There will be no weekly roundup today or next Sunday. It should return on the 21st of January.
Hezbollah just hit Meron airbase hard, in retaliation for Israel assassinating a Hamas leader in Lebanon. This was a major intelligence center, commanding drones and connecting other radar centers.
They have recently withdrawn two brigades from Gaza and intend to pull back more. They don’t control even the land in Gaza they claim to control, and are being bled white by an insurgency they can’t come to grip with and which is outfighting them.
Hezbollah has forced hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers to leave their homes near the Lebanese border. They’re systematically dismantling Israeli surveillance systems. If there’s a real war: if Israel tries to bomb the hell out Lebanon, they’ll strike Israel’s air bases with vast numbers of missiles. Without an air-force, well, Israel has nothing but terrible ground troops and some nukes.
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Meanwhile, the US (no one else matters) has not been able to stop the Houthis from attacking Israeli shipping. It matters less than people make it out to, they can go around the cape and much of Israel’s supplies come from Europe and North America anyway, but the sheer powerlessness, the inability to bigfoot, is instructional: American missiles cost millions, the resistance’s cost tens of thousands most.
What Israel is trying to do is to hold on and let famine do the work. Right now, 80% of the people starving in the world are in Gaza. They can’t win militarily, they’re too incompetent and their enemies are no longer punching bags, but if they can keep the blockade of Gaza going, they can still ethnically cleanse.
It’s worth pointing out that historically, Israelis have been very good at ethnic cleansing: after all, almost everything in Palestine was Palestinian less than a hundred years ago, and now almost nothing is. This is the last gasp, the attempt to finish the job.
But Israel has systematically trained up its enemies. Hezbollah is their creation, it would not exist if they had not invaded and occupied Lebanon. Hamas was actively supported by them in order to undercut the PLA and fragment resistance.
Israel taught its enemies how to fight against overwhelming force; how to hide from assassinations and shrug them off when they inevitably happen; how to operate against air superiority and American style electronic intelligence.
EU Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borell, has met a delegation from Hezbollah, in a last ditch effort to contain tensions on the Lebanese Israeli border and prevent a full-scale war Hezbollah informed Borell that there will be no discussions regarding the Lebanese front until the war on Gaza is stopped, and reiterated that they will not retreat a single inch from Lebanese territory.
Israel has been a US dependency for a long time, but right now, if it weren’t for the US, it would probably collapse economically and militarily.
This war an embarassment for the Israelis. It shows they can’t protect the settlers, they can’t win against Hamas and they can’t stop Hezbollah from striking settlements. It’s just embarassment all around. They want to widen the war and get Iran and the US into it, but they overestimate the US: the US can’t send ships into the Gulf and expect to leave. Most of its regional allies would be unwilling to let it run its airforce off their airfields, and the US can devastate Lebanon but it can’t stop Hezbollah from devastating Tel Aviv.
Israel’s on its way down. I don’t know how this mess will turn out, in the end, but US and Israeli weakness has been made clear. Neither are what they were. Add this to the humiliation of Ukraine and it’s clear the American century is all but over and that its allies are no longer safe.
As for a peace, if it’s negotiated, it’ll be done under Chinese auspices. Think about that a little.