Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on November 04-05/2023
Unmasking Nasrallah's Theatrical and Deceptive Hollywood-Style Speech/Elias Bejjani/November 03/2023
Condemnation of the Killing of Children and Innocents should include all peoples and races, or it becomes akin to crocodile tears shed for the sake of pretense or self-pity/Etienne Saqr – Abu Arz/November 04/2023
Israeli jets hit Lebanon as Hezbollah fires more powerful missile
New round of Hezbollah-Israel skirmishes erupts on the border
Mikati meets Blinken in Jordan and al-Sisi in Egypt
White House and Netanyahu warn Nasrallah after speech
Both Blinken and Nasrallah offer signals against a wider war
US Secretary of State Blinken meets with Lebanese caretaker PM
Israelis near Lebanon border say 'ready' for anything
Pentagon believes Hezbollah won't escalate fighting
Blinken shares "deep concern" about Lebanon-Israel border tension with Lebanese PM Mikati
Netanyahu warns Nasrallah: Any mistake will cost you a price that you cannot even imagine
Caretaker Prime Minister Mikati's Regional Peace Initiative: From Plan to Action
Mikati Commends Egypt's Support during Talks with President el-Sisi
Hezbollah's Nasrallah warns Israel against escalation: The implications
Hezbollah's Nasrallah addresses recent developments: A comprehensive analysis
Hezbollah should not 'exploit' the war between Israel and Hamas: The White House
Jumblat says Nasrallah speech 'realistic', Gemayel sees 'nothing new'
What Did Nasrallah Really Say, and Why?/Hanin Ghaddar/The Washington Institute/November 04/2023
Assessing the Reported Pantsir Delivery to Hezbollah/Andrew J. Tabler and Anna Borshchevskaya/The Washington Institute/November 04/2023

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on November 04-05/2023
Blinken rejects Arab demand for urgent Gaza truce
US special envoy: No record of Hamas blocking or seizing aid
Blinken in Jordan seeking to contain Hamas-Israel war
Israel resists US pressure to pause war, wants hostages back first
How Israel shot down a ballistic missile in space for the first time
Palestinians report Israeli airstrikes overnight, including in southern Gaza
Deadly Israel strike on Gaza ambulance convoy sparks condemnation
Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza denies Israeli assertion that ambulances were used by fighters
Blinken meets with Qatari counterpart in Amman
Jordan: Blinken to meet with several Arab foreign ministers Saturday
730 foreign nationals expected to cross through Rafah Saturday, Egyptian source says
Obama calls conflict in Middle East a ‘moral reckoning for all of us’
‘An existential threat’: Antisemitic attacks soar across Europe amid Israel-Hamas war
Tens of thousands join pro-Palestinian marches across UK
Thousands of protesters in Berlin show solidarity with Palestinians
Turkey recalls Israel ambassador amid tense relations with Netanyahu
Iranians mark the anniversary of the 1979 US Embassy takeover while calling for a cease-fire in Gaza

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on November 04-05/2023
Iran's Genocidal War Against the Jews Biden Must Enforce Sanctions Now/Majid Rafizadeh/Gatestone Institute./November 4, 2023
The road to Israel’s recovery starts with removing Netanyahu from office/Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/November 04, 2023
A shift to ‘strategic interdependence’ could revive the EU’s troubled policy on North Africa/Hafed Al-Ghwell/Arab News/November 04, 2023
The End of Israel’s Gaza Illusions...This War Is Unlike Any Other—and Must Begin at Home/Assaf Orion/Foreign Affairs/November 04/2023
A Meaningful Endgame in Gaza Will Separate Transformation from Revenge/Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib/The Washington Institute/November 04/2023
INSIGHT-How Hamas aims to trap Israel in Gaza quagmire/Samia Nakhoul and Laila Bassam and Matt Spetalnick/Reuters/November 4, 2023

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on November 04-05/2023
Unmasking Nasrallah's Theatrical and Deceptive Hollywood-Style Speech
Elias Bejjani/November 03/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/123886/123886/
Hassan Nasrallah's speech delivered today in Beirut, has unveiled a host of hypocritical aspects shrouding the so-called slogans of resistance and liberation. In a Hollywood-style, delusional, and deceptive manner, Nasrallah's address was nothing short of a scandal, attracting significant attention. His appearance, filled with feigned piety, false claims, and empty rhetoric, exposed a vast chasm between the image that he and Iran attempt to project about their alliance as forces of resistance and opposition to American hegemony and the feeble, cartoonish reality that the content of his speech revealed.
Not a shred of credibility, seriousness, or realism could be found in Nasrallah's remarks, nor did he exhibit even a modicum of respect for the slogans and fanaticism of liberating Palestine and eliminating the State of Israel within seven minutes, as has been falsely claimed by Iran's military, religious, and civilian leaders.
His overt focus on the "Great Satan," the United States, and his attribution of all the consequences of supporting and protecting Israel to it, despite his portrayal of Israel as fragile as a spider's web, reveals a deceptive and evasive approach to avoiding commitments tied to the enormous military capabilities proclaimed by Iran's axis.The narrative, content, heresies, justifications, and allegations in his speech blatantly confirmed that Nasrallah, despite the aura surrounding him, is nothing more than a foot soldier in Iran's terrorist army, a mere mouthpiece, and a puppet. He possesses no independent decision-making ability and merely obeys Iran's orders without question.What Nasrallah demonstrated through his speech is that the Persian state is not, as some suggest, a genuine force of resistance, liberation, and principles; rather, it is an avaricious and immoral merchant, driven solely by selfish local, international, regional, and self-interested objectives, even at the expense of Arab countries, their people, and their wealth in general, and at the expense of the Palestinian cause and blood in particular.
Nasrallah's deceptive and delusional speech once again sheds light on Iran's sinister attempts to sow strife, division, and religious sectarianism among Arab peoples, and exploit the Palestinian people's suffering. The Arab world must remain vigilant against the openly declared Iranian schemes.
To thwart Iranian plots, Arab nations must strive for peace in the region, adopt moderate positions, and confront foreign Iranian interventions that threaten regional stability, peace, and security.
In conclusion, Nasrallah's speech was a staged farce, exposing the deficiencies of the satanic axis of resistance and revealing the true goals of Iran's mullahs. It is important to remember that Hassan Nasrallah, despite his arrogance and inflated media image, is a mere pawn in Iran's army, a mere mouthpiece, trumpet, and cymbal in everything he utters. Today, not tomorrow, it is imperative for Arab countries, particularly the Palestinians, to openly declare Iran as an enemy, boycott it, and dismantle all its armed terrorist and militia proxies.

Condemnation of the Killing of Children and Innocents should include all peoples and races, or it becomes akin to crocodile tears shed for the sake of pretense or self-pity.
Etienne Saqr – Abu Arz/November 04/2023
Crocodile Tears
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/123913/123913/
President Putin said that any normal person would be angered by seeing images of children stained with blood in Gaza, and we agree with him. However, we ask him:
When the Syrian regime’s artillery and rocket launchers were pounding Lebanese homes and targeting sleeping children in their beds or shelters, we didn’t hear a single statement of condemnation from Moscow for the monstrous massacres committed by “Assad” that spilled the blood of our people for three continuous decades!!!
What about the citizens of Ukraine and their children who are pursued by supersonic Russian rockets, killing them every day???
And what about the children of Syria who were chased by Sukhoi fighters and explosive barrels, with thousands of them killed and buried under the rubble of their homes???
The condemnation of the killing of children and innocents should include all peoples and races, or it becomes akin to crocodile tears shed for the sake of pretense or self-pity.
The butcher reveals his true nature when he lectures on humanity.
Long Live Lebanon
Etienne Saqr – Abu Arz
(Free translation from Arabic by: Elias Bejjani)

Israeli jets hit Lebanon as Hezbollah fires more powerful missile
BEIRUT (Reuters)/November 4, 2023
Lebanon's Hezbollah said it carried out simultaneous attacks on Israeli positions at the Lebanese border on Saturday, as residents of south Lebanon reported some of the fiercest Israeli strikes yet during weeks of cross-border clashes. The Israeli army said its warplanes had struck Hezbollah targets in response to an earlier attack from Lebanese territory, and was accompanying the air strikes with artillery and tank shelling. A Lebanese source familiar with Hezbollah's attacks said the group had fired a powerful missile not yet used in the fighting, saying it had hit an Israeli position across the border from the villages of Ayta al-Shaab and Rmeich. Hezbollah has been exchanging fire with Israeli forces across the Lebanese-Israeli frontier since its Palestinian ally Hamas went to war with Israel on Oct. 7. It marks the worst fighting at the frontier since a 2006 war, but has mostly been contained to the border area. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in his first speech since the Hamas-Israel war began, said on Friday escalation on the Lebanese front would depend on events in Gaza and Israeli actions towards Lebanon. He also said the attacks so far at the border "won't be all" Hezbollah does. Nearly 60 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in the violence. Security sources and witnesses in Lebanon reported some of the heaviest Israeli strikes yet. Two thick columns of smoke were seen rising over hills near the Lebanese town of Khiyam‮ ‬in video shared with Reuters by Khiyam resident Soheil Salami, who said the area had been hit by an Israeli air strike. "The shelling today intensified a lot - the shelling by the resistance and the counter shelling by the Israelis," said Fouad Khreis, also speaking to Reuters from Khiyam. "Four shells fell on the outskirts of Khiyam, with no injuries," he said. The Israeli army said among the targets struck were "terrorist infrastructure, rocket caches, and compounds used by" Hezbollah. Israel has said it has no interest in a conflict on its northern frontier. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month warned Hezbollah against opening a second war front, saying that doing so would bring Israeli counter-strikes of "unimaginable" magnitude that would wreak "devastation" upon Lebanon.

New round of Hezbollah-Israel skirmishes erupts on the border
Naharnet/November 04/2023
Hezbollah on Saturday attacked the al-Jirdah, Hadb al-Bustan, Jal al-Alam and Malkia Israeli military posts on Lebanon’s border. Israel retaliated with an airstrike on the al-Labbouneh area in Naqoura and artillery shelling on the Lebanese border areas of Naqoura, Yarin, Tayr Harfa, Dhayra, Shihin and Aitaroun. The Israeli army said it targeted “two cells that tried to fire shells from Lebanon at Israeli territory.” It also said that it destroyed a Hezbollah surveillance post. It had earlier said that one of its tanks had attacked a cell that was trying to fire anti-tank shells as a drone targeted a militant who approached the border fence in the Shlomi area.

Mikati meets Blinken in Jordan and al-Sisi in Egypt
Naharnet/November 04/2023
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Saturday met in Jordan with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. During the meeting, Mikati stressed “the priority of working for a ceasefire in Gaza to halt the continuous Israeli aggression there, and also working on stopping the Israeli aggression against south Lebanon,” Lebanon’s National News Agency said. Mikati decried “the scorched earth policy that Israel is following by using internationally-prohibited weapons to create increased human casualties and destroy southern areas and towns,” NNA said. He also emphasized that Lebanon is committed to U.N. resolutions and coordination with UNIFIL, urging the international community to press Israel to halt its daily violations. Blinken for his part told Mikati that he is exerting efforts to halt the military operations for humanitarian purposes and in order to launch discussions over the captives file. Mikati later arrived in Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The premier, who recently visited Qatar, has said that he would visit several Arab countries in a bid to protect Lebanon amid the current conflagration in the region.

White House and Netanyahu warn Nasrallah after speech
Agence France Presse/November 04/2023
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has said that Hezbollah "should not try to take advantage of the ongoing conflict," shortly after Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah delivered a much-hyped speech in which he addressed threats to both Israel and the United States over the ongoing war in Gaza and the skirmishes in south Lebanon. "This has the potential of becoming a bloodier war between Israel and Lebanon than 2006," Jean-Pierre warned. "The United States does not want to see this conflict expand into Lebanon," she added. In his first speech since war broke out last month between Hamas militants and Israel, Nasrallah said the United States was "entirely responsible" for the ongoing Gaza conflict, and could stave off a regional conflagration by preventing its ally Israel's attacks. Jean-Pierre said: "We will not engage in a war of words." "The likely devastation for Lebanon and its people would be unimaginable and is avoidable," she added. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile warned Hezbollah it would "pay an unimaginable price" for any misstep. The 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 in Israel, largely soldiers. Since October 8, cross-border Hezbollah-Israel skirmishes have killed 72 people on the Lebanese side, among them at least 54 Hezbollah fighters but also other combatants and civilians, including a Reuters journalist, according to an AFP tally. On the Israeli side, at least six soldiers and one civilian have been killed, the army said. Maha Yahya of the Carnegie Middle East Center, said Nasrallah's speech was "the best middle ground that he could take." Ultimately "neither Iran nor Hezbollah are interested in getting into a conflict which would probably end up being a zero sum game," she said.

Both Blinken and Nasrallah offer signals against a wider war
Associated Press/November 04/2023
Julia Norman, an associate professor of politics and international relations at University College London, has said that both U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah -- two actors who “are going to be very influential on how the conflict moves from this point” -- have both offered signals Friday against a wider war. “That’s not to say it won’t, but the messaging today from both seemed to be ... trying to operate within a sense of restraint and to not have this ripple out even further,” she said. Nasrallah voiced his remarks, the first since the Israel-Hamas war began, during a Hezbollah ceremony commemorating the around 50 Hezbollah fighters who have been killed in clashes with Israel in south Lebanon since October 8. Blinken meanwhile made statements in Israel where he is visiting for the third time since the war's eruption.

US Secretary of State Blinken meets with Lebanese caretaker PM
Reuters/November 04/2023
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday met with Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and shared his "deep" concern about exchanges of fire along Lebanon's southern border with Israel, a State Department spokesperson said.
"He stressed the importance of ensuring the Israel-Hamas conflict does not spread elsewhere," spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement, adding that Blinken thanked Mikati for his leadership in preventing Lebanon from being pulled into the war.

Israelis near Lebanon border say 'ready' for anything
Agence France Presse/November 04/2023
The remaining residents of Israel's northern settlement of Kiryat Shmona, those who have not fled rising cross-border fire from south Lebanon, have said that they are ready for whatever happens. The Israel-Lebanon border has seen escalating tit-for-tat exchanges, mainly between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, since Palestinian militants of Hezbollah ally Hamas launched a shock attack on Israel on October 7, stoking fears of a wider regional conflict. Both Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon are backed by Iran, Israel's sworn enemy. Kiryat Shmona was hit by a barrage of rockets on Thursday, with both Hezbollah and the Lebanese section of Hamas' armed wing claiming to have attacked several targets in northern Israel. "We are ready, we're not worried. We are Israeli people, we are tough people ... we will do whatever it takes," said Boaz Shalgi who lives in Kibbutz Gonen around 30 kilometers from the border. Shalgi said "nothing in the world" could push him out of the Galilee. "We are very happy to be living here. Usually, it's quiet and peaceful, but when we have to go to war to protect our children, our families, our communities, we do it without hesitation."
On Kiryat Shmona's main artery Tel Hai Avenue, the impact crater left by a rocket on Thursday in front of a restaurant was small, but the smell of burning lingered.
Running for cover
No one had yet come to remove the burned car and motorcycle outside the storefront. Two men were wounded in Thursday's attack and received medical care, one for severe burns, according to Ziv Hospital in the northern city of Safed. Nahor Duani came to look over the damage the blast caused to his electronics store which sells phones and computers. His shop is next to the restaurant. The windows of his shop were broken, a few phones were scattered on the ground and the electrics in the store were damaged. When the rocket hit the day before he immediately ran to the underground shelter to take cover. "Here, the rocket hits at the same time as the alarm because it's so close" to the border with Lebanon, Duani said. In central Israel, residents have an estimated 90 seconds from when a siren sounds to reach a shelter. Duani said he trusts the government and military to do their job. "They do the work, I just hope it will be quiet soon," he said. Israel has called up 360,000 reservists to fight Hamas in the war in Gaza, and soldiers are visible everywhere in and around Kiryat Shmona.
- Hezbollah warning -
The conflict was triggered by Hamas' bloody raids on October 7, which Israeli officials say killed more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says more than 9,227 people have died in Israeli bombardments, mostly women and children. Shalgi, a tour guide, said of Kiryat Shmona that he hopes "in a few weeks or months, when the Gaza war is over and all this is over, this place will be calm for a long time."In his first speech since the war broke out last month, Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel on Friday against attacking Lebanon, saying that "all options are open on our Lebanese front."Israel's military said on Thursday it had retaliated after the fire from Lebanon and targeted Hezbollah's "military infrastructure, command and control centers, rocket launch sites, weapons storage facilities, and military complexes." Since October 7, six soldiers and one civilian have been killed on the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon, according to the army. In southern Lebanon, 72 people have been killed, according to an AFP count, among them 54 members of Hezbollah.

