{"id":12377,"date":"2023-12-08T17:46:26","date_gmt":"2023-12-08T17:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=12377"},"modified":"2023-12-08T17:46:26","modified_gmt":"2023-12-08T17:46:26","slug":"israel-moves-into-southern-gaza-after-a-week-long-truce-and-its-goals-are-murkier-than-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=12377","title":{"rendered":"Israel moves into southern Gaza after a week-long truce \u2014 and its goals are murkier than ever"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“The continued, widespread bombing of civilian buildings to get at the tunnels underneath, where Hamas protects fighters and its supplies, has already caused thousands of deaths, but Raphael Cohen<\/a>, director of the strategy and doctrine program with RAND Project AIR FORCE, told Vox there\u2019s no real alternative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIsrael\u2019s been seized with the tunnel issue since Operation Protective Edge, so at least since 2014, at least the past decade, and has invested a lot of time and energy into \u2026 how you detect these things, but hasn\u2019t figured out a foolproof way of finding them, particularly without being there on the ground,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no silver bullet to detect them, and once you find them, then you have to destroy the tunnel, and there\u2019s no clean way to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But an investigation by the Israeli outlets +972 and Local Call<\/a> this week indicates that in northern Gaza, the IDF was far less precise in its operations than necessary to keep from harming civilians \u2014 backing up what Israeli officials<\/a> have already said about their approach being destructive rather than surgical. According to the investigation, based on interviews with current and former Israeli intelligence operatives, the military \u201chas files on the vast majority of potential targets in Gaza \u2014 including homes \u2014 which stipulate the number of civilians who are likely to be killed in an attack on a particular target.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of those targets, which the military calls \u201cpower targets\u201d are \u201cnot distinctly military in nature,\u201d according to the investigation, and \u201cinclude private residences as well as public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks.\u201d The investigation found that the military has stepped up its attacks on power targets in the latest conflict, dubbed \u201cOperation Swords of Iron.\u201d That, in turn, has exponentially increased the number of civilian casualties, as has the use of artificial intelligence to generate Hamas targets, according to the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it\u2019s because someone in the army decided it wasn\u2019t a big deal for her to be killed \u2014 that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target,\u201d one source told the outlet. \u201cWe are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The IDF has destroyed much of northern Gaza\u2019s infrastructure \u2014 around 98,000 buildings <\/a>have been demolished or damaged in the north, according to a BBC review of satellite imagery. Throughout the region, about 60 percent of the housing stock has been damaged or destroyed, Al Jazeera<\/a> reported.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/world-politics\/2023\/12\/2\/23985622\/israel-goals-southern-gaza-truce-hamas<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The continued, widespread bombing of civilian buildings to get at the tunnels underneath, where Hamas protects fighters and its supplies, has already caused thousands of deaths, but Raphael Cohen, director of the strategy and doctrine program with RAND Project AIR FORCE, told Vox there\u2019s no real alternative.
\n\u201cIsrael\u2019s been seized with the tunnel issue since Operation Protective Edge, so at least since 2014, at least the past decade, and has invested a lot of time and energy into \u2026 how you detect these things, but hasn\u2019t figured out a foolproof way of finding them, particularly without being there on the ground,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no silver bullet to detect them, and once you find them, then you have to destroy the tunnel, and there\u2019s no clean way to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But an investigation by the Israeli outlets +972 and Local Call this week indicates that in northern Gaza, the IDF was far less precise in its operations than necessary to keep from harming civilians \u2014 backing up what Israeli officials have already said about their approach being destructive rather than surgical. According to the investigation, based on interviews with current and former Israeli intelligence operatives, the military \u201chas files on the vast majority of potential targets in Gaza \u2014 including homes \u2014 which stipulate the number of civilians who are likely to be killed in an attack on a particular target.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of those targets, which the military calls \u201cpower targets\u201d are \u201cnot distinctly military in nature,\u201d according to the investigation, and \u201cinclude private residences as well as public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks.\u201d The investigation found that the military has stepped up its attacks on power targets in the latest conflict, dubbed \u201cOperation Swords of Iron.\u201d That, in turn, has exponentially increased the number of civilian casualties, as has the use of artificial intelligence to generate Hamas targets, according to the report.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it\u2019s because someone in the army decided it wasn\u2019t a big deal for her to be killed \u2014 that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target,\u201d one source told the outlet. \u201cWe are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.\u201d<\/p>\n

The IDF has destroyed much of northern Gaza\u2019s infrastructure \u2014 around 98,000 buildings have been demolished or damaged in the north, according to a BBC review of satellite imagery. Throughout the region, about 60 percent of the housing stock has been damaged or destroyed, Al Jazeera reported.”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/world-politics\/2023\/12\/2\/23985622\/israel-goals-southern-gaza-truce-hamas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[552,1302,1301,194,391,389,108,115,158],"class_list":["post-12377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-conflict","tag-gaza","tag-hamas","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-palestine","tag-terrorism","tag-terrorists","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12377"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12378,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12377\/revisions\/12378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}