What if I offered you a phased deal that, if you accepted it, would result in everything you were desperately trying to avoid? What if I then told you that the only penalty for noncompliance was that the deal would be frozen and the very favourable status quo would be maintained?

Welcome to another episode of Art of the Deal, baby!

On July 31, Trump posted on Truth Social:

Today, the Board of Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza. This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY.

…

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL ON THIS AMAZING DEVELOPMENT, THAT EVERYBODY SAID COULD NEVER BE ACHIEVED!1

You might notice that Trump didn’t specify with whom this agreement was reached. The answer was later provided by the Board of Peace (BOP), scrambling to catch up with Trump’s post:

The 15-point roadmap to which Hamas agreed is virtually identical to the one they helped devise with the Board of Peace in May. As the BOP’s High Representative for Gaza Nickolay Mladenov told the UN Security Council that month:

In December the principles of the civilian and security transition framework were agreed among the guarantors. From those principles we built a detailed proposal for implementation. It has been put to the Palestinian factions in session after session. After rounds of consultations and based on feedback from the factions to the proposal, a 15-point Roadmap, accompanied by a proposed implementation annex, was written in response to the questions and the concerns the factions themselves raised (emphasis added).

Keep in mind that the BOP is in practice a mere extension of the Trump Administration, chaired by Trump himself and run by ex-DOGE staffers alongside senior White House officials and Trump surrogates. And Jared Kushner. So don’t take anything attributed to Board of Peace officials seriously. This includes anything Nickolay Mladenov says.

I could and should really just end this post here, because what more need be said? Ugh.

Anyway, the purpose of this roadmap was to implement the 20-point piss-take imposed on both Israel and Hamas by Trump in October 2025, which was only ever meant to be a hostages-for-prisoners deal.

Because all Trump cares about are announcements, not content, all provisions can be safely ignored by both parties, and have been. Trump’s monkeymen have artistic license to insert whatever they want into these agreements and announce whatever they want after meetings, however contradictory or outright false, knowing none of it will or even can be implemented and nothing matters. It’s all just a nihilistic, cynical circus performance for a single clownchild. Just kill me.

There are so many layers of farce involved here that it’s hard to know where to begin, and also completely pointless to begin at all, particularly since Israel has never accepted and will never accept the contents of the 20-point plan or the 15-point roadmap to implement it. The stakes are incredibly low and I am annoyed to be writing about this at all.

While Bibi initially refused to officially comment on the record, he released at least two statements as a “senior Israeli official” rejecting the roadmap. One of his rabid pitbulls, Itamar Ben-Gvir, upon whose consent Bibi’s survival rests, also explicitly rejected the roadmap, saying the policy of “voluntary” ethnic cleansing must remain the approach.

Energy Minister Eli Cohen implicitly rejected the deal and said it hasn’t even been discussed by the Cabinet since announced. Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon also rejected the roadmap. The Prime Minister’s spokesman Doron Spielman relayed Israel’s rejection of the plan to the Associated Press and other outlets. Israel’s red line has always been that Gaza must be fully demilitarised before any withdrawal.

Sources told Haaretz that Israel is demanding that Turkey and Qatar, two of the parties comprising the International Verification Committee (IVC) alongside Egypt, the US, and the BOP, be excluded. It also demands the freedom to strike areas from which it has withdrawn and the International Stabilisation Force (ISF) has deployed, and that all weapons taken from Hamas must be destroyed. In other words, Israel rejects the roadmap.

Netanyahu has more recently publicly rejected the roadmap himself: “[The Trump Administration] sent us a draft. We did not agree. It is not our draft. We sent our comments. … This is our position,” he announced.

Hamas therefore had nothing to lose in accepting the roadmap, despite joint statements by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and initial statements by Ghazi Hamad suggesting otherwise.2 Basem Naim said Hamas had agreed to the latest version, and Hamad clarified Hamas’ demands, which are in line with the roadmap as published.3

By putting the ball in Bibi’s court, knowing he can’t possibly accept this, Hamas intends to drive a further wedge between Bibi and Trump4 and impose domestic pressure on him prior to the election.

Israel has until now demanded that Hamas must disarm before the non-existent ISF could enter Gaza. According to Channel 12, in order to secure a meeting with Trump, Bibi pulled a meaningless stunt by telling the Cabinet to vote to allow an initial ISF deployment of 200 troops all the same, although only to fully Israeli-controlled areas in Rafah, which has no relation to the roadmap.5 We’ll see which additional hollow sops are required to parry Hamas’ acceptance until Trump gets distracted again.

One such example of an empty concession involves a recent Army Radio report that “targeted elimination” strikes now require the approval of IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, whereas before they only required the approval of division or brigade commanders or the chief of Southern Command. This is nothing. Ignore it.

BOP Executive Jared Kushner also lied to the UAE’s Palestinian surrogate Mohammad Dahlan, allegedly a key facilitator of the agreement, that Israel would halt strikes on Sunday. Nobody cares about anything. Everyone just says stuff.6

Both Israel and Hamas understand that Trump only cared about making the announcement, doesn’t know or care about the roadmap’s content or follow-through (or reality itself), has no ability or will to pressure either side, and has already forgotten all about it.

The 20-Point Plan

The implicit goal of the 20-point plan is indefinite Israeli occupation of a “security perimeter” inside Gaza, with Gaza itself governed indefinitely by the US via the BOP and its colonial secretary Nickolay Mladenov.

Mladenov oversees the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG)7 and ISF, the latter of which will operate “under the unified command of the United States through Major General Jasper Jeffers.”8

Technically, the NCAG, overseen by the BOP, is only meant to run Gaza “until such time as the Palestinian Authority (PA) has completed its reform program…and can securely and effectively take back control of Gaza,” according to clause 9 of the 20-point plan. Since everyone understands that this will never happen, the agreement is for Gaza to remain a US colony in perpetuity.9

Full Israeli withdrawal, even from the security perimeter, will not take place “until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat,” a vague phrase in clause 16, apparently subject to Israel’s interpretation, that in practice legitimises permanent occupation.

My favourite part of the 20-point plan is clause 19, which states that if the PA genuinely carries out reforms and the entire plan is implemented, “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”

The conditions may be in place. For what? Not for Palestinian self-determination, but for a credible pathway thereto. Wow. Possible conditions for a credible pathway. I’m sure Palestinians must be so excited for possibly creating conditions for a credible pathway.

Again, none of this matters. It’s exhausting writing about something that doesn’t matter, but we soldier on.

The 15-Point Roadmap

Who even gives a shit? It’s all so dumb.

The Best Alternative To A Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) for Israel is the status quo. Israel gets to keep destroying buildings, shooting anyone near the ever-moving “Yellow Line”, and generally bombing Gaza and assassinating Hamas leaders and operatives at will while maintaining an indefinite occupation,10 essentially the same arrangement it has elsewhere.

Hamas would prefer this wasn’t happening, of course, but the status quo gives it control of Gaza’s population and humanitarian aid. Accepting the roadmap is actually a win-win for Hamas, because:

1. The status quo is fine, and;

2. Even if the roadmap were to be implemented, it would result in the “Hezbollah model”, establishing a civilian veneer and police force that would legitimise larger aid donations and reconstruction that Hamas would control from behind the curtain.11

Despite the wording of the 20-point plan, including its first clause that “Gaza will be a deradicalised terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbours,” both Hamas and Israel understand that the roadmap implementation would take on a momentum of its own, leading to reconstruction and aid flooding the strip without genuine demilitarisation12 despite the on-paper verification and sequencing gates, and that the ISF would essentially be Gaza’s UNIFIL.13 Pressure on Israel for withdrawal and reconstruction would inevitably compound.

Israel also understands that it lost the war and cannot gain through diplomacy what it failed to achieve militarily. It still absurdly continues to demand Hamas unconditionally disarm before it makes any moves, and to bomb Gaza and assassinate Hamas operatives, precisely to ensure the status remains quo and the roadmap is indefinitely stalled, waiting until it can fully reignite the war.14

Israel, rather than Mladenov’s constant lies about Hamas refusing the roadmap, is the primary obstacle to implementation, and for good reason.

The 15-Point Roadmap would force Israel to halt all operations and withdraw sector by sector to an undefined “security perimeter” as the arms decommissioning process unfolds and is verified. It would also potentially create the potential conditions for potential Palestinian statehood, the thing this Government exists to prevent.

So none of this is going to happen and there’s no point writing about this at all. What am I doing.

Okay, so, the BOP’s High Representative Nickolay Mladenov is a liar whose words mean absolutely nothing. This is not necessarily his fault, but by virtue of being a Trump-Bibi surrogate, he can’t be otherwise. The same applies to anything coming out of the BOP, much less Israel or the US. This is important to keep in mind.

For instance, Mladenov lied when presenting the roadmap to the UN Security Council on May 21: “Let me be clear: we had secured guarantees from Israel that, once Hamas commits to this Roadmap, Israel will move promptly to fulfill its remaining commitments under the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement.”

You can literally just say stuff.

Still, we have to use Mladenov’s descriptions of the roadmap, which consists of 15 points divided into four categories:

• Principles (1-5),

• Security (6-11)

• International Stabilization Force (ISF) and Withdrawal of Israeli Forces (12-14)

• Reconstruction (15)

Mladenov, May 21:

The architecture of that Roadmap rests on a single principle. The principle is reciprocity. Each step by one side triggers a step by the other… The design introduces a verification mechanism. Each step is confirmed by an independent committee before the next is taken. If a step is missed, the next step is not taken… [the roadmap] commits Israel to a phased withdrawal of its forces to Gaza’s perimeter, on an agreed timetable… as decommissioning is verified, sector by sector, the IDF should withdraw.

Following Hamas’ agreement at the end of July, Mladenov again emphasised that “Withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning.”

After meeting with Bibi, Mladenov seemingly reversed himself entirely, with the BOP putting out a statement adopting Israel’s position:

Contrary to inaccurate reports, we note that the withdrawal of the IDF beyond the Yellow Line will take place only once decommissioning is complete, as Hamas committed to the mediators. This applies to light weapons, heavy weapons, and the tunnels alike.

I must repeatedly emphasise that nothing that is said by anyone means anything.

Principles

Point 1

This requires Israel and Hamas to “reaffirm” commitment to the 20-point plan, the one to which neither side is or ever would be committed, so it’s already dead. No point reading further.

Point 2

This forces Israel to halt all military operations and assassinations and withdraw back to the original yellow line, encompassing just over 50% of Gaza, which Israel has for some reason expanded since the 20-point plan was announced until it now occupies more than 60% of Gaza. Bibi recently declared, “We are now in 60% of the territory of the Gaza Strip. We were at 50%. We moved to 60%. My directive is to move to — take it step by step — first of all 70. Let’s start with that.”

Israel, of course, will not withdraw or halt strikes and assassinations, so why the hell am I still writing.

But the best part of point 2 is, even if it did, and Israel accepts the roadmap, that just kicks off an indefinitely extendable 14-day process to prepare “the timetable and implementation mechanisms” for the roadmap. Yes, those don’t exist yet. And never will! But if in some alternative universe you get that far, then the NCAG enters and begins undertaking its responsibilities.

Hamas has actually been demanding that the NCAG enter Gaza since October 2025; Israel has been blocking their entry. The recent nonsense cabinet vote to allow in the initial tiny ISF deployment reportedly also includes NCAG entry, although Smotrich and Strock are demanding this be reversed and that Bibi “adopt a preventative cabinet decision that will block the implementation of the Roadmap published by the Board of Peace, and to compel the Peace Council to amend the outline so that it aligns with the goals of the war and the commitments made to Israel.”

Thus far, the BOP hasn’t even been able to get a green light from Israel for a “pilot humanitarian zone”,15 which seem to be little more than the Boer-style concentration camps originally envisioned as part of the Gaza Humanitarian Failboat mechanism,16 in the sterile, wholly IDF-controlled area of Tel Sultan near Rafah. So yeah, good luck with doing this in the rest of Gaza.

(You can watch the full January 2026 briefing by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to the World Economic Forum here)17

Point 2 also establishes the International Verification Committee (IVC), comprising representatives of the US, Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, and the US. I mean the BOP.

Let’s assume we are in an alternate universe and have made it up to and even past point 2.

Point 3

“Progression from one phase to the following one shall be contingent on the verified completion of the commitments of the previous phase. This verification shall be done by the IVC, which shall also observe any violations by either party through an enhanced monitoring mechanism.”

But how are violations punished? They aren’t; they are rewarded. The only penalty is freezing the roadmap in place, which is exactly what Israel wants.

Point 4

Hamas and its sister organisations like PIJ pinky-swear “that all civilian governance and security functions in Gaza shall be handed over to NCAG” and that they won’t “interfere in NCAG affairs during the transitional period.” Incredible.

Point 5

Hamas’ “civil servants shall be treated lawfully, fairly and with dignity with respect to their rights. Those whose services are terminated or who are retired during the transitional period shall receive their rights in accordance with the Palestinian law.”

What is “Palestinian law”? Who cares. It’s just words.

Point 5 also deals with irrelevant financial stuff.18

Security

Point 6

“Gaza shall be governed according to the principle of One Authority, One Law, One Weapon. NCAG shall operate in accordance with Palestinian laws, relevant international standards and the principles of good governance.”

Cool story bro.

Point 7

In other words, newly-trained personnel are incorporated into Hamas’ police, but then all are vetted by…someone… while formal authority transfers to NCAG.

Hamas official Husam Badran told Al Jazeera in June:

When [the NCAG] comes to take over the Gaza Strip, there will be no visible weapons in the streets and alleys of Gaza except the official weapons belonging to this committee, which is the official Palestinian police. There will be no armed manifestations like the ones we were accustomed to in the Gaza Strip…We are not talking about handing [weapons] over; we are talking about, at least, weapons not being visible except for the official weapons of the Palestinian police. The details of this matter will be discussed within a national framework.

The NCAG’s registration for new police recruits closed at the end of February. A BOP official claimed to the Times of Israel on July 28 that NCAG had received more than 200,000 applications, and that 5,000 Gazans have been vetted so far by NCAG and the ISF. However, the BOPadoo said these cadets still needed to be trained outside Gaza and then allowed back in, and that he hoped they could begin training “in the next weeks.”19

From the same report:

The official says the vetting was carried out by the NCAG with support from the ISF, which also “took information” from other bodies — indicating that Israeli security forces played a role and likely vetoed any candidates linked to the terror group.

An Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel in March that Palestinians who previously served as Hamas civil servants had been allowed to apply to the new police force, but would have to undergo Shin Bet vetting to be approved.

Another report, citing a US official, blamed Israel for the delay: “The US official says training for the police force has already begun, though the vast majority of the 5,000 vetted recruits have yet to leave Gaza amid Israeli foot-dragging.”

Yet another report also underlined that Israel was the issue:

While tens of thousands of Palestinians applied [to] join the force, and the Board of Peace has made progress vetting candidates, they have yet to depart Egypt for training, in part owing to the lack of assurance from Israel that those who leave Gaza will be allowed to return, two Arab diplomats told The Times of Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.

Notably, Hamas’ internal security apparatus, the means by which it actually maintains power, goes unaddressed.

But whatever. Who cares. It’s all fantasy.

Point 8

This is the crux of the roadmap, dealing with the “process to decommission and store heavy weapons,20 military production sites, depots of weapons, and tunnels (emphasis added)”, which will begin after Israel ceases attacks, increases aid, withdraws to the original yellow line, and the ISF and NCAG deploy.

Remember that indefinitely extendable 14-day timetable from point 2? The decommissioning and storage process is meant to be “administered and implemented by NCAG in a gradual, sequential and time-bound manner according to” that 14-day timetable, “supported” and “supervised” by the ISF, whatever that means (nothing), with participation by Hamas and PIJ et al.

Here I must stress that this is the only point directly tied to Israeli withdrawal, contrary to the false BOP statement put out after the Bibi meeting. The clause clearly states, “This process shall be linked to an Israeli withdrawal, in phases, from the areas under its control in Gaza and the decommissioning of [Israel’s Gaza proxies] in accordance with article 10 of this Roadmap.”21

“No weapons shall be transferred or handed to Israel or non-Palestinian parties”, point 8 reads, and “only NCAG shall hold, store or control weapons in Gaza” following points 7-10.

At least point 8 substitutes “shall” for “may”. It “shall create appropriate conditions for a credible pathway towards achieving Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”

Again, “appropriate conditions for a credible pathway.” Hilarious.

But gosh, I wonder what Palestinians think of all this?

According to the most recent Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll in late October 2025:

When asked whether it supports or opposes the disarmament of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in order to permanently end the war on the Gaza Strip, an overwhelming majority of 69% (87% in the West Bank and 55% in the Gaza Strip) said it is opposed to that; only 29% support it.

Huh.

A BOP official said on July 31, “We would like to complete the disarmament process in Gaza within 200 to 350 days. The demilitarization process will be carried out one area of the Gaza Strip at a time.”

Like I said, ignore anything they say, on or off the record.

Point 9

This one is among the funniest clauses. In practice, it means everyone gets to keep their personal weapons.22

Reintegration…into what? And again, what the hell are “Palestinian laws”? What “law” is the NCAG meant to enforce?

And given NCAG wouldn’t, by definition, have a monopoly of arms here, this is meant to happen due to yet more pinky promises by not only Hamas, PIJ, and other Palestinian organisations, but all of the tribes, clans, and criminals in Gaza, as well. Has anyone told them?

Point 10

The weapons of Israel’s Gaza gangs “shall be decommissioned and stored under NCAG authority according to an agreed upon timetable. Members of those militias shall not be integrated in the security and police services.”

Unlike Hamas members,23 Israel’s proxies will be barred from any security role.

Point 11

This is definitely the funniest clause:

A Social Peace Agreement shall be signed in accordance with Palestinian norms and laws. It shall include commitments to immediately end internal violence, avoid reprisals, shows of force, military parades and armed demonstrations.

All Palestinians are supposed to agree not to engage in fratricide and not to show off their armed strength. “Palestinian norms and laws”. What?

Even relative to the overall joke that is the roadmap, this is something special. Who is writing this “Social Peace Agreement”? Who enforces this deal? Who is even meant to sign it?

No, it doesn’t matter.

International Stabilization Force (ISF) and Withdrawal of Israeli Forces

Point 12

The “temporary” ISF deploys solely to separate the IDF from NCAG-controlled areas, and “shall not perform any police mission or missions related to the Palestinian society.”

The ISF’s roles include monitoring ceasefire compliance, training the Palestinian police, “securing the protection and delivery of humanitarian assistance and essential supplies into Gaza Strip,” and supporting the NCAG, “at its request, in any other non-policing mission.”

The ISF does not exist. It will never exist in any meaningful way. The Wall Street Journal reported on July 9:

The promised International Stabilization Force for Gaza is struggling to deploy even an initial group of about 10 to 20 troops, according to a U.S. military official and other people familiar with the plans.

…

The Moroccan soldiers, who were meant to deploy in June, are now expected within months and won’t go into Gaza right away, instead training near its border in Israel before beginning limited operations in the enclave. More peacekeepers are expected to join them at a later date.

…

A spokeswoman for Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the country’s participation in the ISF is still on pause.

Despite the setbacks, four countries—Albania, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Morocco—are now on course to sign formal commitments to the ISF, according to the U.S. military official. Albania’s Defense Ministry declined to comment, and the administrations in the three other countries didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The ISF plans to start its phased deployment within months, the official said, with troops eventually based out of two sites: a Logistics Support Area, a newly built logistics hub in Israel near the Kerem Shalom border crossing into Gaza; and a Mission Support Site, inside Gaza. The logistics hub is mostly built, while construction of the mission site hasn’t begun.

The two sites, once built and operational, are meant to accommodate about 5,500 ISF personnel.24

The small Moroccan contingent, a mix of officers and security troops, will be based at the logistics hub near the Gaza border, the U.S. official said. They will initially be tasked with securing the site, which recently received its first delivery of tactical vehicles. Eventually, troops based there will carry out expeditionary-style operations inside Gaza, like route reconnaissance, the official said.

Israel’s cabinet voting to allow in 200 ISF troops, while meaning nothing, means even less, because there aren’t 200 to allow in.

A US official claimed at the end of July that:

The Board of Peace has secured commitments for 5,000 troops from various countries. However, only a handful of representatives from Morocco, Kosovo, Albania, Kazakhstan have actually made it to Israel for eventual deployment. The Board of Peace official says the four contributing countries will also be talking to other nations about joining the ISF.

Point 13

This is the partner point of article 8:

Israeli forces shall complete their phased withdrawal from Gaza Strip according to an agreed upon timetable, consistent with article “8” of the Roadmap and in accordance with President Trump’s Comprehensive Peace Plan, which includes a commitment not to force anyone to leave the Strip.

The US is also reminding Israel that its voluntary ethnic cleansing plan goes against the 20-point plan. Not that Israel has taken any heed.

Point 14

“NCAG shall be responsible for handling internal security incidents.”

Reconstruction

Point 15

“Implementation of the reconstruction of Gaza Strip and the provision of necessary resources and financing shall take place according to a plan and timetable prepared and supervised by BoP and NCAG in accordance with relevant laws and international standards.”

Literally just buzzwords.

Show Me The Money

Mladenov the Mendacious told reporters in May that countries had committed US$17 billion for this entire process. Over TEN YEARS.

Meanwhile, the Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA) by the UN, EU, and World Bank estimated Gaza needed more than US$71 billion over the next decade, including US$26.3 billion “required in the first eighteen months to restore essential services, rebuild critical infrastructure, and support economic recovery.”

I guess that $17 billion over a decade is at least something, though, right?

Nope! Less than 1% of that has actually been transferred.

The Times of Israel reported on May 20:

Over half a dozen countries announced major donations to the Board of Peace during a February fundraising conference in Washington. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait each pledged at least $1 billion, with US President Donald Trump announcing Washington would tack on another $10 billion.

But as of this week, just around one percent of the $17 billion that the US said was pledged to the Board of Peace has actually been transferred, according to two officials familiar with the matter.

…

To try and close the fundraising gap, the US asked Israel to allow a portion of the $5 billion in Palestinian tax revenues that Jerusalem is withholding from the Palestinian Authority to be transferred instead to the Board of Peace.

…

A Palestinian official told The Times of Israel that the PA offered to donate to the Board of Peace, but is conditioning its contribution on Israel releasing the clearance revenues, which Jerusalem is supposed to collect on Ramallah’s behalf and transfer to the PA each month.

“No big deal!” lies the BOP. They don’t even want the money! The BOP “is not looking to immediately collect all of the pledges, and instead wants to cash in on an as-needed basis,” one source claimed. Very, extremely, overwhelmingly plausible.

So plausible, in fact, that a month later, the BOP’s report, transferred by US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz to the Security Council, stated (paragraph 33, page 8):

During the reporting period, the Board of Peace received USD 17 billion in pledges for reconstruction purposes. The Board of Peace underscores that the gap between commitment and disbursement must be closed with urgency. Funds committed but not yet disbursed represent the difference between a framework that exists on paper and one that delivers on the ground for the people of Gaza.

So yeah, there’s no money for any of this.

But even if there were, there is no “this”. There’s nothing. Well done for wasting your time reading about nothing, and well done me for wasting my time writing about it.

1

Bringing to mind this famous meme:

Read Part I here.

At the risk of repeating myself, which I am about to do, I have been provoked into writing another post about the Trilateral Framework. You can blame this recent article in Commentary by Seth Mandel:

In the spirit of The Apprentice, President Trump has sent out his two highest-profile prospective successors to negotiate and then sell two mutually antagonistic deals… Vice President JD Vance is spearheading negotiations with Iran… Secretary of State Marco Rubio is tasked with [Lebanon].

…

Both deals are hugely significant to the future of American power…

…

The Lebanon deal is predicated on reality.

I do not know from which dimension this article comes to us, but I can assure you it is not this one.

The Trilateral Framework and US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) are not “mutually antagonistic” agreements of equal weight. On the contrary, the former was birthed by the latter, there being only one US interest at play; namely, reopening and keeping open the Strait of Hormuz1 by surrendering to all of Iran’s demands.

[EDIT, JULY 15: Since I wrote this, Trump has repudiated the MOU and reimposed the naval blockade of Iranian ports. With no strategic changes evident in the US approach thus far, barring sudden regime collapse, he will cuck back into the MOU within 2-3 months on the current trajectory and nothing will have changed.]