Pentagon believes Hezbollah won't escalate fighting
Agence France Presse/November 04/2023
The U.S. Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder has said that he does not think Hezbollah would escalate the fighting with Israel, even after Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addressed threats to both Israel and the United States.
"A broader regional conflict has been deterred," Ryder told the BBC. "Right now, we see this conflict as contained between Israel and Hamas," he said.

Blinken shares "deep concern" about Lebanon-Israel border tension with Lebanese PM Mikati
CNN/Jennifer Hansler/November 04/2023
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed his "deep concern" in a meeting with Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati in Amman on Saturday about the cross-fire along Lebanon's southern border with Israel. “Secretary Blinken thanked the Prime Minister for his leadership in preventing Lebanon from being pulled into a war that the Lebanese people do not want, as well as his efforts with regional partners to pursue durable and sustainable peace in the region,” State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said. “The Secretary discussed US efforts to secure humanitarian assistance for civilians in Gaza and noted that Lebanon needs to select a President to lead the country through both the regional and domestic crises.” Some context: Iran-backed Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah has been engaged in daily skirmishes with Israeli forces on the Lebanon-Israel border since October 8. On Friday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah hailed the crossfire as an "unprecedented battle" but called for a ceasefire in Gaza, signalling a reluctance to widen hostilities with Israel.

Netanyahu warns Nasrallah: Any mistake will cost you a price that you cannot even imagine
LBCI/November 4, 2023
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in response to Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: "Any mistake will cost you a price that you cannot even imagine, and I advise our enemies in the north not to try us."

Caretaker Prime Minister Mikati's Regional Peace Initiative: From Plan to Action
LBCI/November 4, 2023
The regional initiatives taken by Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati do not arise from a vacuum. In an article published on October 31st, The Economist revealed that Mikati has a plan for peace in Gaza focusing on the following points:
· A humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza for five days
· Hamas releases some prisoners, both civilians and foreigners
-Israel allows the entry of aid convoys
· Hamas stops launching rockets
According to The Economist, if the first stage succeeds, it will transition to the second one to reach a permanent agreement based on a two-state solution, including a comprehensive prisoner exchange. Mikati began discussing this plan with Iranian Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian during his visit to Beirut on October 14th, considering Iranians as part of the peaceful understanding in the region. He received the green light from Abdollahian. Mikati then went to Qatar on October 29th to discuss these ideas with Qatari officials. In this context, Mikati also met with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Amman and met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Mikati's initiative is ongoing, and he will carry it to more Arab and non-Western countries, including the Arab Summit in Riyadh on the 11th, hoping to achieve a ceasefire before its convening, and an agreement on a partial exchange of prisoners would already been reached.

Mikati Commends Egypt's Support during Talks with President el-Sisi
LBCI/November 4, 2023
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati expressed on Saturday his appreciation for Egypt's consistent support for Lebanon during a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo. The meeting was attended by Minister Abbas Kamel and Lebanon's Ambassador to Egypt and the Arab League, Ali al-Halabi. Mikati stated after the meeting that Egypt, which always carries the burdens of the Arab world, is making significant efforts to stop the Israeli aggression on Gaza and halt the massacres committed against the Palestinians. He declared his support for the Egyptian President's stance in rejecting the displacement of Palestinians from their land and his efforts to find a solution starting with a ceasefire, protecting civilians, and then working towards a permanent solution to the Palestinian Cause that preserves the rights of Palestinians in their independent state. The Prime Minister had arrived in Egypt before noon and was received at Cairo Airport by the Minister of Military Production, Mohamed Salah al-Din.

Hezbollah's Nasrallah warns Israel against escalation: The implications
LBCI/November 4, 2023
The Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, addressed the situation during his speech on behalf of the "Axis of Resistance."
 This article was originally published in and translated from Lebanese newspaper Nidaa al-Watan.
He denied any knowledge of Iran and its allies' involvement in the "Operation of Al-Aqsa Flood" but praised it. He also emphasized establishing the front line opened by the party starting from the eighth of last month. Nasrallah outlined the purpose of this front, which is to support the Hamas movement in its war against Israel. He did not rule out that the southern front is open to all possibilities, indicating the potential for further escalation, a full-scale war, or even a wider conflict. The Lebanese state, represented by its army and institutions, did not respond to Nasrallah's statements, even though it holds international responsibility for the region where confrontations with Israel are taking place.
This border area is subject to UN Security Council Resolution 1701, with thousands of UNIFIL troops deployed in the region. However, Nasrallah did not address the direct losses suffered by the residents of the confrontation area, covering a stretch of 100 kilometers from the coastal town of Naqoura in the west to the occupied Shebaa Farms in the east. These losses, in less than a month, have affected tens of thousands of citizens and resulted in the deaths and injuries of dozens.
Additionally, numerous properties were destroyed, and thousands of acres of agricultural land, particularly olive fields, were set ablaze. However, due to this negligence, no reference has been made to the significant losses that have afflicted the Lebanese economy. The Secretary-General of Hezbollah issued direct threats against the United States, evoking events from the 1980s, stating that those who defeated the US back then are still alive today, along with their children and grandchildren. In response, the US called on Hezbollah not to "exploit" the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. A spokesperson for the National Security Council said, "We and our partners have been clear: Hezbollah and others, whether states or not, should not attempt to exploit the existing conflict." Regarding Nasrallah's threat to the US and the targeting of its fleets in the Mediterranean, the spokesperson for the National Security Council stated, "We will not engage in a war of words."
He also emphasized that "the United States is not seeking escalation or an expansion of the ongoing conflict in Gaza."In the face of these developments, the spokesperson for the National Security Council concluded by saying, "The situation may evolve into a more deadly war between Israel and Lebanon than the 2006 war. The United States does not want to see this conflict extend into Lebanon. The potential destruction that will befall Lebanon and its people is unimaginable and can be avoided."
Nasrallah also issued a warning to Israel, stating, "The resistance operations in the south tell this enemy, which may be planning aggression against Lebanon or a preemptive operation, that you will commit the greatest folly in your history." He warned "the Zionist enemy against the escalation that has affected some Lebanese civilians, as it will bring us back to a civil vs. civil confrontation."The response to Nasrallah came from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Regarding the northern front with Hezbollah, Netanyahu stated, "I repeat to our enemies: do not make a mistake with us. You will pay a steep price. The error will result in losses you cannot even imagine."

Hezbollah's Nasrallah addresses recent developments: A comprehensive analysis
LBCI/November 4, 2023
After a long silence, the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, delivered a speech in which he discussed his perspective on the developments since the beginning of the operation of the Al-Aqsa Flood up to the present moment.
This article was originally published in and translated from Lebanese newspaper Nidaa al-Watan. He further extended his speech, describing and recounting the significant events extensively. However, to such an extent that the vast majority of his speech had already been leaked through party figures and media, which didn't bring anything new. This caused a sense of frustration among Hamas supporters from the very beginning of the speech, and it quickly manifested on social media. While it is natural for Nasrallah to present his viewpoint, he overemphasized the situation and justified the limited support for Hamas and Gaza. The lack of clarity in the vision, his attempt to distance Hezbollah from Hamas due to its claimed independent decision-making, and his denial of any knowledge of the operation left most of the speech open to analysis and criticism, especially in the Sunni environment. This environment had already transitioned from opposition to Hezbollah to a position of accepting Hezbollah's stance due to the focus on Gaza and the understanding that this is not the time for sectarian or political disputes.
But Nasrallah failed to consolidate the support of this population segment because his speech departed from the expectations. Many expected him to intervene to deter the Israeli aggression against Gaza. Unfortunately, Nasrallah's speech took the majority back to their previous stances, and Hezbollah lost the progress it had made in improving its image among the Sunni community. However, what is most intriguing in Nasrallah's entire speech is his complete and surprising disregard for the Islamic Group (Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya) and their evident participation in the resistance efforts in the South, supporting Gaza, as announced by their Secretary-General, Sheikh Mohammad Taqoush. Islamic sources closely associated with the group were puzzled by Nasrallah's deliberate mention of the Resistance Brigades (Saraya Al-Muqawama) and their affiliation despite their modest presence. Additionally, he mentioned the Hamas movement and the Al-Quds Brigades of the Islamic Jihad movement without any reference to the Islamic Group, despite addressing the issue of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood's alleged involvement in the Gaza events elsewhere in his speech.
This disregard for the Islamic Group is not a new occurrence but rather a recurring one, despite Nasrallah's knowledge of the group's active participation in confronting Israeli aggression during the Days of Rage and in the July 2006 war, extending to areas such as Al-Arqoub and across Sunni towns in the South, including Sidon. Perhaps this stance is rooted in Hezbollah's dissatisfaction with the group's direct presence and the activation of its educational and social institutions, which are seen as a challenge to Hezbollah's influence, particularly concerning potential Sunni mobilization that goes beyond Hezbollah's control, both on the border and within Lebanon, politically and on the ground. However, Hezbollah does not favor a partnership with the Islamic Group, which preceded them in the virtue of resisting Israeli occupation. They do not want to acknowledge their participation, possibly to obstruct the development of this participation during and after the operation of the Al-Aqsa Flood, particularly in terms of evolving into a resistance with complete legitimacy and the right to self-determination, given its basis on the legitimacy of belonging to the human and geographical environment it operates in. Its mission revolves around liberating the remaining Lebanese territories under occupation, specifically Shebaa, the hills of Kfarshuba, and Al-Habbariyah. The Islamic Group's stance on its ties with Hezbollah remains unclear. They consider that communication with Hezbollah is necessary within the bounds of national partnership and as per the needs of the field. While communication between the leaderships of both Hezbollah and the Islamic Group has not ceased, the reality suggests an underlying division that becomes apparent through this neglect and reluctance to acknowledge the other party's presence within Hezbollah.

Hezbollah should not 'exploit' the war between Israel and Hamas: The White House
LBCI/November 4, 2023
The United States stressed on Friday that Hezbollah should not "exploit" the war between Israel and Hamas after the Secretary-General of the party announced that the possibilities of expanding this war against Israel were "open."
A spokesperson for the National Security Council said, "We and our partners have been clear: Hezbollah and others, whether states or not, should not attempt to exploit the ongoing conflict."However, Hezbollah's Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah threatened the US on Friday, holding it "fully responsible" for the war in Gaza, and warned of targeting its fleets in the Mediterranean, affirming that the possibilities of regional expansion of the war against Israel are "open."In response to this stance, the spokesperson said, "We will not engage in a war of words."

Jumblat says Nasrallah speech 'realistic', Gemayel sees 'nothing new'
Naharnet/November 04/2023
Progressive Socialist Party former leader Walid Jumblat has described Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s speech on the military developments in Gaza and south Lebanon as “very realistic.”“He was very realistic in describing the plight of the Palestinian people and the Israeli occupation of the past 75 years, in addition to the situation in Gaza and the bombardment of civilians,” Jumblat said in an interview with al-Jadeed television. “He held the United States responsible, the same as I hold it and the West responsible,” Jumblat added. Asked about the White House’s remarks that it does not want to see the war spreading to Lebanon, the ex-PSP chief said: “They are thanked for their generosity, but let them implement a ceasefire in Gaza, end the siege and open the humiliation border crossing that is called Rafah.”“All possibilities are on the table and we don’t know what’s in Israel’s hostile intentions,” he added. Kataeb Party chief Sami Gemayel meanwhile said that Nasrallah’s speech did not carry “anything new.”“The entire speech was fully expected,” Gemayel told Al-Arabiya television. “We know that the Axis (of Defiance) has not decided to open all fronts, that’s why Hezbollah’s secretary-general distanced himself from the October 7 operation and openly said that it was carried out by Hamas,” Gemayel added. “More and more, it was proved today that the Lebanese state is nonexistent and that the Lebanese people’s will is not taken into consideration,” Gemayel went on to say, lamenting that “the decision is exclusively in the hands of Sayyed Nasrallah.”“He linked the fate of the Lebanese to the fate of Gaza and this is something that we reject,” the Kataeb leader added.

What Did Nasrallah Really Say, and Why?
Hanin Ghaddar/The Washington Institute/November 04/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/123927/123927/
The Hezbollah leader’s first public remarks on Gaza were cautious in tone and vague on substance, but the group may not stay deterred indefinitely if its political or tactical situation changes.
As expected, Hezbollah secretary-general leader Hassan Nasrallah did not declare war against Israel today—rather, his first public speech on the Gaza conflict served as a reminder that his calculations on the crisis are the same as Iran’s, and that preserving Tehran’s plausible deniability for the actions of its proxies is paramount. (For English excerpts and analysis of the speech, see this live update thread by L’Orient Today.) In addition to assuring the international community that Iran is not responsible for any of Hamas’s actions, he also told Hamas that it is on its own: “This is a purely Palestinian battle and is not related to any regional or international file.” In other words, the “united front” is not that united. Rather than joining the actual fight, Nasrallah asked his supporters to fight the war of public opinion, essentially arguing that the battlefield is online, not in Gaza.
The speech’s understated tone was more surprising—Nasrallah showed far less anger and agitation compared to his past speeches on conflicts in Syria and Yemen. After one month of eerie silence and three pre-speech trailers full of suspense, most observers anticipated a little escalation, even if mostly rhetorical. Yet his tone was largely muted and his red lines were vague. Besides warning that any Lebanese civilian fatalities would force Hezbollah to kill Israeli civilians in return, he offered the standard ambiguous rhetoric about choosing “the right time and place” to retaliate for Israel’s actions in Gaza. His bottom line was clear: for now at least, Hezbollah will not participate in the war beyond the current border skirmishes. (For more on Hezbollah’s attacks so far, see The Washington Institute’s interactive tracking map.)
His warnings to the United States were more specific and potentially escalatory—he noted that Yemen’s Houthis will continue firing missiles northward, and that Iraqi militias will keep targeting the U.S. presence in both their country and Syria. Yet he was careful not to implicate Tehran in these Iranian proxy actions, nor did he threaten to use Hezbollah’s own weapons against U.S. forces. Indeed, Washington’s timely military deployments so close to Lebanon have seemingly played a major deterrent role for the group.
Nasrallah’s speech was no doubt deeply disappointing for his supporters in Lebanon and the wider region, many of whom expected a more aggressive response by the alleged leader of the “resistance.” It was also disappointing for Hamas, which will probably feel less secure and more isolated now—and perhaps more inclined to negotiate and compromise.
Yet the speech’s most serious repercussions will be felt in the realm of Hezbollah’s legitimacy. Nasrallah essentially declared that he will not be involved in the battle to “free Palestine,” a goal that lies at the core of his resistance narrative. In doing so, he confirmed that Hezbollah’s mission has drastically shifted since the 2006 war—from “resisting” Israel to protecting its own (and, by extension, Iran’s) interests in the region. Without the legitimizing power of resistance rhetoric, the group’s regional (and, perhaps, domestic) support base may lose faith in both Hezbollah and Tehran.
Indeed, this predicament has bedeviled Hezbollah since 2006. Despite engaging in a month’s worth of calculated attacks along the border, the group’s military strength is becoming a weakness of sorts, since flexing its muscles more than it already has would increase the risk of a major Israeli response. Hezbollah has long used the threat of its increasingly advanced arsenal as a deterrent against Israel. But Nasrallah also knows that these same weapons—particularly its precision-guided missiles—would lose their main value if the group began launching them, since Hezbollah forces and assets would quickly be exposed to a devastating war. Yet by dashing regional expectations for a grand, effective, and united military response against Israel, Nasrallah may incur other costs. In short, the group is damned if it escalates and damned if it doesn’t.
Nasrallah also briefly addressed what might happen when the Gaza war is over and Israel turns its full attention back to Lebanon and Hezbollah’s dangerous missiles. The deterrence strategy that was upheld for seventeen years is likely no longer valid now that Israel suffered such horrific casualties at the hands of another neighboring enemy on October 7. Even before the Gaza war, Hezbollah’s border escalation was seemingly changing Israel’s calculus; today, many countries have concluded that groups like Hamas and Hezbollah need to be contained before another October 7 happens. In addition, the United States has reestablished a very strong military presence in the region, and even if some of these deployments prove temporary, the Biden administration’s recent diplomatic activity in the Middle East indicates a longer-term determination to prevent escalation after the war.
Nasrallah seems aware of these shifts and has signaled Hezbollah’s unwillingness to change the deterrence policy along the border: “The resistance’s operations in the South tell the enemy that if it carries out an aggression or thinks of waging a preemptive operation, it will be committing the biggest foolishness in its history.” While vague and couched as a warning against Israeli action, this remark essentially communicated that Hezbollah will not escalate unless Israel launches some kind of unexpected, large-scale campaign across the northern border.
Despite Nasrallah’s rhetorical caution, however, the fact remains that more and more military clashes are occurring on Lebanon’s border daily, so the risks of miscalculation are rising as well. Whether he likes it or not, he may eventually find himself having to make a very different speech in the midst of unintended escalation with Israel. Alternatively, Hezbollah may one day improve its financial situation and boost its military apparatus to the point where it is truly ready to face Israel in a full-scale conflict.
Either way, the United States and its partners must continue signaling Hezbollah and Iran that they are willing to strike back if the group miscalculates its current level of attacks or changes its tactics. They should also start formulating a new Iran policy—one that addresses all of Iran’s militias and destabilizing activities in the region. Otherwise, they risk leaving themselves vulnerable to a repeat of October 7 on another frontier.
*Hanin Ghaddar is the Friedmann Senior Fellow in The Washington Institute’s Rubin Program on Arab Politics.

