is advancing quickly, he said, but carries significant risks.

“Any AI that’s involved in targeting decisions, a major risk is that you strike the wrong target,” Scharre said. ”It could be causing civilian casualties or striking friendly targets and causing fratricide.”

One reason it’s somewhat surprising that we haven’t seen more discussion of Israel’s use of military AI is that the IDF has been touting its investment in and embrace of AI for years.

In 2017, the IDF’s editorial arm proclaimed that “The IDF Sees Artificial Intelligence as the Key to Modern-Day Survival.” In 2018, the IDF boasted that its “machines are outsmarting humans.” In that article, the then-head of Sigma, the branch of the IDF dedicated to researching, developing, and implementing AI, Lt. Col. Nurit Cohen Inger wrote that "Every camera, every tank, and every soldier produces information on a regular basis, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.”

"We understand that there are capabilities a machine can acquire that a man can’t,” Nurit continued. “We are slowly introducing artificial intelligence into all areas of the IDF — from logistics and manpower to intelligence."

The IDF went so far as to call its last conflict with Hamas in Gaza, in 2021, the “first artificial intelligence war,” with IDF leadership touting the advantages its technology conferred in combating Hamas. “For the first time, artificial intelligence was a key component and power multiplier in fighting the enemy,” an IDF Intelligence Corps senior officer told the Jerusalem Post. A commander of the IDF’s data science and AI unit said that AI systems had helped the military target and eliminate two Hamas leaders in 2021, according to the Post.

The IDF says AI systems have officially been embedded in lethal operations since the beginning of this year. It says that the systems allow the military to process data and locate targets faster and with greater accuracy, and that every target is reviewed by a human operator.

Yet international law scholars in Israel have raised concerns about the legality of using such tools, and analysts worry that they represent a creep toward more fully autonomous weapons and warn that there are risks inherent in turning over targeting systems to AI.

Read more: Column: How CEOs are threading the needle in talking about Israel and Gaza

After all, many AI systems are increasingly black boxes whose algorithms are poorly understood and shielded from public view. In an article about the IDF’s embrace of AI for the Lieber Institute, Hebrew University law scholars Tal Mimran and Lior Weinstein emphasize the risks of relying on opaque automated systems capable of resulting in the loss of human life. (When Mimran served in the IDF, he reviewed targets to ensure they complied with international law.)

“So long as AI tools are not explainable,” Mimran and Weinstein write, “in the sense that we cannot fully understand why they reached a certain conclusion, how can we justify to ourselves whether to trust the AI decision when human lives are at stake?” They continue: “If one of the attacks produced by the AI tool leads to significant harm of uninvolved civilians, who should bear responsibility for the decision?”

Again, the IDF would not elaborate to me precisely how it is using AI, and the official told Bloomberg that a human reviewed the system’s output — but that it only took a matter of minutes to do so. (“What used to take hours now takes minutes, with a few more minutes for human review,” the head of the army’s digital transformation said.)

There are a number of concerns here, given what we know about the current state of the art of AI systems, and that’s why it’s worth pushing the IDF to reveal more about how it’s currently wielding them.

For one thing, AI systems remain encoded with biases, and, while they are often good at parsing large amounts of data, they routinely produce error-prone output when asked to extrapolate from that data.

“A really fundamental difference between AI and a human analyst given the exact same task,” Scharre said, “is that the humans do a very good job of generalizing from a small number of examples to novel situations, and AI systems very much struggle to generalize to novel situations.”

Read more: Column: Afraid of AI? The startups selling it want you to be

One example: Even supposedly cutting-edge facial recognition technology of the sort used by American police departments has been shown time and again to be less accurate at identifying people of color — resulting in the systems fingering innocent citizens and leading to wrongful arrests.

Furthermore, any AI system that seeks to automate — and accelerate — the selecting of targets increases the chance that errors made in the process will be more difficult to discern. And if militaries keep the workings of their AI systems secret, there’s no way to assess the kind of mistakes they’re making. “I do think militaries should be more transparent in how they’re assessing or approaching AI,” Scharre said. “One of the things we’ve seen in the last few years in Libya or Ukraine is a gray zone. There will be accusations that AI is being used, but the algorithms or training data is difficult to uncover, and that makes it very challenging to assess what militaries are doing.”

Even with those errors embedded in the kill code, the AI could meanwhile lend a veneer of credibility to targets that might not otherwise be acceptable to rank-and-file operators.

Finally, AI systems can create a false sense of confidence — which was perhaps evident in how, despite having a best-of-class AI-augmented surveillance system in place in Gaza, Israel did not detect the planning for the brutal, highly coordinated massacre on Oct. 7.

As Reuters’ Peter Apps noted, “On Sept. 27, barely a week before Hamas fighters launched the largest surprise attack on Israel since the 1973 Yom Kippur war, Israeli officials took the chair of NATO's military committee to the Gaza border to demonstrate their use of artificial intelligence and high-tech surveillance. … From drones overhead utilizing face recognition software to border checkpoints and electronic eavesdropping on communications, Israeli surveillance of Gaza is widely viewed amongst the most intense and sophisticated efforts anywhere.”

Yet none of that helped stop Hamas.

