Israel/Palestine & Middle East: And now 'Everybody vs. Civilians'

Hello everybody!

The last week of fighting in this part of the World was characterised by Israel’s continuous application of the Dahiya Doctrine: i.e. by IDF and the IASF doing their utmost to increase the suffering of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians….while achieving very little against Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRGC-QF. And because that was obviously not enough, Israel then began targeting UNIFIL troops in Lebanon, and the Lebanese Christians, too. In turn, Israeli opponents have hit hard on Israel, revealing a growing number of weak spots.

This went so far, that ‘even’ Hezbollah (i.e. the Hezbollah/IRGC-QF conglomerate) is starting to ‘adapt’ its strategy in this regards: after almost exactly a year of targeting exclusively the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), it officially announced its intention to start targeting civilian settlements in Israel, too.

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Note for those who are new on this blog, or might have a problem with memorising all the abbreviations and different parties involved, please, be so kind, check the earlier feature Dahiya Doctrine vs the Axis.

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AIR WAR

On average, the IASF and the IDF are targeting between 1,100 and 1,500 aiming points in Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip a day. About a third of these each by fighter-bombers, attack helicopters, and UCAVs. Targets are including (suspected) weapons depots, (suspected) tunnels, (suspected) observation points, and (sporadically) enemy combatants; some are undertaken in form of close air support for own troops in fire-contact with the enemy.

Since around 9-10 October, the IASF downscaled its strikes on the Dahiya and other districts of Beirut: instead, meanwhile it’s primarily targeting Christian villages around Lebanon – all of which are full of refugees from the south of the country. Primary targets are buildings – homes, halls/hangars, and other types of storage depots etc. – used to house the refugees (for example, one such facility was hit in Ayto, in the Zgharta district, on 13 October, killing 18), or a (clearly marked as such) field hospital of the Iranian Red Crescent, equipped with 56 beds, erected for Lebanese refugees outside Qunaitra, in Syria.

Typical video of an air strike on some target in Lebanon, as released in hundreds (if not thousands) by the IDF, over the last year. The place is rarely mentioned, and the usual description is ‘command centre’, ‘weapons storage’, ‘drone cache’, ‘above and/or below the ground’ etc. For details about how carefully are the Israelis avoiding targeting civilians, see here: The Killings They Tweeted.

In turn, Hezbollah is firing 3-5 waves of rockets at Israel per day (total appears to be at between 40 and 190 per wave). For most of the last three weeks, the mass of these was targeting IDF bases in the area between Netanya, Safed, Qiryat Shemona, Tiberias, Ramat David, and Haifa. Tel Aviv was attacked time and again, too (three times on 9 October alone).

Hezbollah claims that much of their targeting of Israel is done with help of al-Hodod UAVs, one of which is visible here. They claim these are near-continuously flying inside the Israeli airspace, entirely unobstructed.

About half of incoming Hezbollah rockets are still, and regularly, intercepted by Iron Dome SAMs (the same is valid for a ballistic missile fired at Tel Aviv by the Houthis, back on 9 October). The rest is usually explained with ‘targeting empty areas’ and thus not targeted. However, gauging by videos taken at different spots between Kiryah Shemona, Tiberias, Safed and Haifa, the number of those getting through is slowly increasing. Additionally, Hezbollah is deploying a growing number of new UCAVs – including some closely resembling Shaheds sold by Iran to Russia – and these are getting through the Israeli air defences, time and again.

Wreckage of a (Hezbollah?) missile intercepted over Haloon, Tel Aviv.

Moreover, in reaction to IDF’s continuous ‘demands for civilians to evacuate’ different places around Lebanon, issued several times a day, Hezbollah announced its campaign of ‘disciplining Israel’. Correspondingly, and because – along its official line – the IDF is using civilian homes in settlements along the border, Hezbollah began issuing public warnings for settlers to evacuate selected areas inside Israel. Initially, such warnings were issued for settlers living next to numerous IDF bases in northern Israel (especially in Haifa and Tiberias). In the aftermath of two such warnings, in the evening of 13 October, two streams of Hezbollah UCAVs have hit two IDF bases: one north, another south of Haifa. One caused about 20 casualties, the other killed 4 and wounded 51 (of which 7 were in critical condition).