Assessing the Reported Pantsir Delivery to Hezbollah
Andrew J. Tabler and Anna Borshchevskaya/The Washington Institute/November 04/2023
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/assessing-reported-pantsir-delivery-hezbollah
The antiaircraft system poses a manageable risk to Israeli operations along its northern border, but Washington must show Moscow and its associates that any benefits to such escalation are not worth the costs.
On November 2, reports surfaced concerning the potential transfer of a Russian-built Pantsir S-1 (NATO SA-22) antiaircraft system from Wagner Group paramilitary forces in Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. A later report that indicated that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad had consented to the transfer, a development the Kremlin denies. Militarily, the transfer of a short-range antiaircraft gun and missile system to Hezbollah threatens only to complicate Israeli low-altitude freedom of maneuver—including possibly its long-range drones and air-to-ground weapons—along its northern border amid heightened tensions fueled by the Gaza crisis. Politically, however, the Pantsir system’s possible introduction into Lebanon suggests the latest convergence of Russia-Iran policy on Israel and the United States—as well as Syria’s role as an Iranian arms hub and emerging battleground between America and Iran-backed groups as the Gaza crisis unfolds.
The delivery of sophisticated weapons systems from Syria to Hezbollah is nothing new, as witnessed in the steady buildup of the Iranian proxy’s rocket and missile inventories, now numbering in the thousands. Indeed in March 2010, President Assad provided Hezbollah with Scud missiles, strategic weapons that his father, Hafiz al-Assad, had long held back as part of his calibrated brinkmanship over Lebanon that constrained Hezbollah’s fighting ability and made the Syrian leader the indispensable arbiter of regional and international efforts to stabilize the Levant.
As Syria descended into war and de facto partition, the aid of Iran-backed proxies to Assad at key moments led to his deepening relationship with Hezbollah. Yet whereas Russia’s 2015 military intervention in Syria halted territorial losses by the Assad regime and its Hezbollah and Iranian militia supporters, this assistance came with a price. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s functional relationship with Israel allowed for the relatively unimpeded flight of Israeli aircraft over Syrian and Lebanese territory to target Iranian weapons shipments. This freedom of maneuver has become increasingly important since the outbreak of the Gaza crisis on October 7, leading Israel to carry out multiple high-profile strikes on Syrian territory. These notably have closed the country’s largest airports, in Aleppo and Damascus, which are often used by Iran to ferry weapons into the country.
The future of the Wagner Group is uncertain following the mutiny and eventual death of its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in summer 2023, but the paramilitary group continues to operate in Syria, reportedly under the direction of the Russian Ministry of Defense. Recent Russian reports suggest that the group has resumed enlistment within Russia. As for the Pantsirs, whoever was responsible for the transfer—whether Wagner or another faction connected with the Defense Ministry—it indicates the Kremlin feels increasingly unconstrained to escalate with the United States and its allies in the context of the Israel-Hamas war, either directly or through proxies.
On a geopolitical level, the reported transfer shows that Moscow is seeking to exploit the chaos of wartime while sowing divisions within the United States and the West. Such a move is not surprising given heavy Russian losses during the long slog in Ukraine and the Kremlin’s growing alignment with the “Global South,” especially Iran. The November 2 passage by the U.S. House of Representatives of a separate bill on Israel aid, omitting aid to Ukraine despite President Biden’s intention to pair the two, likely only reinforced the perception of American and Western divisions over foreign policy.
Moscow appears to have that calculated the benefits of escalation are worth the costs of deteriorating relations with Israel. Over the past year, as expressed by Putin and in Russian official rhetoric, Moscow believes it is fighting an existential battle with the West, with Syria serving as just one theater in the contest to replace the U.S.-led world order with a multipolar one. Regardless of the outcome of the potential air-defense transfers to Hezbollah, the Kremlin—espousing a global-strategic perspective—will continue to find ways to intimidate, harass, or distract the United States and its allies. Washington thus needs to show Moscow that the benefits of escalating are not worth the price—indeed, that such a fight would be unsustainable.
To clearly demonstrate such costs, the United States and Israel need to hold Russia’s patron Assad accountable publicly and militarily. The introduction of Pantsir S-1s, one should note, is not a game changer so much as a prominent symbol of Russian support for Hezbollah and Iran vis-à-vis Israel. It can be fairly easily managed at this early stage of the Gaza conflict.
As a practical matter, press reports outlining Assad’s and Hezbollah’s potential moves are important for marshaling diplomatic and political support against the transfers, but are unlikely to deter the Syrian leader from allowing them. Washington’s response should thus be twofold. First, it should test its regional allies’ recently rekindled ties with Assad by sending direct messages not only through the United Arab Emirates but also through Saudi Arabia to stop current and future transfers. Second, the United States should coordinate with Israel on military action to neutralize the system without injuring Russian personnel, possibly in the Hezbollah-controlled zone along Lebanon’s eastern frontier with Syria. Such decisive, calculated action would show Putin, Assad, Hezbollah, and their associates that such military transfers along Israel’s northern border will not go unanswered.
*Andrew Tabler is the Martin J. Gross Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute and former director for Syria on the National Security Council. Anna Borshchevskaya is a senior fellow in The Washington Institute’s Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation Program on Great Power Competition and the Middle East.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on November 04-05/2023
Blinken rejects Arab demand for urgent Gaza truce
Arab News/November 04, 2023
AMMAN: A demand by Jordan and Egypt for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza was rejected by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at an Arab foreign ministers meeting in Amman on Saturday. Blinken said that a truce would be counterproductive, and made clear the furthest he would go was support for a humanitarian pause to allow the delivery of aid and the evacuation of civilians from the besieged enclave. “It is our view now that a ceasefire would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7,” Blinken told a news conference after the talks, referring to the militant group’s attack on southern Israel that triggered the latest Gaza conflict. Foreign ministers of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, Qatar, and a senior Palestinian official met with Blinken after holding a separate consultative meeting earlier and another with Jordan’s King Abdullah. The meeting was attended by Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi and his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan, along with Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan from the UAE, Qatar’s Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, Egypt’s Sameh Shoukry, and Hussein Al-Sheikh from the Palestine Liberation Organization. According to a Jordanian Foreign Ministry statement, the meeting reaffirmed Arab calls for an “immediate” ceasefire and “undisrupted” delivery of relief assistance as part of efforts to stop the war. Speaking at a joint press conference with Shoukry and Blinken, Safadi said that “slaughter and war crimes need to stop, and also the immunity given to Israel before the international law.”He called for “immediate” delivery of aid into Gaza and a halt to Israeli displacement of Palestinians, and also voiced alarm at the situation in the occupied West Bank, where “settlers are permitted to kill innocent Palestinians.”
Shoukry also raised concerns over the mounting civilian toll in Gaza, describing it as “collective punishment,” and saying that “the slaughter of civilians cannot be justified in (any) terms even as self-defense.” The Egyptian foreign minister called for an “immediate ceasefire without any condition,” and said that Israel needs to end its violations of international humanitarian law. He also highlighted “double standards” in dealing with the mounting civilian toll, saying: “Arab blood is no less worthy.”Blinken reaffirmed Washington’s support for “humanitarian pauses” to ensure civilians receive assistance. The senior US envoy said that he agreed with his Arab counterparts on the need for aid corridors, acknowledging that what has so far entered Gaza is “inadequate.”Asked why Washington is failing to exert pressure to stop the killing of civilians, Blinken said that “Israel has the right to defend itself, but also to take means to ensure the protection of civilians and minimize harm to them.”He claimed Hamas “embeds itself” within the civilian population, and is using civilian infrastructure as command centers and for ammunition storage.
“But Israel has an obligation to defend civilians. This is what I told the Israelis,” he said. Washington’s top diplomat said that he is saddened to see bodies of children pulled from the rubble in Gaza. “I am a father and I have children and I know how it feels.” Ending the press conference, Safadi said: “Self-defense? How would you explain this term to a father who is unable to protect his children and find shelter for them, not even in a refugee camp, a hospital or a UN organization?” Before meeting Blinken, King Abdullah told the foreign ministers “to maintain Arab coordination and speak in one voice to the international community regarding the dangerous escalations in Gaza.”He added: “Arab states have the responsibility of pushing the international community and world powers to stop the war on Gaza, allow the uninterrupted delivery of aid, and protect civilians.”
The king warned that continued fighting would lead to an “explosion in the region,” a statement said. The Jordanian ruler also urged constant support for international relief organizations working in Gaza, especially UNRWA.
He reiterated that a political solution is needed to achieve just and comprehensive peace on the basis of a two-state solution.

US special envoy: No record of Hamas blocking or seizing aid
Reuters/November 04, 2023
CAIRO: US Special Envoy David Satterfield said on Saturday that US officials had not been told that Hamas is blocking or diverting humanitarian aid flowing into the Gaza Strip amid shortages of food, medicine and fuel.
Speaking to reporters in the Jordanian capital Amman, he said that those distributing aid in Gaza had not reported aid being diverted since trucks resumed crossing the Egypt-controlled Rafah gate on Oct. 21 after diplomatic wrangling to resume the flow. Those in charge of the aid “do not report to us in this 10 day, 12 day period of assistance delivery, interdiction of or seizure of goods by Hamas,” he said. Between 800,000 to a million people have moved to the south of the Gaza Strip, while 350,000-400,000 remain in the north of the enclave, Satterfield said. Earlier on Saturday, an Israeli drone fired a missile at the Gaza house of Hamas’ leader Ismail Haniyeh who is currently outside the enclave, Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa Radio reported.It was unclear whether any of his family members were at the house when it was struck. Haniyeh, Hamas’ political chief, has been outside the Gaza Strip since 2019, residing between Turkiye and Qatar.

Blinken in Jordan seeking to contain Hamas-Israel war
Agence France Presse/November 04/2023
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken began meetings with Arab foreign ministers in Jordan on Saturday, seeking to mitigate the nearly month-long Gaza war after Israel resisted his calls for a humanitarian pause. The Israeli army said its ground forces had operated in southern Gaza overnight, after deadly strikes hit an ambulance convoy and a school-turned-refugee shelter in the besieged Palestinian territory. Israeli troops have encircled Gaza's largest city, trying to crush Hamas in retaliation for October 7 raids that Israeli officials say killed an estimated 1,400 soldiers and civilians inside Israel. The health ministry in Gaza, run by Hamas, says more than 9,200 Gazans, mostly women and children, have been killed in the Israeli military campaign. At the Osama bin Zaid Boys School north of Gaza City, AFP saw the aftermath of what Hamas authorities said was Israeli tank shelling that killed 20 people.
Ambulance teams rushed into the debris-littered building to aid the wounded and remove the dead. Stunned onlookers wept and wandered the scene with their hands clasped on their heads in horror and disbelief. A long row of washing still hung from windows on the building's first story, evidence that the school had become a temporary home for some of the hundreds of thousands displaced by the war. The Israeli army describes Gaza City as "the center of the Hamas terror organization" and says it is targeting Hamas militants, weapons stores, tunnel complexes, drone launching posts and command centres there. Israeli ground forces launched overnight "a targeted raid" in southern Gaza, the military said Saturday, where it has struck before but rarely sent in troops. The "IDF (Israeli army) armoured and engineering corps operated to map out buildings and neutralise explosive devices," it said. "The troops encountered a terrorist cell exiting a tunnel shaft. In response, the troops fired shells toward the terrorists and killed them."Israel says it has struck 12,000 targets across the Palestinian territory since October 7, one of the fiercest bombing campaigns in recent memory. A key focus of his Blinken's Israel visit on Friday was to convince Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to enact "humanitarian pauses", which the United States believes could help secure the release of roughly 240 hostages thought to be in Hamas captivity, and to allow aid to be distributed to Gaza's beleaguered population. Netanyahu said later, however, that he would not agree to a "temporary truce" with Hamas until the Islamist group releases the hostages.
Ambulance hit
In Gaza City, an Israeli strike on Friday hit an ambulance convoy near the territory's largest hospital Al-Shifa, killing 15 people, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent and the Hamas-run health ministry. Israel's military said it had targeted an ambulance used by a "Hamas terrorist cell" and had "neutralised" those inside. "We emphasise that this area in Gaza is a war zone. Civilians are repeatedly called upon to evacuate southward for their own safety," the army said. An AFP journalist saw multiple bodies beside the blood-splattered Palestinian Red Crescent vehicle. A child was carried away and a dead horse lay nearby, still tethered to a cart. The Red Crescent said a convoy of five vehicles had been destined for the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, when they were struck multiple times. One vehicle had been transporting a 35-year-old woman with shrapnel wounds. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was "utterly shocked" by the strike. "We reiterate: patients, health workers, facilities and ambulances must be protected at all times. Always," he said. A senior White House official said Hamas had tried to use a US-brokered deal opening the Egyptian border crossing to get its cadres out. Hamas provided a list of wounded Palestinians for evacuation with one-third of the names those of Hamas members and fighters, the official said. "That was just unacceptable to Egypt, to us, to Israel," the official added. Egypt's health ministry said just 17 wounded Palestinians were evacuated for treatment in Egyptian hospitals Friday instead of the 28 originally planned because of the "events" at Al-Shifa.
Shuttle diplomacy
Blinken began the day in Amman by holding talks with Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani of Qatar, a mediator in the conflict. He is also scheduled to meet the foreign ministers of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The talks come amid mounting Arab anger over the civilian death toll from war, and increasing fears that the conflict could spread. The leader of Lebanon's powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, on Friday broke weeks of silence to warn Israel the possibility of "total war is realistic."
Israel's Netanyahu warned Hezbollah it would "pay an unimaginable price" for any misstep.Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said he did not think Hezbollah would escalate fighting, telling the BBC "a broader regional conflict has been deterred." "Right now, we see this conflict as contained between Israel and Hamas," he said. The United States has sent two aircraft carrier groups to the eastern Mediterranean. Saturday's six-nation talks in Amman is also likely to touch on the question of Gaza's future beyond the war. The United States has renewed calls for the creation of a Palestinian state, but few expect success now after decades of failure. In Tel Aviv, Blinken said the two-state solution -- a Palestinian state that sits alongside Israel -- was "best viable path -- indeed, the only path" to peace and security for both communities. Netanyahu has spent decades vehemently opposing that vision. And it is unclear what appetite shocked and grieving Israelis will have for reconciliation or concessions. The United States has also urged the Palestinian Authority, which ceded power to Hamas in Gaza more than 15 years ago, to retake control. A representative of the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas will also attend the meeting in Amman.