Among these demands was that the US force Israel to halt military operations against Hezbollah and withdraw from Lebanon. Despite US and Israeli denials, that was a core element of the April 7 ceasefire as announced by Pakistani Prime Minister and key mediator Shehbaz Sharif:

That provision was codified almost verbatim in the first clause of the MOU, which is just a further indefinitely extendable 60-day extension of the indefinitely-extended April 7 ceasefire.

Hezbollah dutifully complied,2 halting fire the night of April 7; Israel was horrified. Despite Netanyahu and Trump lying that the ceasefire did not include Lebanon, Israel fully understood the reality and rushed to try and kill the ceasefire with a massive bombing3 of Beirut on April 8 in order to provoke Iran into retaliating.

The regime quickly made it clear to the US that the ceasefire would not survive Israel’s violation. Regarding the message Iran was conveying to the US, Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh said:

You cannot have cake and eat it at the same time… You cannot ask for a ceasefire and then accept terms and conditions, accept all the areas that a ceasefire is applied to, and name Lebanon, exactly Lebanon in that, and then your ally just starts a massacre… [The US must choose] between war and ceasefire.

The US chose ceasefire. David Daoud has summarised this volte-face best:

Washington began shifting its tone on Lebanon [on April 8] and called on the Israelis to restrain their attacks, followed by calling on Jerusalem to engage Beirut in direct negotiations. Reporting between April 9 and April 14 made it clear that the United States demanded this change in Israel’s position because Washington needed quiet in Lebanon to facilitate talks with Iran.

Having caved to Iran, the US imposed a 10-day ceasefire on April 16 that it unilaterally extended for three weeks and then again for 45 days. The State Department announced after the second extension that it would “reconvene the political track of negotiations” in early June, from which the Framework emerged. All of this due to the Iranian threats to walk away.

In early June, Trump blocked Israeli strikes on Beirut after Iran again pointed to its Sword of Damocles. “What the fuck are you doing?” Trump reportedly yelled at Bibi over the phone. Another official summarised his remarks as “You're fucking crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”4

Trump has continued to vent his frustration publicly and privately over Israel refusing to stop bombing Hezbollah, even suggesting multiple times that he’d prefer Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa handle it. He later told Axios that he has to keep Bibi “a little sane”.

At the G7, Trump said Lebanon was “a very small piece of the puzzle, actually… The big deal is the Iran deal,” lamenting that Israel’s attack on Hezbollah “just goes on forever. And when that happens, it throws a negative light on the big deal, and that's the deal with Iran.”

JD Bants and other Administration officials began pressing Israel to begin withdrawal at Iran’s request; Israel has thus far refused. “The President has committed us to see a full, regional ceasefire,” Vance said regarding Lebanon.

Iran continues to explain to the US that the MOU-extended April 7 ceasefire will not survive the violation of its first clause, as it has been saying since Israel’s April 8 berserker attack on Beirut. The Framework, which implicitly legitimises indefinite Israeli occupation and bombing of Lebanon, is fundamentally incompatible with the MOU’s first clause.5

Despite “Trump Administration sources” trolling the Wall Street Journal editorial board, saying the Framework is their “interpretation” of the MOU’s language, that provision, by virtue of being inserted at Iran’s command, is solely subject to the regime’s interpretation.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has said that “the full implementation of the first clause” is “an essential condition for achieving a final and lasting agreement”, and that this means “the cessation of [Israel’s] war and military operations” and full withdrawal from Lebanon. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi earlier said, “Without the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territories they have occupied in this war, a full end to the war has not been achieved.”

Following their first summit in Geneva after the signing of the MOU, the US and Iran agreed to “the creation of a de-confliction cell, between the parties, the Lebanese Republic and facilitated by the Mediators, to ensure the adherence of the termination of military operations in Lebanon as per the MoU.” Vance later described this channel as a positive outcome of the summit.6

According to all reports prior to the announcement of the Framework, the Israel-Lebanon negotiations were not going well, described variously as the “least productive to date” or “moving backwards” only 24-48 hours before the announcement. The only thing that changed in those hours was Rubio conveying Trump’s demand to have something signed by the end of the week.

However, Trump has neither posted nor said a single thing about the Trilateral Framework since it was announced.

To repeat: unlike anything Trump or his speechwriters consider important, Trump has officially said nothing. On Truth Social, where he is able to share what he actually cares about, he has posted nothing.

There is no sign he even knows, much less cares, if the Framework exists. He clearly got distracted as soon as Rubio hung up the phone.

Read more

_{Merely by writing a post on it, however disdainful, I am giving the recently signed Trilateral Framework far more attention than it deserves, which is none. I have no excuse for my hypocrisy, engaging with something I am telling you to ignore because it’s contemptible, trivial garbage. I ought to know better, but I can’t seem to help myself.}

.הבל הבלים

The Lebanon-Israel-US Trilateral Framework joins the absurdist pantheon of Trump Administration diplomatic vapourware, the straightforward transactions (and surrenders) masquerading as broader political breakthroughs.

Trump himself is an illiterate, hilariously suggestible circus clown, possessing neither the patience nor intelligence to understand or care about what is actually being signed.1 He just wants to talk about how he has personally ended sixty billion wars in as many seconds, because that’s just who he is. He’s a war ender. His “personality actually is all about stopping wars.”

The job of his officials is to extract scraps of p…

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I wish to apologise to all none of my subscribers and followers who have been eagerly awaiting my delayed take on the Iranastrophe. It’s coming. In the interim, this somewhat NSFW post will ideally tide you all over.

I have been absent for several months due to certain life events, in the course of which I stumbled upon a September 1996 edition of Marie Claire. Possessed of natural curiosity and, more importantly, the existential drive to procrastinate, I began flicking through it, and my god. I won’t even try to describe it. This is something that has to be experienced.1

WOMEN ON A SEX HUNT

No man is safe when these lust-filled South Pacific women embark on their annual erotic rampage

By Abigail Howarth

The men of Kiriwina have been warned. Word has swept through the grass-hut villages of this tiny Pacific island that the women in the Katumatala area are about to begin their yam harvest celebrations. In trepidation, male islanders plot how to get to market by a different route; bus driver…

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We told you so.

That’s the universal message from the Australian Jewish community, which claims that the terrorist attack on Bondi Beach was the natural and inevitable culmination of the Government’s failure to address the post-October 7 surge in antisemitism and antizionist activity and rallies, blaming their appeasement of the Red-Black alliance for this atrocity.

We warned you. For two years. We begged you. If only you’d have listened. Are you ready to listen now?

The problem with this narrative, which is receiving wall-to-wall coverage in every print and broadcast media outlet, is that it is categorically false and frankly stultifying, in the antiquated sense of the word.

Words do not systematically lead to violence. Nothing does. The process of “radicalisation” is idiosyncratic and random; there is no way to predict who will cross the chasm from rhetoric to action, or whether violent ideology will be translated into violent action, much less where.

Relative to the populations of interest, regardless of the ideology in question, violence is so rare that, outside of sting operations or the occasional tip-off, it’s impossible to prevent, particularly in a multicultural democracy.

Least effective of all possible remedies, far less effective than Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s federal crackdown and NSW Premier Chris Minns local crackdown on gun ownership, would be imposing yet further speech restrictions, as advocated by nearly all Jewish community leaders and organisations.1

I am agnostic on the issue of the Royal Commission being demanded by the Jewish community and other prominent Australians. Notwithstanding the fact that all the answers are already known and no relevant recommendations would or could be implemented, it would be good to have all information in one place and to put the issue of jihadi jew-hate front and centre politically.

The righteous fury of the community is understandable. This attack hit too close to home. People I know, including distant relatives, were shot and killed, and but for unexpected Sliding Doors decisions, I would have had at least one younger sibling among the wounded or dead.

Nor am I absolving this suicidal melange of virtue-signalling eunuchs and retarded regressives currently running the country of their actual failures, including those unrelated to “social cohesion”.

The Government has absolutely failed, for instance, to make an example of those brandishing terrorist banners, screeching homicidal slogans, or harassing and intimidating Jews on and off campus,2 online and in real life.

The resultant feverish atmosphere over the last two years made an eventual murder feel inevitable, especially after Israeli embassy staffers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, his bride-to-be, were gunned down in Washington, D.C. by virulent anti-Israel activist Elias Rodriguez in May 2025.3

But using this latest attack, disingenuously, as a political cudgel to compel the Government to suppress the rabid anti-Israel miasma pervading society here, since it could in theory lead to violence, is not a productive or reasonable stance.4

The Bondi massacre is simply unrelated to the protests or other forms of aggressive anti-Israel activism, although general and nearly universal Islamic Judenhass,5 a core principle of identity for most Muslims, also leads them to hate Israel.6

As in the rest of the West, there is bipartisan culpability, spanning decades, for allowing Islam to establish itself as a significant electoral and social force in Australia, whence emerged a thankfully tiny but dangerous cohort of jihadist reavers.

To blame this particular Government for an Islamic State-inspired mass shooting and attempted bombing7 just because it happened to be in power at the time and took a line on Palestinian statehood and the conduct of the war with which the organised Jewish community vehemently disagreed is irresponsible and absurd.

Whatever bureaucratic and intelligence failures, if any, can be laid at the feet of the current Government, none had anything to do with recognising a Palestinian state or attacking Israel’s wartime conduct, fairly or not.

The context for this attack was not antizionist rallies, but annual Islamic State activity targeting Jewish and Christian holiday gatherings globally, about which more later.

There are three distinct local phenomena being conflated that need to be disaggregated, none of which can be directly linked to Bondi.

Anti-Israel Activism

The weekly mass protests that began almost immediately after October 7, 2023, have been shocking, irritating, intimidating, and disruptive. While there have been at least two cases of organic vandalism or unruliness targeting Jewish or Israeli sites8, there has not been a single incident of intentional violence targeting Jews qua Jews linked to these protests that I can find. Harassment? Yes. Intimidation and even death threats? Absolutely. Glorification of terrorism, terrorist groups, and violence against Israelis? 100%.

Antisemitic violence? No.9

That said, jihadis have joined the protests on occasion.

Cretins, Criminals, and the IRGC

Following the complete failure of their October 2024 ballistic missile retaliation against Israel, the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution turned to their age-old ties to global organised crime “to intimidate [Jewish] communities and create conditions that could lead to more serious attacks,” according to the Mossad announcement about a network run by Qods Force officer Sardar Ammar, which was behind at least two antisemitic arsons targeting Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Sydney and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne in October and December 2024, respectively.10

ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess described the approach on August 26 as:

A layer cake of cut-outs between IRGC and the person or the alleged perpetrators conducting crimes. In between them, they tap into a number of people, agents of IRGC, and people that they know in the criminal world, and work through there, so it’s a series of chains. There’s… an organised crime element offshore in this. But that’s not to suggest organised crime are doing it. They’re just using cut-outs, including people who are criminal and members of organised crime gangs to do their bidding or direct their bidding… ‘are there crime gangs in Australia doing this?’ Not in my view. These are cut-outs all the way through. That was offshore. But they have connections to Australia, obviously.

For the Lewis’ attack, the IRGC reportedly acted through Nomad bikie chapter President Sayed Moosawi, who in turn hired low-level thugs for the job, what ASIO reffered to as a “layer-cake of cut-outs”. The texts between Moosawi, who called himself “James Bond”, and his cretins-for-hire are hilarious:11

But court documents show the targeting of the kosher deli in Bondi only came after two botched attempts on the wrong business.

…

The court documents state that two weeks later Ogden drove a white Honda Accord with stolen licence plates along the M5 through Arncliffe, with the car’s owner, Juon Amuoi, in the passenger seat.

It was just past 2am when the pair parked in Bondi Beach, pulled on rubber gloves and balaclavas and walked toward the Curly Lewis Brewery, according to the documents. Police describe the venue as “a popular licensed premises on the beachfront promenade” with no links to the Jewish faith or community.

Amuoi allegedly carried a sledgehammer, but the pair were “spooked” after being spotted by a member of the public, and fled.

“Use both fail the test cant do one small thing, f---ing 16 years kid could of got it done,” Moosawi allegedly lambasted Ogden.

Ogden pledged to “fix that f--- up” and, the following evening, went with Amuoi and Moosawi for a meeting at the Villawood Hotel.

Inside the pokies room, the trio met with two more men, Guy Finnegan and Craig Bantoft, the court documents state.

Moosawi allegedly told the group he was paid $12,000 to organise a fire in Bondi and offered Finnegan and Bantoft $4000 to carry out the job.

Ogden gave them instructions which suggested Lewis’ Continental Kitchen on Curlewis Street was the target, the documents state.

However, at 1am on October 17, Finnegan and Bantoft allegedly drove back to Curly Lewis Brewery.

The pair allegedly sat on a bench out the front of the closed brewery before pouring bottles of accelerant under the door and setting it on fire. It was extinguished by the sprinklers.

Moosawi, the documents allege, was furious.

“Use [sic] f---ed the whole thing now If use [sic] f---ing couldn’t do it from the start then why did use [sic] even went there for f--- me It’s not even done 2% burned f--- me dead,” Moosawi allegedly messaged Finnegan the following morning.

Finnegan messaged Bantoft, venting about Moosawi’s alleged blow-up.

“I’m starting to think he has sent us to the wrong place LoL,” Finnegan said.

Police arrested Finnegan within 24 hours before Ogden allegedly returned to finish the job at Lewis’ Continental Kitchen at 2:30am on October 20.

For the Adass Israel Synagogue arson, the IRGC tapped the network of notorious kingpin Kazem Hamad, who has been in IRGC-controlled Iraq for several years after being deported from Australia, where he still runs things.12 A source told Sky News that “Hamad’s family also have connections to senior military officials in Iraq.”

Separately, in New South Wales, police established Strike Force Pearl to investigate a spate of antisemitic vandalism, which quickly merged with the broader Operation Kissinger investigation being conducted by the NSW Joint Counter Terrorism Team into a caravan full of explosives discovered in Dural in January.13

Within 2 months, police announced that the caravan was a hoax and had been organised by the same criminals behind the antisemitic graffiti and arsons. NSW Police Deputy Commissioner David Hudson said everything had been:

orchestrated by an organised crime element and conducted to further their own causes. All of the Pearl matters — I’m suggesting the 14 incidents, and also the caravan job being investigated under Operation Kissinger, are all being orchestrated by the same individuals.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Krissy Barrett announced on March 10:

Almost immediately, experienced investigators within the JCTT believed that the caravan was part of a fabricated terrorism plot – essentially a criminal con job.

This was because of the information they already had, how easily the caravan was found and how visible the explosives were in the caravan. Also, there was no detonator.

Today (10 March, 2025), I can reveal that the caravan was never going to cause a mass casualty event but instead was concocted by criminals who wanted to cause fear for personal benefit.

The JCTT discussed providing this information earlier to the public, however, during our investigations, we continued to receive tip-offs about other terror plots related to this matter.

Out of an abundance of caution, it was agreed by all agencies that the operation would remain a JCTT investigation. While we were confident all these tip-offs were fake, we could not risk ignoring the information provided, and we kept investigating at the highest level.

We are now confident that all these tip-offs were fabricated, and the caravan plot was an elaborate scheme contrived by organised criminals, domestically and from offshore.

There were several people who had different levels of involvement in this fake terrorism plot but put simply, the plan was the following:

• Organise for someone to buy a caravan;

• place it with explosives and written material of antisemitic nature;

• leave it in a specific location;

• and then, once that had happened, inform law enforcement about an impending terror attack against Jewish Australians.

We believe the person pulling the strings wanted changes to their criminal status but maintained a distance from their scheme and hired alleged local criminals to carry out parts of their plan.

However, the plan was foiled. An AFP operational strategy is in place to take action against this individual and I won’t make any further comment on that.

A number of people have been identified as part of this fake terrorism plot and the AFP is working with local and overseas law enforcement officials in our bid to have all of those responsible brought to justice.

…

Those creating fake terror threats, including using antisemitism to elicit a desired response from law enforcement or the courts, face being charged for creating fake plots – and unfortunately for them, they will face the full experience, capability and dogged determination of terrorism investigators.

This is a rare time I will provide advice to criminals – serve your time quietly in prison and stop diverting the resources of terrorism investigators – otherwise your charges could be significantly upgraded.

Too many criminals are accused of paying others to carry out antisemitic or terrorism incidents to get our attention or divert our resources. And too many offenders working in the criminal gig economy are accepting these tasks for money.

In one example, the AFP will allege a prisoner last year tried to secure high-powered weapons for a fake terror plot so he could provide information to authorities in exchange for a reduction to his drug trafficking sentence.

The key figures identified in the NSW network organising antisemitic attacks to barter insider knowledge for reduced sentences and divert resources and distract police14 were drug kingpin Sayet Erhan Akca, hiding from Australian security services in Turkey since 2023,15 and Nicholas Alexander.

It’s still unclear whether these acts were also linked to the IRGC16 or just organised crime sensing opportunities. Reporting on Nicholas Alexander’s case suggests he was acting on behalf of “a shadowy overseas group”, though the method aligns more with Russian intelligence than the IRGC, and is probably just referring to Akca et al:

A man who orchestrated anti-Semitic attacks on a Sydney synagogue, a childcare centre, and several cars and homes at the behest of a shadowy overseas group ordered his lackeys to cause maximum unrest between Jews and Arabs.

The Newtown synagogue was sprayed with 10 swastikas, the Only About Children childcare in Maroubra was firebombed, and multiple cars and homes – including the former address of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin – were torched and covered in vile anti-Semitic graffiti as part of a co-ordinated campaign across Sydney in January this year.

Nicholas Alexander, 32, has now pleaded guilty to seven offences as an accessory before the fact, after directing others to carry out the repulsive attacks.

…

“We are gangsters setting terrorists up for our freedom and liberties to be restored,” Alexander wrote in messages to Leon Sofilas and Adam Moule, who were directly involved in the Newtown synagogue attack.

“It’s gonna hit the news … we’re gonna vandalise some sinagogs (sic) … then we gonna start the opposite f – Arabs hahahaha in the areas.”

In a statement of facts tendered to Downing Centre Local Court, Alexander was said to have acted on the instructions of unknown people overseas.

In preparation for some of the anti-Semitic acts, Alexander texted Sofilas “you’ll become a terrorist hahahaha”.

“These messages demonstrated that Alexander and Sofilas knew that the preparations directed were part of organised criminal activity that targeted the Sydney Jewish community with arson attacks and the potential use of explosives,” the facts stated.

“Messages (on another day) illustrate the deliberate intention to divide the Arab and Jewish communities to further the aims of the larger criminal group overseas that instructed Alexander.”

…

“Tell em to recruit all kids and if they get hit up why they did it they say they got forced to by their meth dealers or pressured into it by Arabs that don’t talk much English,” Alexander instructed Sofilas.

“If you get grabbed say the Muslim boys made you do it to pay off a drug debt you had no choice they were going to kill me lmao.”

At least with regard to the attacks associated with the IRGC, the Government has more than merited the opprobrium, having pussyfooted around the issue for years and refusing to amend legislation to list it as a terrorist organisation, or in this case a “state sponsor of terrorism”, until a month ago.

The IRGC has been doing this all over the world, for years, and the Government knew it was happening here, too. Law enforcement sources told the Sydney Morning Herald that “Iran has been working with outlaw bikie gangs for years,” while government sources told Sky News that “The Albanese government was aware for several months that Iran may have been involved in antisemitic attacks on Australian soil.”

But none of these attacks, IRGC-linked or otherwise,17 were related to local antisemitism or anti-Israel protests and activity.

Islamic State of Mind

On December 14, five Arab men were arrested in Germany for plotting an Islamic State attack on a Christmas market. Simultaneously, a student at the Catholic University of Lublin was arrested by Polish security services, also for plotting an Islamic State attack on a Christmas market. The same day, an IS agent opened fire on US soldiers in Syria, killing two soldiers and a US interpreter and wounding several other US and Syrian soldiers.18 About 10 days later, Turkey rounded up more than 100 Islamic State supporters “following intelligence indicating that the IS terrorist organisation was planning attacks during Christmas and New Year celebrations.”19 In the Netherlands, a 29-year-old Syrian Islamic State member was arrested for planning an attack in Europe around Christmas, while an 18-year-old planning an NYE Islamic State attack in North Carolina was arrested.

This seems to be the primary context for the Bondi Beach attack. It is Islamic State supporters “showing presence” and targeting Jews and Christians across the world, as they always try to do, and particularly during major holiday gatherings. All are responding to the January 4, 2024, call of Islamic State spokesman Abu Hudhayfa al-Ansari.20

But before we get to the Akrams heeding al-Ansari, consciously or not, let me take you on a journey back to where all the fuckery began.

The Lebanon Concession

In 1975, with the outbreak of the civil war in Lebanon, influential Christian Lebanese leaders in Australia began lobbying then-Prime Minister Malcom Fraser to grant visas to some Maronites with relatives in Australia theoretically fleeing the fighting. These weren’t, strictly speaking, refugees, hence the “concession”.

This turned out about as successfully as all well-meaning Western policies. Here’s Gerard Henderson writing in the Sydney Morning Herald in October 2006:

However, it was not long before the process got out of hand. As it turned out, very few Christians wanted to, or were able to, come to Australia at the time. Department officials sent to Lebanon to administer the program began granting visas mainly to Muslims - often on the flimsiest evidence they had close relatives or, indeed, any relative in Australia.

…

The unintended consequence of the Fraser government’s decision was to allow, for the first time, numerous Lebanese Muslims to enter Australia. They were from rural areas, had little education and minimal English language skills.

As Kabir documents, the numbers grew. There were about 3500 Lebanese Muslims in Australia in 1971. Just two decades later, the number had increased to more than 25,000. The number grew quickly, due primarily to Australia’s then family reunion policy. Most Muslim Lebanese migrants settled in south-western Sydney. The Shia gathered around the Arncliffe mosque and the Sunnis at the Lakemba mosque.

At the time some Maronite leaders warned the Fraser government, at the highest levels, that the decision to allow large numbers of poorly educated Lebanese Muslims into Australia would have unexpected and unwanted policy outcomes.

…

The problem with Lebanese Muslims was that they were ill equipped to enter the workforce. Also, a number were fundamentalist Islamists. In time, some Shias became supporters of Hezbollah while some Sunnis became admirers of Osama bin Laden.

Henderson later wrote in November 2016, after contemporaneous cabinet papers were released:

It turned out that 90 per cent of Lebanese who entered Australia under the Lebanon concession were Muslim. During 1976-77, there was a net migration of 12,000 Lebanese to Australia. Historian James Jupp pointed out in The Australian People that between 1971 and 1981 the proportion of Muslims among the Lebanese population doubled from 14 per cent to 31 per cent.

…

The cabinet papers in the National Archives of Australia reveal that the Lebanon concession was an unmitigated ­disaster. In September 1976 cabinet considered a report that concluded that Immigration ­Department officials were “completely overstretched” and had lost control of the program.

The report expressed concern about “the possibility that the conflicts, tensions and divisions within Lebanon will be transferred to Australia”.

By November 1976 the situation had deteriorated further. ­Immigration minister Michael MacKellar told cabinet that a high percentage of applicants under the Lebanon concession were illiterate and were being admitted to Australia without “any regard to their economic viability, personal qualities or capacity for successful settlement”.

On November 30, 1976, the Fraser government abandoned the Lebanon concession.

This cohort is overrepresented in organised crime and gang violence21 as well as jihadism.22

Then Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, attacking Fraser’s policy, stated in November 2016 that “The advice I have is that out of the last 33 people who have been charged with terrorist-related offences in this country, 22 of those people are from second and third generation Lebanese-Muslim background.”23

A leaked cabinet document from that year says the Lebanese are the “most prominent ethnic group amongst Australian Sunni extremists,” though fails to note that the Shia, and Sunni, are almost universally Hezbollahis.

In May 2003, the ABC broadcast the following segment:

Kahlil Haragli is a member of the Shi'ite Lebanese community near St George in Sydney - a community made up of many Lebanese who fled their country when the Israeli forces invaded and occupied southern Lebanon.

He says while there are those who sympathise with the political wing of Hezbollah, there is certainly no threat to Australian interests.

KAHLIL HARAGLI: You see, the Hezbollah was responsible for the liberation of south Lebanon, and of course, you see, members of the south Lebanese community, who liberated their land, they sympathise with Hezbollah in relation to what happened there, but I don't know they are involved in any activities with Hezbollah on political scene or otherwise.

TANYA NOLAN: Is it possible that they could be supplying financial support to Hezbollah?

