Operation Iron Swords - Day 158 - 12 March 2024

Contents

NEW - War Termination NEW - Operations NEW - Operations - Gaza NEW - Operations - Judea-Samaria NEW - Operations - Lebanon NEW - Operations - Syria / Iraq NEW - Operations - Yemen NEW - Operations Maps NEW - By-Standers NEW - Axis of Resistance NEW - Allied for Democracy UPDATED - By the Numbers

Former Israeli intelligence official and regional analyst Avi Melamed stated the IDF’s drone strike on Marwan Issa’s hideout in Nuseirat illustrates the level of human asset penetration that Israeli Intelligence currently has within the remnants of Hamas’s forces and could indicate that Israel is aware of where Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif are hiding. “The success of Israel’s operation against Marwan Issa illustrates the level of human asset penetration that Israeli Intelligence has into Hamas’s remaining forces in Gaza. "In order to have planned and executed such an operation, with the full cabinet reviewing and approving the plans, Israel would have needed to know where and when Issa was hiding, that he would remain there with time for the cabinet to approve and the IDF to launch the operation, and would have needed to confirm that no Israeli captives were being held near him as human shields – something that could have only been confirmed via a human asset. Targeting Hamas’s senior leadership is extremely complex due to the Israeli hostages being used as human shields, Israel may be aware of where other Hamas leaders are currently hiding but unwilling to target them due to the hostages being intentionally held in the same places.” According to Israeli media, the fears of the Israeli security authorities regarding the upcoming Ramadan season in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem are rising, amid warnings from the Israelis that Hamas may exploit the most important time for Muslims as an opportunity to ignite the scene. The biblical holidays for the Jews this year intersect with the second week of Ramadan, which may open the door to a new battle in Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Ramadan is celebrated Mar 10, 2024 – Apr 9, 2024. Purim is a Jewish holiday that celebrates the survival of the Jewish people from annihilation in the 5th century BCE. The story is told in the Book of Esther and is known as the Feast of Lots. Purim dates are March 23–24, 2024.

Prime Minister's Office Statement: "At a meeting of all security elements chaired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it was decided: Israel strongly safeguards freedom of worship for all faiths, at all sites in Israel, especially the Temple Mount; Ramadan is sacred to Muslims; its sanctity will be upheld this year, as it is every year. During the first week of Ramadan, the entry of worshippers to the Temple Mount will be permitted, similar to the numbers in previous years. A weekly assessment of the security and safety aspects will be held; a decision will be made accordingly."

At the end of the discussion it was decided that there will be no age limit for entering the Temple Mount, but there will be quotas.

War Termination

Operational Update

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ) has created an unparalleled burden on Israeli military operations, believing at the same time that "Israel has the right and duty in its actions against Hamas." Commenting on this, the military and strategic expert, Major General Fayez Al-Duwairi, described the American assessment as very realistic, comparing what is currently happening in the battle of “ Al-Aqsa Flood ” and previous wars starting in 1948 and going through 1956, 1967, 1973, and 2006, all the way to the Israeli wars on Gaza (2008, 2012, 2014, 2021). Al-Duwairi explained - during his analysis for Al-Jazeera - that the previous battles were between regular armies fighting traditional wars, and the occupation army and the air force had the longest arm and demonstrated its excellence in them, imposing field events on the Arab armies, especially in 1967 and 1973. But the “Al-Aqsa Flood” has entered its sixth month, as Israel - according to Al-Duwairi - is not accustomed to this time frame without being able to achieve its goals. Moreover, it has actually failed to define its goals in light of the conflict of visions between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Galant . And his chief of staff , Herzi Halevy . Al-Duwairi adds that Israel faces many challenges as it does not have the experience of fighting in urban and guerrilla warfare, in addition to the presence of a complex and complex tunnel network. “Therefore, the management of the battle by the resistance was effective, while it transferred the occupation from failure to failure.” The Al-Qassam Brigades - the military wing of the Hamas movement - carried out a major attack on bases, barracks and settlements around the Gaza Strip , killing hundreds of Israeli soldiers and officers, and capturing at least 240. More than 100 were released during a temporary humanitarian truce last November.

Operational Update - Gaza

Operational Update - Judea-Samaria

Operational Update - Lebanon

Hezbollah fired more than 100 rockets at the northern Golan Heights and the Galilee Panhandle on Tuesday morning, according to the Israel Defense Forces. The Iranian terror proxy fired a 70-rocket barrage at the two areas at approximately 7 a.m., in one of the heaviest barrages since the start of the war. Just over an hour later, another 30 rockets were fired at the northern Golan. Israeli media reporting majority of the rockets were intercepted or fell in open spaces. No damage or casualties were reported, IDF said that fighter jets struck three launchers used to fire rockets at the Golan Heights.