Israel resists US pressure to pause war, wants hostages back first
Associated Press/November 04/2023
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed back against growing U.S. pressure for a "humanitarian pause" in the nearly month-old war to protect civilians and allow more aid into Gaza, insisting there would be no temporary cease-fire until the roughly 240 hostages held by Hamas are released. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made his third trip to Israel since the war began, reiterating American support for Israel's campaign to crush Hamas after its unprecedented Oct. 7 attack in Israel. He also echoed President Joe Biden's calls for a brief halt in the fighting to address the worsening humanitarian crisis. Alarm has grown over spiraling Palestinian deaths and deepening misery for civilians from weeks of Israeli bombardment and a widening ground assault that risks even greater casualties. Overwhelmed hospitals say they are nearing collapse, with medicine and fuel running low under the Israeli siege. About 1.5 million people in Gaza, or 70% of the population, have fled their homes, the United Nations said Friday. Palestinians are increasingly desperate for the most basic supplies.
The average Gaza resident is now surviving on two pieces of bread per day, much of it made from stockpiled U.N. flour, said Thomas White, Gaza director for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. Demands for drinking water are also growing.
"People are beyond looking for bread," he told U.N. diplomats in a video briefing from Gaza. "It's looking for water." After talks with Netanyahu, Blinken said a temporary halt was needed to boost aid deliveries and help win the release of the hostages Hamas took during its incursion.
But Netanyahu said he told Blinken that Israel was "going with full steam ahead" unless hostages are released. U.S. officials initially said they were not seeking a cease-fire, but rather short pauses in specific areas to allow aid deliveries or other humanitarian activity, after which Israeli operations would resume. Netanyahu has not publicly addressed the idea and has instead repeatedly ruled out a cease-fire.
On Friday, however, a senior U.S. administration official said policymakers believe a "fairly significant pause" in fighting will be needed to allow for releases. The idea is modeled on a smaller-scale pause that allowed the freeing of two American hostages from Hamas captivity in October. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter, said that release was a test pilot for how a broader deal could be struck, and said negotiations on a "larger package" of hostages are ongoing. The official emphasized it would require a significant pause in fighting to ensure their safety to the Gaza border.
GAZA CITY ENCIRCLED
Israeli troops tightened their encirclement of Gaza City amid continued battles with Hamas militants as airstrikes wreaked havoc around the city, the largest in the tiny Mediterranean territory. Al Jazeera TV reported that a strike late Friday hit a school in Gaza City where many were taking refuge, causing casualties. Strikes hit near the entrances of three hospitals in northern Gaza just as staff were trying to evacuate wounded to the south, hospital directors said. Footage showed the aftermath outside Gaza's largest hospital, Shifa, where more than a dozen bloodied bodies were strewn next to damaged cars and ambulances. One bleeding boy screamed as he huddled on top of a woman sprawled on the pavement. Friday's strike outside Shifa Hospital came after Israel said Hamas has a command center there — a claim that could not be independently verified and that Hamas and hospital officials deny. At least 15 people were killed and 60 wounded outside Shifa Hospital, said Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra. At least 50 others were killed or wounded in a strike outside Gaza's Indonesian Hospital, its director said, without providing more precise figures. The Israeli military said its aircraft hit an ambulance Friday that Hamas fighters were using to carry weapons. The claim could not be independently verified. It was not clear whether the strike was connected to the one by Shifa Hospital. The military said it took place "near a battle zone," suggesting it was close to ongoing ground battles. Al-Qidra said a convoy of ambulances left Shifa carrying wounded people to Rafah when a strike hit a vehicle on the edges of Gaza City. The convoy turned around, and another strike hit another ambulance. He denied that any of the ambulances were used by Hamas fighters.
FEARS OVER NEW FRONTS
Throughout the war, Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire almost daily along the Lebanon border, raising fears of a new front opening there. In his first public speech since the war began, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the cross-border fighting showed his group had "entered the battle." He suggested escalation was possible: "We will not be limited to this." But he gave little sign that Hezbollah would fully engage in the fighting. So far, Hezbollah has taken calculated steps to show backing for Hamas without igniting an all-out war that would be devastating for Lebanon and Israel.
"We are in a high state of readiness in the north, in a very high state of alert," said Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari. The exchanges since the start of the war have killed 10 Lebanese civilians and 66 fighters from Hezbollah and other militant groups, as well as seven Israeli soldiers and a civilian in northern Israel. Thursday saw one of the heaviest exchanges over the border yet when Hezbollah attacked Israeli military positions in northern Israel with drones and mortar fire, and Israeli warplanes and helicopter gunships retaliated with strikes in Lebanon.
WHERE THINGS STAND
More than 9,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza so far, including more than 3,600 Palestinian children, the Gaza Health Ministry said, without providing a breakdown between civilians and fighters.
More than 1,400 soldiers and civilians have allegedly died on the Israeli side during Hamas' initial attack. Rocket fire by Gaza militants into Israel persists, disrupting life for millions of people and forcing an estimated 250,000 to evacuate. Most rockets are intercepted. Twenty-four Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the ground operation. The overall toll is likely to rise dramatically. Israeli military officials said their forces have encircled densely built-up Gaza City and began Friday to launch targeted attacks within the city on militant cells. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain in the city and across northern Gaza. Israel says Hamas has extensive military infrastructure in the city, including a network of underground tunnels, bunkers and command centers. It says its strikes target Hamas and the militants endanger civilians by operating among them.
The military said its troops have killed numerous Hamas militants exiting tunnels. Footage released by the military showed soldiers and tanks advancing toward bombed-out buildings. Israel has repeatedly told residents of Gaza's north to evacuate to the south for greater safety. But many have been unable to leave or to stay in the south, fearing continued airstrikes there. The military on Thursday told residents to evacuate the Shati refugee camp on Gaza City's edge. On Friday, shells hit a convoy of evacuees on the coastal road they were told to use, killing around a dozen people, doctors said. Footage from the road showed dead children lying in the sand. Further south, in Khan Younis, workers pulled 17 bodies from the rubble of a building leveled by a strike, witnesses said. Associated Press images showed rescuers digging with their bare hands to save someone buried, with one arm protruding from the wreckage. At a hospital, a crying man held up the dead body of a small girl whose lower limbs appeared to be missing. Heading into Friday morning in the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians and arrested many more, according to the Israeli military and Palestinian health officials. More than 386 Palestinian dual nationals and wounded exited Gaza into Egypt on Friday, according to Wael Abou Omar, the Hamas spokesperson for the Rafah border crossing. That brings the total who have gotten out since Wednesday to 1,115. Israel has allowed more than 300 trucks carrying food and medicine into Gaza, but aid workers say it's not nearly enough. Israeli authorities have refused to allow fuel in, saying Hamas is hoarding fuel for military use and would steal new supplies.

How Israel shot down a ballistic missile in space for the first time
Harriet Barber/The Telegraph/November 4, 2023
Israel this week used its Arrow missile-defence system to shoot down a ballistic missile outside of Earth’s atmosphere, in what is believed to be the first combat ever to take place in space. The ballistic missile was launched from Yemen by the Iran-backed Houthis, and flew almost 1,000 miles over the Arabian peninsula on the way to its target, the Israeli port city of Eilat. While the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has released few details about the interception, the Air Force is known to operate several batteries of the Arrow 2 system, which uses a hypersonic interceptor to take out incoming missiles in space. The Israeli defence ministry released a video showing the moment of interception, with the faint cylindrical shape of the incoming ballistic missile barely visible in the false-colour image, before an explosion smears across the screen. In a statement, the IDF said that air force systems tracked the missile’s trajectory and intercepted it “at the most appropriate operational time and location.” Yemen’s Houthis also released footage purporting to show the missile being launched as part of a barrage of drones and other long-ranged weapons aimed at Israeli towns and cities. The ballistic missile, which was fired on Monday, is said to have been a Qader missile – an improved version of the Iranian-designed Shahab 3. At more than 50-feet long, the Qader carries a high-explosive warhead and has a range that puts all of Israel in striking distance of the Houthis, which have now declared war on Israel and are a key part of the Iran-backed alliance set against the country.It is precisely the threat that Israel’s Arrow system, first deployed some 25 years ago, was designed to counter. A joint US-Israeli project, Arrow sprang from the need to give Israel a way to defend itself after Israeli cities were hit by Iraqi Scud missiles during the first Gulf War. Where other missile-defence systems were originally meant to shoot down aircraft and had to be adapted to the job of shooting down longer-range ballistic missiles at much higher altitudes and speeds, Arrow was the first to be designed specifically for that task. ‘Proof Israel has ability to act against Iran missile program’ The system had previously been used in 2017 to shoot down a Syrian S-200 surface-to-air missile which missed an Israeli warplane and was heading towards an Israeli town. But Monday’s interception was the first time that it was used for its original purpose. “The successful interception is about much more than protecting the residents of Eilat and dealing a blow to the Houthis’ boastfulness,” an Israeli defence official said. “Primarily, it proves to Iran, which was behind the launch and supplied the missile, that Israel has the ability to act against its missile program, and this has much broader implications for the regional conflict.” Since the October 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel, and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza, the Houthis have launched drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles at Israel on four occasions. The Houthis have vowed there would be more such attacks “to help the Palestinians to victory”.

Palestinians report Israeli airstrikes overnight, including in southern Gaza
Associated Press/November 04/2023
Palestinians in Gaza reported Israeli airstrikes overnight into Saturday across the besieged enclave, including the southern part where Israel had told civilians to seek refuge as its ground operation intensifies in northern Gaza.
Raed Mattar, who had fled northern Gaza early in the war and is sheltering in a school in the southern town of Khan Younis, said he heard explosions, apparently from airstrikes. “People never sleep,” he said. “The sound of explosions never stops.”
Airstrikes were also reported in Gaza City, the focus of Israel’s campaign to crush Gaza’s ruling Hamas militants. Strikes hit the western outskirts of the city and near Al-Quds Hospital. The Israeli military repeatedly hit close to the hospital in recent days, said Adly Abu Taha, a Gaza City resident who has sheltered in the hospital grounds for the past three weeks. “The bombardment get closer day by day,” he said over the phone. “We don’t know where to go.”

Deadly Israel strike on Gaza ambulance convoy sparks condemnation
Agence France Presse/November 04/2023
An Israeli strike on a Gaza ambulance convoy has killed 15 people, Palestinian medics said Saturday, spurring concerns for health workers' safety as Israel accused Hamas of using the vehicles to transport fighters. Since a shock Hamas attack on October 7, which Israeli officials say has killed 1,400 soldiers and civilians, Israel has bombarded the besieged Gaza Strip, where some hospitals have been damaged and faced severe shortages of fuel and supplies. More than 9,200 people have been killed so far in Gaza by the Israeli military campaign, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said in a statement one of its ambulances had been struck "by a missile fired by the Israeli forces," about two metres (6.5 feet) from the entrance to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. The strike on Friday killed 15 people and wounded 60 others, it said, mirroring figures released earlier by the Hamas-run health ministry. An AFP journalist at the scene saw multiple bodies beside the damaged ambulance outside the hospital. Israel's military said it had carried out the air strike on an ambulance "used by a Hamas terrorist cell in close proximity to their position in the battle zone," killing a number of Hamas operatives. Another ambulance, belonging to the health ministry, was "directly targeted" by a missile around one kilometre (0.6 miles) from the hospital, causing injuries and damage, the PRCS said. Hamas denied that its fighters had been inside the vehicles, which it said were hit by Israeli forces while transporting wounded people from Gaza City towards the Rafah crossing with Egypt. According to the PRCS, the convoy of five ambulances left Al-Shifa hospital shortly after 4:00 pm (1400 GMT) and headed south. The convoy, consisting of four ambulances from the Hamas-run health ministry and one belonging to the PRCS, had to turn back after hitting a stretch of road "blocked by large quantities of rubble and rocks" due to shelling, the statement said. As the ambulances headed back towards the hospital, a first "missile" strike hit a health ministry ambulance, damaging the vehicle and injuring the people inside, according to the PRCS. A second deadly strike hit the PRCS ambulance, carrying a wounded woman, as it approached Al-Shifa's gates, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.
It said "the deliberate targeting of medical teams constitutes a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions, a war crime."
U.N. 'horrified' -
More than 23,500 people have been wounded across Gaza in four weeks of war, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Some 16 hospitals across Gaza are no longer functioning because of damage from strikes and the lack of fuel, according to the Hamas authorities that rule Gaza.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement he was "horrified by the reported attack in Gaza on an ambulance convoy outside Al-Shifa hospital". He added that the deadly fighting "must stop". World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was "utterly shocked" by reports of attacks on ambulances evacuating patients. Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza's largest, has a bed occupancy rate of 164 percent according to the WHO, which on Wednesday warned a shortage of fuel for generators "immediately risks the lives" of patients. Israel has long accused Hamas fighters of using hospitals and schools, charging that the armed group was using Palestinian civilians as "human shields". On Friday, a senior White House official said Hamas tried to use a U.S.-brokered deal on opening the Rafah border crossing to get its fighters out of Gaza and into Egypt. One-third of the names on a list provided by Hamas of wounded Palestinians for evacuation were those of Hamas members and fighters, the official said.
"That was just unacceptable to Egypt, to us, to Israel," the official added.

Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza denies Israeli assertion that ambulances were used by fighters
CNN/Kareem Khadder and Eyad Kourdi/November 04/2023
The Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza has rejected Israeli military allegations that an ambulance struck on Friday was being used by Hamas operatives. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed responsibility Friday for striking an ambulance "that was identified by forces as being used by a Hamas terrorist cell in close proximity to their position in the battle zone.”At least 15 people were killed, and 60 others wounded in the attack outside Shifa hospital in Gaza City, according to Gazan health authorities.The ministry said Saturday that two ambulances were hit. “The first ambulance was struck near the Ansar roundabout, critically injuring a paramedic and causing additional injuries to the ambulance driver. The second attack occurred as the convoy reached the entrance of the Shifa medical compound,” the ministry statement said.

Blinken meets with Qatari counterpart in Amman
CNN/Jennifer Hansler/November 04/2023
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, meets with Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani at a hotel during a day of meeting, in Amman, Jordan, on Saturday, November 4. Jonathan Ernst/Pool/AP
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting with Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in Amman. Neither spoke during a brief photo spray at the beginning of their meeting on Saturday.
Qatar has served as a key negotiator in discussions with Hamas amid the conflict in Israel and Gaza. The US has credited the Gulf nation for its help in securing the release of four hostages held by the group, as well as for the eventual opening of the Rafah gate between Gaza and Egypt.

Jordan: Blinken to meet with several Arab foreign ministers Saturday
CNN/Jennifer Hansler in Amman/November 04/2023
Jordan says US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with fellow foreign ministers from key Arab partners at a summit in Amman Saturday to discuss the conflict in Israel and Gaza. The Jordanian Foreign Ministry announced Friday that Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi would convene his counterparts from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Qatar, as well as the Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, who will then meet as a group with Blinken. The Foreign Ministry said the summit will be focused on ending the war and addressing “the humanitarian catastrophe it has caused.”

730 foreign nationals expected to cross through Rafah Saturday, Egyptian source says
CNN/Asmaa Khalil in Rafah/November 04/2023
Some 730 foreign nationals are expected to leave Gaza through the Rafah crossing Saturday, according to an official source on the Egyptian side of Rafah.
Here is breakdown of nationalities expected:
55 Egyptians
386 Americans
112 British
77 French
151 Germans

Obama calls conflict in Middle East a ‘moral reckoning for all of us’
Tara Suter/The Hill/November 4, 2023
Former President Obama said the current conflict in the Middle East is a “moral reckoning for all of us” Thursday. “[A]ll of this is taking place against the backdrop of decades of failure to achieve a durable peace for both Israelis and Palestinians,” the former president said at the Obama Foundation’s “Democracy Forum” Friday. “One that is based on genuine security for Israel, a recognition of its right to exist, and a peace that is based on an end of the occupation and the creation of a viable state and self-determination for the Palestinian people.”“Now, I will admit, it is impossible to be dispassionate in the face of this carnage,” Obama continued. “It is hard to feel hopeful. The images of families mourning, of bodies being pulled from rubble, force a moral reckoning on all of us.”The current conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas began with a Hamas attack on Israel in early October that left more than 1,400 people dead. Israeli air campaigns and a recent ground offensive in response have more than 9,200 Palestinians dead, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. President Biden called for a humanitarian “pause” in the fighting Wednesday after the White House said it would consider one for aid to be allowed into Gaza. However, the administration has also pushed back against a cease-fire. A group of 14 senators also called for a short-term “cessation of hostilities” Thursday. “The failure to adequately protect non-combatant civilians risks dramatic escalation of the conflict in the region and imposes severe damage on prospects for peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians,” reads a statement released late Thursday by senators including Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)

‘An existential threat’: Antisemitic attacks soar across Europe amid Israel-Hamas war
Fred Pleitgen, Katharina Krebs and Rob Picheta, CNN/November 4, 2023
“This takes us back to the darkest times,” Chief Rabbi Jaron Engelmayer told CNN, as he surveyed piles of destroyed holy books in a blackened and burnt out ceremonial hall. A brutal arson attack on the Jewish cemetery in Vienna on Wednesday left parts of the building close to ruins, pieces of scripture in tatters, and swastikas emblazoned on the walls outside. But the attack stirred up painful memories, too. “It takes us back to times where the books were burned,” Engelmayer said. “It is an attack on the spiritual values of the religion and of humanity which happened here.”
The last time the cemetery was set alight was 85 years ago, almost to the day, on Kristallnacht – a Nazi pogrom against Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues. “It’s unbelievable that 80 years after Nazi times, we go back to such times and have antisemitic acts here, in the center of Europe,” Engelmayer told CNN.Now, incidents like these feel all too common. Across Europe, in the weeks since Hamas’ brutal attacks in Israel sparked a war between Israel and the militant group, a spate of antisemitic assaults have shaken Jewish communities. Oskar Deutsch, head of the Jewish Community in Vienna, told CNN that Jews in the city have reported 167 incidents in just the past three weeks – a “huge” rise for a small Jewish population of around 12,000. “After the seventh of October, antisemitism grew dramatically here in Austria, here in Europe, all over the world,” Deutsch said.
Small children were wondering whether they should go to Jewish schools, he added. For older people, “the Holocaust comes back in their mind,” he said. “That’s not the life we want.” French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said Monday that since October 7, there have been more than 800 antisemitic acts in the country, nearly twice as many as in the whole of 2022. In London, the first week after Hamas’ attacks saw a 1,353% rise in antisemitic incidents, the Metropolitan Police reported. And on Wednesday, Germany’s Vice Chancellor, Robert Habeck, said in a video message that “Jewish communities are moving their members to avoid certain places for their own safety – and this is happening today, here in Germany, almost 80 years after the Holocaust.”“The scale now is different, completely different,” Rabbi Menachem Margolin, the chairman and the founder of European Jewish Association, told CNN. “People are harmed in the street and social media is full of death threats. People get threats,” he said. “Governments in most countries do not understand that they have to immediately increase the level of alertness and the level of security around Jewish institutions and Jewish neighborhoods. This is very, very alarming.”
When an attack happens, it leaves local Jewish leaders and residents in shock and afraid. “It’s a call which has to worry all of us – to worry about the values of our free world which are now in danger,” Rabbi Engelmayer told CNN. He admitted that some Jews in Austria and around Europe are thinking about leaving – perhaps for Israel or the United States – for their safety. The fire that spread through his cemetery shocked Austria. The country’s chancellor, Karl Nehammer, said he “strongly” condemned the attack. “Antisemitism has no place in our society and will be fought with all political and legal means. I hope that the perpetrators will be found quickly,” he said.
Alongside the fear, defiance
For Tal Yeshurun, the painful impact of Hamas’ October 7 attacks continues. Yeshurun, who lives in Dublin, Ireland, had four family members killed in the attack, and a further seven are missing. The body of one of his relatives “was so badly mutilated that it took them two weeks to actually identify any remnants of DNA to connect,” Yeshurun said. He still has hope. “I believe 100% that my seven family members are alive and are taken care of. I have to, there’s just no other way.”But as he waits for news, he has been forced to deal with fear and uncertainty at home. “I feel like a big, big part of communities in Europe and the US don’t understand the magnitude of what’s going on here,” he said. “We have to be blunt about it. There’s an existential threat for Israelis and Jews all over the world.”“You try to (keep) to yourself, (to) not have large gatherings of Israelis or Jews,” he said, reflecting on the rise of antisemitic incidents across Europe. “Not to be associated with anything written in Hebrew, not to speak Hebrew. Not to go to places which are considered Jewish, like a synagogue.”But alongside the fear, the rise in antisemitic incidents has been met with defiance. “We’re going on to live our Jewish lives,” Engelmayer said in Vienna, after the attack on the cemetery. “The schools are open, the synagogues are open. We won’t let our enemies scare us.”