KAHLIL HARAGLI: Not to my knowledge.

TANYA NOLAN: There are those who spoke to The World Today who say there is financial support for Hezbollah within the Lebanese community, but reiterate the view that none actively support or sympathise with any terrorist organisation.24

Spokesman for the Lebanese Muslim Association, Keysar Trad, says the Government's comments are alarmist and unhelpful.

KEYSAR TRAD: Well we know that there are pockets within the community who are under surveillance, under very regular surveillance, and this is a job of ASIO. But this should not, this should not be alarming for us as an Australian society because the fact that they are surveilling different people means that they are doing their job and that they are just being cautious. But I'm concerned that the comments coming out today about Hezbollah are far too alarmist and they are creating a fear where one should not exist.

Sheikh Kamal Mousselmani, head of the Supreme Islamic Shia Council of Australia, said in 2007:

If Australia supports Israel, they are defending terrorism. Because we believe terrorists come from Israel - not from our people. I support Hezbollah… We are against the suicide bombings going on around the world. And Hezbollah is against it. Our opinion is that Hezbollah is not a terrorist group.25

In a beautiful show of ecumenical Ummahood, Keysar Trad, also the founder of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia and former president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said in 2007 that Sunnis supported Mousselmani’s remarks:

Sunni Muslim leader and community spokesman Keysar Trad said his sect largely championed Sheik Mousselmani’s support for Hezbollah (Party of God), which was revealed by The Weekend Australian.

“Sunnis outside of Lebanon, yes, they still have a great deal of respect for Hezbollah,” he said.

But Mr Trad, who does not believe the Lebanese-based Hezbollah is a terrorist group, said Sunni Muslims in Lebanon were less inclined to back the terrorist organisation because of political differences with the Shi’ites.

“I don’t believe that Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation,” he said.

“I agree with (Mousselmani) that the state of Israel has ... consistently engaged in acts of terror which have brought a great deal of pain to the poor Palestinian population and the Lebanese population.”

The new mufti of Australia, Sunni spiritual leader Fehmi Naji el-Imam, last year called Hezbollah militants “freedom fighters” during an anti-war rally in Melbourne.26

Sheik Fehmi’s spokesman said on Sunday that the cleric could not be reached.

Even the “moderate” Muslim advisers to the Howard Government were pro-Hezbollah. Here’s the Australian in August 2007:

The most common bond between Australia's Sunnis and Shi'ites is proving to be their shared dislike of Israel.

…

When Israel’s offensive in Lebanon was at its peak last July, several moderate Australian Muslim leaders who had backed John Howard on the war against al-Qa’ida called on the Prime Minister to rethink Australia’s branding of Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation.

Ameer Ali, the then head of the Government’s Muslim advisory body, said Hezbollah was wrongly classified as a terrorist group because, unlike al-Qa’ida, it was “not creating violence at random” but merely protecting the state of Lebanon.

…

Another bond between Sunnis and Shi’ites in Australia is their widely held belief that the Australian Government is persecuting Muslims in general and that the tough new terror laws are aimed at people of Islamic faith.

This perception of a common enemy so close to home is further helping to unite these traditional Muslim rivals.

The Australian reported regarding Hezbollah and its support base in Australia in April 2010:

[Hezbollah’s “External Security Organisation” (ESO)] was first detected in Australia in the 90s, when ASIO investigated a Sydney man associated with Sydney’s Arncliffe mosque, the largest Shia centre of worship in Australia. The man was in contact with ESO headquarters and hosted a visit by a number of ESO officials to Australia. It was believed its purpose was to recruit local supporters who could assist with logistics such as the procurement of so-called dual-use technology: civilian hardware that can be converted to military use.

…

Efforts by Australian authorities to curtail the ESO in Australia are complicated by the fact that its parent body, Hezbollah, enjoys substantial support among local Muslim communities, especially those of Lebanese origin, where it is based.

“There’s no question about [there being] fairly large support from a large part of the Australian community who support and sympathise with Hezbollah in Australia,” says Roland Jabbour, chairman of the Australian Arabic Council.

In 2007 The Australian reported that police were investigating a possible Hezbollah cell in Melbourne, after videotaping rallies attended by dozens of men waving Hezbollah flags and banners during a 34-day war between Israel and Lebanon.

Jabbour says he is not aware that Hezbollah is active in Australia. “If they mean are there people who sympathise with Hezbollah in Australia, that’s a fact. But on a community level I’m not aware of any activities related to Hezbollah as such.”

In March 2013, Shaoquett Moselmane, the first Muslim in the New South Wales Parliament, gave a cute speech:

I resent members here accusing the resistance of being terrorist groups. I salute the resistance. If the resistance in Lebanon had not forced the Israelis out of Lebanon I would not have been able to go to my grandparents’ home in southern Lebanon and visit the land I was born in. I salute them for their resistance. It is the right of people to do so. Imagine what the response would have been in 1941 or 1942 if we had condemned resistance against Nazi Germany. Guns would have been blazing at us for not resisting Nazi Germany.

Nothing has really changed. Vigils were held in multiple packed-out mosques when at least six Hezbollah operatives were killed in October 2023:

On Saturday, about 400 people filed into Masjid Arrahman27 – also known as Al Rahman Mosque – in Kingsgrove, southwest Sydney, to commemorate three Hezbollah fighters who died this week in Lebanon: Taha Abbas Abbas, Ali Marmar and Hussam Ibrahim.

…

The Australian can also reveal that, simultaneously, another commemoration service was being held at Al Zahra Mosque a few suburbs away, in Arncliffe, for another three “martyrs”: Mahdi Muhammad Atwi, Ibrahim Habib Aldebek and Hussain Abbas Fasaee. Hezbollah said last week that Atwi had died, and a pamphlet for the commemoration service referred to the three as “Shaheed”, the Arabic term for martyr.

Even larger vigils were held when former Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated in September 2024.28

But it isn’t just Hezbollah, of course. Dr. Michael Mohammed Ahmad wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks about the response in Punchbowl Boys’ High School, where nearly the entire student body is Arab and Muslim, in 2001:

But on September 11, 2001, the Lebs of Punchbowl Prison finally had their eyes open, marching through the front office with their heads cocked and their teeth bared.

…

Out on the quadrangle, 50 boys were drumming on garbage bins and dancing in circles, their feet springing from the floor like popcorn, their hips tussling and hands waving. Even the school dux, Riad, was in the circle. Most days I saw him with his head down inside the library, but today Riad was swinging his bloated arms like it was his wedding day, while the boys around him sang “eye for eye, tooth for tooth!”

…

In one corner was Rajab Masri… Rajab was thrusting his open hand into another Leb’s face, re-enacting the image he saw on the news that morning: an airliner slamming into a tower.

In another corner were the Year 12 boys standing around Usuf Osman, an Egyptian from Lakemba who had spent the past year instructing us to read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Usuf was pounding his chest, shouting: “I prah-dick-ted it!”

…

As soon as Shaky spotted me, he wrapped his freckled arms around my head. “We got them, brother.”

…

Then the Indonesian who also called himself a Leb, Osama, tumbled towards us. He and Shaky hugged and shook hands and laughed for the next 10 minutes as though I wasn’t there.

…

I was with the 40 other students in Year 10, all of whom were sitting in groups of five around each table, vociferously sharing bullcrap stories like “I heard there were no Jews in the World Trade Centre today”.

…

Once again ignoring Isa, the principal signalled for a student we called Cabbage – because his body was shaped like a cabbage – to speak. “Sir, is there even any proof that it was us? How do you know it wasn’t the Jews?”

…

Then up onto his table was Abdul Solomon, Punchbowl Boys’ self-proclaimed mufti, howling “takbeer!” which means “shout out loud!” and all the Muslims replied “Allahu akbar”!, which means “God is great!” Once again, “takbeer!” and “Allahu akbar!”

…

Whitechurch tried to raise his voice over the boys. “There were Australians that died in there today,” he blubbered, “Australians.” But it was too late – the Lebs of Punchbowl Prison had found themselves among the souls of the suicide bomber: “Shout out loud: God is Great!”

It was and remains the same in every Arab and Muslim school.

Sheikh Taj El-Din Hilaly

Hilaly, the first Mufti of Australia, is patient zero. Having arrived in 1982 on a tourist visa from Lebanon, the sheikh overstayed it and somehow avoided deportation, despite then Immigration Minister Chris Hurford’s attempts in 1986. Instead, to help appease the Muslim community, which reportedly strongly supported him, Labor figures granted him permanent residence in 1990.

Hilaly is perhaps most famous for his 1988 doozy of a sermon about Jews, entitled “The Disposition of Jews in the light of the Quran”, with such memorable quotes as “the Jews try to control the world through sex, then sexual perversion, then the promotion of espionage, treason and economic hoarding.”

Hilaly went to Lebanon in early 2004 to deliver another lovely sermon glorifying jihad and reminiscing about the times when Islam reigned supreme and declaring it would again, among other things:

We felt proud of you and we thought there are still some men and some dignity left in this nation capable of achieving what you have achieved in the initiative between Hizbollah and the Israeli enemy (ie. The recent prisoner swap). This was an initiative that demonstrated the strength of Islam, and the tolerance, justice and openness of Islam.

Dear brothers, we need real men to answer the call of Jerusalem and the call of Palestine. Oh half men, you who look for a place to meet, if ever you meet you will stab your nation in the back. Jerusalem is calling you, but there is no answer. Al Aqsa is calling you and telling you “I’m torn apart”.

Children and mothers are crying. Sons of Islam, there is a war of infidels taking place everywhere. The true man is the boy who opposes Israeli tanks with strength and faith. The boy who, despite his mother’s objections, goes out to war to become a martyr like his elder brother.

The boy who tells his mother: “Oh mother don’t cry for me if a die. Oh mother, Jihad has been imposed on me and I want to become a martyr. Oh mother, Al Aqsa is imprisoned and I won’t hesitate to help. Oh mother, come and say good bye for I’m going to fight and sacrifice myself. Oh mother, free men defend their honour and consider martyrdom as an honour. Oh mother, I’m going with a stone in my hand to become a martyr.

…

And perhaps we will find one day an Islamic revolution, and Islamic ideology in western countries.

Don’t be surprised if one day you hear the Muezzin calling for prayer and saying “Allah Akbar (Allah is Great)” from the top of the white house. September 11 is God’s work against oppressors. Some of the things that happen in the world cannot be explained; a civilian airplane whose secrets cannot be explained if we ask its pilot who reached his objective without error, who led your steps? (An allusion to 9/11) Or if we ask the giant that fell, who humiliated you? Or if we ask the President, who made you cry? God is the answer.

I’m telling you that there are no English Korans left in Australia or America or Europe. Everyone is converting to Islam: soldiers, pilots, engineers… those who are spending money to stop the ways of God will spend their money but will be defeated eventually. Trust me my dear friends.

Sometimes good lies in evil. Perhaps there will be an Islamic awakening that starts in the heart of America and restores the Islamic regime and the dignity of human beings. Islam is trying to find its way to people’s hearts but it’s being hidden by our attitudes, our mistakes, our behaviour and our divisions.

Islam is doing well in America, in Europe and in Australia. People are converting to the religion of God, and we feel proud when the banners of Islam are high and when our nation is united by Islam and we see that the nation follows God. In western countries, Islam is gaining ground every day.

We look forward to the day when religious texts are no longer misinterpreted and when there are no interpretations of Islam. It is not acceptable to limit Islam to one group or one sect. We shouldn’t imprison Islam in one idea. And if someone asks “what’s your nationality”, answer him my nationality is ‘there’s no God but God’. If someone asks you to which party you belong, answer him “My party is ‘there’s no God but God’ and tell him “Islam is my father”.

The Australian Federal Police decided that this rhetoric, in Lebanon, including saying September 11 was God’s work, did not concern them, and they would not investigate overseas activity.29 Hilaly was also fond of Holocaust denial.30 “What’s that six million all about? Are there six million? ... Journalism stops and shuts up when it discusses the burning of the Jews – the Holocaust – the Zionist lie and the industry that the West deals in,” he’d tell his followers. Hilaly was also dubiously acquitted of diverting funds to Hezbollah, after which he was questioned again for going to Iran and lobbying Sunnis on the regime’s behalf.31

Hilaly has nothing to do with the Akrams, of course, but he is emblematic of Australia’s failure to deal with this nonsense for decades.32

There are other infamous Australian sheikhs and Islamic organisations that also serve as examples of this failure, from Hizb ut-Tahrir to Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jamaah Association of Australia (ASWJA). For instance, there’s Sheik Feiz Mohammed, head of the Global Islamic Youth Center. Here’s a report from January 2007:33

Sheik Feiz… left Australia for Lebanon in late 2004, just days before federal and state police and ASIO conducted raids in Sydney and Melbourne, arresting 23 people on terror-related charges.

The cleric calls two of the accused terrorists close friends and knew all of the Sydney men arrested. He has links to almost every notable member of Australia’s Islamic community and continues to direct his Global Islamic Youth Centre - the nerve centre of Islamic youth in Sydney, setting the tone for 4000 youths, their families and fraternities.

Along with Sheik Mohammed Omran in Melbourne34 and Sydney’s Sheik Abdul Salem Mohammed Zoud,35 he is considered one of Australia’s leading radical clerics. Unlike Sheik Omran and Sheik Zoud, Sheik Feiz preaches in English with a strong Australian accent rather than Arabic.

In the video running on YouTube, which could not be dated, he criticises Muslims in Australia for not sacrificing their blood as martyrs and for putting lifestyle ahead of action in response to massacres of Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine.

“In our times it is the fear of death, the fear of sacrificing your finger, your toe, a drop of blood that is more honourable than anything else,” he says.

“Why? Because martyrdom to us is, is not as appealing to us, as it was to those ancestors, the great warriors ... who lived around the best creature that walked the earth, Mohammed.”

The YouTube video follows revelations in a British documentary that Sheik Feiz’s collection of DVDs - called the Death Series - were being sold by children in the car park of a mosque in the British city of Birmingham.

In that and another series called Signs of the Hour, made about four years ago, Sheik Feiz labelled Jews “pigs” and exhorted children to jihad.

“We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam,” he says. “Teach them this: there is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid. Put in their soft, tender hearts the zeal of jihad and a love of martyrdom.”

Then there are the countless places like the Al-Furqan Islamic Centre in Melbourne, finally closed in 2015 after it was linked to multiple terrorism suspects.

None of these preachers or organisations had anything to do with Bondi.36

There is, however, one link between a radical preacher and his organisations and associates and the Akrams. Let’s move on to Wissam Haddad (Abu Ousayd).

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The announcement that Kazakhstan had joined the Abraham Accords in November was initially bemusing. After all, Kazakhstan and Israel have had normal, even close, diplomatic relations since April 1992, including a security partnership.

But on second thought, it’s not actually so strange. One could even say it’s emblematic of the entire Abrahamic farce despite the absurd fanfare. Israel’s pre-existing economic, political, and security relationships across the Gulf, and the Arab and Muslim world,1 long predate September 2020. These relationships are continuing to develop, including in the security sphere, without normalisation.

For example, the Washington Post reported on October 11:

Over the past three years, facilitated by the United States, senior military officials from Israel and six Arab countries came together for planning meetings in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and Qatar.

…

Qatar… was one of the countries that had quietly strengthened ties with the Israeli military. In May 2024, the documents show, senior Israeli and Arab military officials convened at al-Udeid Air Base, a major U.S. military facility in Qatar. A planning document for the event, written two days before it was set to begin, shows that the Israeli delegation was scheduled to fly directly to the air base, circumventing Qatar’s civilian points of entry that could have risked public exposure.

…

Five Centcom PowerPoint presentations, obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and reviewed by The Washington Post, detail the creation of what the U.S. military describes as the “Regional Security Construct.” In addition to Israel and Qatar, the construct includes Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The documents refer to Kuwait and Oman as “potential partners” that were briefed on all meetings.

I don’t mean to downplay the convenience for Israelis in terms of vacationing in Dubai or using alternatives to El Al, the opening of Gulf airspace, or the increased arms sales or business investments, but none of this is of strategic relevance, and it certainly isn’t “peace”, despite the word being mentioned about 50 times during the joint US-UAE-Bahrain-Israel press conference. Not a single member or would-be member of the Accords was an official enemy of Israel prior to signing.

Will Saudi Arabia officially join the Accords in the near future? Highly unlikely. No, why hedge? The answer is no. The Saudis have not substantially budged on conditioning normalisation with Israel on a Palestinian state, or at least a concrete, credible and time-bound pathway to one, for more than 20 years, something they have continuously repeated since 2023. Point 19 of Trump’s 20-point plan and its near-verbatim codification in UN Security Council Resolution 2803 won’t cut it:

After the PA reform program is faithfully carried out and Gaza redevelopment has advanced, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood. The United States will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous coexistence2

During his meeting with Trump on November 18, Saudi Crown Prince, Prime Minister and de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) again reaffirmed this condition: “We want to be part of the Abraham Accords, but we want also to be sure that we secure a clear path to a two-state solution.”

This is an insurmountable obstacle to normalisation, as the raison d’être of the current Israeli Government, and especially Bibi himself, is preventing precisely such an outcome. Bibi reasserted this in a statement on November 16:

Our opposition to a Palestinian state in any territory west of the Jordan [River], this opposition is existing, valid, and has not changed one bit. I have been rebuffing these attempts for decades and I am doing it both against pressures from outside and against pressures from within.

Despite the almost impossible naivety of Israeli officials, which often masquerades as enlightened cynicism, Arab leaders actually do care about the Palestinian issue, and act and speak accordingly.3 Whether it’s a personal commitment, a terror of their subjects, or a combination of the two, the Palestinian factor is never going to go away entirely, no matter how much Israeli politicians try to manifest this fantasy.

Anyway, on a strategic level, who gives a shit whether Saudi Arabia joins?

Trump loves announcing deals, regardless of substance. All he cares about is attention and, eventually, maybe, a Nobel Peace Prize. It’s all a game show to him. Knowing this, Arab and Muslim countries can give him nothing but a meaningless announcement and extract whatever they want in return. They can also get more weapons and components [than they were already getting] from Israel and protect Palestinian interests. That, in short, is the sum of the Abraham Accords. They are not for Israel. They are for Trump and his game show presidency.

A Brief History of the Abraham Accords

In January 2020, Donald Trump fucked up.

This being a daily occurrence, I’ll specify that, in this context, I am referring to the release of the “Peace to Prosperity” plan, more widely known as the “Deal of the Century”. The plan, and I use this word extremely loosely, envisioned a Palestinian “state” that would look like this:

At a joint press briefing with Bibi, Trump declared, “The United States will recognize Israeli sovereignty over the territory that my vision provides to be part of the State of Israel. Very important.”

Bibi followed that up with:

Mr. President, I believe that down the decades — and perhaps down the centuries — we will also remember January 28th, 2020, because on this day, you became the first world leader to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over areas in Judea and Samaria that are vital to our security and central to our heritage… Too many plans tried to pressure Israel to withdraw from vital territory like the Jordan Valley. But you, Mr. President, you recognized that Israel must have sovereignty in the Jordan Valley and other strategic areas of Judea and Samaria…

For too long — far too long — the very heart of the Land of Israel where our patriarchs prayed, our prophets preached, and our kings ruled, has been outrageously branded as illegally occupied territory. Well, today, Mr. President, you are puncturing this big lie.

You are recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over all the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, large and small alike.

These, as the distinguished pastors who are here know very well — these are places inscribed in the pages of the Bible. These are places carved into the bedrock of our common civilization: the sacred tomb in Hebron where the fathers and mothers of the Jewish people are buried; Bethel, where Jacob dreamed of a ladder ascending to the heavens; Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant that held the Ten Commandments… for centuries. That’s what happened in Shiloh.

Thanks to you, Mr. President, these areas and so many others that, for millennia, have been etched in the soul of the Jewish people and have fired the imaginations of millions of people around the world and across the world — these areas will now be recognized by the United States as a permanent part of the Jewish State.

Promising to immediately annex the approximately 30% of the West Bank promised under the plan, Bibi subsequently codified the annexation in the short-lived “national unity government” agreement in late April 2020, enabling him to advance the legislation for a vote on July 1 of that year. Regarding what would be annexed, then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo initially said, “The Israelis will ultimately make those decisions. That’s an Israeli decision, but we’ll work closely with them to share our views of this in a private setting.”

Arab states were none too happy with this, forcing the Trump Administration to pump the brakes about two weeks later.4 But how to pull the keys entirely out of the ignition?

Enter the UAE and its ultimatum.

UAE ambassador to the US Yousef al-Otaiba told Jared Kushner and Avi Berkowitz in June 2020 that Israel could get normalisation only if it gave up annexation.5 This would allow Trump and Bibi to save face and memory hole the previous months and the Deal of the Century itself.

Publicly, Otaiba published an unprecedented op-ed in Yediot Ahronot the same month with the same ultimatum:

Recently, Israeli leaders have promoted excited talk about normalization of relations with the United Arab Emirates and other Arab states. But Israeli plans for annexation and talk of normalization are a contradiction… we remain an ardent advocate for the Palestinian people and a long-time champion of the Arab Peace Initiative.6

…

I was one of three Arab Ambassadors in the East Room of the White House when President Trump unveiled his Middle East peace proposal in January.

I worked closely with the Obama Administration too, including on a plan for confidence building measures that would provide substantial benefits to Israel – improved links with the Arab states – in return for greater autonomy for and investment in Palestine.

Annexation will certainly and immediately upend Israeli aspirations for improved security, economic and cultural ties with the Arab world and with UAE.

…

Normal is not annexation. Instead, annexation is a misguided provocation of another order. And continued talk of normalization would be just mistaken hope for better relations with the Arab states.

In a speech in September 2020, UAE senior official Anwar Gargash framed the normalisation deal as in an attempt to preserve a two-state solution:

The Palestinian cause is the central and pivotal cause of the Arab region and the UAE is stressing its fixed stance in support of the establishment of a Palestinian state based on its borders of 4th June, 1967, with its capital in East Jerusalem, in compliance with the legitimate international resolution and the Arab Peace Initiative. The UAE supports all efforts aimed at achieving this objective, which is also supported by all international and Arab parties and is continuing to provide assistance to the Palestinian people and their cause under all circumstances.

The UAE’s policy is unchanged, as it supports the efforts to solve the Palestinian issue and the Arab-Israeli conflict, to achieve peace and stability in the region. This is one of the solid foundations of the UAE since its establishment by late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who said, “Our support for the Palestinian people will continue until they achieve their aspiration to establish an independent country.”

The UAE’s sovereign and strategic decision to announce the signing of a peace accord with Israel entails the latter’s acceptance to suspend the annexation of Palestinian lands, which represents an achievement and is a key step in the peace process in the region and is in implementation of one of the demands of all involved countries and the international community. One of the objectives of the Arab Peace Initiative is to reach a fair and sustainable solution to this issue, and this accord will not violate the rights of the Palestinian people.

This was reiterated by UAE Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah bin Zayed and Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani at the joint press conference with Bibi and Trump on September 15, 2020. The former said the Accords “will enable us to continue to stand by the Palestinian people and realize their hopes for an independent state within a stable and prosperous region.” The latter said in the same vein:

Today’s agreement is an important first step, and it is now incumbent on us to work urgently and actively to bring about the lasting peace and security our peoples deserve. A just, comprehensive, and enduring two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will be the foundation, the bedrock of such peace.

Of course, the Emiratis are not fools,7 and, realising they had both Trump and Bibi in a corner, extracted a massive concession from both: the sale of an F-35 fleet, EA-18G Growler jets, and drones that would qualitatively upgrade its military potential. The UAE had first begun expressing interest in 2014, and Trump considered taking “initial steps toward future procurement of the F-35” in 2017.8

With Bibi trapped, the UAE forced him to sign off on the deal as part of the normalisation process. Once this was reported in Israel, Bibi vehemently denied everything, throwing the process into doubt and paralysing everything until the US smacked him and his then Defence Minister Benny Gantz into submission while throwing in some military upgrades and guarantees to take some sting out of the visit. They were forced to release the following joint statement in October 2020:

During the visit, Defense Minister Gantz was notified by the US administration of its plans to notify Congress of its intention to provide certain weapon systems to the UAE.

The Prime Minister and the Defense Minister both agree that since the US is upgrading Israel’s military capability and is maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge, Israel will not oppose the sale of these systems to the UAE.

