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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30318 thread views

Israel-Gaza Megathread #2

This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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I'm not sure that Israel wants or would prefer 'genteel' ethnic cleansing, even ignoring the US and EU reactions to such a thing. Some of the individual settler-groups, sure, but from the IDF's perspective it's kinda a white elephant. And as bad as the issue of the Gazan Strip is today, at least the IDF wasn't considering a war with Egypt every time a few hitch-hikers get kidnapped.

Of course, on the flip side, I don't think Egypt wants to handle just the civilians who want to leave the Strip, or just the civilians for only a few months, and is willing to threaten to mass ship them to the EU even if Israel could credibly commit, and Israel can't credibly commit. So it doesn't really matter.

On the gripping hand, there were a lot of options on the table that involved ground forces (or prolonged active bombing campaigns), without permanently taking the Gaza Strip, but I'm not sure the delays -- especially in when combined with unsearch humanitarian aid -- are compatible with them. Maybe Biden's just trying to buy time before those more energetic efforts start, either to try to line up some Muslim custodian government or for hostage negotiation or both, but a lot of stuff coming from the White House right now seem like they're just pivoting really hard to the Squad alignment.

Which... boots on the ground in the Gazan Strip seems like a recipe for years of bloodbaths, so maybe that just works out? But there's a limit to the model of war as politics by other means. Trivially, 'just barrier down Hamas and lob a bomb in there when you spot someone with a big hat' was the pre-2023 Likud philosophy, and it doesn't seem like there's some obvious way to prevent a re-occurrence of 10/7 or some similar category of catastrophe. Yes, obviously the intel failures and work permit program and some imports will be getting a lot of scrutiny, but that's a really fancy way of saying 'try again harder' that isn't likely to be perfect for forty years.

And even if you can persuade Netanyahu to make the 'right' decision today, there's little or no reason to suspect that he'll be in charge forever: the opposing coalition is in a double-digit lead right now, and not especially dovish right now. If you persuade them without persuading the people voting for them, they'll just get replaced in turn. And if you could persuade the broader populace, you wouldn't need to set up a game of musical chairs for the political leadership.

but a lot of stuff coming from the White House right now seem like they're just pivoting really hard to the Squad alignment.

What stuff? The SoS dissent memo? +?

The SoS dissent memo?

SoS dissent memo? I tried various searches but couldn't figure out what you're referring to.

I think referring to this, unless I misunderstood. It's been claimed to have 400+ signatories, but I don't know if a draft has been made publicly available or how much I trust those numbers.

I have no idea what extent, if any, the State dissent memo has any real meaning, or even if the claimed numbers are genuine.

Providing aid and funding to Hamas without credible commitments against military use or for searches by a third party to limit weapons smuggling is what I'd consider failing to bring table stakes. The public emphasis on antisemitism and Islamophobia wouldn't be nutty if it came from Red Tribers, but for the same reason that All Lives Matters were unacceptable slogans for two years straight, it's a very specific sort of message to have on an official account. (EDIT: the message has now turned into just Islamophobia). More generally, there's been no serious (and arguably no) Sister Souljah moment in response to the Squad and especially Tliab, even as they've gotten pretty brazen.

This was the Sister Souljah moment, I'd say.

Also, I would guess that this widely reported attack probably served as the motivator for the official White House condemnation of Islamophobia.

That's fair, but despite the objections of a lot of soccons, I don't think AOC is in the White House.

Yeah, a lot of this has been pretty mask off from the left, and it seems like the mask off part is just how little control the ‘moderates’/‘adults in the room’/establishment whatever you want to call it has over the activist class.

there's some obvious way to prevent a re-occurrence of 10/7 or some similar category of catastrophe

Having a heavily-mined no-man's land on your side of the border fence? There's a strip that is tens to a hundred meters wide already, make it 500m everywhere, dig anti-vehicle ditches, build electric fences, saturate the ground with landmines, turn the only remaining border crossing into a fortress.

Points for thinking about it, but I'm skeptical on both the political and pragmatic side.

Israel isn't a signatory to the Ottowa Treaty, but large deployments of landmines near a civilian area would be a long-lasting cause celebre even before some teenager became an example, and their use in the past at the West Bank / Golan Heights in much more conventional military contexts had previously been a matter of a lot of international fuckery. There are also just pretty high upper limits to the utility of landmines in an open environment where your sappers would be near-constantly observed. Electric fences are so simultaneously useless (defeated by gloves!) and politically controversial that they've been a goto slur for electronic monitoring.

A lot of the remainder of your suggests are just things already present, but harder, in ways that may not be possible. Israel hadn't closed all but one border crossing, but the number of crossings dropped dramatically from 2005-2011, culminating in the closure of the Karni crossing, while the remaining handful had been heavily fortified. Of the three major remaining ones, Rafah is in Egyptian territory and Kerem Shalom is politically necessary as part of relationships with Egypt. There's already some use of anti-vehicle ditches and other terrain.

10/7 seems like it depended on overwhelming observation, surveillance, and quick-response features so fast and so heavily that the IDF response took hours; I'm not seeing how 500m would have changed much of it.

And, yes, as 2fara points out, you need to block of not just the tactics from 10/7, but the whole class of any successful attack of this scale.

Put millions of mines behind your barrier wall. So only people who breached it are going to explode.

Do not put random mines in Gaza or on fields.

There are also just pretty high upper limits to the utility of landmines in an open environment where your sappers would be near-constantly observed.

Just dump massive amounts of them?

I think you’re overestimating the efficiency of land mines. They aren’t just dump-and-forget. See this manual for some of the complexities involved. Note in particular figure 2-2: possible effects of minefields. Disrupt the enemy, slow him down, turn him towards a different angle of approach…or maybe, maybe stop his advance. All of these are only considered effective when combined with integrated fires. In other words, if you give the enemy a passive obstacle, he will circumvent it.