“The mistake has been, in the last two weeks, saying this was an intelligence failure. It wasn’t, it was a political failure,” said Antony Loewenstein, an independent journalist and author of “The Palestine Laboratory” who was based in East Jerusalem between 2016 and 2020. “Israel’s focus had been on the West Bank, believing they had Gaza surrounded. They believed wrongly that the most sophisticated technologies alone would succeed in keeping the Palestinian population controlled and occupied.”

That may be one reason that Israel has been reluctant to discuss its AI programs. Another may be that a key selling point of the technology over the years, that AI will help choose targets more accurately and reduce civilian casualties, currently does not seem credible. “The AI claim has been around targeting people more successfully,” Loewenstein said. “But it has not been pinpoint-targeted at all; there are huge numbers of civilians dying. One third of homes in Gaza have been destroyed. That’s not precise targeting.”

And that’s a fear here — that AI could be used to accelerate or enable the destructive capacity of a nation convulsing with rage, with potentially deadly errors in its algorithms being obscured by the fog of war.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Sanders, Warren write to Biden with ‘serious concern’ about Israel’s invasion of Gaza

Miranda Nazzaro
Wed, November 1, 2023 

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), joined by other Democratic senators, sent a letter to President Biden on Tuesday with a “serious concern” about Israel’s invasion and potential occupation of Gaza amidst the country’s war with the militant group Hamas.

While reiterating support of Israel’s right to defend itself following Hamas’s bloody assault on Oct. 7 that killed over 1,400 people in Israel, the senators expressed concerns over the “likely humanitarian toll,” and the “political reality” that could be left in the wake of a large-scale ground invasion by Israeli forces.

The letter, penned by Sanders, Warren and Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), included several questions regarding the U.S. government’s stance on the human toll of an invasion and occupation of Gaza along with what humanitarian aid would look like for civilians in the besieged territory.

Israel has since responded to Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre with a bombardment of Hamas-ruled Gaza, including hundreds of airstrikes, bombings and most recently an uptick in attacks against Hamas militants and infrastructure north of Gaza City. Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and several other countries.

At least 8,525 Palestinians have died in the violence in Gaza, with over 21,500 civilians wounded, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.

Sanders has led efforts in the Senate for Israel to minimize and reduce civilian casualties in Gaza. Last week, he warned on the floor that “revenge… is not a useful policy.”

Israel warned more than 1 million Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza to move south in recent weeks, ahead of a wider ground incursion into the territory. While some have fled, several hundred thousand Palestinians remain in northern Gaza.

“Israel’s proposed invasion will likely bring difficult, street-by-street fighting against entrenched Hamas fighters in a dense urban environment still populated by many civilians,” the letter wrote. “Hamas will continue to use human shields and its extensive tunnel network, and will likely resort to insurgent tactics.”

The senators pointed to a piece from two academics who argued Israel’s reoccupation of Gaza will not end the conflict but rather risk a guerrilla war with civilians who see Israeli leaders as their enemy.

The senators pressed the Biden administration over how long it could take to establish military control of Gaza, how much “insurgent activity” it expects after that point and how the operation’s success will be measured.

The senators also expressed concerns about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which has been further driven by Israel’s siege on food, water, medicine and fuel. While some aid has been allowed to pass into the territory, humanitarian leaders have warned it’s not nearly enough to assist the hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians and hospitals on the brink of collapse.

The letter asked how many civilians will receive humanitarian aid and how the U.S.’s funding will help mitigate the crisis, along with how the administration expects the international community to address the human needs in Gaza and the rest of Palestine once the violence stops.

“Just a few months ago, thousands of people defied Hamas’ authoritarian rule to protest on the streets of Gaza,” the letter wrote. “Their voices are silenced now, but there can be no long-term solution to this ongoing crisis without a serious effort to address Palestinian demands for peace, legitimate political representation, and a vibrant economy. The United States must take a leading role in charting out a future that respects the lives of Palestinians and Israelis alike.”

The senators’ letter comes amid the ongoing debate over the Biden administration’s $105 billion emergency funding request to Congress that allocated aid for Israel, Ukraine, security operations at the U.S.-Mexico border and allies in the Indo-Pacific.

Newly elected Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Republicans unveiled a $14.3 billion aid package earlier this week that covers just Israel aid while cutting the same amount from IRS funding.

The Senate GOP is divided on the House GOP’s Israel-only proposal as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his allies push for both Israel and Ukraine funding together and others remain opposed to further Ukraine aid.

The White House said Tuesday Biden would veto the House GOP’s proposal in its current form.

The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.

GOP lawmaker compares ‘innocent Palestinian civilians’ to Nazis

Graeme Massie
Wed, November 1, 2023 


A Republican lawmaker has come under fire for comparing “innocent Palestinian civilians” to Nazis.

Rep Brian Mast of Florida made the inflammatory comment in the House as he tried to slow down humanitarian aid to Gaza with a bill that would impose sanctions on foreign support from militant groups like Hamas.

“I think when we look at this, as a whole, I would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians, as is frequently said,” Mr Mast said.

“I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’ during World War II.”

More than 8,000 Palestinians, including at least 3,600 children, are believed to have been killed in the enclave since Israel launched retaliatory strikes earlier this month.

Hamas militants killed more than 1,400 people in Israel and took hundreds of hostages in the bloody attacks launched from Gaza on 7 October.

Mr Mast’s comments received a quick backlash from Democrats and civil rights groups.

