The goal of completely eradicating Hamas from Gaza has NOT been met…..
The Netanyahu Government is shaky but is hanging on with just hard Right leaners…..
The US has approved MORE Fighters and arms for Israel , which has Netanyahu crying for more….
But WHY the sudden slow down in Gaza?
Hmmmm?
Could it be the possibility of a second front conflict opening in the North of Israel against Hezbollah in Lebanon?
That WOULD be problem for the Jewish State….
Hezbollah is NOT Hamas….
They are stronger and bigger in size and arms….
Israel fighting up North with Hamas chewing on it in the South would be tactical problem for Israel which has a citizen solder army….
And a strong political push for the conflicts to end and hostages returned…..
Hard choices coming at the Israel Prime Minister right now….
Israel /Hezbollah….
As the war has raged in Gaza, another battle has unfurled in parallel along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon — a risky game of tit-for-tat that has intensified in recent weeks, with a far stronger foe.
In a measure of the danger of a full-scale war erupting, President Biden dispatched one of his senior aides, Amos Hochstein, to Israel on Monday and to Lebanon on Tuesday to press for a diplomatic solution.
Unlike Hamas, the Palestinian militia fighting Israel in Gaza, Hezbollah has troops who are battle-hardened combatants, and the group possesses long-range, precision-guided missiles that can strike targets deep inside Israel.
Despite apparent efforts by both sides to keep the cycle of strikes and counterstrikes from spiraling into a full-blown war beyond the one raging in Gaza, civilians in Israel and Lebanon have been killed, and more than 150,000 people have been forced from their homes along the border.
But as the fighting in recent days has intensified, so too have fears that a miscalculation could draw the sides into deeper conflict. Hezbollah has said it will not negotiate a truce until Israel ends its military campaign in Gaza, which is likely to continue for weeks or months….
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Analysts say Hezbollah is much stronger now than it was in 2006, the last time the group fought a major war with Israel. That war, which lasted about five weeks, killed more than 1,000 Lebanese and more than 160 Israelis, and displaced over one million people. But a war between the two sides today, they said, could devastate both Israel and Lebanon.
During the 2006 war, Hezbollah fired roughly 4,000 rockets, mostly toward northern Israel, over the course of five weeks, said Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general. The group could now likely fire just as many, including heavy missiles that cause serious damage, all over Israel within only a day, he added.
Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom, a former top Israeli military strategist, said the sheer number of munitions in Hezbollah’s arsenal — particularly its cache of drones — could overwhelm Israel’s formidable aerial defenses in the event of a full-scale war. Hezbollah’s troops are also experienced fighters; many of them fought in the Syrian civil war on the side of the Assad regime, which is also backed by Iran.
“In a no-holds-barred war, there will be greater destruction both on the civilian home front and deeper inside Israel,” General Brom said. “They have the ability to target more or less anywhere in Israel and will aim for civilian targets, just as we will target southern Beirut,” he added, referring to capital districts known to be Hezbollah strongholds.
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Israeli Gaza campaign status
A shift from the widespread ground and air attacks that have leveled much of the enclave and killed tens of thousands of people, according to Palestinian health officials, would represent a significant milestone in the war. It would offer a possible respite to civilians who have spent months in the line of fire, allow for more humanitarian aid and possibly jolt stalemated diplomatic efforts to reach a cease-fire deal and free Israeli hostages still held by Hamas.
A complete end to the war is not in sight. The Israel Defense Forces said it has destroyed most of Hamas’s 24 battalions and has severely degraded three of the four remaining battalions in Rafah. But lone fighters and small groups are still launching rockets into Israel and targeting troops, even in areas of the Gaza Strip already largely under Israel’s control….
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“And we have more,” Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obaida said in a statement.
Israel has made clear it intends to keep some troops inside Gaza — or within rapid striking distance just outside the enclave in Israel — indefinitely to keep Hamas in check.
“The guerrilla fighting never ends,” said a senior Israeli military official familiar with ground operations who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss security matters. “Our aim now is to defeat the Rafah brigade, and we are doing that.”…
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“This is not a full-scale attack on Rafah,” said Amir Avivi, a retired general and head of the Israel Defense and Security Forum. “If you don’t want them to escape, you have to surround the city and attack from more than one side.”
Avivi is among those who say Israel cannot claim victory in Rafah or in Gaza until Yehiya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack and Hamas’s leader inside the territory, is captured or killed.
“How can you say we destroyed Hamas if we didn’t reach its leadership?” Avivi said….
A senior Israeli negotiator told Agence France-Presse on June 17 that Hamas still holds “dozens” of living hostages in the Gaza Strip.The official said that Hamas — rather than other militias — is holding most of the hostages.
Note….
The above points to Gaza being under Israeli military control going forward….
Hamas has made it ‘principal’ goal for a end of the conflict and the hostages return the end of Israeli troops IN Gaza….
Hmmmm?