Israeli forces have driven tanks and military bulldozers (WaPo) into the Gaza Strip as they expand their ground offensive. They also carried out an overnight raid in the West Bank and bombed military infrastructure in Syria (FT) in response to a rocket attack from the country. Much of Israel’s latest push into Gaza was shrouded by an internet and phone blackout that lasted more than thirty hours, though U.S. pressure led Israel to partially restore communications yesterday morning, an unnamed U.S. official told the Washington Post.
At an emergency UN Security Council meeting scheduled for today, the United Arab Emirates plans to seek a binding resolution (The Guardian)demanding a humanitarian pause in the conflict. A UN spokesperson said that forty-seven truckloads of aid entered Gaza yesterday, still a fraction of the five hundred trucks per day that arrived before October 7. The White House has pressed Israel to “immediately and significantly increase” the flow of humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
Analysis
“It is unclear that bombardment and incursions in the north will destroy Hamas or its operational capacity, even if Israel does succeed in destroying all of Hamas’ tunnel network there. It seems likely that the tunnel network in the south is also considerable, and given that the majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is now crowded into the south of the strip, operations there will be much more difficult,” the International Crisis Group’s Tahani Mustafa tells the Carnegie Middle East Center. “It is doubtful that the [Palestinian Authority] as currently configured would be willing to shoulder the responsibilities of governing Gaza after a deadly and destructive Israeli offensive runs its course,” former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad writes for Foreign Affairs.“But a properly reconfigured PA may offer the best option for ‘the day after’ and beyond, providing a segue for the creation of a regionally owned and internationally backed effort to end the Israeli occupation within a framework that credibly addresses the structural weaknesses that bedeviled the peace process over the past three decades.”
Read the full suite of Foreign Affairsand CFR.org resources on Israel and the current conflict.