“Racist and bigoted comments like this are why 6-year-old Palestinian-American Wadea Al Fayoume was murdered by being stabbed 26 times. Disgusting and disgraceful,” tweeted Rep Maxwell Frost, a Democrat from Florida.

Brian Shatz, the US Senator from Hawaii, said: “This is an incredible reckless, racist thing to say. No one should talk like this.”

MSNBC host Medhi Hasan slammed the politician for his comments.

“There are dead bodies, including dead kids’ bodies, still being pulled out of the rubble of the Jabaliya refugee camp and this Republican congressman is suggesting there are no ‘innocent Palestinian civilians’ and comparing ordinary Gazans to Nazis. For shame,” he tweeted.

His denouncement was joined by criticism from IfNotNow, a Jewish American group that wants “to end US support for Israel’s apartheid system.”

The group tweeted that Mr Mast’s comments were a “dangerous, wrong and a craven attempt to justify more bombings & more killings.”

“Every member of Congress should be condemning this vile rhetoric & taking action,” the group stated. “Demanding a ceasefire has never been more urgent.”

Opinion

US has an obligation to save lives. We need to de-escalate Israel-Hamas war. 

Dan Kildee
Updated Thu, November 2, 2023 

I am struggling to make sense of the recent violence in Israel and Palestine, as a citizen, an elected official, and simply as a father and human being. It is painful to witness thousands of innocent lives, many of them women and children, tragically cut short. We must empathize with the pain felt by everyone — Israelis, Palestinians and Americans with deep personal connections to the region.

Heinous terrorist attacks by Hamas against Israel took the lives of 1,400 people and injured 3,000, according to Israeli officials. Over 200 hostages, including American citizens, are still being held captive, and must be released. Over 8,000 Palestinians have died in recent weeks, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. While some have disputed these precise numbers from a Hamas-run organization, there is no dispute that thousands of innocent civilians have died.

I am gravely concerned with the growing loss of human life in the Middle East, and the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza. An immediate humanitarian pause in hostilities, on all sides, is necessary to secure the safe return of hostages, prevent further loss of life and allow the delivery of lifesaving aid to innocent civilians.

A picture taken from Israel's southern city of Sderot shows smoke rising during Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip on Oct. 31, 2023.

Israeli military air strikes have already killed thousands of innocent civilians and displaced over a million people in Gaza. And with each passing day, the death toll rises. Hundreds of thousands more lives are now at imminent risk with the ongoing Israeli ground invasion of Gaza, which will also make delivering humanitarian aid more difficult.

Israel’s security and its right to respond to attacks, however, are not incompatible with a commitment to the humanitarian needs of the innocent people of Gaza. Every single human life is precious, and civilians are the victims in this conflict.

We must speak up and the killing of civilians must stop, no matter their faith, ethnicity or nationality. Period.

Jewish people feel familiar fear: What I need to hear as a proud but traumatized Jew | Opinion
Gaza needs humanitarian aid. US can help.

The U.S. and the world must do more to rush humanitarian aid into Gaza to help innocent civilians. While I support President Joe Biden’s diplomatic efforts to open new humanitarian aid corridors through Egypt, the current amount and pace of aid is wholly insufficient. Twenty-six aid trucks were allowed to enter Gaza on Monday, but the World Food Programme estimates that 465 trucks are needed each day to support civilians with their most basic needs.

We must work quickly to surge deliveries of food, water, and energy to ensure that innocent civilians have the life-saving essentials they need to survive. Depriving millions of Palestinian civilians — half of whom are children — of these necessities is a violation of international law.

People walk through the ruins of buildings in Gaza destroyed by Israeli airstrikes on the 17th day of the war between Israel and Palestine on October 23, 2023.

Additionally, expecting 1 million people—more than the populations of Detroit, Flint, Sterling Heights, Dearborn and Ann Arbor combined—to leave their homes in northern Gaza within 24 hours, as Israel has demanded, is unrealistic, and an impossible task. While hundreds of thousands have fled south for safety, Israel has continued to bomb targets in southern Gaza, too. Gaza has been subject to a blockade by Israel and Egypt for decades, not only of food, water and energy, but the free movement of people. We must recognize that civilians in Gaza have nowhere else to go to protect themselves and their families.
Hamas does not represent Palestinians

As Israel goes after Hamas, we must recognize that Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. Israel must abide by international law and seek to avoid, to every extent possible, the death or suffering of civilians. Indiscriminate airstrikes will result in more civilian deaths, worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis, and further endanger the hopes of peace in the region — as elusive as that peace may seem at the moment.

Do people see Palestinians? I almost gave up hope people will see humanity in Palestinians | Opinion

American leadership in the world has always been important, but especially in times of conflict. The U.S. has an obligation to help de-escalate this tragic conflict and save lives. We must also work to prevent a broader regional conflict that would threaten America’s national security.

Ultimately, there is not a military solution to this decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. More violence and bombing, from either side, will not result in peace and stability. The only way to achieve peace is a two-state solution. Israel has a right to exist, and the Palestinian people have a right to dignity and self-determination. I understand how difficult a two-state solution appears now, especially in the fog of war. But as difficult as it seems, we cannot give up. The long view of history will judge our actions in the coming weeks and months. Let us all work to safeguard every human life and to seek peace.

U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township, says the need for humanitarian aid in Gaza is great.