The deal was never consummated, and apparently signed under bizarre circumstances. Reuters reported on January 20, 2021:

One of the people said the agreement was signed about an hour before Biden was sworn into office. The document gave the United Arab Emirates the chance to accept the negotiated schedule and configuration of the jets while also making the purchase request official.

The UAE has had the paperwork for more than a week, the people said. The UAE and the United States had once hoped to have a deal in place in December, but the timing of jet deliveries, their cost, the technology packages and training associated with the deal extended negotiations, the people said.

Biden said his Administration would review the deal, but ultimately signed off on it in April 2021. The UAE itself suspended the deal in September 2021 in response to US concerns over technology leaking to China, with an effective ultimatum presented by the US to choose between Huawei and the F-35.9 Israel Hayom recently reported that the deal may be back on.

It doesn’t really matter one way or the other, as the primary aim of the Abraham Accords, a wholly Emirati initiative, was to protect the Arab Peace Initiative and the Palestinians; weapons were just an ultimately unrealised bonus.

Bahrain, for its part, is a bit player that has always been friendly with Israel and has always had a small Jewish community, joining the Accords with Saudi encouragement as a sop to Trump.

Morocco, which has also always had a Jewish community and close ties to Israel since the 1970s, joined in December 2020 in exchange for recognition of Western Sahara as its own, with the bonus perk of acquiring more Israeli weapons and systems.10

Sudan, which nearly joined the Accords in 2021, began making moves toward normalisation in October 2020 solely to get itself removed from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, and thereby unlock investment and economic aid. In fact, such movement began in the early months of 2016.11 Unfortunately, the UAE and Russia overthrew the civilian government and plunged Sudan back into civil war, which has been the country’s (I use this word very loosely, as well) normal state since before independence. So much for that.

The Gulf of Israel

Israel’s oldest – or perhaps second-oldest after Oman,12 but certainly closest – Gulf state partner was and remains Qatar (cue retarded screeching).13

It was Qatar that led the Gulf quasi-normalisation with Israel in the post-Gulf War and post-Oslo years, becoming the first regional country to recognise Israel and openly establish relations.14 Senior Israeli officials were visiting Qatar from 1996, if not earlier, through 2009, including Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, and Tzipi Livni. Qatari officials also visited Israel during this period, and meetings at the highest levels of government occurred elsewhere, including at the UN and Davos.

By 1997, aside from Oman and Qatar, Israeli officials were visiting Bahrain, as well,15 where Israel has maintained a secret embassy since at least 2009.

Qatar officially severed relations with Israel in early 2009 following Operation Cast Lead. As the Times of Israel put it in 2013:

In February 2009, a few days after Israel concluded its Operation Cast Lead against Gaza terrorists, the chief of protocol at Qatar’s Foreign Ministry invited Roi Rosenblit, who at the time headed Israel’s interest office in Doha, for a meeting in his office. Rosenblit knew exactly what awaited him: a few days earlier he had seen how then-Qatari prime minister Hamad bin Jassim, angry over Palestinian casualties, announced live on al-Jazeera that the period of normalization with Israel needed to end.

The Qatari diplomat welcomed Rosenblit, friendly as always, served him tea with za’atar, and then handed him an envelope. In the letter, the government of Qatar politely yet determinedly informed the Israeli that he had one week to close down the Israeli mission on 15 al-Buhturi Street, and leave the country.

…

But just like the ruler of Oman, the Qatari leader also hinted that, while the official channel needed to be closed, he would not mind if Israeli diplomats in his country continued their work, as long as they do it under the radar.

Within a few months, Qatar was trying to resume official diplomatic relations with Israel. Haaretz reported in May 2010:

Israel has rejected two proposals from Qatar to restore diplomatic relations and let Israel reopen its office in the capital of Doha.

…

Six months ago, however, the Qataris began relaying a series of messages to Israel - through covert channels, through the United States and France, and even in direct talks with Israeli diplomats. The messages included a proposal to resume diplomatic ties and reopen Israel’s office in Doha.

In return, Qatar sought to assume responsibility for rebuilding Gaza. It also asked Israel to make a public statement expressing appreciation for the emirate’s role and acknowledging its standing in the Middle East.

Deliberations were held at the Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office, and a fierce argument erupted between those who supported resuming ties, even at the cost of granting Qatar a role in Gaza, and those who argued that the Qataris had opted for an alliance with Iran and Hamas, so there was “no reason to give them gifts.”

In the end, a senior Israeli official said, the issue was removed from the agenda due to American opposition.

However, the Qataris continued their covert contacts with Israel, and two months ago, they made another, similar offer. But Lieberman and Netanyahu decided to reject this offer as well.

A senior Israeli official familiar with the details of the discussions said that Netanyahu was actually initially inclined to accept the offer, as were both Lieberman and National Security Adviser Uzi Arad.

However, the official said, they ultimately rejected it, because the Qataris conditioned the resumption of diplomatic ties on an Israeli agreement to allow large quantities of cement and construction material into the Gaza Strip. The amount stipulated by Qatar was much greater than Israel was willing to approve, he said.

Of course, close relations continued with Qatar, which funnelled billions of dollars into Gaza at Israel’s request since at least 2012. The New York Times reported in December 2023:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them.

During his meetings in September with the Qatari officials, according to several people familiar with the secret discussions, the Mossad chief, David Barnea, was asked a question that had not been on the agenda: Did Israel want the payments to continue?

Mr. Netanyahu’s government had recently decided to continue the policy, so Mr. Barnea said yes. The Israeli government still welcomed the money from Doha.

As Qatar felt the pressure to temporarily sever official relations with Israel in 2009, Bahrain,16 Israel’s other closet ally, began stepping up as the public face of Gulf normalisation.

That year, in July, its Crown Prince and now Prime Minister Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa published an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled “Arabs Need to Talk to the Israelis”17:

An Israeli might be forgiven for thinking that every Muslim voice is raised in hatred, because that is usually the only one he hears. Just as an Arab might be forgiven for thinking every Israeli wants the destruction of every Palestinian.

Essentially, we have not done a good enough job demonstrating to Israelis how our initiative can form part of a peace between equals in a troubled land holy to three great faiths.

…

The two communities in the Holy Land are not fated to be enemies. What can unite them tomorrow is potentially bigger than what divides them today.

Both sides need help from their friends, in the form of constructive engagement, to reach a just settlement.

What we don’t need is the continued reflexive rejection of any initiative that seeks to melt the ice. Consider the response so far to the Arab peace plan, pioneered by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. This initiative is a genuine effort to normalize relations between the entire Arab region and Israel, in return for Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territory and a fair resolution of the plight of the Palestinians, far too many of whom live in refugee camps in deplorable conditions.

We must stop the small-minded waiting game in which each side refuses to budge until the other side makes the first move. We’ve got to be bigger than that. All sides need to take simultaneous, good-faith action if peace is to have a chance. A real, lasting peace requires comprehensive engagement and reconciliation at the human level. This will happen only if we address and settle the core issues dividing the Arab and the Israeli peoples, the first being the question of Palestine and occupied Arab lands. The fact that this has not yet happened helps to explain why the Jordanian and Egyptian peace accords with Israel are cold. They have not been comprehensive.

We should move toward real peace now by consulting and educating our people and by reaching out to the Israeli public to highlight the benefits of a genuine peace…

The 2013 Times of Israel report, citing Wikileaks documents, wrote regarding Bahrain:

In 2005, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa boasted to an American official that his state has contacts with Israel “at the intelligence/security level (i.e., with Mossad),” according to a different secret US diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks. The king also indicated willingness “to move forward in other areas, although it will be difficult for Bahrain to be the first.” The development of “trade contacts,” though, would have to wait for the implementation of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the king told the ambassador.

Other WikiLeaks documents show that senior officials from both countries have spoken in recent years, such as a 2007 meeting between then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni and Bahraini foreign minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed Al Khalifa in New York. The Bahraini foreign minister in 2009 also signaled that he was willing to meet Netanyahu to try to advance the peace process, but ultimately decided not to go ahead with the plan.

Also in 2009, as Haaretz reported in 2013:

Israel asked for permits to supply components for drones to the United Arab Emirates, as well as pilots’ helmets and aerial refueling systems, ground radar, components for fighter jets, systems to disrupt missile launches, airborne radar systems, and thermal imaging and electronic warfare equipment.

Israel also supported the UAE’s bid to host the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) that year. Israeli officials have been partaking in renewable energy conferences there since at least 2010.

Also in early 2009, Defense News reported that Israel was giving the UAE access to satellite imagery from its Eros B satellite, having previously granted it access to Eros A. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported in February 2009:

Defense News reported Monday that a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries, ImageSat International, is in talks with Abu Dhabi to provide access to the Eros B commercial high-resolution imaging satellite. The satellite was launched in 2006 and has a life span of about 10 years. The deal is similar to an agreement that gives the Arabian emirate access to the Eros A satellite, which will cease operating in 2010.

The deal is estimated at less than $20 million a year. The technology of the satellite is based on spycraft manufactured by IAI.

Israel and the moderate United Arab Emirates do not have formal diplomatic relations, though Israel has operated what Defense News calls “an informal and extremely discreet” interest office in Abu Dhabi. More open relations are unlikely now due to lingering anger over Israel’s recent military operation in Gaza.

As early as 2012, Bibi was secretly meeting with the UAE’s foreign Minister and Otaiba. Relations with the UAE predated this, but the Mossad’s assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in 2010 in Dubai upended them temporarily. Bibi was told the same thing all Arab leaders say privately and publicly: everyone wants to officially normalise. Just start movement towards a Palestinian state.18

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Congratulations! You found the only historical analogy you know.

Now I, having been young and foolish at the time, was admittedly guilty, in the weeks after October 7, 2023, of conceiving of a more positive future for Palestinians in Gaza through the prism of post-war Germany. By December 2023, my knowledge of World War II and its aftermath, not to mention of Hamas and Palestinians, began swimming back into view after the post-massacre daze.

Alas, the parallel continues to be utilised, including by Bibi himself. I encountered it again recently in an article published in the Australian:

This moment represents a key challenge for US leadership: how to turn a military victory into a durable peace. For that, Washington can look to the past.

In 1945, Germany lay in ruins – its cities flattened, seven million dead in a war it started, its land occupied by foreign forces. The Nazis had placed ideology above the welfare of their own people, and the result was catastrophe. Yet within decades, G…

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It is unequivocally excellent news that the 20 or so surviving hostages have been released along with the remains of dozens of many others. It is less unequivocally excellent that some version of this deal could have been done more than a year ago. The only reason it didn’t happen was Bibi Netanyahu;1 Hamas rejectionism was never the primary issue.

As always, there is disingenuous commentary coming from pro-Israel advocates and Bibi surrogates painting this deal as an Israeli victory and even the result of military pressure on Hamas.2 Of course, as I wrote on May 13, the precise opposite is true:

Since October 7, there has been a pervasive, poisonous, infuriating myth, still being bandied about, that military pressure on Hamas would or did lead to hostage releases.

The reality is entirely the reverse: the hostages are held only as long as Israel keeps attacking and refuses to negotiate. As soon as it agrees to ceasefires, prisoner releases and other conditions, hostages are released. Deals were and remain the only route to a general hostage release. As with its sieges, Israel is only pressuring itself for no reason through its own military action while prolonging hostage agony. Or killing them. Eisenkot himself said in January 2024, “I think it is necessary to say boldly that it is impossible to bring the hostages back alive in the near future without a deal.”

I wrote 8 months ago how dishonest Israeli officials were being in this regard. Yotam Cohen, the brother of a kidnapped soldier, put it best: “An entire nation has been deceived. They tell us that military pressure will bring the hostages back, when in fact all it does is kill them.”

It would be one thing if Israel had a serious plan to replace Hamas and was sacrificing the hostages in pursuit of a cold but realistic strategy to destroy the organisation. Currently, however, the “plan” will kill the hostages and fail to do any lasting damage to Hamas’ political or military power. More IDF soldiers, not to mention thousands of Palestinian civilians, are going to be killed and wounded for no reason, and all the hostages will still die.

Hamas will remain armed and in control of Gaza in the absence of a complete and indefinite Israeli military reoccupation, and likely even with one, and the sooner Israel accepts its inability to change this under current conditions, the sooner it can make a deal with Hamas for the remaining hostages or their bodies and “permanently” end the war.

The White House itself is quite explicit that this deal is the result of “maximum pressure” on Israel,3 particularly after its abortive strike against Hamas’ negotiating team in Qatar, for which Bibi was forced to apologise.4 Again, as I wrote on May 13:

Trump wants a ceasefire, or at least the concept of a ceasefire. He wants made-for-TV/Twitter announcements… He doesn’t care how, and he doesn’t care at all about Hamas remaining armed and in power. And now that he’s seen talking to Hamas, Qatar, and Egypt… can easily get him what he wants, he will pursue that route and eventually force Israel into whatever deal or deals result… Bibi has reportedly already set October 2025 as a “final deadline” for the war, meaning that… Israel will once again enter into a deal with Hamas after months of pointless delay… That deadline seems to be a response to the Trump Administration reportedly setting time limits for the IDF and pressuring them to quickly end the war.

So far, so predictable, and right on schedule.

Hamas’ terms for releasing all the hostages have been very clear and unwavering since 2023: hostages would be released for prisoners and a guaranteed end to the war.5 When Israel refused such a deal in January 2024, Hamas said that no new hostages would be released. However, this did not stop internal pressure on Bibi from his war cabinet and security officials. As I wrote in September 2024:

The war has killed far more hostages, both directly and indirectly, than it has saved. Hostages in this kind of situation are not generally rescued but won back with prisoner releases. This is a fairly ironclad rule in hostage crises, and it is incredibly dishonest of the Government to pretend otherwise.

In January, four senior military leaders told the New York Times that rescuing the hostages and destroying Hamas were “mutually incompatible” goals. Eisenkot himself said publicly in January that the idea of getting the hostages back militarily was an “illusion” and “that it is impossible to bring the hostages back alive in the near future without a deal.” He emphasised this in a War Cabinet meeting, as well, saying, “We need to stop lying to ourselves, to show courage and to work towards an extensive deal that will bring the hostages home.” Eisenkot later accused the Government of failing to get elderly male hostages out during the ceasefire in November.

It is unlikely even 50 hostages remain alive, and while the IDF has rescued several and brought back the remains of others, the hostage issue will only end with a prisoner release, whether now or 5-10 years from now. The only question is whether anyone will still be alive. Returning all the hostages should never have been a military objective.6

Former Shin Bet Chief Ronen Bar pushed repeatedly for a comprehensive hostage deal until he was forced out in June 2025. Former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi also reportedly begged Bibi to take a comprehensive hostage deal prior to the Rafah offensive in May 2024, something Bibi firmly rejected.7

In August this year, current IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir reportedly told troops that “there is a [hostage] deal on the table, we need to take it,”8 and then reportedly yelled at cabinet members a month later that they needed to finalise and take the hostage deal on the table rather than expand military operations to no effect.9

That August proposal is more or less the meat of the 20-point framework that was eventually released by the Trump Administration:

First, the leaders and employees of the first and second echelons [of Hamas] — the military, police, heads of agencies and ministries — are ready to retire. In addition, it is proposed to start collecting weapons throughout the Gaza Strip, starting with tribal formations and small gangs, gradually moving to Hamas forces. Thirdly, the movement agrees to the deployment of Arab troops to ensure security, including the deployment of part of the forces in the border strip as a buffer zone. Meanwhile, three years later, Hamas is ready to return to political activity in the format of the Al-Khalas party, which is not formally affiliated with the movement itself.

In turn, the Israeli media, citing government sources, reported on the new initiative of the mediators. According to these sources, the plan provides for the release of all hostages, including the dead, in exchange for amnesty for a number of Palestinian prisoners, the disarmament of Hamas and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the strip under joint Arab-American control.

The document also includes a commitment by Hamas to freeze the activities of its armed wing, the Izzaddin al-Qassam Brigades, and hand over its arsenal, while negotiations on a permanent cease-fire should proceed in parallel. It is worth noting that Hamas has repeatedly refused to disarm, which was one of the key points of contention between the parties.

— The term “freezing of weapons” is now mentioned in a number of reports. This is part of the proposal by Turkey, Egypt and Qatar, which brought the Hamas delegation to Cairo, led by al-Haya. This is not only about freezing weapons, but also about completely freezing the activities of Hamas — political, managerial and military. Weapons should be stored and stored in specially designated areas, but the wording in the public space will be “collecting weapons in Gaza as a whole,” he explained.

The draft proposal also reportedly called for “the formation of a group of 15 Palestinian technocrats to manage the sector for a six-month transition period under the leadership of the Palestinian National Authority.”

It is vital to understand the logic of Hamas’ mass kidnapping on October 7. Initially, the hostages were meant to serve four primary purposes:

1. Bargaining chips for mass prisoner releases

2. Leverage to force Israel to declare an end to the war

3. Human shields to delay or blunt IDF retaliation

4. Psychological warfare

When Israel quickly demonstrated that its no-holds-barred military campaign would not be stopped by the hostages, and the IDF directly and indirectly killed or nearly killed several hostages,10 the third purpose became inoperative. The fourth goal, while technically successful, was seen to have no impact on Bibi and his coalition, and therefore also jettisoned.

Only the first two goals remained, and Hamas continuously tried to offload the hostages in exchange for mass prisoner releases and a declared end to the war. It is not true, as the Americans keep claiming, that they convinced Hamas that the hostages were more a liability than a strategic asset. As has been the case since they were kidnapped, the hostages were viewed as bargaining chips to be traded.

By May 2024, Hamas was accepting proposals for such a deal, until something concrete was finally announced later that month by Biden.11 Netanyahu then obstructed that deal until January 2025,12 when the incoming Trump Administration forced him into a variant of it.

Again, Hamas signed onto this deal, which would’ve seen all the hostages released eventually, but Netanyahu quickly moved to thwart phase II and unilaterally abrogated the deal Hamas had agreed to, restarting the war to keep his coalition intact.13

Hamas: Baqiya wa Tatamadad

Almost immediately after the deal was announced, Hamas deployed thousands of operatives to secure the streets in areas vacated by the IDF and hunt down Palestinian collaborators and looters, reportedly seizing the weapons, vehicles and ammunition that Israel had given its proxy militias.14 It also appointed new governors. Public executions by Hamas have been accompanied by a general amnesty for some gang members. According to Joe Truzman:

The Gaza Ministry of Interior and National Security (Hamas) announced a general amnesty and opportunity for repentance for members of local gangs who were not involved in killings or bloodshed, allowing them to surrender within one week (Oct. 13–19, 2025) to settle their legal and security status.

Hamas is also clearing roads and doing some infrastructure repair and has begun collecting unexploded Israeli bombs and shells to build rockets and IEDs.

When asked about Hamas’ public executions,15 Trump said, “They did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad gangs, very, very bad. And that didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you.” Trump also said the US had given Hamas approval to reassert violent control “for a period of time”.

Not long thereafter, Trump said, “If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

So there’s that.

Hamas’ ability to rapidly deploy so many operatives in such an organised fashion, and the fact that it already had officials ready to appoint to run areas from which the IDF withdrew, shows that the war has done no lasting damage to the movement at either the military or political level.

This all looks depressingly familiar. Despite heavy casualties and the assassination of most of its leadership, Hamas can still smoothly and efficiently coordinate and control all political and military moves, and faces no serious internal resistance.

Israel currently assesses Hamas still retains about 20,000 fighters, hundreds of rockets, and more than half of their tunnels.16

Preliminary Assessment: A Stupid But Necessary Circuit Breaker

There’s no sense wasting time analysing most of the 20-point “peace plan”, though I am going to waste some time, anyway, without comprehensively addressing this fatuous fantasy. The “plan” is in any case better thought of as political cover for Bibi to accept what was merely a deal to release hostages in exchange for ending the war, something he swore he’d never do and could have done long ago.

So, point 12 cancels out Trump’s original goal, which he announced a mere 8 months ago, of depopulating Gaza. This has also been the entire Israeli “strategy” since October 2023.17

Trump just wanted to release his concept of a plan, and he liked the symbolism of announcing it around the two-year anniversary of October 7. He doesn’t care for details or implementation or anything else aside from public spectacle, praise and prizes. Art of the deal.

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On January 11, 2024, Israel made the following claim:

Over the past few months, the IDF has been operating to expose and dismantle the hundreds of kilometers of terror tunnels dug underneath the Gaza Strip by the Hamas terror organization. Using the information collected by IDF troops on the ground and analysis of the tunnels exposed by the forces up until now, the Intelligence Directorate has revealed that over 6,000 tons of concrete and 1,800 tons of metal were used to build hundreds of kilometers of underground infrastructure, at a total cost of tens of millions of dollars.

Instead of investing in civilian infrastructure and development to benefit the residents of the Gaza Strip, Hamas used vast quantities of money and resources over many years to build a vast underground tunnel network used for its deadly terrorist activity.

Now, anyone who has seen footage of Gaza from before the war, or who has spoken to soldiers who fought in Gaza, knows the latter paragraph isn’t entirely true. Gaza, or at least parts thereof, was actually quite nice. Almost Riviera-like.1 In other words, Hamas invested “in civilian infrastructure and development to benefit the residents of the Gaza Strip.”

But did they also divert “vast quantities of money and resources” to build their tunnel network honeycombing Gaza, estimated in January 2024 to be between 350 and 450 miles long (563-724km), according to senior Israeli defence officials?

Is it true, as the late Dore Gold, then in his capacity as director-general of Israel’s foreign ministry, said in May 2016, that “From our own investigations we found that out of every 100 sacks of cement that come into the Gaza Strip, only five or six are transferred to civilians. A hundred sacks is what is necessary to rebuild a home, the rest are confiscated by Hamas and used for military purposes”?

Would it really be possible to build that staggering tunnel network and invest in Gaza’s civilian infrastructure?

Because I know nothing about construction and can’t do even basic math, I cannot answer this question definitively. BUT, if ChatGPT et al aren’t completely hallucinating, AND if the Israeli figures are even close to accurate, then the answer is yes, extremely easily.

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So Gideon’s Chariots and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) failed. This comes as a complete shock to me.1

But, while it also failed in humanitarian terms, The GHF was never intended as a purely humanitarian aid mechanism, and so shouldn’t be analysed as one.

Rather, the GHF was intended to help forcibly transfer the entire population of Gaza to the south by ensuring minimal food was only available in that area,2 thus bringing all Gazans close to the border with Egypt. En route, according to the initial plan, they would be filtered through multiple Israeli intelligence checkpoints to weed out operatives and members of Hamas and its sister organisations.

Once in the south, Palestinian civilians would be confined in “Humanitarian Transit Areas” (HTAs), or a “humanitarian city”, euphemisms for Boer-style concentration camps (or “strategic hamlets”, if you prefer) intended to separate the population from Hamas for the duration of the war, whence many or most would be “voluntarily” evicted from Gaza.

Bibi has long found himself dancing on the heads of snakes, torn between the faction upon which he depends to stay in power, which desires starvation, total desolation, population expulsion and eventual Israeli resettlement of Gaza; a casualty-averse IDF that from the outset refused to fill any security, aid distribution or governance vacuum in Gaza and always openly prioritised hostage releases over total war; and a US that, at least until Trump, prioritised both Israeli security as well as human rights and international law, and advocated achievable (and already achieved) ends rather than a vague and illusory “total victory”.

With his unique, almost magical powers, Bibi has managed to pluck the most malign elements out of this vexing hodgepodge and guarantee the worst of all worlds for everyone (except him), partially implementing the plan of the political factions that keep him in power, but not enough that they’d actually achieve anything except international opprobrium and isolation, in order to mollify the IDF and US.

“But wait,” I can hear my past self protesting, “couldn’t the situation in Gaza be explained as the sum of local initiatives, tactical and military necessity, good-faith efforts to address humanitarian issues, bureaucratic red tape, incompetence, inertia and a minority of very bad eggs in the IDF?”

Why yes, I respond condescendingly, I suppose so.

The destruction in Gaza can theoretically be explained as emerging from the establishment of a buffer zone; the destruction of buildings that have been, are being, or could be used by Hamas,3 including booby-trapped homes, those hiding tunnels, those that can be used as lookouts, those that have previously been used by the IDF where Hamas could later glean intelligence, and those from which Hamas is actively firing or in which it is stashing materiel;4 insurgents planting and detonating IEDs; the local initiative of some commanders; a minority of soldiers just on a vengeful rampage; inertia; and general urban fighting and errant fire. Whatever the logic driving destruction in different areas at different times, it need not be a coherent plan to drive Gazans out of Gaza.5

As for the mass displacement, Israel genuinely wants these people out of the battle zone so it has a freer hand to fight Hamas.

