GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 217

Israel Needs To Pick Up The Pace

UN Pushing For A Palestinian State

Making a case for a true Palestinian state the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted to raise the status of them as we read in a report from i24news.tv:

The U.N. General Assembly voted on Friday to grant new “rights and privileges” to the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations.

As should be expected, Israel’s ambassador responded:

Israeli UN envy Gilad Erdan responded furiously, saying that vote to advance the "establishment of Palestinian terror state, which will be led by Hitler of our times, with sick and twisted irony, the very body that established to prevent evil is now welcoming a terror state into its ranks.”

The vote wasn’t close at all:

The 193-member world body approved the Arab and Palestinian-sponsored resolution by a vote of 143-9 with 25 abstentions.

Not a surprise are the countries that voted against the motion:

The United States was among the nine countries voting against it, along with Israel.

U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood made clear on Thursday that the Biden administration opposed the assembly resolution.

Wood gave the reasoning for voting against it and the logic is one the US has given before:

“We’ve been very clear from the beginning there is a process for obtaining full membership in the United Nations, and this effort by some of the Arab countries and the Palestinians is to try to go around that,” Wood said Thursday. “We have said from the beginning the best way to ensure Palestinian full membership in the U.N. is to do that through negotiations with Israel. That remains our position.”

Does Israel care if the UNGA votes for a terrorist state right on their doorstep? Of course they do. Do they think it carries more weight than say surviving as a nation? I think that last question is a rhetorical one.

Rolling Into Rafah

Although it depends on who you talk to, the Rafah offensive is actually happening as we see in an article in The Jerusalem Post:

In the past day, troops of the 162nd Division and Givati Brigade operated in the Eastern part of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, where they found underground tunnel shafts, the military said on Friday.

In the area of the Rafah crossing, on the Palestinian side, troops of the 401st Brigade eliminated terrorist squads in close-quarter combat and via aircraft strikes.

The IDF added that Israel Air Force aircraft were also used to strike several areas in Rafah, from which rockets and mortar shells had been launched onto Israeli territory, including the Kerem Shalom crossing.

Of course Hamas will put up a fight since this is their last stronghold in Gaza. No one said or thought it would be easy but expect Hamas to be as tricky as ever as they try and intimidate Israel with misinformation over and over again in the hopes that public pressure will slow the process down. To the US, this is not the all out offensive they warned about as we see in an article from The Times Of Israel:

The US does not believe that the IDF’s operation in Rafah during the last 24 hours amounts to a wide-scale military offensive, which President Joe Biden warned would lead him to halt offensive weapons shipments to Israel.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that what we’ve seen here in the last 24 hours connotes or indicates a broad, large-scale invasion or major ground operation. It appears to be localized near the crossing largely with the forces that they had put in there at the beginning,” White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby says.

Israel admits the operation is restrained now:

At the beginning of the week, Israel launched an operation to take over the Palestinian side of the Rafah Crossing. On Thursday night the security cabinet voted to approve a measured expansion of the operation.

Addressing the concerns of civilians, Israel is evacuating every one who could be in harm’s way:

Israel has ordered some 100,000 Palestinians to evacuate from eastern neighborhoods of Rafah and has carried out repeated airstrikes in the area. It has also shut down the Rafah Crossing, offering no timetable for when the crossing will be opened for the delivery of aid.

The US is keeping their eyes on this issue as well:

“We’re watching this with concern,” Kirby says during a briefing with reporters. “Everyday that crossing is not available and usable for humanitarian assistance, there’s going to be more suffering, and that’s a deep concern to us. We urge the Israelis to open up that crossing to humanitarian assistance immediately. That aid is desperately needed, and we urge them… to be as careful precise and discriminate as they can.”

It's more than a slight to even hint that Israel won’t or even isn’t taking humanitarian aid seriously, but the spokespeople continue to feel they have to say it. How about telling Hamas to do the same? I’ll wait.

Wasting Precious Time?

In an editorial from The Times Of Israel we are told that Israel’s slow pace in defeating Hamas is only going to cost more and more efforts by the IDF troops:

Seven months after it carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Hamas is still very much alive and kicking.

It has reportedly reasserted significant civil control in Gaza cities troops swept through and then left. In some areas, Hamas fighters have resumed their rocket fire, including a recent attack on Sderot and the deadly strike on Israel Defense Forces infantrymen near Kerem Shalom on Sunday.

Not only is Hamas surviving, it looks increasingly plucky about its chances to guarantee its return to power.

Recent Hamas attacks seem to support that statement:

The recent Kerem Shalom rocket strike that killed four troops was evidence of Hamas’s mood, argued Meir Ben-Shabbat, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former national security adviser.

“It reflects the self-confidence of Hamas commanders who didn’t hesitate to initiate such an attack, from a humanitarian zone, during critical negotiations for the organization despite the risk of damaging a vital supply artery for the population,” said Ben-Shabbat, adding that the strike was intended to stress to Gazans that its attempts to force Israel into a ceasefire “come from a position of strength and not from surrender or fatigue.”

As the weeks go by, the world has shown a diminishing appetite for Israel’s defeat of Hamas. Almost no one talks about the dismantling of Hamas’s military capabilities anymore; the priority among Israel’s closest allies is to arrange a ceasefire and to get the hostages out.

The article asserts that the slow pace is actually causing more trouble than it’s preventing:

But rather than move with lightning speed to finish the job, Israel’s military appears to have adopted a plodding pace that only allows plenty of time for resistance to the war’s continuation to build up, both abroad and domestically. And that resistance — most notably United States President Joe Biden’s warning that Israel won’t get offensive weapons if it goes into Rafah — will likely slow the campaign even further.

If Israel is to finish this war off, it must decide to quit letting others tell them how to do it. It must reject other nations demands to know the Israeli strategies in advance all the time and to do what they do best and that is to gather intelligence and to act on it decisively. Yes, that involves taking risks and making some mistakes albeit because of Hamas trapping them into bad situations. The terrorists will have fewer options if they are fighting for their lives and we must pray that God provides the IDF with information and insights from a Heavenly perspective even if they can’t recognize it is from Him. Ultimately, Israel will prevail, but it could happen more quickly and with less loss of soldiers and that would be a good thing.