In such extraordinarily difficult times, when passion and fear run deep, it is even more important to remember and lead with our values, including respect for life. We must continue to speak out and actively oppose hate speech and actions in all its forms, including antisemitism and Islamophobia. And as an elected official, I will continue to use my position to speak in support of human life and work toward peace — in the U.S., Israel, Palestine and around the world.

Dan Kildee, a Flint Democrat, represents Michigan's 8th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Hamas is not Palestine. US must help Gaza get aid it desperately needs

Palestinian American family mourns 42 relatives killed in a single day in Gaza

Isabel Rosales
Updated Wed, November 1, 2023 

Thousands of miles away from the brutality of war in Gaza, Tariq Hamouda and his wife Manal are in disbelief over the loss of three generations of their family.

The Palestinian Americans, who live in Maple Grove, Minnesota, say it’s been over a week since they learned 42 relatives were killed in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, and they’re still unable to fully comprehend the news.

Hamouda says his wife, whose maiden name is Saqallah, lost four brothers, a sister and most of their children when two explosions destroyed the Saqallah family compound on October 19 in the Sheikh Ejleen neighborhood of Gaza City.


Hamouda and the family say it was an Israeli airstrike. Israel has launched numerous airstrikes on Gaza City since October 7, including multiple strikes in the area that day.

CNN cannot independently confirm that it was an Israeli strike. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it could not comment without coordinates of the house. The family declined to provide CNN with the coordinates for fear of reprisal.

A video shot by a neighbor and provided to CNN shows what is left of the family compound; charred ruins and rubble, of what relatives say used to be three buildings, now surrounded by virtually untouched homes in the residential area.

A screengrab taken from video shows ruins of the Saqallah family compound after the blast on October 19. - Courtesy Tariq Hamouda

“Up until last night, she is still denying [what happened],” Hamouda told CNN on Thursday, referring to Manal. But the grief being felt in their Midwestern home is very real.

“She loves every member of her family. She spent the summer with them,” explained Hamouda, who says he and his wife are originally from the same neighborhood in Gaza but have lived in Minnesota since 2004.

There has been fear and numerous conflicts between Israel and militant groups in Gaza since then, but nothing like this, he says.

A view of the Saqallah family compound before the strike. - Courtesy Tariq Hamouda

Israel declared war on Hamas on October 7, after the militant group broke through the barrier that separates Gaza from Israel and killed more than 1,400 people, including civilians and military personnel, and abducted over 220 others, according to Israeli authorities.

In response, Israel launched devastating airstrikes on Gaza. It says it wants to destroy Hamas, which governs the coastal territory. But 2.2 million Palestinians living there, unable to escape with closed Israeli and Egyptian border crossings, are caught in the crossfire.

Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 8,485 Palestinians and injured more than 21,000 others, according to the latest figures released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, drawn from sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave. Another 1.4 million people have been internally displaced, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says, after the IDF warned residents in northern Gaza to move south.

But Hamouda doesn’t have time to properly mourn the dead, he says, as he is still worried about what will happen to those who’ve so far survived.

‘Your whole world stops’

In South Florida, Manal’s cousin Eyad Abu Shaban is equally distraught. “It’s like your whole world stops,” he said.

“It’s not one, two, three, or four – it is 42 members, it’s really hard to cope with.”

Abu Shaban says the deceased range in age from three months to 77. They were all staying in a single compound. His uncle, Essam Abu Shaban, wife Layla Saqallah and their son Ahmed were among those killed. To avoid Israeli airstrikes, they had evacuated the nearby Tel El Hawa neighborhood and sought refuge in the Saqallah’s home, Abu Shaban says.

Before the airstrikes, the IDF called to say there could be military activity in the area, but they were never told to evacuate their home, Hamouda says surviving family members told him.

“They have bombed houses with warnings and without warnings,” he said, lamenting there is a lot of fear, confusion and nowhere to go.

His mother-in-law was on a balcony when the first strike hit, Hamouda says. She was able to flee with the help of a relative who also survived.

A second strike completely destroyed the compound, killing dozens of relatives, he says.

A video shot by surviving family members and provided to CNN shows the numerous bodies – wrapped in white burial shrouds – being placed into a mass grave.

“My mother-in-law said her sons tried to evacuate, but they had no time,” Hamouda said, adding that his family was not involved in militant activity and that they “had nothing to do with anything at all.”

Abu Shaban, a Boca Raton real estate developer, said the family were only civilians, and counted numerous medical professionals among them.

From left, Doctors Omar Saqallah, Saed Saqallah and Ameed Saqallah were among the 42 relatives killed on October 19. - Courtesy Tariq Hamouda

Of Manal’s four brothers – Saed, Omar, Ameed and Khorsheed – three were eye doctors; the other was an ENT doctor. Hamouda says they operated Gaza’s largest network of family-owned eye clinics.

“We have no Hamas members [in our family]. They’re just ordinary people: doctors and grandmothers and grandfathers and uncles and aunts and children,” Abu Shaban said.

“I mean, if you want to exterminate Hamas then you should go to the source.”
Pleading for a ceasefire

The Maple Grove community has since rallied around the Hamouda family, showering them with love and support.

Community members visited the nearby Brooklyn Park Islamic Center last week to pray for the family. A staff member from Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s Minnesota office even called to offer condolences and extend an offer of assistance, Hamouda says.

