Video: Israel Encircles Gaza City. A Closer Look at Hamas Past and Present/ By Brian Berletic

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Update on Israeli military operations in Gaza for November 4, 2023:

• Israel competes encirclement of Gaza City;
• Israel is not responding to the October 7 Hamas raids in a bid to eradicate the organization, but rather using Hamas as a pretext to eradicate Palestinians from northern Gaza;
• Israel admittedly maneuvered Hamas into power specifically to prevent a two-state solution. The current Israeli administration is openly adverse to a two-state solution;
• Hamas’ relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and its actions in recent history have made it difficult for Gaza’s resistance movement to attract broader and deeper support from the region and beyond;
• Rather than the October 7 raids being “blowback” regarding this policy, it presents the perfect pretext to not only delay negotiations for a two-state solution, but to eliminate its possibility altogether by eliminating Gaza itself;
• Current Israeli operations may be paced at a slower tempo than previous operations to create a sustainable blockade of northern Gaza to wait out rather than find and fight Hamas fighters inside build-up urban areas;
• Israeli warplanes have leveled entire blocks before armored bulldozers clear open spaces giving Israeli long-range heavy weapons like tanks and armored personnel carrier armaments an advantage over more lightly armed Hamas fighters;
• Hamas is leveraging its tunnel network and knowledge of the terrain to ambush Israeli forces creating a mounting cost in manpower and equipment;
• Israel, as it has in previous operations, is racing against multiple clocks including domestic political patience, international political pressure, military logistics, military losses, and economic pressure;
• Hamas will be racing against their own material limitations to inflict a high enough cost on Israeli forces before becoming depleted and vulnerable to a final Israeli clearing operation;
• As with other US proxies including Ukraine, decision makers in Israel may not be making decisions in favor of Israel’s best interests, but rather in favor of advancing US foreign policy objectives in the region;
• The erasure of Gaza is designed as the ultimate provocation for regional states including Iran but also Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.

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Featured image: Gaza Strip during the Israel–Hamas war, 10 October 2023 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)