Snapshot of the Gaza conflict

Blinken's push for a hostage/truce deal falters. What next?

This week I’ve written for The New European about why a full-scale ground operation in Gaza is a strategic mistake. And in Frankfurter Rundschau on why the collapse of the global order demands we adopt “idealism in a realist world”. I’ve also praised vice-chancellor Robert Habeck’s decisive intervention to demand an end to anti-Semitic rhetoric in Germany. So this week’s edition of Conflict & Democracy consists of a snap analysis of developments since the start of the Israeli ground operation in Gaza, just over a week ago. Obviously things are moving fast and all this is written from OSINT only.

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According to the Institute for the Study of War, the IDF ground offensive has followed three axes of advance: southwards down the coast towards the Al Shati refugee camp; across open ground towards Beit Hanoun; and north-west from Juhor al Dik towards the coastline south of Gaza City (map below).

Overnight, ISW reports fighting between the IDF and Hamas on all three axes. Interestingly, satellite imagery (below, h/t @OSINTtechnical) shows the Juhor al Dik advance to be fairly limited in width.

Contrary to some of the “zones of control” being drawn on some other OSINT-derived maps, this southern advance does not look like any kind of stabilised area where civilians could pass through IDF checkpoints fleeing south. Instead the Israelis are building a string of defensible positions and attriting Hamas as they come out to counter-attack.

This is, one week in, certainly not the full-scale ground invasion that was threatened after the terror attack of 7 October. If the IDF's aim is to surround Gaza City and then encourage an orderly civilian evacuation southwards, in summary, they have a long way to go.

Source @OSINTtechnical

That is the context for Hassan Nasrallah's speech yesterday, in which - despite a long-winded exposition of his geopolitical analysis - he did not commit Hezbollah to full-scale participation in the war.

Ali Hashem, an analyst at Al Jazeera, believes Nasrallah was basically setting the USA a time limit of 11 November, when his next speech is due, to de-escalate the situation, with the threat of a step-change in attacks out of Lebanon if they don't. Today there has already been a reported escalation in the calibre of weaponry Hezbollah are firing at northern Israel.

As I write, Anthony Blinken looks to have drawn a blank from the Israelis on a humanitarian pause. However, it's clear from a State Department briefing to journalists overnight that they are still pushing for a temporary Israeli ceasefire (aka "humanitarian pauses") in exchange for the release of all hostages.

Meanwhile the death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is rising, with 9,000 now claimed - the majority being civilians including women and children. And with every day this goes on, the mood among the masses of the region, and their political elites, turns even more negative towards Western power.

Path to a ceasefire

The strategic danger, as I have said here before, is that the security order in the region, which is structured around America's ability to project power, disintegrates. Even if Iran does not want a regional war, there are many ways in which the conflict could escalate out of control.

That's why semantic arguments - either at the UN or at Westminster - about "ceasefire" versus "humanitarian pauses" are beside the point. The UNGA Resolution passed on 26 October demands:

"an immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities".

Britain abstained and the USA opposed this resolution. Personally, I wish the UK would have voted for it, and I think the Labour Party could have fruitfully signalled that - despite the defeat of the Canadian amendment condemning the Hamas terror attack and hostage taking. The wording of the resolution signals a continuity - between the immediate need for humanitarian cessation and the prospects of a long-term ceasefire.

Achieving de-escalation is the strategic necessity and what the Americans are privately now calling a "fairly significant pause in the hostilities", in exchange for getting the hostages released, should be the first step to it.

How should we formulate this into political action?

• The #1 task of politicians is to prevent the Gaza war escalating into a regional conflict.

• The #2 task is to achieve a substantial pause/ceasfire/truce in return for freeing the hostages. Though I have no doubt Israel is making progress towards its justified goal of destroying Hamas’ military infrastructure, there is no firm evidence that this can be achieved within a few weeks, even within the limited space north of Wadi Gaza.

• The #3 task is pressure Israel into obeying the laws of armed conflict, on proportionality and necessity, which it is repeatedly breaking. (I say this fully cognisant that it will take weeks to analyse each major incident and command decision, but the civilian casualty rate overall is already commensurate with proportionality criteria that no Western army would accept.)

• The #4 task is to demand Israel stop and reverse the ongoing West Bank land seizures and illegal settler attacks.

• The #5 task is to kickstart meaningful progress towards a two-state solution, starting with a coalition of any Western and Middle Eastern states prepared to support the Palestinian Authority in the combined humanitarian relief, reconstruction and stabilisation of Gaza once Hamas' military and civil power is removed.

If the USA can shorten the timescale to a truce, and bring regional powers into a stabilisation project, that then allows for Israel to move to a post-Netanyahu government, changing the dynamics of the situation further.

Hamas has to be taken out of the picture in Gaza. But there is more than one way of doing so, and more than one rational timescale.