Getting enough mines to cover the border is achievable. At which point irregular forces of terrorists just…start tossing explosives in that direction. Sending dogs or prisoners out to find—or make—a path. They don’t even have to exploit any gaps, just waste Israeli time and money repairing and replacing static obstacles.

Put millions of mines behind your barrier wall. So only people who breached it are going to explode.

Yes, having a sterile (buffer) zone between two fence lines with clear signage is the way to go here. There would not be children wandering in. Intruders would have to deliberately defeat the outer fence before wandering into the mine field.

Edit: A big vulnerability is tunneling. A captive motivated population with a lot of time on their hands can dig more tunnels. There are vibration sensors for this, but deploying them along the entire border would be a very expensive prospect.

There are vibration sensors for this, but deploying them along the entire border would be a very expensive prospect.

Ignorant question: how expensive? Vibration sensors range from like @$0.50 for "cheap vibration-triggered switch for your kid's Arduino project" to @$1000+ for "high-frequency accelerometer for your industrial turbine", but I have no idea where in that range (or beyond it?) a tunneling detector would fall ... nor how many such detectors they'd need per linear distance.

You really want a digital seismometer network. Google cache indicates that digital seismometers used to be advertised on Amazon for $8999 each. Which is a steal for defense technology, but the real engineering costs probably come from setting up the network and the analysis software to detect tunnelling without triggering on nearby trucks or nearby uses of bunker-busting munitions.

You're honest in your ignorance, but I am too. I don't have a cost per kilometer (200km?) vs depth of tunnel detection analysis. I just know that tunnel detection vs video motion analysis, vs drone/para-glider detection across the entire Gaza border needs to be calculated, put into a brief, and given to cabinet. They'll run those numbers against whatever the ethnic cleansing numbers are and eventually make a decision.

There would not be children wandering in.

there would be, but at that point it blame would be far more clearly on people that forced them.

(see also Iranian approach to demining: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/53791/during-the-iran-iraq-war-did-the-iranians-use-small-children-to-trip-land-mines )

I have a strong suspicion that the Americans and Europeans would happily help foot the bill in exchange for closing off various Israeli revenge options.

The real question is how the to deal with the tunnels themselves once detected. If you're going the landmine route, I've heard unironic advocacy for digging a moat around gaza from the Mediterranean. Not particularly well thought advocacy, probably, but unironic, with the premise of 'if tunnel detected, flood it.'

I would actually stick with a dual fence sterile zone without mines, supported by CCTV, vibration sensors and a (QRF) response force . Largely for pragmatic maintenance reasons.

A moat could be defeated given time (and planning). It would potentially prevent the use of heavy vehicles, but would otherwise be useless against tunneling, or even ground based assault with bridging (planned ahead of time).

Most modern security theory revolves around risk management and the concept that breaches are unavoidable. It is more about detecting and responding to the breach, and where possible, mitigating the damage.

With an open checkbook, it could be done. Israeli defense force would have to commit.

Edit: As for counter tunneling, there are many ways to respond as long as the tunnel can be detected early enough. which is likely with a large enough sterile zone to accommodate fly over LIDAR (which is problematic in urban areas). Tunneling is slow, so detection is a larger issue than response. Again, vibration sensors are expensive.

Wait, isn’t that more or less how it already worked?

Before the 2005 disengagement Israeli military maintained a one-kilometer buffer zone within Gaza along the border wall which prevented the militants to approach the border, sometimes with gunfire. After the IDF withdrawal the border became easily reachable by the Palestinians.

Oh. Well, I guess they kept the idea.

Overall, the first barrier is a barbed-wire fence without sensors. The second barrier codenamed Hoovers A is 20 meters off and consist of a road and a fence with sensors. These existed before 2005. A new element is a 70-150 meter wide buffer zone codenamed Hoovers B with motion sensors in the ground and surrounded by a new sensor-equipped fence with watchtowers…

Overall, the first barrier is a barbed-wire fence without sensors. The second barrier codenamed Hoovers A is 20 meters off and consist of a road and a fence with sensors. These existed before 2005. A new element is a 70-150 meter wide buffer zone codenamed Hoovers B with motion sensors in the ground and surrounded by a new sensor-equipped fence with watchtowers…

Then it should have worked unless there was detail not available to the public which I'm sure is the case (or the barrier was a fabrication displayed to be a deterrent). A barrier system like that, but somehow amazingly the enemy managed to push across in force without response or detection? Someone fucked up big time, or they're lying about the implementation. Or perhaps the response force was asleep on the job.

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The issue is that that’s preparing for a war that already happened, not whatever they might come up with with Iran’s help in the future.

On the gripping hand

As an aside, how many people using this phrase have actually read the eponymous book? I picked the practice from the Wiki (the Wiki, the original one), but I haven't read anything by Niven other than the first few Ringworld novels. This reminds me of people that use "clay" when discussing about territorial claims without realizing it comes from polandball comics.

I dunno how common it is to use the phrase without being familiar with the book. At least in my case, I read the first two, though I haven't gotten around to Outies.

The phrase was important enough in the story to be the title and a central conceit of the second book, but the Moties series never had the cultural niche of Ringworld, even among scifi fans. While the phrase itself ended up in the Jargon File (and without a lot of the important context), it's kinda important to the series and the phrase's early use among hackers that it be not just the third item in a list, but that it also represent something unexpected or breaking from a false belief of only two options.

The Mote In God's Eye is much weaker as a character story, but I'd argue it's better as speculative fiction than Known Space series. And I say that not just as a specific critique of genetic luck or the Fruit of Life stuff.

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