Operational Update - Syria / Iraq

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Operational Update - Yemen

Maps

All maps are lies. “Not only is it easy to lie with maps, it is essential,” wrote cartographer Mark Monmoneir in his book How to Lie with Maps. He showed that condensing complex, three-dimensional spaces onto a two-dimensional sheet of paper [in old days] is bound to be reductive. But it is impossible to comprehend the war in Gaza without reference to maps, otherwise the entire conflict is reduced to an endless series of meaningless acts of random violence and the suffering of civilians. The first characteristic of guerrilla warfare is the loss of a front line. Evidently, different mappers have different ideas of how to depict the war in Gaza, notably those that seek to depict Israeli progress in the ground campaign. Part of the problem is latency. The news that forms the basis of the maps takes time to filter out to mappers, and the cartographers take time in crafting their maps, and it takes time to curate them. These processes are uneven among mappers, so their maps may differ in detail. Probably there is some ideological bias, or at least thematic apperception, which is understandable in wartime. It may come as no surprise that al-Jazeera maps depict rather less Israeli territorial progress than other sources. Finally, there remains the epistemological question of just exactly what are the colored in areas depicting. Naively, this might be understood as areas of Israeli control, that are no longer contested by the HAMAS. Or possibly these are areas of Israeli presence, in many of which the possibility of an RPG-wielding HAMAS militant popping out of a tunnel unexpectedly remains a live possibility. With the "zero-range" combat characterized by small unit tactics on both sides, maps may be prey to a fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

Bystanders

An estimated 8,000 patients need to be medically evacuated from Gaza, including over 6,000 trauma-related patients, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Axis of Resistance

Allied for Democracy

Avi Melamed noted that “Every action and statement made by Biden and the U.S. Administration against or pressuring Netanyahu has been used by Netanyahu in his attempt to further secure his government from fracture and preserve his legacy as the defender of Israel, while also harming his challengers. One illustration of that is Netanyahu’s recent recharacterization of the dispute between him and Biden as not between the two leaders but rather between Biden and the Israeli people. Benny Gantz, widely seen as the successor to the Netanyahu government understands this and likely is advocating behind the scenes that Biden and the Administration not fall victim to Netanyahu’s political spin. Whether Netanyahu or any future successor serves as the country’s prime minister, there is a strong consensus among Israel’s Jewish citizens demanding the eventual assault on Rafah to ensure that Israel’s goals for its war in Gaza – the return of all the hostages and the ending of Hamas’s reign of terror – are complete.” The Israeli Kan channel quoted American officials as saying that US President Joe Biden has almost lost confidence in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and he also confirmed that there is no specific date yet to meet Netanyahu. The channel added that officials confirmed that Netanyahu's procrastination regarding the issue of relief for the people of Gaza has harmed Israel. For its part, American media quoted Biden as saying that there is no specific date yet for the meeting with Netanyahu, and that Biden currently has no plans to deliver a speech before the Israeli parliament (the Knesset). The American Politico website also quoted officials as saying that Biden may decide to limit the transfer of weapons to Israel if it launches an operation that exposes more Palestinians to danger. This comes at a time when Netanyahu escalated his statements regarding moving forward with his plans to invade Rafah (south of the Gaza Strip ), where more than two million displaced Palestinians are trapped between starvation and bombing. This came in defiance of the US President, who had previously warned that such an attack would be a “red line,” in addition to several international warnings against invading the city. On the other hand, Netanyahu responded by saying that the “red line” for him was “not to repeat the attack of last October 7,” that is, the “Al- Aqsa Flood ” operation launched by the Palestinian resistance. Earlier on Monday, the White House said that the president had made clear that there would be no military operation “unless there is a plan for the security of civilians” there.

Operation Iron Swords - By the Numbers

• 72,760 Gazans injured, 28% adult male
• 40,000 Gazans killed, including buried under rubble
• 33,000 Gaza targets attacked
• 31,112 Gazans martyred
• 15,000 rocket launched from Gaza
• 14,664 Israelis were injured [i24 TV]
• 13,430 Gazan children martyred
• 13,000 HAMAS combatants killed [N12]
• 12,000 HAMAS combatants killed [IDF]
• 11,000 arrested by Israelis in the West Bank in 2023
• 9,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons
• 9,000 IDF psychological assistance
• 9,000 Gazan women martyred
• 8,000 Gazans missing
• 7,335 arrested by Israelis in the West Bank since Oct.7th
• 6,000 HAMAS combatants killed [HAMAS]
• 5,500 IDF wounded [reports]
• 4,665 West Bank Palestinians wounded
• 3,484 administrative detainees
• 3,400 wanted persons arrested throughout Judea and Samaria
• 2,976 IDF wounded [IDF]
• 1,609 terrorists killed on the first day
• 1,500 wanted persons arrested throughout Judea and Samaria affiliated with Hamas
• 1,200 Israelis killed on the first day
• 575 Israeli officers and soldiers killed
• 431 West Bank Palestinians martyred
• 247 Israeli officers and soldiers killed in Gaza
• 222 Hezbollah fighters killed in Lebanon
• 126 people recovered, including 91 Israelis, 11 bodies, and 24 foreign workers
• 116 living hostages in Palestinian custody
• 50 civilians killed in Lebanon
• 29 IDF deaths were caused by "friendly fire"
• 15 Israelis killed in the West Bank and Israel

Many of these numbers fluctate, up and down, with no apparent explanation. This list records the highest number reliably reported for each matter, under the theory that reality with catch up with reports, as is relentlessly the case.

