CLARITY WITH MICHAEL OREN
Why Israel should NOT have a “day after plan” for Gaza
Daniel Pomerantz
June 6, 2024

…For its part, Israel is now fighting its fifth war against Hamas, and after every previous engagement Hamas has remained in power. The October 7 massacre triggered a significant policy shift, with Israel for the first time declaring its commitment to removing Hamas from power. Yet US threats to stop providing military support, tribunals at the Hague, and widespread calls against invading Hamas’s last stronghold in Rafah, send a clear message to Gazans and the Arab world: Hamas might win. Under such a threat, partnership is impossible, and without partnerships, a “day after” plan that actually makes sense is also impossible. There are relatively few examples of successful post-war reconstruction in history, yet the two most prominent are the rebuilding of Germany and Japan after World War II. In both cases, post-war planning did not begin in earnest until after the prior regimes were fully and reliably removed from power…READ MORE

JPOST ‘Nasrallah realizes the IDF can kill him’: Hezbollah leadership shaken after Israeli elimination “The powerful elimination worries Hezbollah members. They now understand that the IDF knows much more about them than they know about us,” says Professor Amatzia Baram. Approximately 250 rockets were launched on Wednesday towards northern Israel, disrupting the holiday calm with successive alerts. Rockets that exploded in open areas caused fires. In the city of Tiberias, a siren was activated for the first time since October. These launches come after the assassination of senior Hezbollah official Sami Taleb Abdullah, whose rank was equivalent to a brigadier general in the IDF…Yesterday, following attacks on Kfar Blum and after recent intelligence gathering on him, the IDF precisely assassinated Taleb using a fighter jet. 

COMMENTARY Seth Mandel: Saving Sinwar The war began with an agreed-upon goal: the dismantling and defeat of Hamas. President Biden, along with our European allies, abandoned that goal. The international community now works assiduously to preserve Sinwar’s control in Gaza. In doing so, they have essentially forced Hamas’s leadership-in-exile to back Sinwar to the hilt. That, in turn, has weakened Qatari leverage over the terror group. It has forced Egypt to reconcile itself to Hamas’s survival on its border. In effect, everyone except for Israel has recalibrated its approach to the conflict in a way that, directly or indirectly, prioritizes Hamas’s survival.