Tens of thousands join pro-Palestinian marches across UK
Marie Jackson - BBC News/November 4, 2023
Tens of thousands of protesters have joined rallies in dozens of towns and cities across the UK to call for an end to Israeli attacks in Gaza. The Met Police estimate there were 30,000 in central London alone. Videos on social media showed protesters in Sheffield, Manchester and Glasgow waving Palestinian flags and calling for a "ceasefire now".In London, 11 people were arrested - including one for displaying a placard that could incite hatred, the Met said. It said the individual was being held under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which makes it an offence to express support for a proscribed organisation.
Two more were held for a public order offence and assaulting a police officer, the force added. There were no details of what the other eight arrests were for. Pro-Palestinian protests have been held in London, and other cities globally, each Saturday since war began last month.
One of the protest organisers, Stop the War coalition, said this weekend would see a series of local protests organised in neighbourhoods, town and cities across the UK, rather than a mass rally. In London, local protests took place before many thousands of demonstrators packed into Trafalgar Square for a rally, led by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. Thousands more gathered in Manchester. Earlier in the northern city, the North West Friends of Israel group held a vigil for the hostages taken in the Hamas attacks on 7 October. Red heart-shaped balloons were attached to each of the hostages' names and photos in Manchester's Exchange Square. Other pro-Palestinian rallies are also being held in Belfast, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Liverpool and Leeds, with a focus on calling for an immediate ceasefire. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday there would be no temporary ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza until all Israeli hostages were released. In contrast to this weekend's smaller-scale protests, there are plans for a mass rally next Saturday on Armistice Day which have been criticised by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as "provocative and disrespectful". He pointed to a risk that war memorials, including the Cenotaph in central London, could be "desecrated". Home Secretary Suella Braverman said on X, formerly Twitter, that it was "entirely unacceptable to desecrate Armistice Day with a hate march through London". On Remembrance Sunday, which this year falls on 12 November, thousands of servicemen and women usually march past the Cenotaph as senior politicians and royals lay poppy wreaths to remember the fallen. London's Metropolitan Police said it was planning a "significant" policing and security operation for next weekend. Both the Met and the march's organisers say the demonstrators have no intention of going near Whitehall, where the Cenotaph is located. Ben Jamal, director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said all of their protests had been peaceful and orderly, and to suggest that another one - well away from Whitehall - "was a disrespect to the war dead was an insult to those marching for peace". People at a rally in Trafalgar Square, London, during Stop the War coalition's call for a Gaza ceasefire.Crowds packed into Trafalgar Square in central London for a rally Israel has been bombarding Gaza with prolonged air strikes following the 7 October attacks on southern Israel by Hamas, in which they killed 1,400 people and took more than 200 hostage. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says Israeli air strikes have killed more than 9,000 people. Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK. Protests in London have been largely peaceful, although 99 people were arrested at the three previous massive weekly marches in London.
BBC reporters, who witnessed the demonstrations, said a wide range of people from different backgrounds, including lots of families with children, have attended the marches. On Friday, five people were arrested during a pro-Palestinian sit-in at London's King's Cross station after the demonstration was banned.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper said he had given an order to allow police to stop the protest.

Thousands of protesters in Berlin show solidarity with Palestinians
AFP/November 4, 2023
Thousands demonstrated in Berlin on Saturday in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, who are enduring continuous Israeli airstrikes in response to Hamas's deadly attack on October 7th. A police spokesperson at the scene told Agence France-Presse, "We estimate the number of protesters to be around 3,500. However, others are still arriving." Calm prevailed as the gathering began. Many families attended with their children, holding banners that read "Save Gaza," "Stop the genocide," and "Ceasefire," according to AFP correspondents.

Turkey recalls Israel ambassador amid tense relations with Netanyahu
Nick Robertson/The Hill/November 4, 2023
Turkey recalled its ambassador from Israel on Saturday as tensions rise over Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan increasingly salient criticism of Israel for its war with Hamas in Gaza. Erdoğan has repeatedly criticized Israel for its war in Gaza and advocated for a cease-fire in the conflict. The move on Saturday comes after Israel recalled its own diplomats from Ankara last week after Erdoğan led a pro-Palestine protest. “Israel has been openly committing war crimes for 22 days, but the Western leaders cannot even call on Israel for a cease-fire, let alone react to it,” Erdoğan said last week, according to The Associated Press. “We will tell the whole world that Israel is a war criminal,” he added. “We are making preparations for this. We will declare Israel a war criminal.” On Saturday, Erdoğan said the Israeli government was intentionally violating international law and killing civilians in Gaza in an attempt to “gradually erase” Palestinians from history. Turkey is a strong advocate for the Palestinian people, a two-state solution in the region, and does not consider Hamas a terrorist organization as the U.S. and others do. “Once all of this that is happening is finished, we want to see Gaza as a peaceful region that is a part of an independent Palestinian state, in line with 1967 borders, with territorial integrity, and with East Jerusalem as its capital,” Erdoğan said, according to Turkish media.“We will support formulas that will bring peace and calm to the region. We will not be supportive of plans that will further darken the lives of Palestinians, that will gradually erase them from the scene of history,” he continued. The Israeli Foreign Ministry called the Turkish decision “another step to side with terrorist organization Hamas.”Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Israel on Friday to advocate for a “humanitarian pause” in the conflict in order to help civilians in Gaza. The Biden administration has not backed a full cease-fire. Blinken will be in Ankara on Sunday to meet with Erdoğan and discuss the conflict in Gaza. The Israeli military stepped up its ground invasion of Gaza on Thursday, sending troops into Gaza City for the first time, as aid group leaders continue warnings over fuel shortages. The war began early last month after Hamas militants killed over a thousand Israeli civilians in a surprise attack on Israel. Responding Israeli air campaigns and a recent ground offensive have killed over 9,200 Palestinian people, including over 3,800 children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

Iranians mark the anniversary of the 1979 US Embassy takeover while calling for a cease-fire in Gaza
TEHRAN, Iran (AP)/November 4, 2023
Thousands of Iranians gathered on the streets Saturday to mark the anniversary of the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” They condemned Washington’s support of Israel as it strikes the Gaza Strip in its war against Hamas.
The rally — which was called for by the state — came as the Israel-Hamas war entered its fourth week. About 1,400 people in Israel were killed and over 240 taken hostage after Hamas' surprise attack on Oct.7. The Israeli retaliatory operation has killed over 9,000 people in the Gaza Strip. People assembled outside the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran, with some burning American and Israeli flags. Protesters stomped on images of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden. Others carried banners calling the U.S., “Great Satan.” The banner on the main podium read: “We trample America under our feet.” The parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, addressed the crowds while criticizing U.S. support of Israel.“We consider the criminal U.S. a principal culprit in all these crimes,” in Gaza and against Palestinians, he said. Qalibaf claimed that the Hamas attack on Israel has caused “irreparable” intelligence and security damage to the Israeli state. In a statement published on behalf of the protesters at the end of the commemoration, they called for an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza and warned the U.S., Britain, and France that the crisis might expand in the region. The statement ended with a vow that Iranians would stand by Palestine “until final victory.”The demonstration began in Palestine Square in central Tehran. Protesters walked for nearly two kilometers (1.32 miles) till they reached the former U.S. Embassy compound. State TV showed footage of similar rallies in other Iranian cities and towns. The annual rally is a venue for anti-Western sentiments and usually draws angry crowds. On Wednesday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei criticized the U.S. for its support of Israel, saying Israel would have been paralyzed without American support. He called for an end to the Israel-Hamas war and for Muslim-majority nations to halt economic cooperation with the Jewish state. Iran is a known backer of anti-Israeli militant groups such as the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as the Lebanese Hezbollah. The U.S. State Department issued a statement on the 44th anniversary of the embassy takeover. “We are grateful to our diplomats who served in Tehran and to all the American diplomats who work every day to advance our interests in dangerous situations around the world,” spokesperson Matthew Miller said. Miller also said that "we condemn Iran’s continued detention of foreign citizens for use as bargaining chips. “We condemn the Iranian regime’s ongoing support for Hamas and other terrorist groups across the Middle East region that engage in the abhorrent practice of hostage-taking,” he said.

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on November 04-05/2023
Iran's Genocidal War Against the Jews Biden Must Enforce Sanctions Now
Majid Rafizadeh/Gatestone Institute./November 4, 2023
Iran has not only been threatening the US with attacks, it has attacked US assets in Syria and Iraq 83 times since Biden became president, and at least 24 times in the past two weeks. Iran also recently threatened again to annihilate Israel, and has reportedly begun ordering its elite militias based in Syria into southern Lebanon "to participate in attacks on Israel."
Worse, Biden is reportedly again trying to meddle again in the government of a sovereign democracy by strongly intimating that he wants Israel's duly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gone. The reason, presumably, is so that Biden can install some weakling who will do whatever Biden and his newly minted, extremely pro-Iran ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, tell him. That doubtless includes approving some horrendous "nuclear deal" enabling Iran's to have as many nuclear weapons as the mullahs like after Biden leaves office...
By effectively crippling America's oil production his first day in office and enabling Russia to sell its oil at inflated prices, Biden has literally financed Russia's war with up to $1 billion a day. In addition, by cancelling sanctions on Iran, Biden financed Iran's proxy war against Israel. The Biden administration, then, has funded both sides of two wars in two years.
Iran has attacked US assets in Syria and Iraq at least 24 times in the past two weeks. Iran also recently threatened again to annihilate Israel, and has reportedly begun ordering its elite militias based in Syria into southern Lebanon "to participate in attacks on Israel." Pictured: Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei meets with Hassan Nasrallah, head of Lebanon's Hezbollah terrorist organization. (Image source: khamenei.ir)
The Biden administration has apparently decided to totally ignore the involvement of Iran in Hamas's October 7 invasion of Israel. The Iranian regime, meanwhile, has been assisting Russia militarily in its war against Ukraine and is reportedly behind the latest Hamas terrorist massacre in Israel. The Biden administration, by ignoring sanctions against Iran's oil and gas exports, thereby enabling Iran to accumulate close to $60 billion with which to fund the Hamas war, as well as to advance its own nuclear weapons program.
Iran has not only been threatening the US with attacks, it has attacked US assets in Syria and Iraq 83 times since Biden became president, and at least 24 times in the past two weeks. Iran also recently threatened again to annihilate Israel, and has reportedly begun ordering its elite militias based in Syria into southern Lebanon "to participate in attacks on Israel."
Worse, Biden is reportedly again trying to meddle again in the government of a sovereign democracy by strongly intimating that he wants Israel's duly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gone. The reason, presumably, is so that Biden can install some weakling who will do whatever Biden and his newly minted, extremely pro-Iran ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, tell him. That doubtless includes approving some horrendous "nuclear deal" enabling Iran's to have as many nuclear weapons as the mullahs like after Biden leaves office, as well as preventing Israel from winning the war that the terrorist group Hamas started, the same way he is preventing Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky from winning the war that Russia started.
By effectively crippling America's oil production his first day in office and enabling Russia to sell its oil at inflated prices, Biden has literally financed Russia's war with up to $1 billion a day. In addition, by cancelling sanctions on Iran, Biden financed Iran's proxy war against Israel. The Biden administration, then, has funded both sides of two wars in two years.
To top everything off, Biden is calling – in the middle of a genocidal Palestinian war to annihilate the Jews – for a "Palestinian state." Perhaps he imagines that would burnish his image as having "done something." As a news analyst said, "That is not a 'two-state solution;' that is a 'final solution.'"
On April 21, 2018, the Commander of Iran's Army, Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi, warned:
"When the arrogant powers create a sanctuary for the Zionist regime to continue survival, we shouldn't allow one day to be added to the ominous and illegitimate life of this regime. The Army will move hand in hand with the IRGC so that the arrogant system will collapse and the Zionist regime will be annihilated."
A few hours later, Hassan Nasrallah, chief Iran's Lebanese proxy Hizballah, said:
"The forces of the resistance today have the ability, the power and the missiles to hit any target in Israel."
The Commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Salami, has made the strategy of his regime vehemently clear by stating on Iran state TV Channel 2, in 2019:
"Our strategy is to erase Israel from the global political map. And it seems that, considering the evil that Israel is doing, it is bringing itself closer to that."
Salami also bragged:
"Today, more than ever, there is fertile ground... for the annihilation... of the Zionist regime. In Lebanon alone, over 100,000 missiles are ready to be launched. If there is a will... these missiles will pierce through space, and will strike at the heart of the Zionist regime. They will prepare the ground for its great collapse in the new era".The Iranian regime has set up weapons factories abroad for manufacturing advanced ballistic missiles and arm in foreign nations, including Syria. Some of the weapons Tehran is producing there include precision-guided missiles, using advanced technology to strike specific targets. Iran's uses its foreign weapons factories and proxy armies, such as Hamas, Hizballah, and the Houthis in Yemen, for "plausible deniability." Both of these methods of "outsourcing" its aggression give it an advantageous military capability for waging wars or striking other nations through third countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.
Israel has "targeted 15 Iran-linked facilities... the fourth reported attack by Israel against Iranian targets in Syria in the past two and a half weeks." Last week, Yemen's Houthis, whom Secretary of State Antony Blinken removed from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations just weeks into Biden's term, fired missiles at Israel from Yemen.
As the Biden administration has not been enforcing sanctions and tried to hand the Iranian regime $6 billion more, Iran has been enjoying a windfall of revenues. In April 2023, a bipartisan group of 12 US Senators urged the Biden administration to enforce Iranian oil sanctions, writing:
"United States sanctions should be enforced to the fullest extent of the law. As Iranian oil sales continue to rise, and the IRGC continues to target U.S. citizens and service members, including inside the U.S., it is imperative that we use all available government assets to limit the activities of the Iranian regime."
US sanctions have not been hurting Iran's economy since the Biden administration assumed office. Iran is now producing more oil and selling it at levels higher to the pre-sanctions era to countries such as China. As Iran's hardline President Ebrahim Raisi boasted, "We are not worried about oil sales."
Tehran's major revenues come from exporting oil. The sale of oil accounts for nearly 60% of the government's total revenues and more than 80% of its export revenues. Several Iranian leaders have, in fact, hinted at Iran's major dependence on oil exports. "Although we have some other incomes, the only revenue that can keep the country going is the oil money," then President Hassan Rouhani acknowledged in 2019.
The White House is not taking any action.
The Biden administration must immediately impose drastic economic sanctions on Iran's energy and financial sectors. Such sanctions, as they did before, would threaten the ruling clerics' hold on power and to proceed with their nuclear program, forcing the leadership to recalculate its priorities. The US needs for once to hold those who violate commitments worldwide strictly accountable, and make clear that if they continue advancing their hostilities – with Iran, its nuclear weapons program -- military options are on the table.
*Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu
© 2023 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

