BICOM
BICOM provides accurate, timely and balanced information that is read by officials, experts, journalists and many others.
The Economist publishes on the choices Israel has to make, saying “The first war aim is to destroy Hamas. Over the past three weeks that has come to mean eradicating the group’s military infrastructure and killing its leadership and as many of its foot soldiers as possible. Because Hamas undertook a mass-attack to kill Jews, Israelis can no longer tolerate the old stand-off in which Hamas violence was supposed to have been kept at a tolerable level by a combination of financial rewards and the threat of Israeli attack.” Similarly, on the choices Hamas have taken so far, The Times publishes a piece on how Hamas use civilians as human shields.
The Financial Times, The Telegraph, and The Times – which publishes a leading article – have all reported on Keir Starmer’s internal battle within the Labour Party and his speech yesterday calling for a humanitarian pause, not a ceasefire, at Chatham House.
The Telegraph also writes that “Hamas poses the greatest terror threat to the West since Islamic State, the director of the FBI has said, amid fears that the Gaza war risks radicalising a new generation of Jihadists.” Christopher Wray told the US Senate that Hamas’s attacks in Israel would serve as an “inspiration” to terrorists across the world. The Biden administration also warned that the dire humanitarian conditions inside Gaza are allowing Hamas and its allies to position themselves as “saviours” inside the strip.
Patrick Wintour in The Guardian publishes on how Iran uses proxy forces across the region to attack Israel and the US, saying: “Iranian leaders have warned the world is closer to a regional war in the Middle East and that Israel has crossed red lines, which, in the words of President Ebrahim Raisi, ‘may force everyone to take action’. But Iran is walking a tightrope, keen to avoid a direct confrontation and therefore blurring its red lines to avoid walking into a trap. Instead, it leans on proxy militias around the region from its ‘axis of resistance’ to launch limited strikes aimed at Israel and US military bases in Iraq and Syria.”
The Guardian reports that several South American countries have registered diplomatic protests against Israel, including Colombia, with Bolivia’s leftwing government cutting ties entirely and attributing its decision to alleged “war crimes and human rights abuses being committed in the Gaza Strip”. This is also reported in the BBC.
In The Guardian, Margaret Sullivan comments on unverified reports and misinformation: “as if the atrocities in the Middle East over the past month weren’t terrible enough, the mainstream press has managed to make matters worse. Too often, false or unconfirmed reporting circulated widely, including on some of the biggest, most prestigious platforms in the world. In two notable cases, the problem began with dubious or insufficient sourcing, was accepted by the media as the truth – or, hey, close enough! – and then exaggerated on social media.”
The Guardian publishes on Netanyahu’s prospective political future, saying “For more than a decade, there have been calls for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to resign – and for no shortage of reasons: growing levels of inequality, Israel’s housing crisis, his penchant for ugly populism, multiple corruption scandals for which he is still on trial, and most recently, attempts at a judicial overhaul. But after the 7 October attack on the country by Hamas, the future of Israel’s ultimate political survivor looks especially shaky, even in the midst of a new war in Gaza.”
Tessa Wong in The BBCreports on what China could want from the war: “as the conflict between Israel and Hamas intensifies, an unlikely development has emerged – China playing the part of peace broker. But there are limits to what it can achieve. China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, discussed the conflict with officials in Washington at the weekend amid fears of a bigger regional war. The US has pledged it would work with China on trying to find a resolution.” The Telegraph also reports that Israel has been disappearing from maps of major Chinese tech giants including Alibaba.
The Telegraph publishes a piece on the United Nations, saying: “it started out as an organisation committed to disarmament, preventing war through collective security and settling disputes between countries using negotiation and diplomacy. Before long, however, it became a laughing stock, riddled with accusations of favouritism and rendered irrelevant by the great powers’ refusal to listen to it. Sound familiar? The current problems that look endemic to the UN are in fact nothing new. Its predecessor, the League of Nations, lasted only 26 years, failed to stop conflicts in Manchuria, Abyssinia and, of course, the Second World War.”
Yediot Ahronot’s Yossi Yehoshua focusses on the IDF brigade at the heart of the first ground incursions. “There isn’t an IDF brigade that knows Gaza better than the Givati Brigade,” he writes. “There hasn’t been a ground operation that it hasn’t taken part in, and that does not apply only to IDF incursions into the Gaza Strip after the 2005 withdrawal. There isn’t a brigade that has killed more terrorists, and there isn’t a brigade that has guarded the Gaza periphery communities more than the Givati Brigade. As we wrote at the start of the ground manoeuvre, the people who are now commanding the divisions and are leading them into battle are veterans of the Givati Brigade who served as company and battalion commanders in previous rounds of fighting.”
In Israel Hayom, Yoav Limor assesses the achievements of the operation so far. “People in Gaza and beyond will be surprised,” he says, “by the depth of the IDF’s seizure of Palestinian territory. That doesn’t mean that Hamas’s defeat is imminent; even the most optimistic among the IDF’s commanders believe that it will take a number of weeks, at the very least, to deliver a major blow to Hamas’s operational and governmental capabilities. One of the efforts already bearing fruit is the blow to the mid-level Hamas commanders, primarily battalion commanders. This comes on top of the dozens of operatives who have been killed and the damage to the operational infrastructure.”
