Since fighting resumed last Saturday, more than 700 Palestinians have been killed, raising the death toll to beyond 15,500 since the start of hostilities on Nov 7.
The barrage of bombings has damaged more than 100,000 buildings, including most of Gaza’s hospitals and medical facilities, and displaced 1.7 million Palestinians. Based on reports citing Israeli sources, the war could go on for over a year.
A surprising article in The New York Times on Dec 1 has led to speculation that Tel Aviv had deliberately allowed the attack to take place in order to establish a pretext for a long-planned military assault on Gaza.
The article reported that despite seeing a 40-page document, which meticulously described the methods of the attack, Israeli officials brushed it off, regarding the plan as “aspirational” rather than realistic.
Was it a case of intelligence failure on the part of Israel? If so, why were troops, including those involved in surveillance and intelligence gathering, moved elsewhere before the attack, as veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has asked?
According to his sources, Israeli military authorities ordered two of the three army battalions at the border to shift focus to the Sukkot festival near the West Bank.
“That left only 800 soldiers responsible for guarding the 51m border. That meant citizens in the south were left without Israeli military presence for 10 to 12 hours. They were left to fend for themselves,” he wrote.
The Israeli military has declined to comment on the plan, code-named “Jericho Wall”. It only responded by saying that such questions would be looked into later.
Meanwhile, 70% of the Gazans killed so far comprised women and children, with the latter making up more than 6,000 of the victims. Another 1,800 are believed to be trapped under the rubble and presumed dead, while about 9,000 children suffered serious injuries.
On Sunday, James Elder, a spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), condemned the incessant bombing of civilians.
“The world cannot see more children with wounds of war, with burns, with shrapnel littering their bodies and with broken bones. This is a war on children,” he said in an emotional video posted on Instagram.
But in Ukraine, the other theatre of war, there are signs that the conflict is likely to end sooner rather than later. The global focus on Gaza is obliquely blurring the ongoing battles between Ukrainian forces and deeply entrenched Russian troops.
With Russia’s fight against Ukraine entering its 21st month and the third winter, war fatigue also appears to have set in among the proponents in the United States and its NATO allies in Europe. The talk has shifted towards ways to negotiate and end the war or keep it in a frozen state.
The proxy war waged by the US and NATO against Russia is proving to be futile. Despite the billions given in cash and sophisticated weaponry, not much has been achieved by Ukraine. A fifth of its territory is still controlled by Russia. Ukraine’s much-hyped counter-offensive, launched in June, has been a costly blunder with tens of thousands of soldiers killed and billions of US dollars worth of military equipment and infrastructure destroyed.
Ukraine’s miserable military situation is worsened by the politics in Kiev. Besides endemic corruption, there are divisions within President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government and growing tensions with his top general, Valery Zaluzhnyi.
The general wrote an article for The Economist last month in which he said the war had reached a stalemate and there would “most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough”. It led to a quick denial by Zelenskyy.
Some of Zelenskyy’s allies have criticised Zaluzhnyi for his leadership of the war, and there have been calls for his resignation.
Vitali Klitschko, the former heavyweight boxing world champion who has been mayor of Kiev since 2014, said in a recent interview with a Swiss news site that Zelenskyy was becoming increasingly isolated and autocratic, adding that his popularity was falling and he would pay for his mistakes by losing power.
Meanwhile, Hersh, who has been mostly right in his information on the war, wrote on his Substack platform last week that Russia and Ukraine were conducting secret peace negotiations, citing anonymous US officials.
“The driving force behind these negotiations is not Washington or Moscow, not Joe Biden or Vladimir Putin, but the two high-ranking generals who control the war – Valery Gerasimov (head of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces) and Valery Zaluzhnyi (Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine),” he wrote.
Hersh said Zelenskyy was made to understand that it was not him but “the military which will solve this problem and negotiations will continue with or without you”.
Media consultant M. Veera Pandiyan likes this quote from Abraham Lincoln: “There’s no honourable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.” The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
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