Hezbollah attack UAV approaching Tel Aviv, late on 11 October. It was not intercepted, and scored an… ‘impact’. Of course, nothing was hit.

Early on 15 October, Hezbollah claimed to have shot down a Hermes 450 UCAV of the IASF. Operated by at least two squadrons of the IASF, Hermes is one of largest families of attack UAVs in Israeli service. While primarily used for reconnaissance/observation at earlier times, examples like these are notable for carrying underwing pods, containing guided air-to-ground missiles.

Katayib Hezbollah from Iraq is known to have hit Eilat with at least two streams of UAVs, back on 9 October. The Israelis claimed all as shot down, but several videos (as usually, taken by Palestinians still living in Israel) have shown ‘impacts’, too.

In Syria the last week, the IASF bombed a number of places. Notable between these were a car assembly plant outside Hasiya (Homs) and a military base in Hama.

Finally, yesterday – and in reaction to Israel’s repeated targeting of Lebanese civilians – Hezbollah adapted its strategy once again and publicly announced it’s going to start targeting settlements in Israel, aiming to (quote), ‘de-populate them’, (essentially) in same fashion Israel is de-populating southern Lebanon. Ironically,

Hezbollah explained this as, ‘no Iranian agenda, but Palestinian case supported by Iran’… hkhm… (sorry, that’s from smoking too little…)

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GOING NOWHERE: ISRAEL’S GROUND OFFENSIVE

On the ground… Up front, because Hezbollah is systematically targeting IDF observation posts along the border, and that already since 8 October 2023, the Israelis are experiencing growing problems with detecting and tracking of enemy movements and positions on the other side. With other words: the Israeli intel services and armed forces have ever less clue about what’s going on in southern Lebanon, and where or what to target there. Unsurprisingly, while their invasion must be expected to drive some 20-40km deep into the country in order to achieve serious effects (like detection and destruction of ‘at least the most important’ of underground storage depots and positions), so far, it’s going exactly nowhere.

In three weeks of fighting the IDF didn’t manage to seize even one complete village: every time it tries to do so, its forces run into ambushes. They are hit by IEDs and are then subjected to heavy mortar- and machine gun fire, and/or strikes by multiple anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs). On average, this is happening some 5-6 times every night, usually resulting in around 20 IDF casualties (per day). Unsurprisingly, as of late 14 October, the IDF confirmed 15 KIA and 305 WIA in clashes in southern Lebanon since 23 September 2024.

The results of the Israeli incursions are rather meagre. The deepest so far has reached about 2,500 metres into Lebanon before involved troops were forced to withdraw. For example: on 9 October, the IDF troops entered Ras al-Maroun, took photos of themselves with their flag, claimed the village as ‘taken’, but then left in a hurry when hit by Hezbollah. In other case, the Israelis (after running into another Hezbollah ambush, early on 9 October) have managed to enter Blida, demolish about a dozen of homes, but then withdrew before the sunset, too.

…the following morning the IDF reported a total of 48 WIA over the previous 24 hours…

IDF troops interviewed (by different instances) on condition of anonymity, say, they have problems re-adjusting to fighting in the local terrain – after spending a year with fighting in ‘urban areas’ of the Gaza Strip.

Hezbollah troops, as seen in a video ‘officially’ released on 14 October.

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IDF vs UNIFIL

Typically, after two weeks of frustrating failures to secure even one village in southern Lebanon, on 5-6 October the IDF began targeting UNIFIL positions in the same area, and/or positioning its troops nearby thus using peacekeepers as human shields. The first such action was undertaken against the Outpost 6-52, held by 35 troops of the 124^th Infantry Battalion, Irish Army, outside Maroun el-Ras: one of key Israeli targets, a Hezbollah stronghold, and the area where at least 10 IDF troops were killed and more than 50 wounded since the start of Israel’s onslaught on Lebanon, on 23 September.

