Posts
Comments
We are in agreement, then
Oh, I see. I find it very unlikely. Such actions would border on casus beli, and it just doesn't seem important enough to risk an actual war with Israel. The US sent ~$80B over the years, which is a bit less than $2B a year, which is 2% of Egypt's government budget.
The peace with Israel is mainly based on mutual deterrence since the 1973 war, military aid from Israel and more. The US is not a major actor within it.
I would expect very public, very ulikely to escalate actions in order to increase US aid. Not something like this.
I agree it will also affect Gaza. Disagree about the effect on Israeli casualties.
I agree. However I know that it's widely accepted Hamas is enjoying popular support. I don't have good public sources to support that statement, it follows from many little anecdotes over the years. A good example is that unlike widely unliked authoritarian regimes such as Belarus, they enjoyed very little protests over the years, and have managed to repeatedly rally people to their needs.
While it's a defensible position from a "briefely googled this" point of view, I really don't think people who have been following closely hold this position.
I really doubt that. The Hamas generally enjoys popular support, AFAIK (no good public source).
I really doubt that. The Hamas generally enjoys popular support, AFAIK (no good public source).
The government was democratically elected in 2006, so it's not a bad indication.
The Russian are now close Iranian allies, so it might have been some form of payment.
Could you point me to the exact deal? I'm not sure what you're talking about. Also, Egypt had three different regimes since 2010, which all had different interests. We have reasonably good relations with the current one.
Sure. Qatar is one other obvious candidate, and there are probably other possibilities.
I was actually born in Netzarim in the Gaza strip, but my parents left when I was one month old for job reasons. I've not been there until 2005, when The Separation happened, all jews were transferred from the strip and jewish entrance was prohibited, after which I couldn't visit anymore.
There are 150,000 Palestinians from the West Bank who work in in Israel, and around 15,000 from the Gaza strip who used to do the same until last saturday. Israelis and Israeli Arabs mix all the time (for instance, I have some Israeli Arab friends), Palestinians less so. Access from and to the Gaza strip is very restricted, and in the West Bank settlements are separate. I live for a few years in the West Bank, and I talked to Palestinians when I met them during hiking and stuff. My dad and I actually saved a Palestinian goat that fell to a water canal during one of our hikes. It's unrelated to your question, just a funny anecdote I remembered while writing this.
We shouldn't have payed so much, but I don't know if it had a long term strategic impact. We definitely gave a lot of talent back to Hamas, who used it well.
Basically zero. My theory would rely on classified information, so I won't give it, sorry. I imagine there will be some kind of public commission of inquiry after the war. I'll try and remember to post a link to its conclusion for you when that happens.
Part 1: I agree, it seems they don't use the Roofknock Protocol for now, and that will be the main source of civilian casualties. It's a tragedy, but not actually a problem by law of war (see Jay Donde's post).
Part 2: I generally agree. I don't think actual food shortage will be a problem (5%), electricity might (10-33%, very uncertain) but I don't think will cause many casualties by itself. We live in a warm country, and hospitals (and Hamas operatives) have emergency reserves.
Part 3: I agree, and think it depends a lot on Egyptian refugee policy.
Additional possibility is a second front in Lebanon, which adds orders of magnitude more missiles, which are also stronger and more accurate. Israeli civilian casualties will quickly rise, not to mention the possibility of them trying similar tactics to those Hamas tried last Saturday (even though that will probably be less effective, since Israel is on high alert).
Of course such scenario will also deeply impact Lebanon and its citizens.
As for your later point, I think Israel is trying to topple Hamas's regime, one way or another. The region around Gaza is populated by 70,000 people, who will not stay there if there's a risk for attacks like the last one. I am not sure whether it will be done by completely occupying the strip, a siege, or something completely different, but I don't think we'll return to status quo unless Israel tries and fails to do that.
I'm not so sure about that. Hamas don't actually talk that much about the deal, and as long as Israel doesn't do anything too terrible in the coming war I don't think it'll be affected that much. I also don't think a deal with the Saudis will do nearly as much damage to the Hamas as will the current attack, which represents a clear existential threat to its regime.