The road to Israel’s recovery starts with removing Netanyahu from office
Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/November 04, 2023
It is a mystery to many of those who have witnessed the complete collapse of Israel’s strategy toward Hamas that its architect, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is still in office and being allowed to conduct the war against the Palestinian Islamist organization.
It is especially disturbing considering that, once again, he has proved to possess neither the judgment nor the leadership qualities that are required for the task. Every second that he remains the country’s prime minister compromises Israel’s interests, threatens regional stability, and risks prolonging the war, with enormous consequences for both sides. In the months leading up to the horrific Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, Netanyahu was preoccupied with putting together the most right-wing, provocative and incompetent coalition government in Israel’s history. He did this with the sole aim of weakening the judiciary, in an attempt to ensure he could escape justice in his corruption trial.
Because of this he lost his focus, even his interest, in the issues that really matter for Israel, including its security. He surrounded himself in the political arena with inept individuals, as well as people unqualified to hold any senior civil service position, who were told to protect their master’s personal interests above all else and vitriolically attack anyone who opposed him. All the while, he was completely misreading the intentions of Hamas.
During the months of regular weekly protests by Israelis against the government’s assault on the system of checks and balances that is the core mechanism for protecting any liberal democracy, thousands upon thousands of reservists warned the government that they would not serve a prime minister and a government that attempted to lead the country down a path of authoritarianism. Many of them stopped reporting for duty, including critical air force, navy and cybersecurity personnel.
But instead of halting the judicial coup and entering into dialogue with the wider society to reach a consensus over judicial reforms, Netanyahu used what has become known as the “Poison Machine” to portray these long-serving reservists as traitors.
One of the more mindless ministers in his cabinet went so far as to argue: “There is a mutiny within the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and any military deals with insurgents as insurgents should be dealt with.” Another equally venomous minister wrote that the reservists could “go to hell.”
Such diatribes were directed at the very same people who were immediately called up for service after the Hamas atrocity of Oct. 7, and who joined their units without hesitation. One can, and should, severely question the missions to which they have been assigned, considering the unacceptable and unbearable death toll among civilians in Gaza. But questioning their loyalty was an act of self-harm dispatched straight from the Israeli prime minister’s office.
Anyone who tried to warn Netanyahu that his cynical and irresponsible approach was weakening the military’s preparedness, and signaling that message to the country’s enemies, was either disparaged or, as in the case of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, fired by the prime minister for the “offense” — only to be reinstated the very next day as a result of public pressure.
But the damage had been done, in terms of weakened deterrence and social cohesion, and this did not go unnoticed by Hamas, nor by Iran and Hezbollah.
Netanyahu’s political opportunism and corruption has caused great damage to Israeli society but his misjudgment of the state of relations with the Palestinians has been criminally costly. Instead of leading Israel toward a lasting peace with the Palestinians, based on a two-state solution, he gambled the country’s security on helping to sow the seeds of division in the Palestinian political system.
Divide-and-rule, which is second nature to him in domestic politics, was applied also to his relations with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and with Hamas in Gaza. The objective, as he put it, was to prevent a Palestinian state from ever being established. In his own words: “Whoever opposes a Palestinian state must support delivery of funds to Gaza because maintaining separation between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza will prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
He was incapable of understanding that by “sowing the wind” through strengthening Hamas, he would “reap the whirlwind” of their distorted ideology. The idea of weakening the PA for the benefit of Hamas, as a strategy intended to ensure Israel’s security, collapsed in the space of a few dreadful hours on that October morning, to the extent that Israel suffered the worst single day of horror in its history.
It was an atrocity that will take years to come to terms with and has embroiled the country in a war that, even if it ends in a military defeat of Hamas, will still tarnish Israel’s reputation because of the huge human cost its army is inflicting on the people of Gaza. Netanyahu’s political opportunism and corruption has caused great damage to Israeli society but his misjudgment of the state of relations with the Palestinians has been criminally costly. Instead of leading Israel toward a lasting peace with the Palestinians, based on a two-state solution, he gambled the country’s security on helping to sow the seeds of division in the Palestinian political system.
This is the horrendous outcome of strengthening Hamas at the expense of the PA, and enabling the organization to arm itself, with the support of Iran, without ever changing its ideology.
Netanyahu, who has long cast himself as “Mr. Security,” the single-handed defender of Israel, not only failed spectacularly to defend his country but is one of the very few people in key positions in politics or the security forces who have so far refused to take any responsibility for the Hamas attacks, or apologize to the families of those who were murdered or taken hostage. Typically, he instead set about apportioning blame to everyone but himself, including the intelligence community and other branches of the IDF, which is a reflection of his current clouded state of mind.
In the middle of a war, one that he described as Israel’s “second war of independence,” the country cannot afford to be led by someone more concerned about being exonerated of blame over the failure to prevent the Hamas attacks, when an official inquest is eventually held into the failures that led to Oct. 7.
He probably stands less chance of being absolved of the responsibility for those failures than of being acquitted in his corruption trial. Even before the current war began it was clear that Israel’s prime minister was not fit to govern while on trial and facing such extremely serious charges.
His focus was mainly on getting himself off this legal hook, in the pursuit of which goal he was ready to form an ultra-right-wing government that immediately began to inflame an already delicate situation regarding the holy places in Jerusalem, expand settlements, and allow settler violence to get completely out of control. There is some logic in arguing that it is risky to change a prime minister during a war. But this argument cannot hold when the danger to Israel’s present and future security and well-being emanates from the appalling way in which its prime minister is conducting the country’s affairs.

A shift to ‘strategic interdependence’ could revive the EU’s troubled policy on North Africa
Hafed Al-Ghwell/Arab News/November 04, 2023
For every theory of foreign policy, there is an equal and opposite alternative. It is this strange maxim that seeks to augur the bewildering aftermath of Europe’s failed pursuit of some kind of strategic vision premised on European exceptionalism.
Swimming against an undercurrent, Europe had sought, and was on the cusp of finding, its place in the sun, somewhat unshackled from American hegemony and poised to take advantage of the emergence of China and heady ambitions for the Global South, fueled by Russian energy, of course.
Unfortunately, a rash of crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, an upsurge in migrant arrivals and the recent convulsions in the Middle East, have conspired to uproot that dream, forcing Brussels back into more familiar geopolitical trenches. This retreat will likely bury the remnants of the idea of “strategic autonomy,” once the lodestar of European foreign policy in the post-War on Terror world, now to be replaced by a more outward-looking and proactive “strategic interdependence.”
It is within this evolving diplomatic framework that Europe must revisit its troubled policy on North Africa, which has long been plagued by a lack of political will, uneven capabilities, and diverging priorities among member states.
The EU has traditionally viewed North Africa through an array of prisms, including migration management, counterterrorism, and resource trade. Often, these have prioritized European self-interest over a more balanced approach, making it impossible to craft effective policies to build a path toward fostering better ties or, at the very least, helping to ameliorate some of the pressing challenges in the subregion.
Guided by its strategic interests, the EU has long recognized the importance of forging robust ties with North Africa, which is its gateway to the youthful, resource-rich and burgeoning African continent. This focus is nothing new, given the gradual development since the early 2000s of the European Neighbourhood Policy in an attempt to craft frameworks for political dialogue and reforms in North African countries, which form part of the bloc’s Southern Neighbourhood.
In 2021, the EU launched a renewed agenda for the South Mediterranean, with a view to integrating these economies further with the EU edifice. Two years later, however, North Africa remains nowhere close to reaching a region-wide free-trade agreement, nor has the subject of EU-Maghreb integration moved beyond the realm of fiction.
Europe is stuck and it can only be hoped that a new, more assertive approach in trade, security, migration and energy will help materialize the contours of this new “strategic interdependence.”
Today, the subregion largely remains at arm’s length, its instability perceived more as a distant threat than a direct challenge to Europe’s geostrategic interests. The end result, therefore, is a patchwork of clashing priorities, questionable maneuvering, absenteeism, lop-sided bilaterals, unforced errors and, as demonstrated in Libya, complete disarray.
In short, Brussels consistently fails to engage meaningfully with the complex sociopolitical nuances of the subregion by grossly underestimating, and even dismissing, the importance of promoting equitable, mutually beneficial relationships.
Inevitably, rather than strong foundations and robust frameworks for mutual cooperation, we instead have harmful misconceptions, unfulfilled potential and institutional resistance to replacing flawed policies with assertive, cooperative approaches toward North Africa, ideally rooted in the principles of strategic interdependence.
As we find ourselves on the precipice of a new global order in which middle powers increasingly shape the terms of engagements, the EU needs to recalibrate its relationship with North Africa, post haste. On paper, strategic interdependence looks promising, since it shuns a Eurocentric narrative in favor of a more nuanced perception of engagements with external powers, while simultaneously recognizing the inherent interlinkages that shape these relationships.
It also compels the EU to acknowledge its limitations, while also identifying areas in which it wields significant influence. Rather than striving for self-sufficiency or dominance, it encourages a shift toward an equitable, equal footing with external partners. This necessitates navigation around political coexistence, competitiveness, and key relationships in lieu of championing the crumbling remnants of a bygone era that is largely responsible for the current malaise.
Strategic interdependence in the EU’s North Africa policy will certainly enhance the bloc’s interactions with the region, although a growing undercurrent of Western antipathy will complicate such a pivot. A focus on interdependencies, however, might facilitate greater engagement across various sectors, including climate, migration, and socioeconomic partnerships, thereby strengthening ties and fostering more effective cooperation.
If successful, such a forward-looking approach will naturally evolve into a conduit for a more nuanced understanding of each North African country’s distinct aspirations and imperatives as part of overall policymaking.
By dispensing with the lazy, “one-size-fits-all” diplomacy du jour, the EU could finally achieve something that has eluded many of its accomplished statesmen and women: Constructive engagement with the bloc’s near-neighborhood on the basis of shared interests and expectations, thereby meeting North Africa halfway, while curtailing the one-sided approach that marred previous engagement policies and strategies for navigating the subregion’s shared crises.
However, this does not mean that the pathway to strategic interdependence would be devoid of challenges. A crucial prerequisite will be the EU’s political will to adopt a more “tactical” approach to help safeguard its interests in an ever-shifting geopolitical landscape in which the lines blur between friends, foes, aspirants and aggressors.
Europe’s quest to reenergize its ties with North Africa will likely bear more fruit if it is rooted in honest, unvarnished discourse about the bloc’s vested interests in areas of potential collaboration. Such a transparent approach would position it more as an earnest participant in an increasingly multipolar world, without restricting or denying the agency of keen-eyed counterparts wary of any version of neocolonialism.
Moreover, while “moral righteousness” might have shaped the contours of engagement in the world of yesteryear, that world has changed. Identifying common ground rather than demanding subservience to elusive, broad stances on so-called “universal values” will go a lot further, provided it is reinforced by tangible financial backing.
Europe must therefore endeavor to nurture confidence in partnerships through fruitful discussions about an array of pertinent issues, including debt sustainability, climate change compensation, infrastructure development, healthcare, education and migration, to name but a few.
It is vital for the bloc to approach these affairs with a lucid understanding of their inherently transactional dynamics, and engage squarely based on overlapping interests. Over time, acknowledging strategic interdependence and its nuanced approach to collaboration will demand acceptance of a new, fractured global order. This by no means implies that Europe should isolate itself. On the contrary, constructive engagement with non-Western actors becomes critical, not only to address global challenges but also to further Europe’s own agenda.
Commitment to these new rules of engagement will define whether or not the EU emerges as a formative player in shaping this new world order, and it begins with its own proverbial “backyard.”
The shift from autonomy to interdependence should not be a mere change in terminology, or window-dressing to disguise a rehash of past failures. It should be a fundamental reorientation of Europe's diplomatic posture, one that signifies a move away from a self-centered, inward-looking approach toward a more proactive, outward-looking stance that emphasizes coexistence, competition and key relationships.
Such a shift could prove instrumental in enhancing Europe’s engagements with North Africa, a region in which geopolitical volatility directly affects Europe’s security and energy dynamics, and unprecedented migrant surges are adding to the challenges.
For too long, the EU has been bound by a flawed approach defined by one-sided interests; if Brussels hopes to revitalize its strategy for and influence in North Africa, it must signal a willingness to learn from the past, adapt to present realities, and to participate meaningfully in the emerging world order.
*Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow and executive director of the North Africa Initiative (IKSI) at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington D.C., and the former adviser to the dean of the board of executive directors of the World Bank Group. Twitter: @HafedAlGhwell
• Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. X: @YMekelberg