But all Hamouda and Abu Shaban want is for the killing to stop.

“We’ve never seen in this day and age where the whole world is watching innocent people just being torn apart. Families, whole families, just wiped off the map,” Abu Shaban said.

“I want everybody to know that the people of Gaza are just like them, they hurt, they bleed, they have families, they have feelings.”

Photos and videos of the conflict flooding social media are too much to bear, he says.

Activists, human rights groups and international officials have all called for a ceasefire, but the war rages on, and has witnessed a new phase of dangerous ground operations.

Until the killing stops, Abu Shaban says his family still reels: “I’m still in this nightmare. I haven’t woken up yet.”

CNN’s Yahya Abou-Ghazala, Ivana Kottasova, Ben Wedeman, Akanksha Sharma and Tamar Michaelis contributed to this report.




Why the Israel-Hamas 'ceasefire' debate is so divisive


Andrew Romano
·West Coast Correspondent
Thu, November 2, 2023 

“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates.

Photo Illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Jacquelyn Marin/Pool/AFP via Getty Images, Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images, Getty Images (1).
What’s happening

As the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza escalates — with relentless Israeli airstrikes claiming the lives of more than 8,800 people there, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry — so too have calls for a ceasefire, both in the U.S. and abroad.

The calls for a ceasefire

Bombing “is not going to bring the hostages back safely,” Rep. Delia Ramirez, a Democrat from Illinois and one of 12 House progressives who recently signed a “Ceasefire Now” resolution, explained earlier this week. “The only way we are going to get to long-lasting peace is a ceasefire — is deescalating and using diplomacy.”


Global protests have echoed that message, as have humanitarian groups such as Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders. A nonbinding resolution demanding an immediate and “sustained humanitarian truce” in Gaza overwhelmingly passed the United Nations General Assembly on Friday.
The arguments against a ceasefire

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has unequivocally rejected calls for a ceasefire as his forces push deeper into Gaza as part of an expanded ground operation to eliminate Hamas after the militant group’s brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel that left more than 1,400 people dead.


Hamas also seized hundreds of hostages in the assault and has so far refused to release the vast majority of them.


“Just as the United States would not agree to a ceasefire after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or after the terrorist attack of 9/11, Israel will not agree to a cessation of hostilities with Hamas after the horrific attacks of Oct. 7,” Netanyahu said Monday. “Calls for a ceasefire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorism, to surrender to barbarism. ... Israel will stand against the forces of barbarism until victory.”

Why there’s debate

Amid an Israeli siege, fuel, food, water, electricity and medical supplies continue to dwindle in Gaza, dramatically worsening conditions in an impoverished enclave that human rights organizations have long described as an “open-air prison.”


Israeli airstrikes continue as well, hitting apartment buildings in Gaza’s largest refugee camp Wednesday for the second day in a row, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run government. The Israel Defense Forces said its strikes killed a top Hamas commander there Tuesday.


Proponents of a ceasefire argue that a formal commitment to end the fighting — with an eye toward a permanent political resolution — is the only way to adequately minimize civilian suffering and escape the region’s endless cycle of violence.


Ceasefire opponents, however, say that cycle will continue as long as Hamas, which strategically embeds itself in civilian areas and aspires to eradicate Israel and its Jewish population altogether, remains in control of Gaza — and that the only way to stop the bloodshed is by eliminating Hamas’s leaders and military capabilities.


Seeking to strike some sort of balance, the Biden administration — which has repeatedly emphasized Israel’s right to defend itself — has said that it opposes a full ceasefire but is now prepared to back “temporary localized humanitarian pauses to allow aid to get to specific populations and maybe even to help with the evacuation of people that want to get out,” as National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby put it Monday.

What’s next

Given the U.S. and Israeli positions, a traditional ceasefire seems unlikely anytime soon. But as protests continue and civilian casualties mount, political pressure will build for some sort of restraint.


“Food, water, medicine [and] other essential humanitarian assistance resilience must be able to flow into Gaza,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday. “Civilians must be able to stay out of harm’s way, a task that’s made even more difficult as Hamas uses civilians as human shields, and humanitarian pauses must be considered.”
Perspectives

The answer to violence is not more violence

“Civilians — wherever they are — must be protected equally. Gaza’s civilians did not choose this war. Atrocities should not be followed by more atrocities. The response to war crimes is not more war crimes.” — Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees, the Guardian

As long as Hamas remains in power, the violence will continue

“I don’t see how the cycle of hatred, killing, and suffering ends while there is a fundamentalist terrorist organization explicitly dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews — read its 1988 founding charter; the message is not subtle — equipped with legions of fighters ready to kill and die to achieve its goals, an arsenal of missiles, and a powerful state sponsor, Iran, that enables its violence and shares its explicitly genocidal agenda.” — Ned Lazarus, international affairs professor at George Washington University, the Atlantic

The Israeli people will not accept a ceasefire at this point

“It seems like the big demand from a lot of people who are critics of Israel is just, ‘You should have a cease-fire. They should stop doing what they’re currently doing.’ [But] Israelis of all stripes have unified around a need to do something ... really, really dramatic about the Hamas threat. … An expert on Israeli politics told me this point blank: ‘No ceasefire and no return to the status quo. Something needs to change.’” — Zack Beauchamp of Vox, in conversation with Ezra Klein, New York Times