This could be an Iranian plan for the same reasons, since they have less to lose and more to gain from sabotaging the deal, but then I would expect a similar attack from Hezbollah at the same time for maximum effect, which they did not do. I genrally don't think they were coordinated until after the attack, and might still not be. So far they haven't joined the war, and might not do so at all.
I think there's a strong possibility Hamas tried to lead a smaller scale teerror attack, with <100 dead and some hostages, to use as a bargaining chip for prisoners, then succeeded way more than expected and brought war upon themselves.
I think this is a clear blunder by Hamas, so there's some miscalculation behind it. I don't know if we'll ever know that.
Thanks for your question! It's complicated, and I'll try to adress it tomorrow.
I slightly disagree with David here: Hamas representatives did thank some unnamed countries in addition to Iran in the last couple of days, which might hint to some Russian involvement and supply. However they don't want to be publicly associated with all this, so I imagine it's not too substantial.
I don't know about the war on terror more than what David said, sorry. It's a bit far from home, and I was young at the time and didn't follow it closely.
I don't expect it, since historically Israel let humanitarian supplies in during wars. I also sincerely hope it will continue do that during this war.
IIRC (can't find sources right now) common practice has been to stop electricity for some time, then when international pressure increases supply it interminently.
Yeah, I don't understand the water situation myself. I hear Hamas complaining about electricity, and not about water, so it seems to be fine for now.
About casualties: That's extremely difficult to answer in the best conditions, depends on the way Israel will do it, and requires actual expertise and classified information which I lack. I will try to give you the way I think about this question.
The most similar war would be Operation Protective Edge, in 2014. Gazan forces were approximated at 25,000 people. According to Israel [1] in that war 2,125 Gazans were killed, of which 36% were civilians, 44% combatants, and 20% uncategorized males aged 16–50 (probably some are militants, some civilians and some opportunistic attackers who did not formally belong to any organization). Israel suffered 67 soldiers killed. However, the cities themselves were not invaded, and Hamas's vast bunker system was not directly confronted. Most palestinian casualties were from air strikes.
The most similar purely urban battle I can think about is the battle of Jenin (AFAIK the Israeli version of the events is the correct one). It consisted of 1000 Israeli soldiers vs 300 Palestinians, in a 40k people city. it ended with 23 Israeli soldiers killed, ~25-40 Palestinian militants killed, and 15-25 civilians killed. Direct multiplication would suggest 2,300 Israeli dead, 2,500 - 4,000 militants, and 1,500 - 2,500 civilians killed. In practice it would be more, since Gaza is better fortified and Hamas would not have anywhere to flee, unlike in Jenin.
An additional possibility is the usage of siege tatics. It seems siege directed against civilians is prohibited, but it's possible if you let civilians out. Therefore, if Israel manages to establish a humanitarian corridor to Egypt where Gazans can flee, without too many casualties for itself beyond the 1,000+ it already has. I find it very unlikely we'll have a siege without such corridor.
The truth will lie somewhere between airstrikes, urban fighting and siege. I don't know how Israel will combine the three, and it's probably being decided right now. We'll have to wait and see.
[1] I use Israel's figures because Hamas' are trivially unreliable, and UN Human Rights Council is an extremely biased body. For instance, after the recent attack on Israel, they held a moment of silence in memory of lives "lost in Palestinian territories and elsewhere".
I imagine the US might have something like that. but if it does it doesn't share it.
I agree, which is why I tried to answer to the points concretely. Did I miss anything? I did write "your points" where I should have written "their points", but I don't think it's important enough to edit. I'm not surprised at all, I've seen worse. The far left is quite antisemitic.
They did indeed stop going to reserve. However, basically 99% of them who were of relevant age enlisted now. It's not actually in our cultural DNA not to show up in emergency. Brothers In Arms also called for everyone to enlist immediately (Hebrew, sorry).
Historically wars did not negatively affect long term growth in Israel.
- Not much, unless maybe Hezbolla joins in and starts seriously shelling us. It has accurate long range rockets which can do orders of manitude damage more than Hamas. However maybe in the long term we'll frogleap back? IDK.
