“The European Commission on Monday presented five principles for the day after the war ends: Gaza cannot be a haven for terrorists; Hamas cannot rule in Gaza; there cannot be a long-term Israeli security presence, nor forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza; and there must not be a continuous siege of Gaza. Sounds good. Does anyone have an idea of how to pull off and enforce these principles for longer than the time it takes to recite them, much less many years?” Fred Kaplan with a quick, solid overview of Why There’s No End in Sight For the Israel-Hamas War.

+ Netanyahu says Israel will have security control over Gaza after war. This is exactly the wrong message to be delivering. Netanyahu is doing nothing to rally allies in the region, nothing to build trust, nothing to indicate this is about Hamas and not all Palestinians, nothing to stem settler violence in the West Bank, nothing to support the families of the hostages, nothing to unify Israel, and nothing to ease growing antisemitism around the world.
He was the wrong guy to protect Israel and he’s the wrong guy to lead the country forward.

+ “Watching the battle unfolding in Gaza, I can see Fallujah’s hell houses. Hamas’s attack on October 7 was designed to elicit a specific, violent response from the Israelis. Hamas has turned the city of Gaza into a hell house. It has not only taken 242 hostages; it’s taken the entire city and population of Gaza hostage. Hamas’s goal isn’t the liberation of the Palestinian people. Like al-Qaeda in Iraq, Hamas is a death cult.” Elliot Ackerman compares what the IDF will face to what American soldiers faced in Fallujah. The Atlantic (Gift Article): A Knife Fight in a Phone Booth. “The images coming out of Gaza are beyond grim. They will worsen as Israeli troops push deeper into the city and enter the hell houses, to say nothing of miles of tunnels they’ll have to navigate as they seek to free hostages. In an urban battle—whether in Fallujah, Bakhmut, Hue City, or Stalingrad—the city is usually destroyed. It becomes the one hostage that can never be rescued. It’s difficult to see how Gaza City will avoid this outcome, or to understand how Hamas could deliver the citizens it purportedly represents to such a fate.” (Let’s hope this is somehow better than many experts predict…)

+ The suffering in Gaza is getting worse, even as safety corridors to the South finally open, the IDF is near Gaza’s city center, Israelis mark one month since the Hamas massacre, US opposes re-occupation. Here’s the latest from CNN, NBC, BBC, and Times of Israel.