The Palestinian resistance says that the losses of the Israeli forces are much greater than what is announced. Al Jazeera military and strategic expert Major General Fayez Al-Duwairi expressed his conviction that the numbers of dead and wounded announced by Israel “cannot represent the truth,” due to a discrepancy between the Israeli army’s data and the Walla website, which is close to the army itself.

In an interview with RT, Military strategist retired Tunisian Brigadier General Tawfiq Didi said that the number of Israeli army deaths in the Gaza battles is much greater than what Israel announces. Didi explained in an interview with the “Best Saying” program on RT channel, “The number of people killed in battles can be easily known, as the equation in wars is that for every 3 wounded there is a dead person, and the numbers now in Israel hover around 12,500 wounded and disabled people, and when we divide by Three, we find that the death toll exceeds 4,000, especially after eliminating more than a thousand tanks and armored vehicles, and I know what happens when Kornet missiles hit a tank. Its ammunition explodes and no one is left alive.”

He added, "The Israelis announce their dead only of those of Jewish origin and of the first race, meaning all Arabs, Falash, and those who are among them. They are not counted because they are of the second category. So I am sure that the number exceeds 4 thousand dead, and this is a very easy military calculation."

He pointed out, "The Palestinian resistance documented everything it did, unlike the Israelis. The resistance documented shooting at tanks and armored vehicles and destroying the houses in which the Israeli soldiers were holed up, and we saw them being killed... We saw the Kornet hitting the tanks, we saw Al-Yassin 105, so the difference is clear."

Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed have been held as hostages in Gaza since 2014 and 2015, respectively. Unlike the roughly 240 people kidnapped in the Hamas October 7 terrorist attacks, the campaign for the release of Mengistu and al-Sayed has received little publicity. Mengistu is known to suffer from what HRW deemed "serious" mental health issues. "Avera crossed one of the safest borders in the world, under the eyes of the security services," recalled Gil Elias, a relative. "We're talking about a mentally ill person who got lost." The calls for the release of Mengistu and al-Sayed have been barely audible during the many years they have been held captive in Gaza.

Abraham Wyner, Professor of Statistics and Data Science at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, reported 06 March 2024 that : "While the evidence is not dispositive, it is highly suggestive that a process unconnected or loosely connected to reality was used to report the numbers.... Another red flag, raised by Salo Aizenberg and written about extensively, is that if 70% of the casualties are women and children and 25% of the population is adult male, then either Israel is not successfully eliminating Hamas fighters or adult male casualty counts are extremely low. This by itself strongly suggests that the numbers are at a minimum grossly inaccurate and quite probably outright faked.... Taken together, Hamas is reporting not only that 70% of casualties are women and children but also that 20% are fighters. This is not possible unless Israel is somehow not killing noncombatant men, or else Hamas is claiming that almost all the men in Gaza are Hamas fighters....

"Israel estimates that at least 12,000 fighters have been killed. If that number proves to be even reasonably accurate, then the ratio of noncombatant casualties to combatants is remarkably low: at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1. By historical standards of urban warfare, where combatants are embedded above and below into civilian population centers, this is a remarkable and successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians."

This makes perfect sense under a third possibility, namely that the IDF doing a really good job of targeting male combatants, most of whom are in proximity to their families. There are no HAMAS barracks, so everyone lives at home, en famille. Co-habiting extended families are common [hence reports of dozens of family members killed in a single strike]. The HAMAS battalions are organized by neighborhoods, so it would not be surprising that multiple HAMAS combatants live in a single building. So casualties structured as one male combatant, one female cohabitant, and two children are approximately consistent with both expectations and reports.

Lord Roberts of Belgravia (Con) stated 08 February 2024 "My Lords, even if we were to take as accurate Hamas’s statistics and the 27,500 figure — there is no reason why we should; we do not do that with Putin or ISIS — if one subtracts the number of Gazans who have been killed by the quarter or so of the Islamic Jihad and Hamas rockets that fall short, one is left with a less than 2:1 ratio of civilians to Hamas terrorists killed, of whom there have been more than 9,000 so far. War is hell, and every individual civilian death is a tragedy, but — I speak as a military historian — less than 2:1 is an astonishingly low ratio for modern urban warfare where the terrorists routinely use civilians as human shields. It is a testament to the professionalism, ethics and values of the Israel Defense Forces."