Israeli Merkava tank (centre, background) in front of the Outpost 6-52, on 5 October.

Over the following days, Israel then began demanding the 10,000-strong UNIFIL peacekeeping force to withdraw from southern Lebanon and, when the UN refused to do so (why should it, if there is no resolution to do so?), it began intentionally targeting different of its positions (including not only those of the Irish contingent, but also the Italian). At least five peacekeepers (two from Indonesia, two from Sri Lanka) were seriously wounded in the first three attacks.

The fifth and last Israeli attack on UNIFIL took place on 13 October, when IDF explained two of its tanks had to drive backwards to avoid being shot at… That’s why then two IDF Merkavas smashed the main gate of the outpost and the same was then subjected to attacks by chemical weapons (‘smoke’), which wounded 15 peacekeepers.

Simply asking the UNIFIL to turn off the lights so neither it (nor Hezbollah) can see the Israelis evacuating their casualties after running into another Hezbollah ambush was unacceptable for the God’s hand-picked ones…

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GAZA STRIP

Since late September, Israel is ordering about 400,000 Palestinian civilians herded into the northern Gaza Strip, to ‘evacuate to safe zones in the south’. The people in question refuse because Israel is continuously targeting them – especially when they attempt to ‘evacuate’ along so-called ‘safe corridors’. Indeed, the locals are reporting that the Israelis are targeting whoever tries to exit whatever homes are still intact, and that over 400 civilians have been killed in this area alone since 1 October. And, therefore, because the civilians are refusing to leave, and they are so humane and concerned about the well-being of civilians, the Israelis have cut off all the water, electricity, and humanitarian aid for this area. Local hospitals are threatened to shut down, or cut off even from fuel supply.

In the ‘safe zones’ further south, late on 13 October, the flying supermen of the IASF have bombed the al-Aqsa Hospital in Dayr al-Balah, massacring scores.

Once again: for exactly what and how are the IASF and the IDF targeting in the Gaza Strip (but also in Lebanon and Syria), recommended read is the investigation here: The Killings They Tweeted.

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Atop of all of this, RUMINT has it the IDF is meanwhile experiencing growing problems with resupply of artillery- and mortar ammunition. Partially, this is caused by a growing number of embargos imposed by Israel’s ‘allies’ in the West, where there is growing awareness of what are the country’s armed forces doing to the Palestinians and neighbours. Therefore, the IDF is imposing such measures like that only brigade commanders are granted permission for mortars and artillery pieces to open fire. The related directive is not yet valid for air defence systems, nor for combat units under enemy fire.

Moreover, and following numerous painful experiences from running into Hezbollah ambushes while attempting to enter southern Lebanon, there is also a growing number of reports about tensions between troops and their commanders: the former are frequently refusing to follow orders.

Finally… while the Trio Fantasticus in the White House has decided to deploy a THAAD SAM-system in Israel (i.e. US troops are going to be deployed to directly defend the country). THAAD is a longer-ranged, much more sophisticated anti-ballistic missile defence system than the Patriot.

One might wonder how comes the Israelis need this, considering their super-turbo ABM and SAM-systems like David’s Sling, Arrow II and III? Well, the word is that all of these have failed during the IRGC-ASF’s strike on Israel, back on 1 October, and thus Israel does not dare retaliating without US-operated THAAD.

…which is rather surprising, considering it’s well-known that the Iranians hit nothing on that evening, and the Israeli-US defences were so highly successful that Nevatim AB was hit by 32-40 Iranian missiles and that, even the third week after, there are still no satellite photographs of Tel Nov AB (known to have been hit at least as heavily as Nevatim)…

Ah yes, and: in Iran, the IRGC seems to be moving against Zarif (and thus Pres Pezeshkian). I.e. there are complaints the latter ‘illegally appointed’ the former as his Vice-President (for backgrounds to this, see: Doctrinal Revisions).