The End of Israel’s Gaza Illusions...This War Is Unlike Any Other—and Must Begin at Home
Assaf Orion/Foreign Affairs/November 04/2023
In the nearly four weeks since Hamas’s heinous October 7 attacks, Israel has begun a deep transformation that will be felt for years to come. As Israeli forces embark on the more difficult stages of a ground campaign to defeat Hamas, two themes have become particularly important. First, it is crucial to understand that this is not just another round of conflict in Gaza. To be successful, the country must countenance a war of exceptional scope and difficulty that could last for many months.
Israel will have to deploy military strategies drawn from long-war paradigms alongside a multiyear counterinsurgency campaign that also leverages diplomatic, informational, and economic tools. In this comprehensive mission, Israeli forces can learn much from prior campaigns, including some from earlier eras in the country’s history. But they will also need to be resolute, patient, and nimble in fighting a war that in many ways will be different from any previous one Israel has fought.
The second insight is that the horrific massacre of at least 1,200 Israelis by Hamas death squads marked a catastrophic collapse of Israel’s existing security strategy. The failure of Israeli intelligence and security forces and of their overseers in the government cannot be overstated. The old deterrence model—which assumed that Hamas could be contained through defensive technology and occasional limited and indecisive deterrence operations in Gaza—is dead. The Israeli defense establishment will have to consider bold new approaches at every level to prevent such disasters in the future. Never again.
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In this regard, Israel’s political and security leadership has much to answer for. Although the full details have yet to be uncovered, stark findings have already come to light. Potential warning signs were ignored, dismissed, or downplayed, and misguided security priorities may have made the attack more deadly. In addition to a comprehensive postwar inquiry about what went wrong, the Israeli public will demand a full accounting from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about his own role in the debacle.
Much will depend on how well Israel can achieve its difficult war goals against Hamas and how quickly it can create a new and effective security paradigm in the conflict’s wake. Beyond Gaza, Israel will need to address the broader network of threats and armed groups backed by Iran now menacing the country on multiple fronts. These include threats from Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, as well as from within the Palestinian population in the West Bank.
THE DETERRENCE DELUSION
The deterrence model that previously guided Israeli security policies toward Gaza took shape over many years. After Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005 and Hamas forcefully took control of the strip in 2007, the Israeli government sought to contain Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), relying on intelligence early warnings, strong border defenses, and the occasional use of force to deter further aggression. Fairly frequently, flare-ups would arise that escalated to larger military conflicts, as was the case in 2006, 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2022, and May 2023. In each of these operations, it became clear that Hamas was acquiring stronger and better weapons, including longer-range rockets with larger warheads, along with drones that could pose aerial and naval threats.
It was also apparent that Hamas was building a large and increasingly sophisticated network of underground tunnels. During each conflict, Hamas did its best to punch through Israel’s defenses and reach the communities around Gaza’s border. But Israel’s antirocket defenses also improved, as did its antitunnel defenses, and these Hamas operations mostly failed—on the ground, underground, in the air, and at sea.
Despite Hamas’s growing capabilities, these failures convinced Israel that its defense strategy was working: Hamas was unable to effectively strike Israel’s population; and it faced significant retribution for attempting such strikes and could be rewarded with material support for keeping calm. Israeli officials also concluded that trying to destroy Hamas’s forces outright would be too costly and might create dangerous new problems. That assumption was widely shared by Western officials: toppling Hamas, they feared, would result in a power vacuum that Israel would have to fill by directly ruling Gaza—a prospect that Israel has long shunned.
Limiting conflict with Hamas served Netanyahu’s goal of splitting the Palestinians.
Thus, the Israeli government kept conflicts with Hamas limited in scope and generally fairly short. Each flare-up lasted between several days and a few weeks—the 2014 conflict lasted almost two months—and usually ended with some kind of cease-fire arrangement mediated by Egypt and combined with economic measures. This limited-conflict concept, combined with Israel’s tacit acceptance of Hamas rule in Gaza, also served Netanyahu’s goal of splitting the Palestinian system: by allowing Hamas to maintain control of the strip, Israel could weaken the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and sidestep a political dialogue with it.
But this approach also allowed Hamas, supported by Qatar, to acquire the resources it needed to transform its military into a highly capable army of terror. Despite the growing threat of Hamas’s rocket arsenal, for example, Israel chose not to forcefully disrupt Hamas’s weapons programs except during these intermittent, short-lived conflicts. In between, Hamas continued to develop new strategies to challenge Israel without crossing the threshold into a wider escalation. For example, beginning in 2018, Hamas began organizing the so-called Marches of Return—encouraging large numbers of Palestinians to gather near the border fence with Israel. Viewed in the West as demonstrations against Israel’s blockade of Gaza, these marches provided a way for Hamas to cover up its military activities. Hamas embedded its armed fighters in the crowds, using them as a cover to reach the border fence and try to launch attacks against units of the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli communities near Gaza.
The IDF was able to repel these attackers and prevent a border breach by dispersing the crowds with nonlethal weapons and targeting the leaders, killing hundreds over many months. Yet the marches also provided a way for Hamas fighters to prepare for its October 7 offensive. Thus, in the weeks before the October massacre, there were again large gatherings of people near the border fence. Six Gazans died when an explosive device blew up on September 13 in what was very likely part of the preparations for the attack. Also in the weeks before the October 7, tractors were brought to the border area under the pretext of agricultural work and to prepare for the border protests. Later, these tractors would be used to tear down the fence and open the way for Hamas’s death squads.
A DOUBLE RECKONING
On the morning of October 7, the last day of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, Israel woke up to a double catastrophe. The attack by about 3,000 Hamas terrorists against Israel’s southern communities and defense forces was utterly devastating for the Israeli population, leaving at least 1,200 Israelis dead and more than 240 kidnapped in Gaza. But it was also devastating for Israeli defense policy.
The government and security establishment had failed to prevent a well-known extremist group—one that it had been closely monitoring for many years—from carrying out horrific atrocities against Israeli civilians. The terrorists rampaged for hours through dozens of communities, shattering Israelis’ sense of security across the country. First responders heroically fought the attackers, many paying with their lives, but several hours passed before a more organized military response was able to reach the attacked communities. For many victims, it was too late.
Almost instantly, the concepts, policies, and beliefs that had for so long governed Israeli security doctrine came crashing down. Among them were the assumptions that the Palestinian conflict could be contained, that Hamas had put its own governance and the economic well-being of the Gaza Strip ahead of its jihadi ideology and its genocidal plans for Israel, and that simply having a far stronger military than Hamas’s was sufficient. It had become almost axiomatic that simply employing advanced ground and air defense technologies, such as the border fence and Iron Dome, with occasional recourse to airstrikes from the outside, could prevent major attacks, allowing Israelis to contain Hamas with moderate costs and relatively limited manpower.
Israelis know there is no going back to the old model. On November 1, the Hamas politburo member Ghazi Hamad said that Hamas will repeat such attacks until Israel is annihilated. Unless Hamas is neutralized, the horrors of October 7 could be visited upon every home in the country. Therefore, unlike in any previous Gaza campaign, Israeli forces must not just reestablish deterrence but eliminate the Hamas threat entirely.
Since the attacks, this campaign has steadily advanced, step by step. In the days after the attacks, Israel’s Southern Command closed the Gaza border, preventing additional attacks into Israel and capturing or killing any terrorists remaining on Israeli land. Central Command began arresting hundreds of Hamas members in the West Bank, where Hamas seeks to undermine the PA and promote terror against Israel, and foiling active threats from Palestinian cities and refugee camps. Meanwhile, the Israeli air force has been hitting thousands of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. Finally, on October 27, Israeli ground forces entered Gaza and began slowly advancing toward Gaza City, the center of Hamas’s political organization and terror army.
At the same time, Israel continues to face rocket and missile fire from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and even Yemen. The IDF’s Northern Command is engaged in continuous exchanges with Hezbollah on the northern border with Lebanon, where Hezbollah has been launching rockets missiles, drones, and deploying snipers at Israeli forces, positions, aircraft, and occasionally civilian communities, in an effort to divert Israeli defense resources away from Gaza. Since October 7, more than 50 Hezbollah fighters have been killed, as well as about a dozen Hamas and PIJ fighters who had been attacking alongside Hezbollah. Meanwhile, Yemen’s Houthis have fired drones and cruise and ballistic missiles, most of which have been intercepted by Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Israeli border communities have been evacuated, and sirens frequently send people into shelters and safe rooms across the country. These threats will continue for the foreseeable future.
MONTHS, NOT WEEKS
As Israel begins large-scale ground operations in Gaza, it is crucial to recognize that it will be impossible to defeat Hamas quickly. In contrast to most previous Israeli operations since the First Lebanon War in 1982, a long campaign will be necessary to degrade, isolate, and, over time, eradicate Hamas from Gaza, just as it took years for the U.S.-led coalition to deliver an enduring defeat of the Islamic State (or ISIS) in Syria and Iraq. To achieve lasting results, moreover, a long war cannot rely exclusively on force. It must include diplomatic, informational, legal, and economic efforts, supported by both regional and international partners.
Israel, then, will not be able to model its current campaign against Hamas on previous operations in Gaza. Instead, Israeli strategists will need to draw inspiration from the longer conflicts in Israeli history, including the 1948–49 War of Independence, the 1967–70 War of Attrition, and Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, which sought to uproot the threat of terrorism from the West Bank, after hundreds of Israelis were killed in the second intifada.
These long wars provide relevant lessons in how to conduct such a campaign. This is a model of war that involves continuous, full-mobilization and whole-of-society efforts in which military actions of varied intensity are conducted across multiple fronts and results are delivered not immediately but over a longer time span. These earlier wars also underscore the high costs and potential risks of long campaigns, including the exceptional resources needed for the war effort and war economy and the deep national resolve necessary to stay the course over months and even years.
Operation Defensive Shield, which ran from March to May 2002, for instance, was a focused operation to eradicate Hamas and PA terror cells, employing five IDF divisions in West Bank towns and cities. Effectively breaking the second intifada, this larger operation became a turning point that, along with continuing counterterrorism efforts, reduced the number of terror attacks and victims. But in contrast to what Israel faced in the West Bank in 2002, the current threat from Hamas in Gaza is much more complicated, with a heavily-armed enemy that is hidden in dense urban areas amid a very large civilian population. Thus it is necessary to bring a more powerful use of force, alongside efforts to avoid a humanitarian crisis and informational efforts to counter intense Hamas propaganda in the fight for world opinion.
To achieve lasting results, a long war cannot rely exclusively on force.
Specific aspects of the current war can also draw on special operations from earlier decades. For example, according to reports, the Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, has established an operations room to hunt down the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre, echoing Israel’s campaign to eliminate the Black September terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics. That effort required ongoing intelligence and operational efforts across the globe and political backing in a multiyear campaign; it resulted in some mishaps, but it established the firm understanding that Israel will not accept any such attacks on its people. Hamas leaders are naturally high on Israel’s target list, and several Hamas military leaders, some of whom were involved in the October 7 offensive, have already been killed during the fighting in Gaza.
Of course, the long-war paradigm has pitfalls of its own. Israel’s drawn-out campaign in Lebanon offers a cautionary tale. Beginning in 1982 with the successful eradication of armed Palestinian organizations in Lebanon and the deportation of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat from Beirut, the operation dragged Israel into Lebanon’s quagmire and devolved into a protracted war with Hezbollah, which effectively lasted until the Israeli withdrawal in 2000. This legacy explains much of Israel’s reluctance over the past two decades to wage large and decisive ground operations, contributing to the rationale for the limited conflict approach to Gaza.
It is thus realistic to expect that the unfolding war against Hamas in Gaza will not be limited to a single, finite offensive. Instead, it will probably take shape around an extended series of military operations, each degrading specific Hamas capabilities, until the group can be defeated. As has already become clear, the war effort is now focused on an intense offensive in Gaza, combining heavily armored ground units with extensive firepower from air, land, and sea and supported by a large array of intelligence. The ground forces are facing well-prepared enemies above and below ground, who are using civilians and sensitive locations, such as hospitals, both as human shields and as fodder for anti-Israel propaganda. Israel will need to defeat Hamas in the open and in urban areas, in the tunnels, on the beaches, in the air, and in the international media.
But Israel cannot neglect other fronts in the meantime. In parallel to the Gaza operation, a strong defensive strategy has to be maintained to thwart all incoming threats. And given the critical support of the United States in this war, Israel also has to draw some lessons from coalition warfare, which is unusual for its military and strategic culture. Recalling British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s words, Israel would do well to remember that the only thing worse than having allies is not having them, and it must make a continual effort to communicate and coordinate with its partners in the world and in the region.
Defining what it means to defeat Hamas is also important. Beyond a military defeat and ending Hamas rule in Gaza, the war needs to address Hamas’s power elsewhere and in other dimensions. Uprooting the group as an ideological and social movement, one that now has deep reach in Palestinian society, will demand more than just crushing it on the battlefield. Hamas’s radical ideology and narratives, which are a threat to moderate Arab states as well as to Israel, must be countered by local and regional voices. Having Qatar’s Al Jazeera on Hamas’s side gives Hamas an important advantage among Arab populations across the region, which are stirred by constant visuals of destruction and suffering in Gaza. Initial Israeli military wins must be followed by continuous efforts to prevent Hamas’s resurgence and to allow the ascendance of a moderate alternative. In other words, Israel must find ways to rally Palestinian and regional parties to bring about a sustainable solution.
THE HUMAN STAIN
The unprecedented nature of the October 7 attacks has also left Israel with difficult humanitarian dilemmas. One is the mounting numbers of Palestinian fatalities, which the Hamas Health Ministry reports has exceeded 9,000, along with many more injured. This number does not differentiate between combatants and civilians. To uphold international law and maintain legitimacy for its necessary war in Gaza, Israel warned north Gaza residents to evacuate to the southern part of the strip, decreasing the risk of their becoming collateral damage in Israeli strikes on Hamas targets. Hamas, however, urged residents to stay put and has continued to use them as human shields.
Crucial for Israel is the question of the more than 240 hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, including both Israelis and foreign nationals. Alongside its military operations, Israel, with the help of international and regional partners and mediators, will need to do everything it can to secure the hostages’ safe release. In this context, military operations cut both ways. On the one hand, they can serve to raise pressure on Hamas to release the hostages and they may increase the possibility of rescue operations—as was demonstrated by the rescue of one hostage by Israeli forces three days after the ground offensive began.
But military operations also raise the risk to the hostages themselves, who are used by Hamas as human shields. Hostage release deals may be conducted before the fighting ends by holding humanitarian pauses or opening safe corridors, and Hamas will do its best to exploit any suspension in fighting to unhinge Israel’s military operations and heighten the tensions between the Israeli public, the government, the armed forces, and foreign countries whose citizens are among the hostages.
At the same time, the Israeli government has had to evacuate dozens of Israeli communities from the southern border area around Gaza and the northern border with Lebanon. Currently, about 130,000 Israelis—more than one percent of the populace—are internally displaced. Israel must care for this large displaced population and guarantee its security from cross-border threats in Gaza and Lebanon before the residents are able to return. This will demand not only adopting a new and robust defense posture but also convincing Israelis that they will not find themselves in another October 7 ordeal, or worse. Some voices have already called for the IDF to establish security zones to push enemy threats away from Israel’s southern and northern borders—deep into Gaza and Lebanon.
Although Israel can do much in its current offensive in Gaza, Lebanon remains a major problem. After the 2006 war, Hezbollah blatantly crushed the concept of a buffer zone with Israel, which had been mandated by UN Security Council Resolution 1701. The growing numbers of dead Hezbollah combatants are proving both that Hezbollah’s elite Radwan units are deployed on Israel’s border and that Hezbollah poses an imminent threat to Israel’s northern communities, which are now evacuated. If diplomacy and economic tools, along with limited force, fail to remove the threat, other much more costly options will have to be considered.
NEW GAZA, NEW ISRAEL
Once Israel has achieved its military objectives against Hamas, it will need to deal with larger questions. The first is how to stabilize Gaza. Israel cannot be responsible for Gaza’s governance, but the Israeli government will have to act responsibly and allow interested parties and partners to provide for the needs of the Palestinian civilian population there and prevent the resurgence of terrorist threats. Global and regional partners, including the Gulf states, as well as the members of the Abraham Accords and Israel’s older regional partners, Egypt and Jordan, will be critical in supporting a moderate, legitimate, and responsible Palestinian administration; providing political backing and financial support; and helping it face the daunting task of reconstruction, governance, deradicalization, and stabilization.
The effort to normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, until recently the focus of much attention by the U.S. and Israeli governments, took a major hit by the Hamas attack, which aimed to derail it. Although it is less likely to make significant and formal progress while the war is unfolding, Saudi Arabia remains a relevant player in helping shape Gaza’s future and Israeli-Palestinian relations, perhaps even more so now. The role of Qatar, however, must be limited. It has funneled billions of dollars to Gaza, furnishing Hamas with resources it has used for building its terror army, supporting its cause through the powerful reach of Al Jazeera across the Arab world, and hosting Hamas’s political leadership in Doha.
In essence, Gaza must ultimately be governed by capable Gazans and Palestinians, who are provided with regional and international support, as well as careful oversight to prevent the resurgence of terrorism. The PA could have a potential leadership role there if it can pull its act together and rally popular, regional, and international support, commit to preventing terrorism, and overcome likely violent counterefforts by Hamas, which will surely try to regroup after the major Israeli operations end. Delegating security and basic governance to moderate Palestinian groups would be in line with the approach taken by Israel’s defense establishment toward the West Bank, where Palestinian security forces share Israel’s goals of countering Hamas and other extremist groups. But it is much less in line with the current Israeli government’s right-wing members, who see the PA as an agent of terror that is no better than Hamas.
Sooner or later, the Israeli public will demand accountability and change.
Although U.S. President Joe Biden has expressed his hope for a two-state solution, the current circumstances have made that vision seem beyond reach. Preserving the two-state option for the future was already a challenge, given the PA’s abysmal situation and Israel’s increasingly polarized politics in the years and months before October 7. Since then, it has become even more far-fetched. Yet Arab and Western leaders insist that the PA has to be part of the Gaza endgame. The PA itself, while unenthusiastic about actually governing Gaza, already links its role there with a wider framework addressing the Palestinian theater as a whole. One may assume that the aftermath of the war will include some political process with PA and regional participation, perhaps as part of wider integration efforts.
Most important for Israel will be devising a new security approach to protect its borders and keep its population safe. Ultimately, Israel’s national security begins at home. After the Netanyahu government was established in December 2022, political turmoil about the government’s judicial overhaul and protests swept the country for months, weakening its resilience, defense, and deterrence and contributing to its enemies’ sense that it was ripe for attack. West Bank strife drew forces and attention there, at the expense of the Gaza border, while maintaining understandings with Hamas about economic measures deepened the common belief that escalation was unlikely. All these factors contributed to the disastrous intelligence, military, and policy failures that allowed October 7 to happen.
Israel’s chiefs of defense and intelligence have already accepted responsibility for their part, and they will surely resign after the war ends. Netanyahu has so far declined to take responsibility for the catastrophe occurring under his leadership and continues to maneuver between deflection and denial, promising “answers after the war.” The long-war concept, so far indefinite in duration, could allow the current government to stay in power despite the unprecedented crisis in Israel. Yet although the timeline is still unknown, the Israeli public, currently mobilized for the war effort, will sooner or later demand accountability and change.
THE WAR AT HOME
Almost a month since the October massacre, the war in Gaza has just begun. Waging it, Israel will need to attain its goals and continue fighting for Hamas’s enduring defeat over years to come. Even if a wider war is avoided now, including in the north and with Iran, Tehran’s ring of terror armies around Israel will still need to be melted sooner or later, and surely before Iran attempts to become a nuclear-armed power. Israel’s next defense leadership will need to rebuild and rebolster its intelligence and early warning capability, its decisive military power, its defense forces, its civil defense and first-response capability, its border defenses, and its community protection arrangements.
Given that Iran is waging a multifront warfare against Israel and the threat of its proxy terror armies is increasing, Israel will need to make countering Iran’s “axis of resistance,” a highest national priority for years to come. At the same time, Israel must avoid triggering a “lost decade” in its economy, as occurred in the mid-1970s following the strategic surprise of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Beyond flexing its military muscle, Israel will need to cultivate and strengthen its relations with regional and global partners, advance the U.S.-led security architecture in the Middle East, and seek bold new paths to break out of the dead-end conflict with the Palestinians.
Israel will require a long and painful healing to regain its balance, its defense posture, and its composure. But first and foremost, it will need to come to terms with the fact that this war is different from any it has fought in many years and that it must transform its approach to security. Both will take a long time and extraordinary effort. But unless Israel commits unwaveringly to these fundamental tasks, it could soon find itself in another terrible crisis. The unifying energy that has brought the country together since the attacks gives hope that it can rise to the challenge.