- Not much
- I imagine opposition, since it's seen as a strategic failure by Nethanyahu policy, who was in charge in the last 15 years. However that's hard to predict, since it might give rise to far right forces who'll want to retaliate.
Wildly off the mark. I'll try and address your points one by one.
- Content warning: discussing slaugter of innocent jews, babies and elderly. Also the Holocaust.
How many babies and elderly Germans were killed during the Uprising of Warsaw Ghetto? Literally zero. It's a baseless comparison, making analogy between a last stand of people getting slaughtered against Nazi soldiers, and people who slaughtered hundreds of music festival attendees, beheading babies, taking babies as hostages, killing and burning babies (terrible censored image, proceed at your own risk), and that's just scrolling my feed for a bit, there are more terrible atorcities commited yesterday, murder, kidnpping and rape.
Conditions in Gaza are not good, but they are far from genocide. Population is growing rapidly.
Please actually read about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Wikipedia before saying such things. - We did not do anything unusual in the Gaza Strip lately, AFAIK. Even if we did, see point 1.
- Recent Israeli protests were around reforms in the juidical system, seen as an overreach by the executive branch of Israeli govenment, and led by opposition leaders. It was postponed due to external threats. Both pro- and anti- reform protesters are proudly posting pictures of themselves enlisting.
- See previous point
- The protests stopped due to the war, where mainly Israeli working class were slaughtered. Who do you think is whose common enemy here?
I think we'll continue to get one messy equilibruim after the other, until we get something stable that's neither a two state solution nor a one state one. I don't know how it will look like.
Nope.
I don't think you will be able to get an actual solution in the next 10-20 years (barring SAGI- scale changes), since there's a sizable fraction of the palestinian population that wants literal jewish genocide and the destruction of Israel [1].
I do think Israeli government is planning to take over the Gaza Strip, so I imagine we'll get some kind of a different equilibrium after. But I can promise you nobody knows how what will happen in the day after. Some people are trying to promote solutions, such as the Palestinian Authority taking over the Strip, but nobody knows what's possible yet and much will change in the next weeks.
[1] Couldn't find a survey, but Hamas won elections handily in the Gaza Strip in 2006 and there were no other elections in the West Bank since because Hamas would win them too. Hamas's constitution literally called genocide of the jews until 2017 (in Hebrew, sorry), and is still an extremely anti semitic document that aims for the destruction of Israel.
We have been keeping peace and nation building in the West Bank in the last fourty years or so. It's far from perfect, but the places didn't go up in flames in the last 20 years or so. We have less options than the US in Afghanistan so we learn through trial and error. Also the EU tends to send experts to try and help (whether they do is a diffferent question, for which I don't actually know the answer).
The problem tends to be not that we don't know how to nation- build, but that we don't want to. When we tried to build an actual Palestinian country in the 90's it kinda blew up in our face. The Palestinian Authority became a terror nation which we had to weaken a lot in Operation Defensive Shield back in 2002. It remained a weak, unelected government ever since (last elections were back at 2006, when Hamas started taking over). Nobody knows what will happen when the current president will die and it's A Problem.
In conclusion: Yes, better that the US did but not very good objectively. We muddled through so far, so... fingers crossed?
Haha not that different from data science in other large organizations, but from time to time you do gruard shifts because it's the army.
People try to make you do research on problems with next to no data, and there are literal human lives on the line, but you have to convince everyone it's not possible and you should focus on other, more approachable problems.
Let's take, for instance, a non classified problem: Automatically detecting people trying to sneak towards you. Seemingly easy: computer vision is a solved problem! However, sneaking tends to happen at night. While wearing camouflage (Out Of Distribution!). Sometimes your cameras are on a plane (OOD!) and/ or cover a large area (very small humans!). Also, there are only a few terrorist attacks a year, only some of them properly saved (until the one that literally kills a thousand people in one day), so almost no test data, not to mention training.
In conclusion: lots of fun, lots of action, but I enjoy civilian life better. It has better data!
Sorry it took me some time.
