I think there is a corollary to this on the Israeli side…they have an interest in keeping Hamas relevant because it provides a perverse justification for expanding settlements in the West Bank. I mean it really doesnt, but at least in the mind of the pro-settlement wing who dominate government now, it gives them something to point to while saying “this is what we’ll be facing if we dont take this land for ourselves and eliminate the people who want to kill us” (while killing the inhabitants)
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I wonder if someday that Hamas will figure out, Israel isn’t going any where and pissing over the fence into the wind is just going to get themselves wet.
BREAKING: Two American hostages are going to be released by Hamas, two Israeli officials confirm
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) October 20, 2023
Urgent Appeal🚨
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) October 20, 2023
PRCS faces an imminent threat. The IOF demands the evacuation of Al-Quds Hospital, a sanctuary for over 400 patients and around 12,000 displaced civilians.
We call the international community to act urgently, averting another catastrophe like Al-Ahli Hospital
How do you mean ?
Cheers , I’ll take a look.
it’s incredibly hard to believe anything you see in video these days
example
I’m not following? I thought the current consensus that it came from within Gaza was arrived at without having to use any evidence from the IDF.
The consensus isn’t always correct.
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Im not saying it is. Im not even saying anything about the likely truth of the consensus.
Im asking about the IDF evidence because I was genuinely unaware anything they said had any relevance to why people had landed on the consensus.
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Sometimes it is.
There doesn’t seem to be any indication that it’s a Israeli missile (w.r.t evidence on the ground shrapnel etc).
Not saying the independent analysis is wrong , but it needs to be corraborated with evidence on the ground.
The biggest problem I have with that explanation is that it raises a second question - what kind of missile warhead would do that? That was the immediate question in the aftermath, and the unspent fuel from a misfiring launch provided a somewhat plausible explanation for the very weird damage pattern.
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An Airburst munition seems to be what a lot of people are thinking
https://x.com/middleeasteye/status/1714851843602334031?s=46&t=wYI1UQq4Zm7qgLRSA8YMdw
“Have the warhead to prove it but havent disclosed it”
I call bs on that.
They can easily produce a warhead from some other strike.
Especially when so much time is being taken to disclose that. If it was an Israeli missile , the media would have reported it by now. And that embarassment at a time when Israel was hosting Biden would have been immense.
But it is hard to match that pattern with any known US or Israeli airburst ordnance - in particular, the blast is bizarrely conical, where something like a Hellfire has a circular blast. Using airburst munitions would also be a significant departure from what IDF has been doing. How many hundreds of strikes have they launched in Gaza in the past week? Yet not one appears to use a similar weapon.
To be honest I have no idea,
I had not heard about airburst munitions until 24 hours ago. Lots of heated debate on twitter at the moment.
Something similar to this
https://x.com/brucetabor8/status/1714987349200028063?s=46&t=wYI1UQq4Zm7qgLRSA8YMdw
Is being suggested. Pointing to things like car roof tops, bottom of trees fine but middles burnt. small crater, but hugely powerful shrapnel.
This bombing atrocity will be a controversy for years to come, with forensic explanations on both sides and no conclusive evidence either way.
All of this obscures the real issues which are; the suffering of the victims, and the culpability of both sides in creating and prolonging this interminable conflict. Whoever fired the rocket, both sides are to blame.
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A really good piece by Jonathan Freedland here:
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