Israel does a limit tank roll into North Gaza….
More humanitaran aid flows into Gaz as images of suffering hit socail media….
Israel is insisting on checking aid truck going into Gaza is slowing the supplies…
The UN will issue a request that a cease-fire come into effect for ALL sides….
Saudia Arabia is trying to operate as ‘normal’ not letting the conflict pull away it’s effort’s to get away from ‘normalization’ in the region…
A deep look into the sitaution in a linked piece below explains the reality of end game goals available to the Israeli’s despite Netanyahu ‘s daily commnets and boasts….
Nearly three weeks after the war began, it remains unclear if or when Israel will launch a ground invasion of Gaza. In a televised speech on Wednesday evening, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, did not offer details on the scope of a possible invasion, but vowed that Israel would exact a price for the Oct. 7 assaults led by Hamas, the armed group that killed more than 1,400 people.
The United States has asked Israel to delay a ground invasion for a few days to give it more time to provide more protection for American troops at bases in the region, according to U.S. officials. The Biden administration has also been trying to buy more time for hostage negotiations and to allow more aid to enter Gaza. It also wants the Israeli military to refine its military objectives and potentially move away from a grinding urban fight that would result in a large number of casualties.
Israel has been relentlessly bombing Gaza from the air, carrying out more than 250 strikes over the past day, its military said. Israel said it is hitting Hamas targets, but Palestinians accused it of indiscriminately killing civilians. The Hamas-run Gazan health ministry said more than 7,000 people have died. Those figures cannot be independently verified.
Here is what else to know:
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A day after President Biden became the most prominent person to cast doubt on the death toll in Gaza, the Hamas-run Ministry of Health released a list of the names of people it said had died in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since Oct. 7. The list includes 6,747 names, including those of 2,665 children. The ministry said it did not name an additional 281 people who died because their bodies could not be identified.
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As of Thursday morning, 74 trucks carrying humanitarian supplies had entered Gaza since Saturday, far short of the 100 a day or more that the U.N. said the territory needs. As the U.S.-backed deal between Israel and Egypt falls short of producing a sustained flow of aid, U.N. officials and diplomats attribute the delay partly to Israel’s demands to inspect the trucks at a border checkpoint about 25 miles from the crossing where the vehicles move into Gaza from Egypt.
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The United Nations General Assembly is expected to vote Thursday on a resolution calling for a cease-fire in the conflict. General Assembly resolutions are not binding but reflect a wider global view than the U.N. Security Council, which has been deeply divided on a response to the war…..
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Saudi Araba tries to NOT let the Gaza attack divert it’s efforts to NOT be dargged into the conflict….
Something the Biden admin HAS been working for….
“Before the 7th of October, a lot of de-escalation had happened, which brought a lot of hope for the region, and we don’t want the recent events to derail that,” the Saudi finance minister, Mohammed al-Jadaan, said during the three-day conference, which ended on Thursday.
Five years ago, Prince Mohammed sat in the same gilded conference hall where the forum was held this year and declared that the Middle East would become the world’s “new Europe.” Since then, he has rendered the conservative Islamic kingdom nearly unrecognizable, ending many social restrictions and pushing forward a sweeping economic plan, while at the same time increasing political repression and cracking down on dissent.
Since the war began, life in the kingdom has been a split screen. On one side, many Saudis are glued to their social media feeds in horror, scrolling through videos of weeping parents and dead children covered in dust from the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
On the other side, the flurry of festivals, announcements and events that has marked Prince Mohammed’s rule has moved ahead at full speed.
Last weekend, models with bare shoulders and slicked-back hair strutted the runway at the inaugural Riyadh Fashion Week. And between visits from foreign officials keen to discuss the war, Prince Mohammed juggled his typically manic schedule.
On Monday, at an event attended by FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, and the soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, Prince Mohammed announced that the kingdom would create a new “Esports World Cup.”….
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For many Saudis, uncertainty over the state’s shifting red lines has pushed their expressions of solidarity with the Palestinians into the private sphere, including onto social media accounts closed to all but trusted friends.
When Saudis gather in their homes, Gaza is the topic of the hour, said Abdulhamid, a Saudi man who asked to be identified by his middle name only for fear of government retribution.
“People don’t want to say anything because it would get them in more trouble,” he said…..
Almost 3 weeks after the Gaza conflict began?
Israel has NOT rolling in and all over Northere Gaza except a shot action in the last 24 hours….
Yet despite a speedy mobilization of thousands of Israeli reservists and remarks that the mighty Israel Defense Forces are “ready,” no ground offensive has begun. As my colleague Steve Hendrix reports from Israel, there are growing questions about this apparent delay. “Both those who yearn for the ground war to begin and those who dread it are looking for clues,” he writes….
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This time is notably different from limited incursions in the past. A ground operation represents far more difficult terrain for Israel to navigate, both in Gaza itself and in the wider region. Big picture, there are serious questions not only about whether a ground offensive could backfire in unexpected ways, but also whether it could ever hope to achieve its aims.
Hamas seems to have anticipated a ground offensive before its assault Oct. 7. It took some 200 people hostage as it rampaged through Israel. One hostage released this week described how her captors had seemed prepared to hold people, with clean rooms and mattresses on the ground in rooms deep inside a network of underground tunnels.
In the past, Israel has gone to major lengths to protect the safety of hostages and return them home. In 2011, the government reached an agreement with Hamas to return Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for 1,027 prisoners, including some who are now in Hamas’s leadership….
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Even supportive countries like the United States have qualms about the number of civilian deaths already seen in Gaza, and there are growing calls for a humanitarian cease-fire to allow aid into the strip. Public opinion is already against Israel in the region, even in countries where Netanyahu’s government had just weeks ago been seeking diplomaticopenings….
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Israeli military planners are unlikely to be under any illusions about any of this. They know of all these problems and perhaps more, which is why there has been deliberation about the ground offensive within Israel leadership. “Thank God there are disagreements,” Yaakov Amidror, a former general and Netanyahu’s national security adviser from 2011 to 2013 said to be still consulting with the prime minister, told The Washington Post. “They should argue for hours, for days and nights.”
The biggest argument, of course, is whether Israel can actually achieve its goals in Gaza through a land invasion. Writing in the Financial Times, John Sawers, the former chief of British spy agency MI6, argued that “Israel’s security chiefs know the goal of destroying Hamas is probably beyond their reach” and that even if it were, the question of what comes after it is equally dangerous and requires planning now…..