I agree with your asessment. I did say Israel tried to do that, but it's a hard problem. I didn't want to elaborate on this point in the original comment since it felt off topic, so here goes:
TL;DR: Blockade is the baseline from which we try to improve, since Hamas are genocidal terrorists and use any aid to military needs. Under that constraint Israel has supplied water, food, electricity, and tried to build more generators and let palestinians work within its borders.
Some links will be in hebrew, sorry in advance. I'll only use major newpapers, wikipedia or large think tanks.
First of all the background assumption is that Israel is trying to improve the situation in the stip within the constraint "a genocidal terror organization is in reign, and they'll abuse any aid". The original raional behind the Separation in 2005 was to let the Palestinian Authority control a relatively large piece of land with a port. All that went to hell after Hamas won the democratic elections in 2006, then killed all other political parties in 2007. Since then work visas from Gaza to Israel were stopped, and the blockade started.
- Concrete steps are, for instance:
- Letting money donations from Qatar into the strip, which was used to pay Hamas officials and pay for social needs
- Providing work permits for 15,000 palestinians in the last years, with hopes of giving more in time. There are 150,000 palestinians workers in Israel from the west bank, 10% of its workforce. Gaza could (and have, before Hamas) have similar proportions.
- Provide basic human needs such as electricity, even though the Palestinians don't actually pay for it.
It is not much. However, keep in mind that everything that entered the strip was used for military needs first, and civilian second: cement for bunkers and offensive tunnels, iron for rockets (couldn't find a good link, but they're produced locally and the iron comes from somewhere), and sandbags for bunkers. And that's the stuff we actually let through, not the military equipment they are constantly smuggling inside, some in civilian guise.
In conclusion: It's hard. There are no good solutions. We are trying. It's not optimal, or even the best we could concievably do, but nothing ever is. We are trying to manage our own potential genociders, backed by popular support. It's an impossible situation, and everyone suffers, but we're triying to make it better than baseline.
- Thanks for your concern! Thankfully I've been impacted very little personally. I live in the center of Israel which "only" gets bombed once a day or so. My room is a bomb shelter (as is required by Isreali law to be available in every apartment), so I don't even have to get out of bed if there's an alarm during the night!
However two of my cousins are in combat, have enlisted as resrves and will go into the Gaza strip if it's invaded, so I'm worried for their safety. - In two word: Yes, exactly.
Israel's strategy since the Hamas took the strip over in 2007 has been to try and contain it, and keeping it weak by periodic, limited confrontations (the so called Mowing the Lawn doctorine), and trying to economically develop the strip in order to give Hamas incentives to avoid confrontation. While Hamas grew stronger, the general feeling was that the strategy works and the last 15 years were not that bad.
I think the genral concensus in Israel right now is that Hamas proved this strategy does not work, and we have to re- occupy the strip and topple Hamas's regime, then maybe try to establish a non- terrorist regime (maybe by some UN force or the Palestinial Authority). All that might not be possible. We'll have to live and see.
I would look deeper into Israel's policy around cash transfers per child to see how big is the effect. We used to have extremely generous transfers for families with four or more children (veryuch non optimal, it was the result of pressure by the Ultra- Orthodox parties), so generous that families literally lived off of them. They stopped after 2001 for being unsustainable, and you can clearly see fertility rates taking a hit. If I remember correctly Kohelet Forum published a research about it a few years back.
For what it's worth, I got to Kameel independently, from an Israeli East Europe expert.
I did similar trades to yours- call on VXX, and put on JETS (nothing on USO, as I don't think it can get much lower than it already is). As the market doesn't react to the rising case numbers in the US (and maybe more importantly, in Ireland, where they have a horrible outbreak), do you think the market might just factor the coming outbreak as a net positive, since everyone will be either vaccinated or immune after it? Also, vaccine distribution in the US seems to be accelerating, the British strain seems to be a bit less contagious than thought in December, and otherstrains that might or might not be affected by the vaccine were discovered. Have you changed any of your investment plans? Personally, I have options for both March and June, so I will either sell in a COVID related crsis, or sell the March ones at the first reasonable opportunity after March 1st, and the June ones at the first reasonable opportunity after May 1st, but I'm not sure how optimal that is.