What we’re seeing is not anything remotely like the implementation of a comprehensive peace settlement in Palestine. Nevertheless, a halt to genocide is something to be grateful for. It’s also confirmation of a statement that Max Blumenthal made some time ago to Judge Nap, to the effect that “the US could stop the genocide while we’re having this conversation, with one phone call.”
MoA has an excellent summary of what led to this point, which confirms the overall details that we were reporting last night:
Two Israeli Actions Misfired, Pushed Netanyahoo Into Retreat
MoA maintains that Netanyahu got too cocky and overreached by executing the aid workers and launching a direct attack on Iran (its embassy in Damascus). I agree with the backfire/misfire view with regard to the execution of the aid workers—that may well have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, leading to Pelosi’s call for an end to blank check support for Israel. That definitely looks like hubristic overreach. On the other hand, I’m not so sure with regard to the direct attack on Iran. Rather than hubristic overreach, I suspect that was a product of desperation—a last throw of the dice to involve the US directly, in the knowledge that without US involvement in a broad regional war against Iran Israel faced certain defeat.
Israeli desperation was fueled by three broad factors, in no particular order:
First, the overall failure of military action in Gaza, coupled with global blowback against the genocide.
Second, the devastating effect of Houthi sanctions against Israel—reinforced by a naval blockade, which the US has been unable to end. This economic effect was exacerbated by Israel’s inability to maintain a war economy indefinitely.
Third, unrest inside Israel, also fueled by the huge number of Jewish refugees who have been displaced from Galilee in the north and areas bordering Gaza in the south.
Regarding the seeming lack of a comprehensive settlement, commenter American Cardigan pointed out last night that the US might continue arming Israel even while a ceasefire continued. Undoubtedly. The Dems, having forced Israel into standing down from its genocide will be eager to curry favor to the degree possible with the Israel Lobby, so continued arms transfers seems to be a given—although possibly with some restrictions at this point. On the other hand, as MoA points out, Israel is having to admit defeat on a major domestic issue for the Israeli government—the return of Israeli prisoners held in Gaza. Further, Israel has surrendered on its two points of pressure: active genocide and starvation.
Netanyahu is already receiving an implicit vote of no confidence:
Megatron @Megatron_ron
 Israeli Minister of Justice, Itamar Ben Gvir:
'If Netanyahu ends the war without an extensive attack on Rafah to defeat Hamas, he does not have a mandate to continue serving as Prime Minister'
3:18 AM · Apr 8, 2024
It appears that the long bruited attack on Rafah that Netanyahu has sneeringly threatened will no be canceled for good, but the return of Israeli prisoners will have to be negotiated under a ceasefire—giving Hamas a strong hand. It seems doubtful that Netanyahu can survive this double whammy along with the continuing DMZ in Galilee that Hezbollah is enforcing.
Significantly, while the US has been adamantly insisting that it did not greenlight the Israeli attack on Iran, top Iranian officials continue to insist that the US was behind the attack—presumably on the arguably correct view that even a few minutes advance notice would have been sufficient for the US to order Israel to abort the strike—accomplished with US planes and munitions. That means that Iran may not be done with retaliation.
Now, I recommend a reading of MoA, but I’ll paste in hear MoA’s excerpt from the Times of Israel, for the Israeli reaction. It pretty much tracks what we’ve been saying:
Yesterday Israel withdrew its last but one brigade from Gaza. Many in Israel interpreted this as an admittance [sic] of defeat:
Is this how the war ends? Not with a bang, or even a whimper, but with the IDF pulling its ground forces out of Khan Younis, and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant asserting, in defiance of reality, that Hamas has “stopped functioning as a military organization throughout the Gaza Strip,” contradicting himself in the next breath, and clarifying a few hours later?
As Israel on Sunday marked six months since the October 7 massacre, the two prime declared goals of the war — destroying Hamas’s military capabilities and bringing home the remaining 129 hostages abducted that day — are patently unfulfilled.
...
Channel 12 TV’s military correspondent Nir Dvori, reading from his notes during the primetime evening news, presumably after a military briefing, echoed the assessment: “We have moved from war to fighting. The high-intensity [ground] maneuver is finished everywhere in Gaza. The operation in Khan Younis is done. [The IDF] is moving to the system of [more narrowly focused] raids.” Such raids were already being implemented in the north of Gaza, and now they would become the modus operandi in the south as well, he assessed.Making no effort to conceal his dismay at the material he was conveying, Dvori declared that “the hunt for [Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya] Sinwar now moves essentially to the realm of intel. And Israel, as we see, has given up on [its] two major points of leverage: both military pressure and humanitarian [aid].”
“After half a year,” Dvori unhappily summed up, “Israel remains with three big problems: how to return the hostages; how to bring the residents back home in the south and north [who were evacuated due to the fighting]; and how to set up an alternative to Hamas” to administer the Strip. “If Israel cannot achieve a framework for this, and I don’t know of one, then we are entering a very big problem for Israel,” he concluded.
The radicals in Israel's government also interpret this as a defeat of their aims. They are threatening to blow up their coalition with Netanyahoo over this:
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich issues a statement calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to immediately convene the security cabinet to discuss the state of the war in Gaza, after the army pulled forces out of the southern Strip.
“The only forum authorized to make significant decisions in war is the full [security] cabinet, but unfortunately this is not how things are happening, and we are seeing decisions being made in the smaller [war] cabinet without approval, without updating the full cabinet, under international pressure that is harming the war’s momentum and our security interests,” he says.
Smotrich got that right. DC spoke and told Netanyahu how high to jump, and he complied. Just as Blumenthal said would happen. US complicity in the genocide is thereby exposed—the US could have stopped the genocide at any point between October and the present.
No doubt there will be lots more discussion to come.
Meanwhile... https://dailycaller.com/2024/04/08/hezbollah-special-forces-commander-ali-ahmed-hassin-airstriked-israel-defense-forces/
Thanks for getting out of bed, Joe! It is truly appreciated.