When it comes to blocking aid or obstructing delivery, Israel is actually concerned about Hamas diversion and profiteering, and many of the obstacles to aid delivery are due to bureaucratic red tape and dysfunction, not necessarily intent to inflict mass suffering. And banning UNRWA, despite its knock-on effects on aid delivery, was not aimed at aid disruption (see note 9).

All of this is technically true, but there are enough reports, statements, and actions that only fit together one way, and the conclusion that there is an overarching plan, however badly implemented, to starve and destroy Gaza for the purpose of mass expulsion, though not mass death, seems inescapable to me.

Once we know – and we do know, because Israel openly says it is working towards this and details how its actions line up with that aim – that Israel’s ultimate goal is to permanently transfer most Palestinians out of Gaza, the rest of its conduct cannot be fully explained outside of that context.

Israel views Gaza’s civilian population as Hamas’ centre of gravity; that is, the most effective means of pressuring Hamas, according to the Israeli political and security establishment, is through Gazan suffering.

Insofar as any consistent strategic concept can be identified since October 7, 2023, it is that humanitarian suffering would lead miserable Gazans to become ungovernable, thereby undermining Hamas’ political control, and then eventually to “voluntarily” leave the Strip when possible. To further encourage that “voluntary emigration” and prevent return, all infrastructure would be destroyed. If none of that was enough, cash payments and rent and food subsidies for relocation would be on offer.

What would happen after that fantasy was fulfilled is anyone’s guess. Certainly, nobody in the Israeli Government ever gave it a moment’s thought.

I am not going to criticise this policy on legal or moral grounds, but it seems undeniable that that was, has always been, and continues to be the plan, impractical as it was from the start given internal and external political and logistical constraints. The fact that the GHF was established outside its original context doesn’t really change anything.

That Gaza only recently reached the point of full-blown humanitarian catastrophe nearly two years into the war is solely due to multiple US interventions postponing the policy’s implementation in full, not because Israel had no such policy.

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The ongoing existence of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, widely known as UNRWA, is a travesty.1 That Palestinians should be the only group in the world to still have their own dedicated organisation, much less one that has no mandate for resettlement, is absurd.

But some of the disingenuous accusations levelled against it by Israel and pro-Israel advocates, including UNRWA’s farcical designation as a terrorist organisation by the Knesset last year, have put me in the unfortunate position of anti-anti-UNRWA posting.

Many of the accusations against UNRWA are actually external top-down or bottom-up issues, all of which would exist even if the organisation were to be dismantled.

That is, the problems identified are due to either widely-held beliefs among Palestinians, who constitute nearly 100% of the organisation’s workforce, and the nature and ideology of the Palestinian national movement; or the decisions of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and its automatic anti-Israel majority, under the mandate of which UNRWA operates.

In addition, UNRWA, like all humanitarian organisations, subordinates all other considerations to its jealously guarded bureaucratic functions and purposes, i.e., to deliver services to the population it is mandated to serve.

The lack of screening current or future employees or beneficiaries for ties to groups Israel considers to be terrorist organisations, or the pervasive anti-Israel incitement at UNRWA schools, for example, is not the result of malice, but is instead simply UNRWA skating on bureaucratic inertia and acting within the constraints of Palestinian society and ideology as well as its UNGA mandate.

In chaotic war zones and militia-run areas or under totalitarian regimes, this means working with “de facto” authorities, whoever they may be, in pursuit of the primary directive: delivering aid and services.

That cooperation is always maintained even at the expense of granting terrorist and insurgent groups or totalitarian regimes control over aid and allowing them to siphon off portions of it for their own benefit. This is a serious problem with international humanitarian relief organisations in general, and is hardly unique to UNRWA.

There is no realistic alternative to UNRWA, the primary task of which is to provide services, such as health and education, that ought to be provided by a Palestinian state. Aside from Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, that is, both of which are worse by every metric used to criticise UNRWA.

Before I deal with the most idiotic or irrelevant claims made about UNRWA, it’s vital to note that Israel’s antipathy towards the organisation is political, not security-based.

Netanyahu was already saying in June 2017 that “It is time UNRWA be dismantled and merged with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).” He referred to it as the “refugee perpetuation agency” in September 2018, with the Israeli Foreign Ministry stating, “UNRWA perpetuates the myth of the eternal ‘refugee’ status of the Palestinians. The sole purpose is sustaining an illegitimate instrument aimed at the destruction of the State of Israel. UNRWA is part of the problem, not of the solution.”

After October 7, 2023, Israel began laying the groundwork to dismantle UNRWA, as reported in late December 2023:

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has put together a classified report calling for the removal of UNRWA from the Gaza Strip in the long-term, noting that the U.N. relief agency works against Israel’s interests.

The report’s recommendations set out a three-stage process for shrinking and eventually eliminating UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, from the Strip: 1) Prepare a case detailing UNRWA’s cooperation with Hamas; 2) Reduce UNRWA’s field of activity and find replacement service providers; and 3) Transfer UNRWA’s responsibilities to another entity.

Is UNRWA violating its own codes of conduct and neutrality framework? Absolutely. Can it reform to mitigate that? No, it cannot. In order to operate, it, like all international organisations, must by definition ignore its own neutrality rules, something many on all sides disingenuously pretend not to know.

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It’s far too early to assess the outcomes of Operation Rising Lion, the thing I literally just said probably wouldn’t happen a week before it did, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

But first, let’s dally in a little retrospective assessment of my June 5 post, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Iranian Bomb”, and then proceed from there to explaining why this operation happened and why now, and only then move to irresponsible and inane speculation.

“Some Form of War”

In my previous post, I wrote the following:

However, for those who want to be as certain as possible that the regime won’t restart its nuclear weapons program, then there are only two options, as Obama correctly asserted in 2015: “Let’s not mince words: The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy and some form of war.”

…

“War” is a very strong word for what would happen under a military approach to ending Iran’s program, given Iran is utterly impotent. It can neither defend itself nor retaliate effectively, whether directly with its missiles or via its broken, bupkis global terrorism apparatus.

This was the case long before Israel destroyed what Iran did possess in terms of air defence systems. The regime’s alleged attempts to reconstitute its useless air defences are, well, useless.

…

Israel alone, much less the US, could easily destroy Iran’s entire program, including all enrichment facilities. Even the deeply buried ones, if not entirely destroyed from the air, could be finished off via ground raids. Israel already demonstrated proof of concept for this in Syria last year, and could readily replicate that operation using its massive agent network in Iran and its ability to operate directly from Azerbaijan.

On this count, I’d say I scored fairly well. Since at least mid-2019, it has been obvious to me that the regime was so thoroughly penetrated by Israeli intelligence that it would be crippled immediately in any fight. Iran has always just been an Israeli playground.

That Iran wouldn’t be able to retaliate effectively, both because of the inaccuracy of its missiles and useless air defences – and Israel’s very good air defences – and the fact that Israel had a huge network of intelligence operatives inside the country would not have surprised anyone paying attention over the last two decades. Even the fact that IDF commandos were operating in Iran isn’t remotely surprising, as I wrote they’d be on standby for ground raids at Fordow if Israel couldn’t convince Trump.

The small Mossad teams that smuggled hundreds of small drones into Iran and prepositioned near air defences and ballistic missile launch sites to take them out in the opening hours of the campaign were also old hat. Mossad already tested this tactic in February and May 2022 and again in January 2023.

Rising Lion was different in scope, but not in kind, to assassination and sabotage operations against nuclear and missile scientists and sites ongoing in Iran since at least 2010.1 In fact, the Jerusalem Post reported on July 3:

According to Mossad sources, 2002 was the first Mossad operation of manipulated and tampered equipment and technology as part of a new sustained and systematic campaign in that direction against both Iran and Hezbollah.

…

The Mossad, through a variety of deceptive “straw men” and “fronts,” would eventually sell the Iranians a substantial amount of tampered equipment in 2003 and 2004, which had dramatic impacts in the realm of sabotage.

…

In addition, already between 2004-2010, the Mossad was using drones to launch attacks in various places, including Iran.

…

What happened this past June 13-24 in Iran was an enlargement of what the Mossad had already carried out numerous times in the past within Iranian territory.

Basically, no element of Israel’s successes or the regime’s hilariously humiliating failure was surprising.

מַה־שֶּֽׁהָיָה֙ ה֣וּא שֶׁיִּהְיֶ֔ה וּמַה־שֶּׁנַּֽעֲשָׂ֔ה ה֖וּא שֶׁיֵּעָשֶׂ֑ה וְאֵ֥ין כׇּל־חָדָ֖שׁ תַּ֥חַת הַשָּֽׁמֶש

יֵ֥שׁ דָּבָ֛ר שֶׁיֹּאמַ֥ר רְאֵה־זֶ֖ה חָדָ֣שׁ ה֑וּא כְּבָר֙ הָיָ֣ה לְעֹֽלָמִ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר הָיָ֖ה מִלְּפָנֵֽנוּ

“There is little reason to believe Israel would actually strike Iran”

Now we get to the more embarrassing bit. I wrote on June 5:

Despite all the leaks from both the Israelis and Americans over the years, including over the past month, there is little reason to believe Israel would actually strike Iran, or that, if it did, it would be a full-fledged campaign that would target all relevant facilities in Iran. This makes it very difficult to take reports and leaks that Trump “waved off” imminent Israel strikes seriously.

What’s likely happening is Trump, because he is retarded, believes Bibi’s bluster about wanting to bomb Iran and therefore keeps telling him not to do anything to spoil his deal. Trump recently underlined this, saying, “It’s not a warning – I said I don’t think it’s appropriate.”

Meanwhile, some of Trump’s officials, because they are also retarded, are leaking this stuff to try and obstruct an Israeli strike that the Israelis don’t actually want to launch, while other officials, perhaps the dumbest of them all, are leaking in an attempt to use the threat of Israeli strikes to pressure Iran during negotiations, something the Saudis also seem to be doing, obviously at US behest.

Bibi, for his part, wants to look tough for his domestic audience and is happy for them to believe that he’s serious about substantially striking Iran but is being blocked by the US from taking action.

The Iranians understand that both Trump and Bibi are absurd half-man buffoons who think only in terms of themselves and domestic politics and hate decisive military action.

Now, to be fair to me, the regime had exactly the same assumptions as I did. I don’t know why I didn’t realise something had fundamentally changed in terms of Bibi’s calculus on hitting Iran after it decimated Hezbollah in late 2024, because I myself wrote2 in August 2024 that the calculus could change in the event of a rapid defeat of Hezbollah:

Having neutralised Hezbollah, and with US security guarantees against Iranian missile and drone salvos, Iran itself would be defenceless and unable to respond to Israeli operations to destroy its nuclear facilities.

The Wall Street Journal reported on February 12:

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded during the final days of the Biden administration that Israel is considering significant strikes on Iranian nuclear sites this year, aiming to take advantage of Iran’s weakness, officials familiar with the report said.

The finding was included in an analytical assessment produced around the new year as the Biden administration wound down. The analysis highlighted the risks of further high-stakes military activity in the Middle East after the degradation of Iran’s capabilities over the past year.

The intelligence analysis concluded Israel would push the Trump administration to back the strikes, viewing him as more likely to join an attack than former President Joe Biden and fearing the window for halting Tehran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon was closing, two of the people familiar with the intelligence said.

The U.S. intelligence community produced a second report delivered during the early days of President Trump’s administration reiterating that Israel is considering such strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, according to one of the U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence.

The Washington Post reported on June 25, citing current and former Israeli officials:

After Israel decimated Iran’s air defenses in a missile skirmish and crippled its main ally, Hezbollah, in October, Netanyahu issued a general order to prepare for a strike, the current and former officials said. Israeli intelligence officials began huddling to compile lists of dozens of Iranian nuclear scientists and military leaders who could be targeted for assassination. Israel’s air force began to systematically take out air defenses in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq to clear the skies for future bombing runs against Iran… senior Israeli government officials said they had already decided by March, weeks before Netanyahu met Trump in the Oval Office on April 7, to strike Iran with or without U.S. participation by June at the latest, said two people with knowledge of the matter.

The Wall Street Journal reported on June 26 about Operation Narnia, the assassination of Iran’s primary nuclear scientists and military officials, the planning for which began as soon as Hezbollah sued for peace:

In November 2024, the military gathered 120 intelligence and air force officials together to decide who and what would be in their crosshairs when fighting began.

In the end, the conference drew up a list of over 250 targets, including the scientists the Israelis wanted to kill, nuclear sites, Iranian missile launchers and military officials

But even with all that, I still didn’t believe Bibi would defy Trump.

Israel’s widespread decimation of Iran’s air defences and strikes on key missile sites in late October, called Operation Days of Repentance, in retaliation for Iran’s massive ballistic missile attack earlier that month, was clearly a test run, paving the way for Rising Lion, but I was too hooked on my priors and [rightfully] feeling nothing but contempt for Bibi to see it. However, the attack did not “target all relevant facilities in Iran”, as predicted, though it’s not clear how relevant this is.

As for my claim that “Trump and Bibi are absurd half-man buffoons who think only in terms of themselves and domestic politics and hate decisive military action,” this remains accurate.

“Under Bibi and Trump, it would be an inevitably haphazard affair with no broader strategy that would come to a precipitous, pointless, stupid end.”

Me on June 5:

The odds of a comprehensive military campaign to destroy all of Iran’s nuclear facilities are virtually zero under these effete clowncucks, and the Iranians know it.

And that’s probably for the best, because under Bibi and Trump, it would be an inevitably haphazard affair with no broader strategy that would come to a precipitous, pointless, stupid end. It would be mostly risk-free, aside from maybe some drones getting shot down, and it would destroy or damage many facilities and capabilities. It might even set the program back a few months or even years! But we’d all end up right back here relatively quickly, with the core of the program intact and reconstituting.

Who knows, it might even all work out well. I’d enjoy watching it either way.

But such a half-assed operation might convince the Iranians that they should finally convert their bomb option into a bomb… why risk it when there’s a deal to be had, one for which Trump has been practically begging for years?

The jury is still out on this one. Let’s say I was partially right.

While the campaign was more comprehensive than I, and, clearly, the regime, expected it to be, it did not destroy all of Iran’s facilities. Nor was there any broader strategy. And it did come to a precipitous, pointless, stupid end. Plus, I did enjoy watching it.

In addition, I allowed that even a non-comprehensive campaign could set the program back months, years, or even indefinitely. Alternatively, I said it could finally convince the Iranians to try and break out, something they were not interested in doing when the operation was launched. We won’t know either way for quite a while.

As for my assertions about Trump’s desperation for a deal, that was and remains accurate. He really didn’t want Israel to strike. The eve of Rising Lion, he said regarding the potential for an operation:

I don't want to say imminent, but it looks like it's something that could very well happen.

Look, it's very simple, not complicated. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Other than that, I want them to be successful. I want them to be tremendous. We will help them be successful. We will trade with them. We will do whatever is necessary. I want to have an agreement with Iran. We're fairly close to an agreement. As long as I think there is an agreement, I don't want them going in, because I think that would blow it.

Might help it, actually, but it also could blow it. There's a chance of massive conflict. We have a lot of American people in this area. And I said, we got to tell them to get out because something could happen soon.

Trump was simply too weak to stop Bibi and resigned himself to the strikes after months of blocking Rising Lion. While eventually Fox News, the praise he was getting, and his need to insert himself into the drama convinced him to undertake the strike, after reportedly warning the Iranians to evacuate the facilities, he still remains desperate for a deal.

Even as Israel was striking, Trump attempted to organise a last-minute meeting with the Iranians in Istanbul, and was reportedly “prepared to send Vice President J.D. Vance and White House envoy Steve Witkoff — or even travel himself to meet Iran's president, if that's what it would take to reach a deal.”

So desperate was Trump for a deal that he was ready to call back the B-2 bombers he had dispatched to bomb Fordow at the slightest sign of a diplomatic window, and is still, even now, pursuing diplomacy. Axios reported on June 22:

As the strike was underway, White House envoy Steve Witkoff sent a message to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to make clear that the operation was a one-off and limited strictly to Iran's nuclear program, a U.S. official told Axios.

Witkoff, who has remained in direct contact with Araghchi throughout the crisis, emphasized that the U.S. still seeks a diplomatic resolution — and now wants Iran to return to the table following the destruction of its key enrichment sites, the official said.

Several senior Trump officials, including Vance and Hegseth, stressed Sunday that the U.S. does not seek regime change in Iran and called on the Iranians to return to the negotiating table.

…

Trump still wants a deal with Iran — and wanted one before the bombers took off, an adviser to the president told Axios.

“Once the B-2s were radio silent, it was too late,” the source said. “But the phones are open now.”

Trump stopped the Israelis from assassinating Khamenei, something the Israelis deny,3 and, a single Truth Social post notwithstanding, has continued to reiterate how anathema the idea of regime change is to him.

The New York Times reported on June 22 that Trump told his advisors “that Israel would be foolish to try to assassinate Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader Moreover, he said, if the United States were to strike Iran, the goal should be to decimate its nuclear facilities, not to bring down its government.”

Why? Because, like I said in August 2024, “Trump has been fairly consistent on this issue: he wants the same relationship with Khamenei as he has with Kim, Xi and Putin. All he asks in return is a JCPOA he can put his name on alongside a photo-op.”

Negotiations are reportedly back on, with the uncompromising negotiating positions unchanged. Iran denies this. Axios reported on July 4 that “White House envoy Steve Witkoff is planning to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Oslo next week,” but “The sources said a final date hasn't been set, and neither country has publicly confirmed the meeting.”

Scream into the abyss

The narrative of a long-term deception operation is bogus. Like me, Iran didn’t believe Bibi would strike, despite all the leaks to this effect, because he’s a chickenshit who’s been blustering about it for decades.

And even if a unique confluence of events outweighed his cowardice, he wouldn’t defy Trump, who just wanted a deal and surely wouldn’t allow Israel to ruin his negotiations, which would’ve taken place had Rising Lion not been launched to head them off.4

What Iran, and I, misjudged, was that Bibi saw a unique window to hit Iran, and, far more importantly, raise his political support ahead of the early elections he clearly wanted to call after surviving threats by his ultra-orthodox coalition partners to bring down the Government. All of this overshadowed his own natural chickenshittedness.

Trump, meanwhile, is too weak a person to matter one way or the other. I should never have factored him in.

No strategic “headfakes”, no deception. Everything is exactly as it looked on the surface. Bibi made clear he wanted to strike for months, Trump held him off as long as he could, and then quickly imposed a ceasefire, after taking out Fordow and finishing off the enrichment site at Natanz, so he could get back to his deal.

What we saw was just a weak man who suddenly saw a military and political opportunity and an even weaker man who wanted all the credit when he saw the first weak man’s action was popular.

Operation Rising Lion

Operation Rising Lion was a tactical campaign, not a strategic one.

Whatever its appearance, there was no coherent plan beyond attacking a particular set of nuclear facilities and scientists coupled with a separate set of targets to disrupt the regime’s ability to retaliate effectively, these being the military command structure and ballistic missiles, missile launchers, and facilities involved in their production. The campaign was remarkably successful and brilliant in this regard.

But it’s important to note that the narrative presented by Netanyahu is false. This operation was not a response to anything the regime had done or was planning to do, but instead the result of a serendipitous confluence of political and military factors that allowed Israel to hit its arch-nemesis with impunity and further reduce the potential, not actual, threat it presented. One source told the Washington Post that the attack was fully decided in March, with a June deadline, because “Iran would have rebuilt its air defenses by the latter half of the year.”

Israel did this simply because it could, and the timing, and politics, worked.

Nuclear Nonsense

First, Iran did not want the bomb, and there’s no evidence whatsoever that it was attempting to develop one. It wanted a credible bomb option, not a bomb. It was certainly not on the verge of imminent nuclear breakout.

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Days after Yisrael Beiteinu party leader and former deputy prime minister Avigdor Lieberman claimed that “Israel has provided assault rifles and light weapons to crime families in Gaza, on Netanyahu's orders… We're talking about the equivalent of [Islamic State] in Gaza,” Netanyahu confirmed that this was indeed what he was doing. “In consultation with security officials, we made use of clans in Gaza that are opposed to Hamas. What’s wrong with that? It’s only good. It saves the lives of IDF soldiers.”

The accusation follows months of reporting since November 2024, including by the Washington Post, Financial Times, New York Times, and The New Arab that this is what’s been happening. The Washington Post cited an internal UN memo from October:

An internal United Nations memo obtained by The Washington Post concluded last month that the gangs “may be benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence” or “protection” from the Israel Defense Forces. One gang leader, the memo said, established a “military like compound” in an area “restricted, controlled and patrolled by the IDF.

The gang leader, described by the Financial Times as “Gaza’s most notorious gangster” in November, is none other than Yasser Abu Shabab, the ringleader of aid looting and one of several criminals that escaped Hamas jails now in Israel’s employ. These also include salafi-jihadists like Issam Nabahin, who allegedly fought in the ranks of Islamic State in Sinai and was involved in firing rockets at Israel outside of Hamas’ auspices as well as Ghassan Duhine, a brother of an Islamic State operative killed by Hamas who was himself involved in the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit.

Abu Shabab’s “Popular Forces” militia, or “Anti-Terror Service”, is said to number about 100-300 individuals, although one report says it’s only “a few dozen”. An Israeli involved in the operation told Kan News:

This is a military unit that receives instructions from high-level officials and arms gangs inside Gaza. The unit transports, unloads, secures, and takes directions from Shin Bet officers who accompany the forces on the ground. I assume there are many such operations in various parts of the Gaza Strip. They are carried out at the request of the Intelligence Directorate and the Shin Bet, so I don’t know exactly how many… We brought in light weapons, a lot of equipment, and I think there was also money.

The weapons are reportedly captured from Hamas and Hezbollah and handed over.

The precise involvement of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the UAEgypt is unclear. Abu Shabab said that his forces “conduct [security checks] through the Palestinian intelligence service,” but claims to be unaffiliated.

PA sources told Ynet that the militia’s salaries are paid by the PA via one of its intelligence officers in Gaza, Baha al-Balusha, although overall PA intelligence chief Majed Faraj is unhappy with the arrangement. The same sources also said UAE agent, former Fatah man, and Mahmoud Abbas’ bête noire Mohammad Dahlan is involved, and that two more armed gangs, one in Beit Lahiya in the north and the other in central Gaza, are slated to begin operating soon.1

A senior PA official told i24NEWS that “everything is coordinated with Mahmoud Abbas,” with the news organisation citing Arabic media reports saying that “an unnamed Arab country is involved in training the militia. Mahmoud al-Habash, advisor to Mahmoud Abbas, maintains direct contact with Abu Shabab.”

Meanwhile, CNN reported:

Abu Shabab’s force uses Palestinian insignia and flags prominently on its uniforms, but he told CNN that his “grassroots forces are not an official authority, nor are we operating under a direct mandate from the Palestinian Authority.”

The office of the spokesperson for the Palestinian Security Forces, Major General Anwar Rajab, told CNN there was no connection between the Palestinian security apparatus and Abu Shabab’s group.

Rajab told the New York Times, “I will issue a statement clarifying everything soon, as the matter is complex and involves overlapping security, political, and — most importantly — humanitarian factors.”

None of this really matters, except that Netanyahu wants this operation to be as indirect and [implausibly] deniable as possible, and therefore may be working through the PA/UAEgypt in terms of funding. Abu Shabab’s progressively more sophisticated social media campaign, and UAE license plates, indicates UAE involvement.

CNN also reported:

“Leaders and elders of the Abu Shabab family” said in a statement that they had confronted him about videos showing “Yasser’s groups involved in dangerous security engagements, even working within undercover units and supporting the Zionist occupation forces that brutally kill our people.”

The family declared its “complete disassociation from Yasser Abu Shabab” and urged anyone who had joined his security groups to do the same.

“We have no objection to those around him eliminating him immediately; we state clearly that his blood is wasted,” the family statement said.

Abu Shabab told CNN that the statement was “fabricated and false” and accompanied by “a media campaign targeting me and my colleagues.”

Abu Shabab himself has been at pains to repeatedly deny any affiliation with Israel since the news first broke, including this Facebook post on June 6:

To the masses of our Palestinian people,

The Israeli media has circulated false claims alleging that our popular forces received weapons from the occupation.