A ceasefire ‘would mean Hamas would win’ — and nothing would change

“At present, [Hamas’s] military infrastructure still exists, its leadership remains largely intact, and its political control of Gaza is unchallenged. As Hamas did after conflicts with Israel in 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021, the group will almost certainly rearm and restore. It will be able to add to its system of tunnels running under the enclave. The strip will remain impoverished, and the next round of war will be inevitable, holding both Gazan civilians and much of the rest of the Middle East hostage to Hamas’s aims.” — Dennis Ross, former U.S. envoy to the Middle East, New York Times

Both sides should ‘pause’ — to free hostages, protect civilians and rethink their approaches to the war

“Israel should keep the door open for a humanitarian cease-fire and prisoner exchange that will also allow Israel to pause and reflect on exactly where it is going with its rushed Gaza military operation — and the price it could pay over the long haul. ... A pause could also allow the people of Gaza to take stock of what Hamas’s attack on Israel — and Israel’s totally predictable response — has done to their lives, families, homes and businesses. ... Hamas has gotten way too much understanding and not enough hard questions.” — Thomas Friedman, New York Times

A ‘humanitarian pause’ will only facilitate more fighting, not peace

“Generally, cease-fires aren’t simply about ceasing fighting, but about advancing or serving as a part of a broader political process — dialogue and negotiation, in other words, ideally leading to a long-term political settlement. Humanitarian pauses are not. A cease-fire is the only one of these two options that has the potential to produce a peaceful, nonviolent solution to the current conflict, because it’s the only one that treats such a solution as an actual goal. ... Cease-fires exist to facilitate dialogue and eventual peace; humanitarian pauses exist to facilitate continued fighting.” — Branko Marcetic, Jacobin

A ceasefire is fine — if Hamas surrenders

“Those who are demanding a ceasefire should aim their demands at Hamas. There can be a ceasefire the moment Hamas releases all its hostages and agrees to disarm by turning over all of its weapons to the United Nations or the government of Egypt. However, doing so would mean putting the wellbeing of the Palestinian people over Hamas’ genocidal ambitions — a fundamental rejection of Hamas’ entire purpose.” — Rep. Brad Sherman, California Democrat, Newsweek

What is the path to peace in Gaza?

Andrew Romano
·West Coast Correspondent
October 25, 2023

Photo Illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images [2]

“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates.
What’s happening

Ever since Hamas brutally attacked Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostage, Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu’s right-wing government has vowed to launch a large-scale ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and destroy the militant group once and for all.

But as the days have passed with no invasion — and as unbridled Israeli airstrikes have leveled large swaths of Gaza, killing at least 5,700, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry — experts, observers and even U.S. officials have started to question whether Israel has a workable plan for the “day after” it eliminates Hamas (assuming it can even accomplish that goal).

“The Biden administration is concerned that Israel lacks achievable military objectives in Gaza, and that the Israel Defense Forces are not yet ready to launch a ground invasion with a plan that can work,” the New York Times reported Monday.

In response, the U.S. has sent a Marine three-star general and several other U.S. military officers to Israel to help advise its military leadership — while also urging Israel to delay its ground offensive until hostage negotiations can play out.

Israeli forces will almost certainly invade Gaza. But the consensus is that how Israel fights Hamas — by minimizing or maximizing civilian casualties? by considering the future of the Palestinian people as well as its own? — will set the stage for what comes next.

Is peace a possibility, or will war engulf the entire region?

Why there’s debate

Over the last 75 years, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has proven to be perhaps the world’s most intractable and combustible problem. Given the current level of hostilities — and Israel’s increasingly hard-line internal politics — a lasting resolution has rarely seemed more remote.

Yet as David Ignatius, a longtime foreign-affairs reporter and columnist at the Washington Post, recently explained, wars in the Middle East tend to “open new opportunities for peace.”

“That was true with the 1973 war, which produced [Egyptian President Anwar] Sadat’s trip to Jerusalem and eventually the Camp David Peace Agreement between Egypt and Israel,” Ignatius wrote. “The First Intifada produced [the] Oslo [Accords] and the Palestinian Authority. This war will produce openings, too, if Israel and the Arabs are wise enough to see and pursue them.”

The question is what Israel — and allies such as the United States — must do today to pave the way for such opportunities later.

A cease-fire is unlikely, at least before Hamas releases its hostages. But most experts agree that Israel’s current trajectory — “Obliterating Hamas capabilities” at all costs, as Israel's ambassador to the United Nations put it last week, without “thinking now what will happen the day after the war” — risks maximizing Palestinian deaths.

Such an approach could also mire Israeli forces in Gaza for the foreseeable future, triggering outrage in the wider Arab world and drawing Iran and Iranian-backed militant groups such as Hezbollah into the conflict.

So is there a different path — a path that might aim to alleviate rather than intensify the region’s endless cycle of violence? And if so, can Israel be convinced to pursue it?
What’s next

Publicly, President Biden has spent the last few weeks emphasizing America’s unstinting support for the Jewish state. But behind the scenes his administration has successfully pressured Netanyahu to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, and there are signs that the U.S. is using the hours before Israel’s seemingly inevitable invasion to steer its hawkish government toward a more far-sighted course of action.