A Meaningful Endgame in Gaza Will Separate Transformation from Revenge
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib/The Washington Institute/November 04/2023
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/meaningful-endgame-gaza-will-separate-transformation-revenge
Without clearly stated goals and a well-defined exit strategy, Israel risks its counteroffensive becoming a punitive effort that costs immense civilian deaths while failing to establish lasting stability and peace in its southern sector.
Immediately after Hamas’ unprecedented deadly October 7 attack that killed more than 1,400 Israelis, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Galant declared that their military response would forever change the Gaza Strip and the entire region. Israel’s stated goal is to dismantle Hamas’ rule over the coastal enclave to permanently eliminate security risks from Gaza. While current Israeli strikes have put immense pressure on combatants throughout the Strip—reducing the number of daily rockets fired toward Israel and forcing militants underground—the ferocity and vastness of the bombardment, particularly against residential structures and dense neighborhoods, raise questions about the nature of the operation’s objectives.
Has the Israeli military’s overwhelming application of firepower been largely punitive? Or is the current counterattack part of a cohesive strategy to transform the tactical and strategic conditions in the Strip to ensure long-term stability and security? Despite warnings from analysts, observers, and even President Biden to avoid the intractable quagmire of a reoccupation of the enclave, Israeli policymakers have not yet offered a clearly defined vision for the future of Gaza beyond a maximalist goal of eradicating Hamas.
“The desire is understandable for revenge. But vengeance is not a strategy,” said former CIA Director and retired General David Petraeus of the current Israeli military actions in Gaza. Due to his experience leading U.S. occupation and counterinsurgency missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, he is acutely aware of the dangers that lacking a strategy beyond initial battlefield victories can bring. Petraeus likewise cautioned about the reality of the day after, asking, “Will this operation take more bad guys off the street than it creates by its conduct?’ You've got to be careful that the answer to that is going to be yes.”
Public sentiment in Israel supports the war effort, and most Israelis will initially tolerate high casualties as their military attempts to entirely destroy Hamas in Gaza. However, an indefinite operation or occupation is unlikely to be politically popular, especially without transitional steps and policies or a clear Israeli plan of what a post-war future might look like.
Hamas has proven resilient and highly adept. It has spent the past decade preparing for an epic defense of its positions in Gaza against a ground invasion, exploiting dense urban features and using well-rehearsed urban and guerilla warfare tactics. But assuming that Hamas can be eliminated, all its commanders and officers liquidated, hundreds of miles of tunnels destroyed, and its armaments in the Strip confiscated, immediate challenges would quickly engulf Israeli efforts to pacify and stabilize a destroyed Gaza unless there is a clear and cogent plan for the day after. Due to Israel’s preoccupation with the ground war, its hostages in Gaza, and its inability to craft a coherent post-war vision for the Strip at present, U.S. and European allies, along with Arab and Muslim partners, could meaningfully contribute to shaping the Gaza endgame.
Identifying an Administrative Infrastructure
Issues such as societal chaos, criminal mobs, the rise of warlords or dominance of powerful clans, poverty, famine, diseases, the radicalization of a resentful and beaten population, and low-intensity insurgency would present enormous security, geopolitical, humanitarian, and international challenges and consequences. As such, rebuilding an administrative infrastructure for Gaza should be an immediate priority.
An often-overlooked aspect of Hamas’ control in Gaza is the difference between the group’s armed wing—responsible for the terror attack on Israel—and ideological leadership on the one hand, and the administrative local government, which manages tens of thousands of civil servants, on the other. The Hamas-run government in Gaza employs some 50,000 workers in various classifications and functions—no statistics or estimates exist for how many of these are ‘card-carrying’ Hamas members. The group’s governance of the coastal enclave also entails a hybrid structure of its members in key posts, professional technocratic elements, PA employees who enjoy international recognition and legitimacy, and a diverse web of local charities and international NGOs.
These administrative employees include policemen, firefighters, teachers, sanitation and municipal workers, and healthcare staff. Gaza’s governance is thereby facilitated by a mix of Hamas’ own governmental structures and administrative bodies tied to the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) government. The PA has staff in Gaza who control critical sectors such as finance, border crossings, some ministerial posts, and the issuance of ID cards and passports. The destruction of Gaza and toppling of Hamas’ rule pose serious questions about the fate of the ‘administrative state’ within the Strip and what becomes of its civil servants, a considerable number of whom are not members of Hamas.
A contextually relevant U.S. mistake worthy of consideration is what occurred in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “De-Ba’athification” policies and the disbanding of the Iraqi army were initiated to get rid of remnants of Saddam’s regime and prevent them from holding public sector jobs in a new Iraq. What the United States failed to consider is that whenever a single party like the Ba’ath dominates and governs a country or territory, direct or incidental affiliation to the party is integral to civil servant life.
In such settings, anyone seeking government work must cozy up to members of the ruling party to improve their odds, often having to either join the party or display approval of its policies and practices. When implementing de-Ba’athification in Iraq, technocrats who were casual members or associates of the Ba’ath were lumped in with ideological constituents, preventing the new post-Saddam administration from absorbing seasoned professionals who could have helped stabilize the country. U.S. diplomats, historians, and experts have attributed a significant amount of the ensuing insurgency, crime, chaos, and radicalization in Iraq to this ill-conceived policy enacted by Paul Bremer, the leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority overseeing the occupation of Iraq.
An Israeli occupation of the Strip would face similar challenges if Gaza's civil and administrative structures are disbanded along with Hamas militants and on-the-ground leadership, and a systematic purging of anyone with previous ties to Hamas takes place in post-war Gaza.
Facilitating International Humanitarian and Security Assistance
If the administrative infrastructure is maintained, Gaza will still need security assistance and significant humanitarian support. The most viable option to address what becomes of Gaza after Hamas is completely eliminated or severely weakened is transitional international custodianship of the Strip under the United Nations. This would entail administering Gaza’s affairs and providing basic governing structures for sustaining the healthcare, education, public safety, and economic sectors.
The technocratic professionals in Gaza can play a vital role in maintaining critical functions and keeping various departments and agencies going, leveraging their experiences and local know-how. Arab, U.S., and European involvement and support could initiate a transformative transition for Gaza and create possibilities for a different future. Most importantly, neither Israel nor Egypt will likely be viable transport or access pathways in and out of the coastal enclave. Gaza has a strategic feature: it overlooks the Mediterranean Sea.
Accordingly, the UN can operate safe maritime and aerial corridors directly over the sea, thereby avoiding Israeli airspace and Israeli involvement in the lives of Gazans as they provide for their needs. And while both Israel and Egypt will likely expect coordination, establishing a route to bypass the issues surrounding extant crossings into Gaza will be vital in order to facilitate the movement of critical cargo, humanitarian workers, patients, war survivors seeking to exit Gaza, travelers, and reconstruction efforts and materials. France, for example, sent a helicopter carrier to the eastern Mediterranean to support hospitals and medical needs in the Strip cope with the crisis and provide a maritime lifeline civilians in Gaza, though it is unclear how such aid will be facilitated. Future arrangements could be established whereby Palestinians from Gaza can access the West Bank via Jordan, bypassing the need to traverse Israeli territory. Contemporary and historic precedents provide pragmatic options for addressing the needs of civilians in Gaza upon cessation of military action in the Strip. The UN’s World Food Program (WFP) chartered cargo ships to transport fuel and food to Yemen at the height of that country’s civil war and ensuing humanitarian disaster. The WFP also has an aerial arm called the UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS), which flies UN-marked passenger and cargo airplanes to disaster and conflict zones. For decades, humanitarian air operations have been instrumental in accessing denied areas or inaccessible parts of the world and have served as a lifeline in conflict zones throughout Africa and the Middle East. These capabilities could be vital in sustaining Gaza after the cessation of Israel’s military operation. The UN’s Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, stated that his agency has vast worldwide experience distributing and managing items with potential dual-use in conflict zones.
Furthermore, UN peacekeepers, especially troops from Arab and Muslim countries (such as Jordan, Morocco, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Turkey, and Indonesia), can likely be deployed to Gaza without antagonizing the population, who may fear or resent the presence of Western soldiers on their soil. These teams can help ensure that Gaza’s borders with Israel are monitored and secured to prevent infiltrations while allowing Gazans access to vital farmlands that are near the security barrier along the Strip’s borders. It is also crucial, however, to avoid the repetition of the Lebanese model, whereby UN forces under UNIFIL’s command are largely unable to stop Hezbollah from rearming and launching attacks against Israeli territories. Accordingly, the peacekeepers should be granted discretionary use of force and policing powers to enforce the ceasefire in order to maximize the potential for calm and long-term stability along Gaza’s borders with Israel.
After the 2014 war between Gaza and Israel, Turkey offered to send power-generation ships to Gaza, just as they have offered to Ukraine after Russia’s attacks destroyed a significant portion of Kyiv’s electrical grid. This is one of the numerous options in which an internationally accessible Gaza through maritime and aerial corridors, under UN custodianship, could immediately work to restore life-sustaining services critical for a stable life for civilians. In addition to power generation, urgent initial action will require rubble removal, the disposal of unexploded ordnances, the provision of potable water, and the resumption of sewage treatment or pumping away from population centers to avoid the spread of disease.
In a post-Hamas Gaza, the Palestinian Authority would also need to be involved in the international custodianship of the Strip, primarily to funnel international aid and finances. However, physically re-introducing the Palestinian Authority or some of its past political figures, like the controversial Gaza native and influential powerbroker Mohammed Dahlan, would likely be a mistake.
Not only were the PA’s incompetence, corruption, and thuggery significant reasons for Hamas’ 2006 electoral victory and subsequent violent takeover, but its immediate introduction in a post-Hamas Gaza would be viewed as arriving on top of Israeli tanks, undermining the what little remains of the PA’s legitimacy and ability to govern. Nevertheless, Gaza’s long-term stability and transformation into a prosperous and peaceful territory will not occur in a vacuum. Peace in Gaza cannot be isolated from making progress on critical issues impacting Palestinians in the PA-controlled West Bank, namely settlements and access to East Jerusalem. Without clearly stated goals and a well-defined exit strategy, Israel risks its counteroffensive becoming a punitive effort that costs immense civilian deaths while failing to establish lasting stability and peace in its southern sector. In order to prevent the perception that the Gaza endgame is about revenge, day-after plans addressing these issues should be clearly and publicly articulated.
Such a plan-or lack thereof-has broad implications; without a clear future for a post-Hamas Gaza, Israel’s military actions can disastrously backfire. A destroyed Gaza without a future risks irreparable reputational damage to Israel’s international standing, further inflaming anti-Semitism worldwide, diminishing prospects for growing ties and rapprochement with Arab nations like Saudi Arabia, eroding U.S. and European support for Israeli operations, and most worryingly, planting the seeds for far more violent groups and ideologies that could take Hamas’ place. A transformation in Gaza will occur only if detailed and substantive plans and agreements are quickly conceived and put in place to reverse the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe and initiate reconstruction once the guns go silent.

INSIGHT-How Hamas aims to trap Israel in Gaza quagmire
Samia Nakhoul and Laila Bassam and Matt Spetalnick/Reuters/November 4, 2023
Hamas has prepared for a long, drawn-out war in the Gaza Strip and believes it can hold up Israel's advance long enough to force its arch enemy to agree to a ceasefire, two sources close to the organization's leadership said.
Hamas, which rules Gaza, has stockpiled weapons, missiles, food and medical supplies, according to the people, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation. The group is confident its thousands of fighters can survive for months in a city of tunnels carved deep beneath the Palestinian enclave and frustrate Israeli forces with urban guerrilla tactics, the people told Reuters. Ultimately, Hamas believes international pressure for Israel to end the siege, as civilian casualties mount, could force a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement that would see the militant group emerge with a tangible concession such as the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli hostages, the sources said.
The group has made it clear to the U.S. and Israel at indirect, Qatar-mediated hostage negotiations that it wants to force such a prisoner release in exchange for hostages, according to four Hamas officials, a regional official and a person familiar with the White House's thinking. Longer term, Hamas has said it wants to end Israel's 17-year blockade of Gaza, as well as to halt Israeli settlement expansion and what Palestinians see as heavy-handed actions by Israeli security forces at the al-Aqsa mosque, the most sacred Muslim shrine in Jerusalem. On Thursday, U.N. experts called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, saying Palestinians there were at "grave risk of genocide". Many experts see a spiraling crisis, with no clear endgame in sight for either side. "The mission to destroy Hamas is not easily achieved," said Marwan Al-Muasher, Jordan's former foreign minister and deputy prime minister who now works for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
"There is no military solution to this conflict. We are in some dark times. This war is not going to be short."Israel has deployed overwhelming aerial firepower since the Oct. 7 attack, which saw Hamas gunmen burst out of the Gaza Strip, killing 1,400 Israelis and taking 239 hostages. The Gazan death toll has surpassed 9,000, with every day of violence fuelling protests around the world over for the plight of more than 2 million Gazans trapped in the tiny enclave, many without water, food or power. Israeli airstrikes hit a crowded refugee camp in the Gaza on Tuesday, killing at least 50 Palestinians and a Hamas commander. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to wipe out Hamas and has rejected calls for a ceasefire. Israeli officials say they're under no illusions about what may lie ahead and accuse the militants of hiding behind civilians.
The country has braced itself for a "long and painful war", said Danny Danon, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. and ex-member of the Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee. "We know at the end that we will prevail and that we will defeat Hamas," he told Reuters. "The question will be the price, and we have to be very cautious and very careful and understand that it's a very complex urban area to maneuver."The United States has said now is not the time for a general ceasefire, though says pauses in hostilities are needed to deliver humanitarian aid.
HAMAS 'FULLY PREPARED'
Adeeb Ziadeh, a Palestinian expert in international affairs at Qatar University who has studied Hamas, said the group must have had a longer-term plan to follow its assault on Israel. "Those who carried out the Oct. 7 attack with its level of proficiency, this level of expertise, precision and intensity, would have prepared for a long-term battle. It's not possible for Hamas to engage in such an attack without being fully prepared and mobilized for the outcome," Ziadeh told Reuters.
Washington expects Hamas to try to bog Israeli forces down in street-by-street combat in Gaza and inflict heavy enough military casualties to weaken Israeli public support for a drawn-out conflict, said the source familiar with the White House's thinking, who asked to remain anonymous to speak freely.
Israeli officials have nonetheless stressed to their American counterparts that they're prepared to confront Hamas' guerrilla tactics as well as withstand international criticism of their offensive, according to the person. Whether the country has the capability to eliminate Hamas or merely severely degrade the organization remains an open question, the source added. Hamas has about 40,000 fighters, according to the sources at the group. They can move around the enclave using a vast web of fortified tunnels, hundreds of kilometers long and up to 80 meters deep, built over many years.
On Thursday, militants in Gaza were seen emerging from tunnels to fire at tanks, then disappearing back into the network, according to residents and videos.
The Israeli military says soldiers from its Yahalom special combat engineering unit have been working with other forces to locate and destroy tunnel shafts, during what a spokesman called a "complex urban fight" in Gaza.
Hamas has fought a series of wars with Israel in recent decades and Ali Baraka, the Beirut-based head of Hamas' External Relations, said it had gradually improved its military capabilities, particularly its missiles. In the 2008 Gaza war, Hamas rockets had a maximum range of 40 km (25 miles), but that had risen to 230 km by the 2021 conflict, he added. "In every war, we surprise the Israelis with something new," Baraka told Reuters. An official close to the Iranian-backed Lebanese movement Hezbollah, which is allied to Hamas, said the Palestinian militant group's fighting strength remained mostly intact after weeks of bombardment. Hezbollah has a joint military operation room in Lebanon with Hamas and other allied factions in a regional network backed by Iran, according to Hezbollah and Hamas officials.
CALLED FOR ISRAEL'S DESTRUCTION
Hamas, which is designated a terrorist movement by Israel, the US and the EU, called for the destruction of Israel in its 1988 founding charter.
In a subsequent document known as its 2017 charter, the group accepted for the first time the idea of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders claimed by Israel after the Six Day War, although the group did not explicitly recognize Israel's right to exist.
Hamas official Osama Hamdan, who is based in Beirut, said the Oct. 7 attack and the unfolding Gaza war would put the issue of Palestinian statehood back on the map.
"It is an opportunity for us to tell them that we can make our destiny with our own hands. We can arrange the equation of the region in a way that serves our interests," he told Reuters. Hamas gained leverage after the Oslo peace accord, agreed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1993 to end decades of conflict, hit a wall. Netanyahu won power for the first time in 1996. Palestinians and the U.S. negotiators said his governments' refusal over the years to halt Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank undermined efforts to create a separate Palestinian state. Israeli officials in the past have denied settlements were an obstacle to peace and Netanyahu's current far-right coalition has taken an even harder line against ceding occupied land. An Arab peace initiative, with broad international and unanimous Arab support, has been on the table since 2002. The plan offers Israel peace treaties with full diplomatic ties in exchange for a sovereign Palestinian state. Netanyahu has instead opted for seeking an Arab Sunni alliance with Israel, made up of Egypt and Jordan – nations Israel has peace treaties with dating from 1979 and 1994 – as well as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco. Before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, he was in U.S.-brokered talks with Saudi Arabia to forge a landmark diplomatic deal as a united front against Iran, but that process has since been put on hold. Muasher, the former Jordanian minister at Carnegie, said Hamas' attack had ended any possibility that Middle Eastern stability could be reached without engaging with Palestinians. "It's clear today that without peace with the Palestinians you are not going to have peace in the region." (Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick, Simon Lewis, Steve Holland and Phil Stewart in Washington and James Mackenzie in Jerusalem; Writing by Samia Nakhoul; Editing by Angus McDowall and Pravin Char)