We completely reject these accusations and consider them an obvious attempt to tarnish the image of a grassroots force that was born from suffering and stood against injustice, looting, and corruption.

Our weapons are simple and modest, provided through the support of our people—from the meagre resources of our children, through donations from families, and from young men who found no choice but to protect humanitarian aid from theft and to defend families in eastern Rafah. Suspicious pages have deliberately avoided showing images of our weapons because they know our arms are primitive and old, which contradicts their lies and the occupation’s narrative.

We have not been and will never be a tool in the hands of the occupation, and we will not allow our name to be dragged into dubious schemes.

If the occupation has evidence, let it present it to our people and to the global media.

We call on everyone to visit our areas and investigate the facts before spreading lies that serve the occupation’s narrative by sowing division and deepening internal strife.

The occupation’s attempt to claim us as its own is nothing more than an indirect admission that we are a powerful and influential force.

We will remain committed to our principles, reject treason, and remain loyal to this proud people, who know their own and can distinguish the sincere from the impostors.

You will not succeed in demonising our liberation project from terrorism, and falsehood will not silence the voice of truth.

It does not bode well for the future of this plan, whatever it is, that everyone is still terrified of being associated with Israel, or of being associated with those associated with Israel.

At first glance, this appears to be the piloting of an “ink-spot strategy”, with Abu Shabab acting as a nominally independent Israeli proxy controlling territory while Israel controls aid distribution via the nominally independent Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Further, as CNN reported:

On May 17, the day before the Kerem Shalom crossing reopened, work started on a tent encampment in eastern Rafah, according to satellite imagery reviewed by CNN. That work appears to have concluded on May 30.

The camp is less than 500 meters from where Abu Shabab runs checkpoints.

Four days later the so-called Popular Forces issued a statement saying that Abu Shabab “invites the residents of these areas to return, where food, drink, shelter, security and safety have been provided, shelter camps have been set up, and humanitarian relief routes have been opened.”

Abu Shabab is now calling on Gazans to volunteer for “administrative committees” to run these areas under his ostensible control. In an ideal world, the plan would be to start reconstruction there and allow in more aid, not just food aid, to stabilise them. There is no sign of this happening, however.

An ink-spot strategy is impossible to reconcile with Netanyahu’s recent declaration that one of the new goals of the war is to evict Gaza’s population, which comes after his statements about destroying as much infrastructure as possible to force Gazans to leave.

These gang proxies are not part of some coherent war or even postwar plan, but on the contrary, the result of Netanyahu refusing to have one.2

Some, including Hamas, have accused Israel of deliberately fomenting anarchy and facilitating looting to undermine Hamas and the UN aid delivery and distribution system,3 partially in order to present its GHF in a better light as an alternative. This gives Israel far too much credit.4

While those outcomes might be serendipitous byproducts for Israel, Hanlon’s Razor remains the correct prism. Israel simply has no plan to replace Hamas’ governance and security functions, but the IDF has been ordered to destroy Hamas’ political and military control. Hence, anarchy.

There is no long-term vision here beyond the negatives: ensuring that no Palestinian entity can govern both Gaza and the West Bank and that Israel doesn’t have to directly involve itself in any way with managing aid distribution, security or municipal functions.

Because the quintessentially indecisive Bibi declines to come up with any plan, the Israeli security establishment is just on auto-pilot, as it has been throughout the war.

One security source told Maariv:

We’re not building castles in the air around this group as if it’s going to replace Hamas. We’re talking about a few dozen to maybe a couple hundred members. The point is to test whether local actors can fill governance roles in specific, geographically-defined areas in place of Hamas… Right now, this is a very small and limited move. It’s an initial pilot, and it’s unclear how or where it will develop.

Maariv reports scepticism in the IDF, with a military source saying:

As long as this is a local tactical move that helps us in a few areas, we’re fine with it. But these gangs cannot be a substitute for a long-term strategic plan. If you want to replace Hamas, you need to build a governance mechanism with regional states that can take over Hamas’s role.

One thing Israel and Hamas both understand is that control of humanitarian aid lies at the heart of political power in Gaza. Which is how this Abu Shabab caper began.

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Israel Has and Eats Its Humanitarian Aid Cake

Israel’s response to October 7 was always predicated on a paradox: Israel would destroy Hamas’ military and political governance of Gaza, but would emphatically refuse to take any responsibility for the lawlessness and looting that would inevitably result and would draw a red line around the IDF even temporarily managing aid distribution5 or security functions. This is the beginning and end of the humanitarian aid issue in Gaza.6

Haaretz reported on March 4, 2024:

Until recently, armed Hamas policemen guarded the aid trucks entering Gaza. Though these police saw to the needs of Hamas first and only then distributed aid to Gaza's residents, the U.S. demanded that Israel not harm these police, to prevent looting and chaos. For several months, Israel allowed these Hamas police to guard the convoys.

This arrangement ended after Israel assassinated senior Hamas police officer Majdi Abd al-Aal on February 7, who had been in charge of Gaza's Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Several other policemen were also killed in the strike.

Immediately after Israel began systematically targeting the police in early February, aid delivery completely broke down as desperate civilians and then organised criminal gangs began attacking trucks and looting aid across Gaza. Turns out getting rid of law enforcement leads to law and order breakdowns. Who would’ve thought.7

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Ambassador David Satterfield, at the time the State Department special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, said on February 17, 2024:

This is a dangerous area. The UN had been attacked, first by desperate mobs, then by criminal elements. They required security. With those attacks on police escorts… it has been virtually impossible for the UN or anyone else, Jordan, the UAE, any other implementer, to safely move assistance in Gaza because of criminal gangs.

The Washington Post reported several days later:

After a string of Israeli attacks on members of Gaza’s Hamas-run civilian police force, officers withdrew earlier this month from the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel. Since they left, trucks have been attacked in the crossing’s holding area, according to U.N. humanitarian coordinator James McGoldrick. Drivers have been shot at, attacked with axes and box cutters, and had their windows smashed, he said.

Humanitarian officials said police have also stopped serving as security guards for aid convoys, paralyzing deliveries in the enclave, where… profiteers are selling stolen food at astronomical rates on the black market.

…

“Many of these trucks, before they even get 200 meters, are stopped by cars and then attacked and looted,” McGoldrick said. “We’re lucky to get some of the material to warehouses.” Getting the food from there to the north is even more difficult.

Convoys run the risk of being overrun on the journey, he added, describing one driver he met on a trip to Gaza this month who had lost his voice from screaming at looters: “This is for the people of Gaza. This is for Gaza City, it’s not for here,” he recounted telling them.

“It made no difference,” McGoldrick said.

…

Haya Marwan, 23, said her family in the northern Jabalya refugee camp has also been subsisting on khoubiza and other edible plants. Theft is rampant, she said, with empty homes stripped bare.

“The situation has descended into severe chaos,” Marwan said, adding that armed men threaten anyone carrying food. “I’ve heard of shootings by bandits,” she said. A bag of flour that used to cost $8 now goes for about $275.

“People are left to fend for themselves,” she said.

Despite the occasional snarky and obnoxious tweets and statements by Israel’s Coordinator of the Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) about the UN not collecting aid on the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom, it was Israel ensuring that aid organisations could neither safely reach it nor distribute it. This while cynically making irrelevant claims about the numbers of trucks it allowed in or could theoretically screen.

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In the north, no aid was coming in due to Israeli restrictions and the looting of whatever was allowed through by criminal gangs and desperate civilians in the absence of Hamas police. In late February 2024, therefore, the IDF organised at least four aid convoys as part of a partnership with “local Palestinian businessmen”, the last one of which ended in the so-called “flour massacre”, where more than 100 civilians were reportedly killed and countless others wounded. Thus ended that experiment.8

By October 2024, it had become clear that Israel was actively facilitating the systematic looting of aid.

First, in early July 2024, the Washington Post reported on the lucrative cigarette smuggling business in Gaza, which Israel refused to comprehensively crack down on, exacerbating the looting crisis as aid trucks were ransacked and aid was ripped apart to find the smuggled cigarettes. As the Post reported in November:

By the summer, a lucrative black-market trade in smuggled cigarettes — banned by Israel from entering Gaza during the war — was booming, with organized gangs attacking trucks to search for them.

…

[Georgios Petropoulos, head of the Gaza office for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] said cigarettes, originally hidden in produce, were now being found inside cans of food, showing that smuggling begins in factories, with much of the contraband believed to originate in Egypt. The smuggling route runs through the Sinai Peninsula and is linked to the Egyptian branches of the Bedouin tribes in Gaza, aid organizations and transport company executives said.

…

U.N. officials say they have repeatedly asked Israel to clamp down on cigarette smuggling — or let cigarettes in legally — to ease the looting epidemic, but discussions have been fruitless.

…

While traveling in a humanitarian convoy during a visit to Gaza this month, Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said he saw a group of men carrying sticks less than half a mile from the aid pickup point. Mattresses intended for displaced people were strewn along the road, cut to pieces by thieves searching for cigarettes.

Haaretz also reported on the cigarette smuggling issue, as did the BBC.

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But far worse than that was Yasser Abu Shabab. As the November Post article reported:

The internal U.N. memo obtained by The Post identified Yasser Abu Shabab — a member of the Tarabin tribe, which spans southern Gaza, the Negev Desert in Israel and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula — as “the main and most influential stakeholder behind systematic and massive looting” of aid convoys.

Operating from the eastern part of Rafah, Abu Shabab leads an outfit of about “100 thugs” who attack trucks bringing food and other supplies into Gaza, Nahed Shuhaibar said. He described how the gang sets up berms to waylay convoys along the Israeli-controlled route from Kerem Shalom, where they wait with Kalashnikovs and other weapons.

In one incident in early October, about 80 of Shuhaibar’s 100 aid trucks were attacked and the goods inside stolen by Abu Shabab’s men, he said. The gang has killed four of his drivers since May, he added, most recently in an attack on Oct. 15. Another driver who was attacked last month remains in the hospital with broken arms and legs, Shuhaibar said.

…

Israel did not respond to questions from The Post about Abu Shabab and his alleged criminal activities.

The IDF was also shooting or bombing anyone, whether Hamas-affiliated police or private escorts, trying to protect the trucks from his gang:

For months, Israel approved only one route for all aid entering through the Kerem Shalom crossing: a rough road running from the cargo pickup point through a desolate patch of southeastern Gaza.

One humanitarian worker who regularly travels the route said looters typically station themselves a little over a mile and a half from the crossing. Others recounted seeing men and boys even closer to the entry point, some armed with sticks, rods and guns.

…

While the gangs carry out their work openly, local escorts employed by logistics companies were “shot at repeatedly” by Israeli forces in early October, the U.N. memo said, describing one incident involving a quadcopter drone.

…

Humanitarian groups have repeatedly asked Israeli authorities to approve other crossings and routes that would allow them to bypass the gangs. For months, they recounted, those entreaties were ignored: “The only route they give us is directly through the looters,” one aid worker said.

When the World Food Program tried to clear another road for humanitarian use in recent months, its team came under fire on several occasions, according to Alia Zaki, a spokeswoman for the agency.

The new route was finally approved by Israel last month, and some aid trucks have begun using it. But looters have already adapted, targeting convoys there as well, Zaki said.

Haaretz reported in November:

Trucks entering from Kerem Shalom pass through the area along the Egyptian border, which the IDF controls, and then turn north toward Rafah, where the gangs attack them. Sources familiar with the aid distribution process say the gangs stop the trucks through improvised barricades or by shooting at the tires. They then demand a "transit fee" of 15,000 shekels ($4,000). Any driver who refuses risks being abducted or having the contents of his truck stolen.

Sources working in Gaza say the armed attacks take place just a few hundred meters away from Israeli troops. Some aid groups say attacked truck drivers have even sought help from the IDF, but the army has refused to intervene. Moreover, they say, the army bars them from taking alternate roads that are considered safer.

…

To prevent this, some groups do agree to pay. Payments are generally made through a Palestinian company that serves as an intermediary. Several sources say that officers from [COGAT], the army unit responsible for aid to Gaza, even recommended that they work through that particular company.

"I tried everything," the senior aid official says. "We wanted to travel by other roads, but the IDF forbade that. We tried coming at 5 A.M. in hopes that the thieves wouldn't be there, but it didn't help. We even tried negotiating with the armed men and explaining that this was food for people, but that also didn't help."

…

Around a kilometer from Kerem Shalom, shortly before the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah, there's an area that the army calls "the looting zone." This is where most of the looting of aid trucks takes place. Yet the area is under full control of the IDF, with troops stationed just hundreds of meters, and sometimes less, from the roadblocks the armed men erect on the road.

The Israel Air Force monitors the area using drones while IDF lookouts monitor what is happening from the ground. Soldiers operating in Gaza say they're very familiar with the looting, which they say has become routine.

During a tour for journalists with IDF forces in northern Gaza, reporters saw an aid convoy heading south. One officer told them, "In another 500 meters, they'll be looted." None of the soldiers looked surprised.

The IDF lookouts, both on the ground and in the air, operate 24 hours a day along the logistical routes the army has paved throughout Gaza. These are the roads the aid convoys use. Truck drivers and officials from international aid organizations charge that the soldiers can see the attacks on the convoys, yet do nothing.

The IDF says another road was recently opened in southern Gaza that will enable truck drivers to bypass the looting zone. Yet several incidents have already occurred along this road as well. Palestinians say the gangs are still collecting protection money for letting aid convoys into both "safe areas" and combat zones.

A more in-depth Financial Times report the same month said:

Led by escaped convicts and formed along family lines, the heavily-armed gangs defy Gazan authorities and operate freely along the border, a restricted Israeli military zone.

They stockpile the looted goods in open-air headquarters — seemingly overlooked by Israeli surveillance drones — and resell the supplies via middlemen to destitute Palestinians at prohibitive prices.

…

While some theft occurs on the road itself, in other cases trucks are forced into the gangs’ bases. In such instances, one transport broker said, “the driver is led under the threat of weapons to the eastern border areas within the eye line and earshot of the Israeli military”.

…

Unarmed UN escorts and volunteer protection teams carrying sticks have, meanwhile, been hit by Israeli attacks, officials and locals said.

Mohammad recalled being taken to a gang’s base where his truck was robbed. Vast amounts of looted goods surrounded him, including flour, canned food, blankets and medicine.

“Everything you can imagine, it was just piled up there. Out in the open: there were no walls, there was no building,” he said, adding that the base was less than 2km from the Kerem Shalom crossing.

Trucks carrying commercial goods are held hostage until the trader pays a ransom to have his goods released, according to local business people.

“They take the truck with the driver. They have forklifts, and storage places. These are also known to the Israelis,” said Ayed Abu Ramadan, head of Gaza’s Chamber of Commerce.9 “They ask for a massive ransom for the commercial goods to be released. Whereas for the aid [from the UN and NGOs] they just take it and sell it in the markets.”

…

Abu Shabab’s gang, which is believed to control territory just 1.5km from the border crossing, is the most powerful group, according to truck drivers, transport brokers and aid and humanitarian officials.

His men are heavily armed with new weapons, and profit chiefly from smuggled cigarettes, according to the internal UN memo, which was first reported by The Washington Post. One crate of cigarettes sells for $400,000, according to Gaza’s Chamber of Commerce, up from a couple of thousand dollars before the war.

The BBC reported that it “was told that thefts often happen in clear sight of Israeli soldiers or surveillance drones - but that the army fails to intervene. Stolen goods are apparently being stored outside or in warehouses in areas under Israeli military control.”

However, the New York Times reported on December 23 that Israel might have begun to take at least some action:

Until recently, Israeli forces largely did not target the looters unless they were affiliated with Hamas or other militant groups, according to U.N. officials. But that appears to have changed in recent weeks.

In Israeli military drone footage viewed by The Times, looters can be seen confiscating white sacks of aid from cars in southern Gaza in November. Minutes later, an Israeli airstrike killed them, the footage appears to show.

Shani Sasson, a spokeswoman for the Israeli military agency that regulates aid to Gaza, said Israeli forces were targeting armed looters who attacked convoys, not just those affiliated with Hamas. She denied that Israel was providing any immunity to criminal gangs stealing aid.

In late November, Israeli forces opened fire on looters waiting to waylay trucks in Rafah, forcing them to retreat, according to an internal U.N. memo. With the path cleared, U.N. aid trucks rushed toward central Gaza.

But the gangs were far from deterred.

The looters soon regrouped and hijacked them on the road, the U.N. memo said. The trucks were stripped bare.

Hamas’ Law and Order vs. Israel’s (Mis)Managed Anarchy

In response to the rampant aid theft and price-gouging by organised criminals and looters, Hamas re-established the Saham (Arrow) strike force and counter-profiteering squad, alternatively referred to in one report as the “The Popular and Revolutionary Committees”, ambushing and executing looters and war profiteers, including from Abu Shabab’s gang and family.

The Financial Times reported on November 19:

The remnants of Gaza’s Hamas-run security forces have begun a violent crackdown on aid theft and spiralling black market prices in the enclave, including shooting suspects in the legs as they struggle to appease a starving population.

Armed men in plain clothes, who Palestinians say are policemen driven underground by Israeli targeting, have started to reconstitute in the enclave to act as a shadow force against wartime profiteering.

Traders dealing in looted aid have been threatened with hefty fines and with being shot in the knees, several Palestinians with knowledge of the matter told the Financial Times. More than a dozen suspected aid thieves were reportedly killed in a single operation on Monday as the clampdown intensified.

Nahed Shohaybr, head of Gaza’s private transport association, said he had seen multiple suspected profiteers shot in the legs from the window of his car as he was driving through the southern city of Khan Younis, where he lives. He estimated that about 100 suspected profiteers or thieves had been shot.

…

Attempts by members of the prewar Hamas-led authorities, who have retained some measure of power within the strip, to keep the profiteering in check have ranged from the violent punishments to price caps introduced by the Ministry of National Economy in Gaza.

…

“The Ministry of Economy and supply investigators are attempting to impose control, but they lack the necessary numbers, capacity and protection given the rampant lawlessness and spread of weapons,” said Mohammad Barbakh, a researcher at the economy ministry.

An “emergency committee” formed during the war by [Hamas] has published price lists and warned traders to adhere to them in messages that circulate on Gazan news sites and social media groups.

As early as March 2024, the OCCRP reported on Hamas’ failed attempts to impose price controls, describing “a broken and exploited system where money is skimmed at every point in the commercial supply chain, from transport to procurement and sale.”

Traders, authorised importers and Hamas officials all blamed one another for the profiteering and sky-rocketing prices, although the accusations against Hamas seem to be more about ineffective enforcement and corruption:

In a bid to control prices, a committee from the ministry of economy now buys the majority of each shipment from Palestinian importers, the senior economy ministry official said. Those products are taken to sales points run by the ministry in the three governorates of Rafah, Khan Yunis, and Central Gaza where prices are controlled, he added. The official blamed “traders, middlemen and thugs” for going around the system, trying to commandeer goods and hike prices.

However, traders who spoke with OCCRP said the Hamas-run authorities do not pay a fair price for their shipments and do not properly control prices at the sales points, fuelling a black market that puts basic goods beyond the reach of ordinary Gazans.

“The [economy ministry] takes the goods to selling points where goods are sold for unbelievable prices and no one adheres to the prices set by the ministry,” one trader told OCCRP.

“Imagine the ministry distributes to the selling points 10,000 trays of eggs. Traders who buy it, sell 2,000 or 3,000 trays, hide the rest and later sell them on the black market. The ministry of economy cannot control them by staying there until all goods are distributed and sold,” he added.

The official and traders described how, since the war started, Israel has imposed a new restriction whereby it authorizes only five Palestinian importers to transport goods into Gaza from Egypt.

The senior economy ministry official accused the authorized importers of taking up to a 30 percent cut from the Palestinian businesses receiving the goods.

Of the seven traders who spoke with OCCRP, three are among those now authorized by Israel to bring in commercial goods from Egypt to Gaza. They denied profiting from a monopoly, instead blaming Hamas-run authorities for seizing their goods and undercutting them.

One of the authorized traders told OCCRP he no longer felt able to operate in the Hamas-run system. “I am not willing to take the risk so that they make profits,” he said.

Nahed Shohaybr told the Washington Post in November 2024 that “Things are under control” in terms of prices and distribution in the areas still fully controlled by Hamas.

A Gazan reporter, writing under a pseudonym, explained on June 5, 2025:

In response to the looting, Hamas’ Interior Ministry announced the formation of a new police force called Sahem. This force has 5,000 officers tasked with fighting against looters. They have claimed that the thieves are collaborators with Israel who act according to Israeli military instruction.

Hamas has threatened that all thieves have a target on their back and has said that they will punish all law breakers, as well as merchants who have inflated their prices.

Israel has now escalated its support for the Popular Forces against Hamas’ crackdown, providing air support to Abu Shabab’s gang in fights with Saham. Hamas claims to have successfully targeted the “Popular Forces” in recent days, inflicting at least a dozen casualties. Abu Shabab’s forces themselves say Hamas has killed at least 50 members of the group.

The Moot and Irrelevant Question: Did Hamas Systematically “Steal” Aid?

According to the Shin Bet, as of May 2024, Hamas had been diverting at least 60% of humanitarian aid entering Gaza since the war began, with journalist Ehud Yaari claiming contemporaneously that Hamas had made US $500 million from this control. In April 2024, Fatah’s Awdah TV also claimed:

Hamas’ persecution of any party who is a source for distributing the aid or securing it began from the start of the war, as Hamas persecuted well-known figures and teams of volunteers on the ground in mid-October. It attacked them and killed some of them for two reasons: Firstly, preventing any activity by any party in the Gaza Strip; and secondly, ensuring Hamas control over the aid and its storage, which of course leads to these crazy and unreal prices that no one can pay in the shadow of this destruction. After the occupation bombed storehouses controlled by Hamas, the accumulation of tons of various food and aid products that Hamas had taken exclusivity over became clear, at a time when the Gaza Strip is suffering from hunger.

In May 2025, the Palestinian Authority directly condemned “the looting and theft carried out by criminal gangs targeting warehouses and storage facilities of humanitarian aid designated for the people of Gaza” and “held Hamas-affiliated gangs primarily responsible.”10

Unfortunately, Israel has refused to show evidence, publicly or privately, for its allegations of Hamas systematically looting or stealing aid,11 and until very recently all it did was release several clips of gunmen on trucks and alleged communications intercepts that by no means proved anything.

In February 2024, Satterfield said:

No Israeli official has come to me, come to the Administration, with specific evidence of diversion or theft of assistance delivered by the UN in the centre and the south of Gaza – the north’s a different story12 – Since October 21, when assistance resumed. Is there Hamas presence among UN staff? Absolutely. Without question. Does Hamas have its own interests in using other channels of assistance, [like the] Palestinian Red Crescent Society, to shape where and to whom assistance goes? Without question. But the issue of formal diversion or theft directly from UN-delivered assistance? No such allegations… It includes fuel, as well... No allegations.

On March 25, 2024, Shimon Freedman, a COGAT spokesman, said Israel had no “specific evidence” he could share that Hamas was stealing aid.

In early April 2024, Satterfield said, “Gaza’s population of 2.2 million are not… starving today because the bulk of the assistance delivered has gone to them, not to Hamas; and that’s the fundamental fact.”

On May 2, 2024, then State Department spokesman Matthew Miller asserted aid diversion by Hamas was not a widespread issue, and that the first major case of Hamas aid diversion had just occurred and ended with them returning the aid:

QUESTION: Has this been a widespread issue, Matt?

MR MILLER: No, it has not.

QUESTION: No —

MR MILLER: This is the first widespread case of diversion that we have seen. Hamas had diverted these trucks for some time after – not the original, just to be clear, because that could be misleading. The original trucks came in, unloaded the aid; they were then picked up on different trucks for distribution inside Gaza. They did divert those trucks; they were held for some time. To my understanding, the aid has now been released. It’s been returned to the humanitarian implementer that was responsible for it in the first place. And we have made clear – and we think the United Nations relief organizations involved will also make clear – it’s an unacceptable act that Hamas should not repeat in the future —

QUESTION: But —

MR MILLER: — because it jeopardizes the delivery of aid to the Palestinian people.

QUESTION: But in terms of the number of occurrences that Hamas has diverted aid, is this – how many times would you say this has happened?

MR MILLER: There may have been minor ones in the past. I can’t speak to – this is the first major diversion of aid.