Limor also analyses the northern front, where “it appears that the IDF is well prepared to defend the northern border. It also seems that Israel’s relatively aggressive responses to every attack surprised Hezbollah, which has suffered roughly 60 casualties. But beyond the attempt to avoid a war in the north in order to focus on the south, the government will have to decide what to do about the massive forces that Hezbollah maintains all along the border: many residents have explicitly said that they will not return to their homes as long as the threat in the north exists.”
Channel 12’s Ehud Yaari also looks at the northern front, and finds that “Hezbollah has decided to change tactics,” having “reached the conclusion that it has no effective response to the Israeli Air Force’s UAVs, which detect and hit the anti-tank missile squads and the other launchers. Hezbollah has therefore decided to switch to another method: first, it has been trying to hit the UAVs and drones that cruise and hunt for the Hizbullah cells from the air, using weapons provided by the Iranians. The second change is that they have switched to a method that they call ‘two-phase fire.’ First they shoot, then they wait either for troops to gather or for the IDF to retaliate, then they fire again.” Yaari also says that both Iran and Russia are putting pressure on Hamas to release the foreign nationals amongst the hostages.
Yediot Ahronot’s Nahum Barnea considers the question of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and its intimate relationship with continued US support for Israel. “The current scope of humanitarian aid is inadequate,” he writes. “The delays stem from practical reasons and difficulties in execution. Israel has a vested interest in increasing the scope of humanitarian aid quickly… The United States and Israel are not at odds with one another on the issue of humanitarian aid except when it comes to one component—fuel. When IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari spoke in English about the fuel that Hamas has stockpiled in its tunnels, he had one target audience in mind—the White House. He wanted to prove to the Americans that Gaza does not have a fuel problem. But the Americans, and not just the Israelis, also have political constraints. Biden’s unequivocal support for Israel has turned him—temporarily—into the most-loved American president here, but it has hurt him in the polls in America. Members of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party aren’t pleased with the hugs that the president gave to the Israelis and the generous aid that he promised them. As a result, the administration’s sensitivity to human rights violations in Gaza has increased; its reactions to hilltop youth attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank have also become sterner… Israel needs America now more than ever. That comes with a price.”
Ynet features Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly’s visit to al-Arish in northern Sinai yesterday, where he pledged to reject any attempts to pressure Egypt into opening its territory to Gazans. “We are prepared to sacrifice millions of lives to ensure that no one encroaches upon our territory,” Madbouly said.
Maariv includes Ilan Zalait, a Gulf researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, explaining the motivation of the Iranian proxy Houthi rebels in Yemen in launching attacks on Israel. “Their slogan is ‘death to America, death to Israel and a curse on the Jews’, that’s what motivates them,” he says. “The hatred for Israel there is something very big, no matter how far they are from it, the issue of Israel and aid to the Palestinians is a very strong thing.”
Haaretz covers new opinion polling, showing a divide amongst Israelis on the idea of exchanging Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails for security offences with the hostages. 45 percent of respondents said they would oppose such a deal while 40 percent said they would support it. The polling also shows that the public overwhelmingly places greater trust in the military establishment than in the prime minister. 70 percent of Israelis said they believed the infighting caused by the judicial reforms influenced Hamas’s thinking in launching the attack of October 7th, while the polls found that only 55 percent of respondents said that if elections were held today they would vote for a party in the same bloc that they voted for in last November’s ballot.
Recommended Reading
The Qatari dilemma will haunt Israel after the war with Hamas, Yoel Guzansky, The Jerusalem Post
- “Qatar’s actions are detrimental to essential Israeli interests while serving other interests. It is important to remember that Qatar’s aid to Hamas throughout the years received tacit approval from Israel, which was willing to turn a blind eye to the dangerous calm it bought with Qatari money.” Read more
Not content with harming Israel, the Houthis lock horns with the UAE and the Saudis, Lior Ben-Ari, Ynet
- “While the southern port city of Eilat has largely been quiet since the beginning of the war, being 175 miles away from the Gaza strip, events in recent days seemed to have disturbed the serene and laid back nature of Israel’s most prominent vacation spot, courtesy of none other than Yemen’s Islamist political and armed organization that emerged from the Yemeni governorate of Saada in the 1990s, called Ansar Allah, also knows as the Houthis.” Read more
Israel’s Campaign Against Hamas in Gaza: War Aims and Operational Challenges, Michael Eisenstadt, The Washington Institute
- “In response to the massive Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, Israel initiated Operation Swords of Iron, a sustained air, sea, and land campaign to destroy the group’s military capacity, end its rule in Gaza, and obtain the safe return of the 229 or more Israeli and foreign hostages taken during the attack. The air and sea campaign, now in its twenty-fifth day, has targeted, inter alia, Hamas’s Gaza-based political leadership, its military commanders, and fighters from its land, sea, and air forces, along with command centers, training facilities, rocket launch sites, the tunnel network under Gaza, and military workshops. And following a number of limited incursions, Israeli ground forces entered the northern part of the Gaza Strip in force last Friday, October 27, and are reported to be gradually expanding operations there”. Read more