“As hard as it is, we cannot give up on peace. We cannot give up on a two-state solution,” Biden posted Monday on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, referring to the diplomatic plan that envisions an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. “Israelis and Palestinians equally deserve to live in safety, dignity, and peace.”
Perspectives

Eliminate Hamas now; diplomacy can come later.

“At this moment, Israel’s imperative is not to stall, but to conclude. To see this through, it must dismantle the roots of this recurrent cycle of violence, which are embedded deep within the toxic ideology of Hamas. Once Hamas and its violent brand of nationalism are defeated, the two-state solution, and the prospect of a lasting peace, can be meaningfully revisited.” — Joe Roberts, National Post (Canada)

But the problem is that ‘indiscriminate destruction’ will only lead to more Hamas-like extremism.

“Hamas, whose atrocities deserve bitter condemnation, is a product of alienation, desperation, and dispossession. The movement is seen by millions of Palestinians as part of a resistance to exactly the kind of indiscriminate destruction Israel is now unleashing upon a defenseless population. If Israel truly wanted to ‘wipe Hamas off the face of the earth,’ as its defense minister says, it would deal with the conditions that created them.” — Ronan Burtenshaw, Jacobin

So Israel needs to reframe its approach ahead of the invasion…

“Israel would be much better off framing any Gaza operation as ‘Operation Save Our Hostages’ — rather than ‘Operation End Hamas Once and for All’ — and carrying it out, if possible, with repeated surgical strikes and special forces that can still get the Hamas leadership but also draw the brightest possible line between Gazan civilians and the Hamas dictatorship.” — Thomas Friedman, New York Times

… and make ‘the aim of the war itself … a lasting Israeli–Palestinian peace rather than the military defeat of Palestinian aspirations for statehood.’

“A more targeted campaign against Hamas’s leadership and capabilities could be coupled with a historic effort to secure significant Arab support and resources for ... a reconstructed Gaza. ... Gaza’s southern border could become a conduit for humanitarian support to Palestinian civilians rather than a route to expel them permanently into Egypt.” — Ben Rhodes, New York Review of Books

Now is the time to start figuring out who will govern Gaza.

“Israel doesn’t want to run Gaza, and its proxies will be rejected as collaborators. The best hope — the only hope, really — is that moderate Arab nations will work to create a new, post-Hamas structure that will represent a new Palestinian Authority that could govern the West Bank, as well.” — David Ignatius, Washington Post

Israel can learn from America’s failures in Iraq.

“If you fail to try to build something better in Hamas’s place or try in a halfhearted way, Israel will gain only a few years’ respite. … So what should you prioritize at the outset? … 1. End Hamas’s culture of economic corruption in Gaza. … 2. Listen to what Gaza’s residents want. … 3. Change the educational curriculum. … 4. Find a path for Gazans to write a constitution that will lead toward a more democratic state that can live in peace side by side with Israel. … 5. Show Gazans that Israel is prepared to help Gaza rebuild economically. … 6. Border security for Gaza that Israel can live with — not a siege — is vital.” — Thomas S. Warrick, former State Department and Homeland Security official, in the New York Times

The ‘work of moral rebuilding’ must begin too.

“Israel desperately needs a genuinely Jewish and Palestinian political party, not because it can win power but because it can model a politics based on common liberal democratic values, not tribe. American Jews who rightly hate Hamas but know, in their bones, that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is profoundly wrong must ask themselves a painful question: What nonviolent forms of Palestinian resistance to oppression will I support? More Palestinians and their supporters must express revulsion at the murder of innocent Israeli Jews and affirm that Palestinian liberation means living equally alongside them in safety and freedom.” — Peter Beinart, New York Times

Does a Two-State Solution, Long Discounted, Still Have a Future?

Mark Landler
Updated Wed, November 1, 2023 

From left: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel; President Donald Trump; Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, the minister of foreign affairs of Bahrain; and Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, minister of foreign affairs of the United Arab Emirates; on the day the Abraham Accords were signed at the White House in Washington, Sept. 15, 2020. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)


JERUSALEM — “There has to be a vision of what comes next,” President Joe Biden said last week of the war between Israel and Hamas. “In our view, it has to be a two-state solution.” The surest path to peace, said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain, is a two-state solution, a sentiment echoed by President Emmanuel Macron of France.

At first glance, their words seemed like a sepia-tinted throwback: invoking, as a remedy for the worst eruption of bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians in many years, the faded relic of a peace process that many on both sides viewed as dead and buried some time late in the Obama administration.

And yet, the two-state solution — Israelis and Palestinians living side-by-side in their own sovereign countries — is getting a new hearing, not just in foreign-policy circles in Washington, London and Paris but also, more quietly, among the combatants themselves. In part, it reflects the lack of any other viable alternative.

“We cannot return to a pattern where every other year, there is a violent confrontation between Israel and Hamas,” said Gilead Sher, who helped lead Israel’s negotiations with the Palestinians in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the two sides arguably came closest to striking a two-state settlement.

“If America engages in what President Biden has stated he would commit to, there is a chance,” Sher said. “There is a chance for negotiations that could provide a step-by-step process to two distinct states.”

Such an effort would have to overcome a thicket of obstacles, not least the proliferation of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which Palestinians say have eroded the dream of creating a viable state on that land. The rise of ultranationalists in Israel further complicates the task: They oppose Palestinian statehood, seek to annex the West Bank, and know that uprooting the settlers is political dynamite.