On July 8, 2024, COGAT’s Elad Goren said, “The looting [of trucks coming through Kerem Shalom] is happening by criminal families,” not Hamas.

In November 2024, the Washington Post relayed:

Israeli officials, who have often accused Hamas of hijacking aid and commercial deliveries to enrich itself, acknowledged last week that crime families were behind some of the looting.

“Some looters have connections to Hamas,13 and some do not,” an Israeli official told journalists at a briefing on Nov. 11, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Satterfield said in early November 2024, referring to the reentry of trucks through Rafah towards the end of October, that those involved with aid distribution “do not report to us in this 10 day, 12 day period of assistance delivery, interdiction of or seizure of goods by Hamas.”

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In a more recent interview with Satterfield on CNN, he said of the claim Hamas was stealing aid:

No such allegation, or evidence in support of allegations like that, were ever provided privately by informed Israeli security or political officials. It is a claim which, on the face of it, is not reflected in any of the experience that those involved in the humanitarian effort have seen. Did Hamas benefit politically from its presence at distribution sites, to reinforce to the population of Gaza that they remained effective and in place? Certainly, they did. Did Hamas take some assistance? Quite likely. But from the UN and INGO channels, which were highly accountable, whatever aid was ultimately diverted in any fashion by Hamas was minimal compared to the aid that was received by the general population. Now, the same can’t be said about aid that came in outside UN or international NGO channels. That’s a different matter, and Israel understands that. But we’re speaking now of the UN. The allegations that the majority, I’ve heard some claims all of the assistance, was seized by Hamas, that has never been made privately to officials involved in this process nor demonstrated through evidence.

Asked in May 2025 whether she’d seen any evidence that it is Hamas stealing the food, World Food Programme (WFP) head Cindy McCain said, “No. Not at all. Not in this round,” presumably, though not unambiguously, referring to the period after Israel’s full siege, when it began letting aid trucks back into Gaza.

The IDF itself assessed that, of the more than 100 looting incidents since aid began to reenter Gaza in May, none were attributable to Hamas, but to desperate civilians, criminal gangs and several of Gaza’s clans.

On May 24, 2025,14 the Washington Post reported:

Citing intelligence assessments, Israeli officials say that Hamas has generated hundreds of millions of dollars by seizing convoys and reselling goods. But Israel has never presented evidence publicly or privately to humanitarian organizations or Western government officials to back up claims that Hamas had systematically stolen aid brought into Gaza, at least under the United Nations’ system, according to interviews with more than a dozen aid officials and several current and former Western officials.

The previously-mentioned Gaza reporter, writing under a pseudonym in June 2025, wrote, “The second party responsible [for the hunger in Gaza] is Hamas, which confiscates part of the food meant to feed civilians to feed its own forces.”

An April 16 Wall Street Journal article reported claims by various officials and an activist:

Hamas used the flow of humanitarian and commercial goods to build new income streams, according to Arab, Israeli and Western officials. This has included charging taxes on merchants, collecting customs on trucks at checkpoints, and commandeering goods for resale. Hamas also has used overseas cash to buy humanitarian goods that are then sold in Gaza and turned back into cash, the officials said.

Even with these workarounds, Hamas was nearing a liquidity crisis before the January cease-fire brought an influx of aid into Gaza, giving the group a chance to refill its coffers, the Israeli and Western officials said. Those pathways closed when Israel sealed Gaza’s borders to humanitarian supplies in March.

…

“There is a big crisis in Hamas in terms of getting the money,” said Moumen Al-Natour, a Palestinian lawyer from the Al-Shati refugee camp, in central Gaza. Natour, who has been part of a burgeoning opposition movement to Hamas’s rule, said the group was struggling to pay Hamas-affiliated government employees. “They were mainly dependent on humanitarian aid sold in black markets for cash.”

…

During the cease-fire, Hamas set up distribution points for salary collection, paying people in cash or at times with goods, the Arab intelligence officials said.

On May 28, Jonathan Whitehall, the chief of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza, said in a briefing:

Israel has publicly claimed that the UN and NGO aid is being diverted by Hamas. But this doesn't hold up to scrutiny. We do not have evidence that aid coordinated through credible humanitarian channels has been diverted. Aid coordinated through the UN system made up for 35 per cent of what entered during the ceasefire. We have no oversight on those supplies which were facilitated to enter by Israel through other channels.

The real theft of aid since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the watch of Israeli forces, and they were allowed to operate in proximity to the Kerem Shalom crossing point into Gaza.

On June 12, UNICEF spokesman James Elder said:

Just show us the proof. At no point, at no point in these 20 months, have we had any precise claims from [Israeli] authorities, let alone evidence presented. So we face statements without evidence designed to discredit tried and tested aid systems… even without the evidence, just take UNICEF, because it's not the first time we've worked in a war zone with a lack of governance. Our aid is tracked from point of registration to point of delivery.

The first actual evidence of systematic Hamas diversion somewhat suspiciously only emerged this month in the form of a single alleged Hamas document cited in a Wall Street Journal report on June 11, which “appeared to be genuine” according to “Arab intelligence officials and a former senior Israeli intelligence official”:

The group gave up to 25% of the aid under its control to members of its military wing until around April 2024, according to one Hamas document found by the Israeli military inside Gaza. Later, for a reason Hamas didn’t explain, the group lowered the total amount given to its military wing to 7%, with another 8% going to political and administrative parts of the organization, according to the document.

Also in June, the IDF gave a briefing recapitulating its accusations, allegedly based on intercepts and a few documents, that Hamas’ control of aid allowed them to make hundreds of millions through various mechanisms and protection rackets as well as divert a portion of aid to their members.15

The Times of Israel summarised the briefing:

Internal Hamas documents show the group has been “systematically exploiting” the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza throughout the ongoing war in order to fund its terror activities, the Israel Defense Forces said on Thursday, citing captured papers.

The military said the group has done so by confiscating the aid itself; then giving some of it to fighters and selling some to civilians at exorbitant prices; by smuggling forbidden products such as cigarettes into the Strip and selling them at great cost; by demanding protection payments from Gazans living in areas under the group’s effective governing control; and through informal banking transfers, in coordination with Hamas representatives in Turkey.

The IDF released a document Thursday it said was drawn up by Hamas, indicating that the group has maintained a policy of confiscating 15%-25% of aid entering Gaza during the war in order to finance its operations and pay operatives.

“In the past Al Qassam [the Hamas military wing] took 25% of the aid that arrived,” according to the document. “It has been agreed with the brothers in Al Qassam that the percentages will be changed as such: 7% to Qassam, 4% to government entities, 4% to elements of the [Hamas] movement.”

Other intelligence indicated that Hamas acted to smuggle goods — in particular tobacco products — that are not allowed by Israel to enter the Strip and then sold them at exorbitant prices. The military added that Hamas forbids local, independent vendors access to the products.

“In light of this, as part of the entry of humanitarian aid, cigarettes are not allowed to enter the Gaza Strip through the crossings,” the IDF said, adding that inspectors at border crossings “have thwarted dozens of attempts to smuggle tobacco products” since the start of the war.

The military also said that Hamas — which has ruled the enclave for almost two decades — has demanded protection fees from Gazans, providing another source of income.

Finally, the IDF said that Hamas in Gaza has received “hundreds of millions of shekels from Iran and other sources” in payments facilitated by the group’s members in Turkey, through a Muslim hawala network, in which individuals, rather than banks, broker money transfers.

“Hamas exploited the humanitarian aid process and international aid organizations, whether knowingly or through manipulation, by pushing for the entry of ‘excess’ aid items, purchased using Hamas’s external funds, into Gaza. Hamas then sold the aid at inflated prices to residents and collected the cash proceeds,” the IDF said.

The evidence presented is extremely thin, and mostly extends only up to March 2024. For instance:

• A March 2024 letter by a random Gazan complaining to a senior Hamas official of a single minor incident where Hamas members had taken 17 bags of flour and 15 aid coupons from his brother’s truck. It’s quite possible the senior Hamas official ensured the aid was returned, assuming the letter is even genuine.

• An alleged intercept of two random Gazans complaining about Hamas selling flour for 120 shekel instead of 60 and accusing them of raiding UNRWA warehouses, among other things. Date unknown.

• A single alleged Hamas document, cited by the Wall Street Journal, which apparently says, “In the past Al Qassam took 25% of the aid that arrived. It has been agreed with the brothers in Al Qassam that the percentages will be changed as such: 7% to Qassam, 4% to government entities, 4% to elements of the movement.”16

It’s also notable that the IDF is cynically blaming Hamas for the tobacco smuggling and profiteering, to which the IDF themselves turned an occasional blind eye or actively facilitated and which they caused by banning tobacco products from legally entering. Hamas has historically either banned tobacco products or heavily fined those selling them.

The reality is closer to what the Washington Post reported in July 2024:

Who profits from the illicit trade in cigarettes… is often murky…

For much of the war, cigarettes were smuggled in through trucks at the Rafah crossing and sold at an inflated price, according to an Egyptian truck driver who moved aid along the border.

…

In Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, a 26-year-old unemployed restaurant waiter watched his profits rise, along with the risks. He joined the trade early in the war to feed his pregnant wife, he said.

His current route begins in West Bank fruit and vegetable markets, where people working with him pay a driver to conceal cigarettes in commercial items destined for Gaza.

“We arrange the cigarette packs at the bottom of the boxes that are supposed to hold the vegetables,” he said in a phone interview. “Every time we invent a specific method.”

One technique, he said, involves creating a small opening in watermelons and emptying out the pulp to make room for the packs.

“Every pack of [twenty] cigarettes costs us three shekels [$0.80] from the West Bank, and we sell them here for 2,000 shekels [$530]” — about $27 dollars apiece, he said.

The cigarettes are then loaded onto a prearranged truck and driven out of the occupied West Bank through the Israeli-controlled Tarqumiya checkpoint and dropped off at Kerem Shalom, the last remaining crossing into southern Gaza.

At Kerem Shalom, Israel says all goods are inspected to prevent Hamas from smuggling in weapons. Goren said COGAT finds and confiscates “90 to 95 percent” of hidden cigarettes, but did not respond to further questions.

Adel Amr, head of the Ramallah-based Palestinian transport syndicate, said that “90 percent” of trucks coming from the West Bank are not involved in smuggling efforts. Goren said cigarettes have also been found in aid coming from Egypt.

As recently as Wednesday, an Israeli-owned truck was found with 220 packages, typically each with 10 packs of cigarettes, at Kerem Shalom, according to a charge sheet Amr provided to The Washington Post.

COGAT has worked to cultivate business ties with traders and companies unaffiliated with Hamas. In doing so, Amr said, it has allowed a small group of merchants, some with cigarette smuggling ties, to monopolize much of the trade with Gaza.

The article continues:

When trucks make it to their destination, the smuggler in Deir al-Balah described separating the packs from the produce they were hidden in and selling them to another merchant.

The cigarettes are then hawked in the open, in makeshift tent camps and bombed-out cities, at astronomical rates.

With the lucrative black market largely out of Hamas’s control, officials try to co-opt the trade by targeting merchants and their connections, the smuggler said.

“If the merchants refuse to report us,” some plainclothes Hamas agents levy “huge fines,” he said, or “threaten them with death.” Others, he said, simply ask for a cut [emphasis added].

According to the Los Angeles Times, also in July 2024:

Nearly all of the tobacco now entering Gaza comes from smugglers who manage to slip it among truckloads of food at the commercial crossing still open. Or the few travelers from outside bring it in.

Hamas, whose government used to tax cigarettes that arrived in legal shipments, demands an unofficial tariff of half of any cigarettes it intercepts, Gazans said. Bandits, too, have ransacked humanitarian supplies looking for smuggled cigarettes.

Discussing the IDF facilitation of the Abu Shabab gang in November, the Washington Post reported:

The thieves, who have run cigarette-smuggling operations throughout this year [emphasis added] but are now also stealing food and other supplies, are tied to local crime families, residents say. The gangs are described by observers as rivals of Hamas and, in some cases, they have been targeted by remnants of Hamas’s security forces in other parts of the enclave.

Going back to the previously mentioned Israeli accusations, a Makor Rishon investigation in February 2025, based on Israeli sources, said:

According to estimates, the organization seizes 25-30 percent of the humanitarian aid entering the Strip – 150 trucks per day.

…

Sometimes Hamas takes on the role of the generous uncle passing out aid packages to residents. In one such case, Hamas took over a distribution line operating at a school and clinic, and began distributing food vouchers to residents, including baby food, creating absolute resident dependence on the organization. In other cases, two columns could be seen at distribution centers – one for Hamas members and one for Gaza residents. Those in the first line received twice the amount of supplies as their neighbors in the parallel line.

Some of the aid Hamas steals, it immediately resells to residents, the victims of the theft. Its revenue from this channel is estimated at $50 to $100 million per month, totaling nearly a billion dollars since the war began. For comparison, the Qatari cash suitcases that entered the Strip contained $30 million each month.

Then there's fuel. Fuel entry into the Strip before the ceasefire was done sparingly and only according to precise needs definition, such as operating generators in hospitals and humanitarian facilities. Even from this small amount, Hamas stole and used for its purposes.

…

Even when Hamas doesn't take goods by force, it ensures it profits from them. It collects protection money on every truck entering or moving within the Strip, even for essential aid to hungry residents. This week, Kan 11 reported that under the ceasefire agreement, Hamas set up checkpoints at various locations in the Strip to stop aid trucks and collect taxes on goods. Due to IDF forces' withdrawal from the Strip, there's no one to prevent Hamas from doing this.

"The average payment per truck is about 30,000 shekels, and it can reach 50,000," Eyal Ofer, a Hamas economy expert, tells us. "If you multiply that by 70,000 trucks that have entered since the war began, you reach about 2 billion shekels. Add to that the goods that reached them, and those they sold at high prices – and we're talking about 4 billion shekels accumulated in the past year."

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Based on all the above contradictory information and claims, I think a few preliminary conclusions are possible:

• There is no evidence Hamas ever systematically “stole” UN aid,17 though there have been desultory and small-scale incidents by local Hamas members or “Hamas-connected” looters, whatever that means.

• Hamas diverted some aid for its own members and loyalists, but never anywhere near 60%, even according to the single unverified Hamas document the IDF now cites, which says 15% was the agreed total Hamas cut since early 2024. Even then, assuming the document is genuine or operative, there’s no evidence 15% actually was diverted.

  • Hamas may have stolen more aid from commercial or private trucks Israel was allowing in outside of United Nations auspices.

• Hamas has been attempting, with varying degrees of success, to enforce price controls and order against looting in areas under its control, including through heavy fines and execution of looters and price-gougers, though some corrupt Hamas operatives are on the take.

  • Hamas, like all entities, organisations and countries in the region, is extremely corrupt. Welcome to the Middle East.

• Some version of what Israel and other anonymous Western and Arab officials claim about the ways in which Hamas profits from its control of aid is almost certainly true, because it’s exactly what happens in every war zone.

  • Hamas is genuinely trying to tackle gang and desperation-related anarchy, even if this is also a cynical attempt to ensure it controls aid distribution and sends a signal to anyone collaborating with Israel.

• Some of Israel’s claims are projections based on their own facilitation of such activities by gangs, from tobacco smuggling to protection rackets to price-gouging in the markets. Some or all of the accusations against Hamas may have been true at the start of the war but are out of date more than 20 months in after Israel systematically targeted the police and “criminal justice institutions”.

Ultimately, the question of whether Hamas systematically stole aid is moot. While it’s important for Israel to cut off sources of Hamas funds,18 the primary reason for Israel’s aid obsession is about Hamas controlling, not stealing, aid, as humanitarian aid is the fulcrum of political and social control in Gaza. The GHF is not primarily about bypassing Hamas’ ability to profit from aid, but to destroy Hamas’ control over aid distribution, and thereby undermine its political power in the eyes of Palestinians.

Israel’s target when it completely blockades Gaza or areas of Gaza is technically Hamas, but via the civilian population. The IDF wants the situation to become as difficult as possible for Palestinian civilians, and thus for Hamas. Hamas, on the other hand, wants, needs, aid to reach civilians to maintain control and alleviate unrest, and is attempting to restore the law and order and mitigate the anarchy that Israel has fomented.

This logic was laid out by the IDF itself in a March 4, 2024 article in Haaretz:

Many [Israeli] ministers, however, also oppose Hamas' involvement in the distribution of aid, on the grounds that it would enable the organization to control the population in Gaza.

…

The army says Hamas' leaders are concerned about the issue of aid, because they recognize that prolonged hunger and distress in Gaza could turn the public's anger against Hamas, and give rise to independent power centers beyond its control.

However, Israel’s security establishment has been given no orders as to what should replace Hamas, even as it was ordered to undermine and destroy its governance and internal security capabilities. In the absence of any plan by Bibi, the IDF and Shin Bet have been attempting, and failing, to implement their preferred stop-gap policy to manage the anarchy: the [pre-Hamas regime] status quo ante.

The Failure to Return Gaza to Clan and Family Control

Before Hamas seized power in 2007, Gaza looked like Somalia, a failed state consisting of a chaotic melange of clans, tribes and families under nominally central Palestinian Authority control.19 Part of Hamas’ initial popularity was that it could enforce law and order, however brutal, and any order is always preferable by the bulk of humans to disorder. The Israeli security establishment, however, lacking any plan or orders for a post-Hamas Gaza, simply went with the only thing they knew.

It was reported in early January 2024 that:

Israeli security chiefs are reportedly set to propose a plan by which Palestinian clans in the Gaza Strip will temporarily administer the coastal enclave after the ongoing war to remove Hamas ends, with each clan handling humanitarian aid and resources for their local regions.

The Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service want to divide Gaza into regions and sub-regions, with civil administration and the distribution of humanitarian aid in each area entrusted to a local clan, the Kan public broadcaster reported Monday. Only clans that are familiar to Israeli security officials will be entrusted to manage the aid that will enter the war-torn Strip from Egypt and Israel, the report said.

The plan, formulated by the IDF as a stopgap until a more permanent arrangement for Gaza is found, was to be presented to the security cabinet on Tuesday, the report said.

Needless to say, this was never going to work while Hamas still had the power to hunt down and kill collaborators. Hence, in mid-March 2024, the “coalition of families and clans of the southern districts of the Gaza Strip” released the following announcement:

Families and clans in Gaza deny reports claiming that they have met with international agencies. We emphasize that we are willing to meet with international institutions that are not connected to governments that are subordinate to Palestinian factions and only with those that are acting under Palestinian authority, namely the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is the only representative of the Palestinian people.

The occupation has contacted several members of the larger families by phone and its requests were rejected. We praise the al-Najjar, al-Madhoun, al-Shawa, al-Araa, al-Astal and Hilles families, whose position is that the PLO is the sole representative of the Palestinian people and that Gaza is an inseparable part of Palestine. We warn anyone who cooperates with the occupation in order to evoke internecine war and confusion, with the aim of creating a geographic rift that cuts the Gaza Strip off from Palestine. We demand that Hamas stops accusing us of treason and apostasy. Our nation can no longer bear the foreign concepts Hamas is trying to disseminate through its toxic media.

This happened shortly after reports emerged that Hamas had murdered the leader of the Doghmush clan, Haj Saleh Ashur, as a signal to anyone else cooperating with the Israelis.20 The clan itself vehemently denied the reports and released the following statement on March 15 accusing Israel of having killed the leader:

To our steadfast Palestinian people,
To our brothers in the Fatah and Hamas movements and all national and Islamic factions...

A malicious and false statement, falsely attributed to the Central Council of the Doghmush family, has been circulated. It accuses the Hamas movement of killing the family’s leader. We firmly refute and clarify the following:

1. The family’s leader, Saleh Ashour Doghmush, along with a group of family elders and sons, were martyred at the start of the war by Israeli shelling in central Gaza (on November 16, 2023). This includes our heroic martyr who gave his life for our cause. These individuals fell victim to the criminal Israeli assault on our family and all of Gaza.

2. The Doghmush family and its central council reiterate our absolute commitment to the unity of the Palestinian people and their national and Islamic cause. We emphasize that we have not issued any such statement, and none of our members or representatives have made any contacts or statements outside the national consensus.

3. We warn anyone who tries to falsely use our family's name in misleading statements or actions that distort our legacy of struggle, sacrifice, and the honorable memory of our sons.

In conclusion:

We affirm that our family has a proud history and continues to offer its sons, with deep experience, on the path of national liberation, resistance, and jihad.
In this war alone, our family has sacrificed a group of martyrs—our sons—for the sake of God and the homeland.

“And Allah is predominant over His affair, but most of the people do not know.”

In June 2024, the Telegraph reported, based on an “Israeli intelligence source with knowledge of the plan”:

A secret Israeli plan to persuade a powerful Gazan clan to take power from Hamas was derailed when the terror group executed its leader, The Telegraph can reveal.

…

The plan to install Gaza’s Doghmush clan – the most powerful in the enclave – failed after the group’s leader and several of its allies were assassinated, an Israeli intelligence source with knowledge of the plan said.

…

The intelligence source said an attempt was made two months ago to encourage the notorious Doghmush family to take control when the fighting ends.

“We offered the Doghmush control over Gaza,” the source said. “It ended disastrously.”

“The short attempt ended with Hamas entering the clan’s compound, beheading its people, and the next day all the clans jointly announced support for Hamas.”

…

The plan gave Israel “a potential avenue for alliances based on the age-old adage the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, said the intelligence source.

“This plan was like asking Tony Soprano to govern New Jersey,” the source added.

…

Several Israeli officials, unaware of the clan’s activities beyond its militancy, with a network of weapons and drug-smuggling operations, recognised the strategic potential and initiated contact with the clan’s leaders who agreed to discuss the proposals.

Muntez Doghmush, the head of the clan, which is known for its connections to al-Qaeda, is also listed among the US’s most wanted terrorists. Its notoriety has also made it unpopular with Gazans.

Mumtaz Doghmush, the leader off the infamous salafi-jihadist and Islamic State affiliated Jaysh al-Islam, involved in kidnapping Gilad Shalit in 2006 and BBC journalist Alan Johnston in 2007, is indeed sanctioned by the US as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. A 2007 International Crisis Group report on clans and families in Gaza (p. 11) had this to say about him:

Among the best-known for switching allegiances is Mumtaz Dughmush. During the 1990s, while still in his twenties, he had worked as an officer in the Preventive Security Organisation (PSO). After the 2000 uprising began, he left the PSO to help found the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) established by a former Fatah leader, Jamal Abu Samhadana, and became their deputy commander, drawing on financial and logistical support from both Fatah and Hamas. As Mumtaz and his followers grew increasingly autonomous and eventually left the PRC, their ties with Hamas developed accordingly. In June 2006 Dughmush’s group, operating for the first time under the name Army of Islam, participated alongside Hamas’s military wing and the PRC in a cross-border raid to avenge Samhadana’s assassination, which resulted in the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

For reasons that have never been entirely clarified, however, Mumtaz subsequently fell out with Hamas and apparently relinquished his role in holding Shalit. Within weeks the Army of Islam – its very name a pointed challenge – was flouting the Hamas government’s project to restore public order, capturing two journalists working for the U.S. Fox television network. In late 2006 Mumtaz switched allegiance yet again, reportedly approving deployment of several hundred of his fighters to boost Fatah.

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In April, both the Abu Samra and the Hassanain clans accused Hamas of killing a member in the midst of desperate crowds trying to storm aid warehouses. The former took revenge only on the individual alleged Hamas operative they said was responsible in a publicised execution by firing squad, a mere act of tribal score-settling rather than a political act against Hamas, of which they are still terrified.

The latter demanded justice and threatened revenge, but clarified, “We hold no hostility toward any governmental or organizational entity in general,” worried Hamas might mistake their call for insubordination rather than the usual blood money or personal revenge under the traditional law.

None of this deterred Israel. On July 2, 2024, Reuters and the Times of Israel reported:

The plan for postwar Gaza that Israel has pitched to US allies is to run the Strip in cooperation with powerful local families. But there’s a problem: In a place where Hamas still wields ruthless influence, none want to be seen talking to the enemy.

…

A major pillar of the plan, according to public statements from leading Israeli officials, was to shape an alternative civil administration involving local Palestinian actors who are not part of the existing structures of power, don’t have ties to any terror organizations, and are willing to work alongside Israel.

However, the only plausible candidates in Gaza for this role – the heads of powerful local families – are unwilling to get involved, according to Reuters’ conversations with five members of major families in Gaza, including the head of one grouping.

…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged the challenges last week, saying in an interview with the right-wing Channel 14 network that the Defense Ministry had already made attempts to reach out to Gaza clans but “Hamas eliminated” them.

…

The approaches from Israel described by members of the Gaza clans were modest in scope but different: they were about practical issues inside Gaza itself and focused on the north of the Strip, where Israel says it is concentrating its civil governance efforts.

One of Gaza’s clan leaders, who asked not to be named, told Reuters Israeli officials had contacted other mukhtars – though not him — in the past few weeks. He said he knew about it because the recipients of the calls told him about the calls.

He said the Israeli officials wanted “some respected and influential people” to help with aid deliveries in northern Gaza. “I expect that mukhtars will not cooperate with these games,” he said, citing anger with Israel over its offensive, which has killed clan members and destroyed property.

The person, whose clan is a major player in agriculture and the Gaza import business, has no formal connection to Hamas.

In another contact between Israel and influential Gazans, officials from the Defense Ministry have in the past two weeks contacted two major Gaza business owners in the food sector, according to a Palestinian briefed on the contacts.

It was unclear what the Israeli side wanted to talk about, and the business owners, who are from the north of Gaza, refused to engage with the Israelis, according to the person.

A senior member of a different clan said Israeli officials had not contacted his clan but would be given short shrift if they did.

“We are not collaborators. Israel should stop these games,” the clan member, who also has no formal connection to Hamas, told Reuters.

It seems the security establishment then turned to forming its own gangs of criminals instead of relying on cohesive clans or families. But even in June 2025, Yasser Abu Shabab’s family has disavowed him and said, “We have no objection to those around him eliminating him immediately; we state clearly that his blood is wasted.”

More than 20 months in, Hamas is still perceived by Gazan clans and families as the primary and once-and-future power in the Strip,21 while Israel’s staying power, despite its firepower, is too dubious to risk Hamas’ wrath.22

The potential collapse of the Islamic Revolution’s headquarters in Iran could change everything, but for now, the IDF and Shin Bet are creating a failed state on Israel’s borders out of bureaucratic inertia, having destroyed most or all of Gaza’s infrastructure, displaced its population, and facilitated total anarchy.

Israel is now legally and morally responsible for taking care of much of Gaza’s civilian population, a responsibility it refuses to accept or acknowledge, but has neither destroyed Hamas nor gotten any hostages released. In the absence of a plan, it has achieved the worst of all worlds.

This inertia, and the consequent and bloody mismanagement of anarchy by the IDF, will continue unless and until Bibi is willing to make a real decision to either end the war “permanently” in a deal and get the hostages back or pursue a coherent strategy, any strategy, in Gaza.

BLUF: I don’t care if Iran gets nuclear weapons.

Now, that doesn’t mean I think it’s ideal. I just don’t think it matters very much.

The long-dormant nuclear weapons program has always been a distraction, a vestigial and irrelevant component of the Islamic Revolution’s imperial expansion.

Obviously, we can’t know what we can’t know. But that doesn’t mean we can’t extrapolate from what we do know, and I just don’t think the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution would ever use a nuclear weapon, whether directly delivered on a missile or via one of its many, although now severely diminished, Arab organs or individual terrorist operatives.

If the Soviets under Stalin and his successors, the Chinese Communist Party under Mao, the Pakistanis under their persistent jihadist deep state, and the North Koreans under the Kim of the day never used their nukes, there’s no reason to believe Khamenei would.1 If you think the Islamic Revolution is somehow madder or more revolutionary than the aforementioned regimes, you simply don’t know anything and shouldn’t be thinking about this issue at all. It doesn’t mean Iran couldn’t use a weapon, only that if past is prologue, why make that assumption?

Also, nuclear weapons are useless. Israel has “allegedly” (*eyeroll*) possessed them since the 60s. Did that stop multiple wars and attacks to destroy the state over the last six decades, including the Islamic Revolution’s October 7 war?

Were any communist insurgents and regimes and then jihadist groups and regimes afraid of the US, British or French nuclear arsenals? Did the mujahideen fear the Soviet arsenal? Did Ukraine surrender because of Russia’s arsenal? Was it deterred from attacking deep into Russia countless times? Did India and Pakistan go to war both before and after they developed nuclear weapons? Did the US arsenal deter the USSR and China from directly intervening in Korea and Vietnam? Did the Soviet arsenal discourage Israel from dogfights?

I could go on, but the point is that nukes do nothing except, at best, deter others from using nukes. And nobody is using nukes regardless. So nukes just do nothing.

Nobody has conducted a substantial military attack on Iran even without nuclear weapons, and they wouldn’t after it had them. The equation won’t change. At the height of US power in the 1990s, the US was too diffident to do anything serious in response to North Korean provocations. The US continued to do nothing after North Korea developed nuclear weapons. The equation never changes.

One might argue that the problem is less Iran having a nuclear arsenal itself than that it might spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and a cascade of Arab nuclear weapons programs and a Turkish bomb. I don’t think this is a serious concern, either, because see above. Again, not ideal, but meh, as the kids (used to?) say.

Perhaps a greater risk is that, upon developing a nuclear arsenal, one of the Middle Eastern regimes might collapse and nuclear weapons could potentially fall into the hands of criminal or terrorist groups, but given this didn’t happen after the collapse of the Soviet Union and that there’s been no proliferation from Pakistan, there’s no reason to believe it’s anything but an extreme fat tail risk.

Thankfully, this is all entirely theoretical, as the Islamic Revolution understands that a bomb option is far more useful than an actual bomb and has understood this since late 2003, when it “halted” its nuclear weapons program. If it wanted a bomb, it would already have one. But it doesn’t.

However, for those who want to be as certain as possible that the regime won’t restart its nuclear weapons program, then there are only two options, as Obama correctly asserted in 2015: “Let’s not mince words: The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy and some form of war.”

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Some Form of War?

“War” is a very strong word for what would happen under a military approach to ending Iran’s program, given Iran is utterly impotent. It can neither defend itself nor retaliate effectively, whether directly with its missiles or via its broken, bupkis global terrorism apparatus.

This was the case long before Israel destroyed what Iran did possess in terms of air defence systems. The regime’s alleged attempts to reconstitute its useless air defences are, well, useless. With Hezbollah now decimated, Iran doesn’t even have a theoretical deterrent, although as we now know, it actually never had one, as Israel would simply have detonated the pagers and walkie-talkies if Hezbollah ever tried to intervene.

Israel alone, much less the US, could easily destroy Iran’s entire program, including all enrichment facilities. Even the deeply buried ones, if not entirely destroyed from the air, could be finished off via ground raids.2 Israel already demonstrated proof of concept for this in Syria last year, and could readily replicate that operation using its massive agent network in Iran and its ability to operate directly from Azerbaijan.3

In my youth, I advocated for this approach, and in theory, I still do.

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Could Israel’s ostensible new gambit in Gaza, dubbed “Operation Gideon’s Chariots”, succeed where Operation Swords of Iron failed?

To quote Mark Brendanawicz, “I would say, is it likely? No, it’s not likely. You know. But, is it possible? No, it’s not possible.”

After a gigantic huff of copium and maybe a traumatic brain injury, I could perhaps understand why some would have hope. For instance, Donald Trump is no Joe Biden, not least because of his fantastically deranged concept of a plan to forcibly evict the entire population of Gaza to turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East”, the stuff of wet dreams for some on the Israeli right, including cabinet ministers. Nor are there any munitions or systems being withheld or US political pressure restricting IDF conduct.

Secondly, and as a result, Israel has cut off humanitarian aid, electricity and fuel to Gaza since early March, allegedly depriving Hamas of much needed revenue and causing a cash crunch that’s hurting the organisation’s ability to pay salaries. There are now desultory but widespread protests by Gazans against Hamas.

But none of this matters, even without the impact of the above being blown out of proportion, which it has been. If Hamas felt it was under existential pressure, it wouldn’t respond the way it has. Hamas, unfortunately, understands that time works in its favour and that the pressure is on Israel, not Hamas, in large part because Israel continuously chooses to pressure itself, but also because Hamas understands Trump and Israel still somehow does not.

Without a concrete day-after plan to replace Hamas’ regime and reconstruct Gaza, even if there is “success” as long as the operation and occupation lasts, there’s no victory to be had here.

As Bibi’s highest strategic priority is remaining in power, followed closely by preventing a genuinely sovereign Palestinian state or any circumstance that has even the slightest chance of leading to one, Israel has no options to replace Hamas with a legitimate Palestinian alternative. No amount of buildings destroyed, Palestinians displaced, territory controlled or converted into “buffer zones”, or control of aid distribution will change that basic reality.

Now, if Israel can ethnically cleanse Gaza1 convince a substantial proportion of the Gazan population to “voluntarily” emigrate and convince other countries to resettle them,2 and if the report of preliminary discussions about the US heading a temporary post-war administration of Gaza is true and actually leads to anything, that could maybe change the equation, depending on other factors. But none of this will happen.

On the contrary, the Trump Administration is the first to engage directly with Hamas since the 1990s, and it got what it wanted: hostage and dual-citizen Edan Alexander was unconditionally released by Hamas as a result of talks that cut Israel out of the process. This goodwill gesture is already paying dividends, with Trump declaring:

This was a step taken in good faith towards the United States and the efforts of the mediators — Qatar and Egypt — to put an end to this very brutal war and return ALL living hostages and remains to their loved ones. Hopefully this is the first of those final steps necessary to end this brutal conflict. I look very much forward to that day of celebration!

Trump wants a ceasefire, or at least the concept of a ceasefire. He wants made-for-TV/Twitter announcements, like an American hostage being released. He doesn’t care how, and he doesn’t care at all about Hamas remaining armed and in power. And now that he’s seen talking to Hamas, Qatar, and Egypt (and Oman and Iran) can easily get him what he wants, he will pursue that route and eventually force Israel into whatever deal or deals result.3

Gideon’s Chariots

Details of “Gideon’s Chariots” remain vague, though reportedly entail the conquest of parts, or all, of the Gaza Strip, the destruction of all remaining buildings and the displacement of the entire population to the south.4 Bibi himself said, “We’ll call up reserves to come, hold territory — we’re not going to enter and then exit the area, only to carry out raids afterward. That’s not the plan. The intention is the opposite.”5

It’s more probable there is no such operation in the works and the leaks are merely a laughably poor bluff. If it is simply a bluff, the intended audience is not only Hamas, but the Israeli electorate, as well.

Bibi rightly fears Trump is going to force him back into the ceasefire that he repudiated solely to ensure he maintained power.6 This entire farce would send the message that “we were about to do something serious, but the Americans again stopped us. Shoot!” Bibi is so desperate not to follow through that he’s leaking and blustering as a cry for help to the Americans to save him from his coalition partners.

But it is also a cri de cœur directed towards Hamas. What is painted as a deliberate, three-stage effort to pressure Hamas into releasing hostages on Israel’s terms without having to carry out this purported plan is in fact a plaintive cry to Hamas to stop Israel shooting itself in the face. Bibi recognises the rhetoric and leaks, intended solely as an idiotic negotiation tactic, have trapped Israel on a dead-end, inexorable path to actually implementing Gideon’s Chariots, and he’ll need Trump or Hamas to save the country from the course upon which he’s set it. Basically this:

Although Bibi abrogated the ceasefire for his own political reasons rather than any strategic exigency, it was always doomed to fail before Phase II, which he never had any intention of negotiating, regardless of one’s view on whether his position is correct. Prior to scuttling the current agreement, Bibi obstructed a virtually identical deal to Phase I, which could’ve been achieved a year ago, thus leading to the deaths of hostages in the interim that would otherwise have been released. The simple fact is, for better or worse, Bibi does not care about the hostages.

But let’s pretend for a moment that Gideon’s Chariots is an actual plan and that Israel maladroitly pressures itself into carrying it out: it’s not going to achieve either of its stated goals.

According to the IDF, “The supreme mission that the IDF is dealing with is our moral duty to return the hostages. The second mission is defeating Hamas. We are working to advance both goals, with the return of the hostages being at the top [of the list of priorities].” Gaza Division commander Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram had said on April 21 that “The immediate purpose of the mission is to exert more pressure on Hamas to return the hostages.”

According to Israel’s somehow STILL prime minister, on the other hand, the “supreme goal” is “victory”, whatever the hell that means, rather than returning the few remaining living hostages and the remains of the rest.

All of them are wrong. And lying. There is no plan. The full extent of Israeli planning and thinking, or what passes for such, both before and during the war has been:

1. Destroy Gaza’s infrastructure

2. Displace the population

3. ???

4. Absolute victory and all hostages returned

Since at least January 2024, senior Israeli political and security officials have said on and off the record that the only way to get the hostages out was with a comprehensive deal, and that the goals of destroying Hamas’ political and military power and releasing the hostages were “mutually incompatible”. The IDF is already warning the Government that a renewed offensive will endanger the remaining hostages.

Neither goal was ever achievable militarily given Israeli ideological and logistical constraints. Both then Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and former IDF Chief of Staff and then War Cabinet member Gadi Eisenkot derided Bibi’s slogan of “absolute victory” as mendacious nonsense. And so it remains.

Scream into the abyss

Siege: Israel vs Israel

Before Operation Swords of Iron, Israel cut off aid, electricity, fuel and water to Gaza, but was quickly forced to lift its siege, having put pressure on nobody but itself due to the looming humanitarian crisis.

For some reason, it has decided to do the same thing again, and somehow everything has (surprised Pikachu face) ended exactly the same way, with Israel pressuring only itself to try and lift the siege.

Consistent with the ongoing travesty that is everything this Government does, Israel repeatedly asserted that more than enough aid had gone into Gaza in January and February, so the siege wouldn’t impact anyone. Which naturally raises the question: What the hell was the point of any of this?

Allegedly, it’s because “The resale of international aid has become [Hamas’] dominant revenue stream,” allowing it to recruit new operatives and pay regular salaries.7 The new aid distribution mechanism under discussion is meant to hamper Hamas’ ability to do this.8 It won’t, though, assuming such a plan is implemented at all, which also probably won’t happen.

Already, a May 5 report in Israel Hayom claims that millions of dollars of goods are still going into Gaza:

The exact route by which the goods are reaching Gaza, and whether this occurs with any form of official approval, remains unknown. What is evident, however, is that at least part of the profits generated from these sales ultimately find their way into the hands of Hamas.

This so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF) sounds great on paper.9 But the GHF’s own memo says its initial four “Secure Distribution Sites” (SDS) could each only provide for about 300,000 Gazans each, and not even that at first. It claims this could eventually be scaled up to meet the needs of the entire population of some 2 million, but gives no timeframe. A recent NPR report, with British understatement, says, “Key details remain unresolved, like who would run it or pay for it.” Recall that this operation could be launched as soon as next week, according to the Israelis.

Israeli officials themselves concede that the IDF knows Gazans are “nearing starvation”, but are hoping to evict enough of the population from the Strip to “minimize the discrepancy between the aid initiative’s initial capacity and Gaza’s total population.”10

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As someone who loves seeing the Houthis get bombed, this post is painful to write.

It goes without saying that nothing Trump does makes any sense, even on its own terms, and it’s futile trying to interpret contradictions embedded in his [what pass for] policies. There is therefore nothing surprising about his incoherent decision to restart a fruitless bombing campaign against the Houthis using an inordinate amount of severely strained US military resources.

More than 30 days, hundreds of airstrikes, and a billion or so dollars in, the campaign has nothing to show for itself except as many as 19 downed MQ-9 Reapers. The entire circus is as of this writing a complete failure, as literally every person predicted it would be.

But it is also, from Trump’s, and thus America’s, point of view, pointless.

Firstly, Trump hates trade. He really, really hates it. He famously wrote “TRADE IS BAD” in the margins of one of his speeches in 2018 to sum up his entire worldview. He is trying to burn down the entire global economy and send the US into prolonged recession, or worse, because he deeply believes that there has never been anything worse since the dawn of civilisation than the free flow of commerce.

What, then, is his problem with the Houthis? As David Frum put it, “They want to stop international commerce. The Trump administration also wants to stop international commerce. Houthi methods may be a little rough, but the goals are the same.”

Nothing the Houthis have done in the past two years comes anywhere close to the damage Trump himself has done. Those B-2s should be dropping bunker busters on the White House, not the often off target sand pirates, if the priority is free trade.

But this campaign makes even less sense, because the Houthis had already stopped firing on shipping. While they threatened to restart their attacks in reaction to the breakdown of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, they had not done so.1 Nor did any officials believe there was any pressing need to begin bombing them right now.

Trump’s own officials could not come up with a reason for the bombing campaign beyond “sending a message”. What that message is, or to whom it is being sent, is anybody’s guess. Perhaps the message is intended for allies and adversaries alike and amounts to “We have no idea what we’re doing or why, but at least we are also erratic and ineffectual when we do it!”

Here’s what I tweeted in 2020:

All 'policy' is random neuronal misfires in Trump's decaying brain while his headless chicken aides try to invent explanations and narratives… everything that comes out of officials on every issue [is] just an incoherent attempt to spin Trump's spastic synapses. No amount of administration babble can polish the underlying turd that is Trump's brain.

This remains the case.

There was and is a very simple and cost-effective way to ensure the Houthis don’t start firing on shipping again: force Israel back into the ceasefire it signed up to with Hamas.

It boggles the mind that Israel’s preferred outcomes in Gaza are considered of such paramount importance to the US as to outweigh the needs of INDOPACOM or any other allegedly vital interest. The Israelis aren’t likely to accomplish anything in any case (a separate post on this anon), and they’re going to be forced back into a ceasefire soon regardless.

This entire nugatory, farcical distraction, and its exorbitant expenditure of munitions and money, all while depriving INDOPACOM of vital ships and air defence systems, could easily have been avoided if the US had just forced Bibi to uphold the ceasefire2. Which, again, it is going to do anyway. At least, eventually.

There are now reports of a ground campaign being prepared by local militias to capitalise on US airstrikes aimed at retaking the Hodeidah port. One wishes them the best of success, but this should’ve been coordinated and prepared from the very beginning by the US.

If this rumoured assault is genuine, and I am extremely dubious it is, the reporting thus far is that “The U.S. is open to supporting a ground operation by local forces, the U.S. officials said, while noting that a decision on whether to back the effort hasn’t been made yet. The U.S. isn’t leading the talks for a ground operation, the officials added.”

This doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, particularly given that Trump previously screwed the Saudis in 2019 after they were directly attacked by Iran. Neither the UAE nor the Saudis are likely to back a ground campaign without US guarantees, which are worthless in general, but especially under Trump. And without substantial air power, the ground campaign will bog down, assuming it ever starts.

Finally, there’s the Iran issue. That’ll be a separate post filled with despair, but in brief, as others have pointed out, the Houthis couldn’t make the decision to stop firing even if they wanted to. That decision lies with Khamenei alone.

Needless to say, Trump blustering a month ago that:

Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN. Any further attack or retaliation by the “Houthis” will be met with great force, and there is no guarantee that that force will stop there. Iran has played “the innocent victim” of rogue terrorists from which they’ve lost control, but they haven’t lost control. They’re dictating every move, giving them the weapons, supplying them with money and highly sophisticated Military equipment, and even, so-called, “Intelligence.” Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!

has not, in fact, led to any dire consequences. Or any consequences at all, for that matter. Trump’s threats rarely do, unless they’re against allies or domestic enemies.

And now for some random Trump snippets from the past few years:

• December 2018: “[Other countries] are going to have to start doing a lot of their own work, and they’re going to have to start paying for it, because the United States cannot continue to be the policeman of the world. We don’t want to do that… We don’t want to be taken advantage anymore by countries that use us and use our incredible military to protect them. They don’t pay for it, and they’re going to have to… Wealthy countries cannot continue to use the United States to defend them. These are wealthy countries. These are seriously wealthy countries, in certain cases, that I’m talking about. I’m not only talking about in the Middle East. I’m talking about all over the world. Wealthy countries cannot expect the United States to pay for a vast majority of their military. They can pay us. They can reimburse us.”

• September 2019: “Because we have done so well with Energy over the last few years (thank you, Mr. President!), we are a net Energy Exporter, & now the Number One Energy Producer in the World. We don’t need Middle Eastern Oil & Gas, & in fact have very few tankers there, but will help our Allies!”

• August 2020: “We don’t have to be there anymore. We don’t need oil. We don’t need anything there…As of a few years ago, we don’t have to be there. We don’t have to be patrolling the straits.”

Amazingly, Trump even criticised Biden for bombing the Houthis in January 2024.

And yet here we are, with the US desultorily policing the world, “patrolling the straits”, trying to reopen the shipping lanes for the Europeans and Egyptians when they didn’t ask, and discussing how to get them to pay for it, which, spoiler alert, will not happen.

Given Trump’s outlook, there is no rhyme or reason to “Operation Rough Rider”. This is one of those “Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know” moments, but JD Vance was right to point it out.

Even if it magically succeeded in restoring freedom of navigation by unintentionally paving the way for a successful ground operation, it would be a waste of resources, even counterproductive, given the global trade war he decided to launch.

But like everything Trump mercurially sets his primitive blobs of neural tissue on, it won’t succeed.

It is the travesty as much as the tragedy of it all that has stopped me writing recently.

The reason I have not posted anything in several months is that my entire frame of reference, the prism through which I filtered all information, vanished in November 2024.

My analytical lodestar was always what I thought most benefitted and further empowered the US Empire, or “Post-War International Order”, as it was often euphemistically called. That was the entire context in which I could care about and discuss global issues, prioritise particular policies and outcomes, and differentiate adversaries from allies, the latter to be supported at all costs and the former to be undermined, contained, or smashed decisively with all means available.

All that is over. The Pax Americana has officially ended, and in the most spectacularly idiotic fashion conceivable. Who cares about Russia, Iran, China, Israel, or anything else, because none of it really matters now that the entire basis for caring about any outcomes no longer exists.

The US is now just another rapacious rogue state. In the words of Dr. Ichiro Serizawa, “Let them fight”.

Despite everything I just said, as we watch the deranged hegemon bring the world crashing down on us like some spastic Samson, I am going to start writing again about various current events like a total hypocrite.

As you all become substantially poorer, and the new wars comprising what will in retrospect be recognised as the beginnings of a new World War begin to expand across the globe, at least you’ll have my Substack posts to make everything even worse.

I did not mean to pull a Breaking the Silence, but an Israeli soldier I know who fought in Gaza from November-January shared his recollections with me several months ago and has now kindly allowed me to publish them. The following is edited very slightly for clarity, but is otherwise as it was received.

Disclaimer

This is just the experience of one soldier on the lowest rung of command, I have only my perspective to share. My understanding of the Israeli-Arab Conflict, both past and current, is developing and my views aren't particularly sophisticated. Though I am not much of a writer, I hope this short recounting will provide some sort of pointers regarding what questions to ask when investigating the war in Gaza from an Israeli perspective. 

It's very easy to sensationalize stories. For some reason there's often a feeling that what happened wasn't quite crazy enough. With …

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Until late 2023, there had been two days over the last few years when my brain simply short-circuited: the fall of Kabul to the Taliban (again) on August 15, 2021, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Both of these were predictable and predicted events, but the anticipation did not reduce the despair when they occurred.

Then October 7 joined that wonderful pantheon of disastrous dates, and unlike the others, it was not some ineluctable cataclysm. That day was among the worst, most shocking days of my life, not least because one of my siblings came close to being killed in the initial attack. Rumours swirled throughout the synagogue that day that something terrible had happened, but they were too ridiculous to be believed. That evening we discovered the rumours did not come close to capturing what had actually transpired.

My initial catatonia eventually gave way to a grim conviction, one almost universally shared by Israelis and Jews, that a total war to dest…

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Since October 8, 2023, Hezbollah and Israel have been engaged in a low-level conflict that has all the hallmarks of an Israeli shaping operation in anticipation of a major offensive, with several senior commanders and hundreds of rank-and-file fighters killed.

Israel faces a pressing problem: tens of thousands of citizens have been displaced for nearly a year, not only due to incessant Hezbollah bombardment, but also the ever-present fear of a larger-scale repeat of October 7 in the north as long as Hezbollah remains entrenched at the border.

Despite this, based on historical precedent and Israeli political, economic and logistical constraints, I don’t think the cost-benefit analysis currently favours a unilateral escalation in Lebanon, with all the potential risks and dubious prospects of long-term success that would entail.

I also do not assess anything on the scale of October 7 is somet…

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