Sher listed a string of caveats for Israeli-Palestinian talks: The two sides would have to start modestly, with a political process focused on disengagement rather than a high-stakes negotiation over the details of two states. Both would need new leaders, he said, since the existing ones have proved to be unwilling or incapable of striking a deal. Above all, Hamas would have to be vanquished and the Gaza Strip demilitarized.

Israeli officials say they are focused on the battle against Hamas, which could last for months, and that any discussion of a peace process must wait until after the guns are silent. But in think tanks and corners of the Israeli foreign ministry, discussion of what a day-after political process would look like has already begun.

Among Palestinians, suffering Israel’s bombardment and blockade of Gaza, and rising tensions on the West Bank, the prospects for statehood appear even more far-fetched. But some Palestinians argue that the shock of the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 has stripped Israelis of the illusion that they can manage conflict with Palestinians without confronting their deeper aspirations for nationhood.

“What happened on Oct. 7 should push us to be more creative and more innovative about the two-state solution,” said Nidal Foqaha, director general of the Palestinian Peace Coalition, a nonprofit group based in Ramallah, in the West Bank. “Without a political horizon, this is an impossible mission.”

The mechanics of such a process are far from clear. The European Union last week called for an international peace conference, an idea championed by Spain, which held a landmark Middle East peace summit in Madrid in 1991. Arab nations could also convene peace negotiations, though an early effort by Egypt last week, as the Israeli military operation in Gaza was gearing up, produced little.

By all accounts, the United States would have to take a central role in any talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. That has not happened since the Obama administration, when the secretary of state at the time, John Kerry, shuttled between the two sides in 2013 and 2014 before giving up in frustration. It was a quest that even then, some aides to President Barack Obama viewed as quixotic.

Under President Donald Trump, the United States shifted its energy from resolving the Palestinian issue to normalizing relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors. That strategy dovetailed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in a coalition with right-wing partners who openly disdained the idea of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu has swung between saying he would be willing to consider a Palestinian nation with limited security powers, and opposing it outright.

“One of the biggest issues with the phrase ‘two-state solution’ is that it fails to address the very real threats against Israel that exist now, and will likely continue to exist, within certain segments of Palestinian society and elsewhere,” said Jason D. Greenblatt, who was Trump’s special envoy to the region.

Greenblatt said the Trump administration’s approach to peacemaking emphasized Israel’s security needs. The Abraham Accords, the Trump-brokered deal under which Israel normalized relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in 2020, forestalled an Israeli plan to annex 30% of the West Bank. But it effectively set aside the goal of a Palestinian state.

Despite its fealty to the dream of two states, the Biden administration largely adopted the Trump blueprint. It had been trying to broker a deal that would normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, an even greater prize for Israel than the Gulf emirates, given Saudi Arabia’s status as the vanguard of the Arab world.

Those talks have been put on hold by the Israel-Hamas war. But if Israel were able to revive them, that could put the two-state solution back on the table. The Saudis have told Secretary of State Antony Blinken that they want steps toward a Palestinian state to be part of any normalization accord with Israel.

Arab countries are also likely to push for the Palestinian issue to be addressed as a condition of playing a role in stabilizing and rebuilding postwar Gaza. Dangling the prospect of a Palestinian state could reassure Egypt and Jordan, which are alarmed by the prospect of millions of refugees from Gaza.

“Part of this is to give them the framing, the packaging, they need to take part in a solution for Gaza,” said Ghaith Al-Omari, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research organization. “That’s one reason I think the president talked about it, even if it seemed irrelevant.”

The odds of progress with the current Israeli and Palestinian leaders are nonexistent, Al-Omari said. Netanyahu’s governing coalition includes ultranationalist partners who want to annex the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967 and which they refer to by the biblical names of Judea and Samaria.

At a minimum, his government was committed to rapidly expanding the number of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Since the Hamas attacks, attacks on Palestinians by settlers and Israeli troops have surged.

The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, 87, has lost legitimacy with his public, analysts said, particularly after he canceled elections in 2021. Critics say Netanyahu contributed to the weakening of the Palestinian Authority by pursuing a divide-and-conquer strategy that bolstered Hamas.

Diplomatic historians like to point out that the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, came tantalizingly close to a deal with Israel brokered by President Bill Clinton in 2000, only to walk away. And that was before hundreds of thousands of new settlers put down roots across the West Bank.

Violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians have cut both ways in terms of influencing subsequent peace efforts. The barbaric nature of the Hamas attacks and the ferocity of the Israeli military response in Gaza, experts said, makes the coming debate in Israel particularly unpredictable.

“There will be two sides to that debate,” said Dennis B. Ross, a peace negotiator under Clinton and Obama. “What Hamas showed is that it is too dangerous to have a Palestinian state next to us because it could become dominated by groups like Hamas. The countervailing argument will be, once we defeat Hamas, we cannot freeze the situation with the Palestinians on our terms indefinitely.”

Al-Omari, who once advised Palestinian negotiators, suggested a less calculated reason for the reemergence of the two-state solution.

“This is similar to 9/11 in that everyone knows something huge has happened and there are going to be changes, but no one knows what the changes are going to be,” he said. “You default to your muscle memory; you default to your talking points. It’s a placeholder while you figure out what will happen.”

c.2023 The New York Times Company