The International Court of Justice in the Hague will release its decision later today. I won’t be able to comment about it until Sunday.
What I can comment about is the war. CNN, in particular, spends an inordinate amount of time talking about Gazan casualties. They also view the conflict threw a seriously distorted lens. For CNN almost every casualty in Gaza is a civilian. But the Hamas military wing has lost probably more than 10,000 terrorist fighters. That would make up a significant part of the dead. What happened to them? Those of you following my posts know that I place very little trust on the accuracy of CNN reports. It seems there is a good reason for that.
Israel is still talking, via mediators, about a new hostage release deal. From what I’ve heard the positions of the belligerents are still very very far apart. Hamas needs a cease-fire (permanent) to survive. One of the primary goals of Israel is to put an end to Hamas rule. It is not easy to reconcile those two positions. The war has lasted a long time; far longer than anything in any Hamas scripts. But Hamas is still clinging to the hope that somehow Israel will be forced to halt. Gazan residents may be beginning to recognize that Hamas brought this disaster upon them. (CNN, along with some other media, continues to ignore this).
The US finally woke up to the idea that the Houthi ‘blockade’ of the Red Sea wasn’t going to stop because they were asked nicely. The amount of force used against targets in Yemen so far appears to me to be well below what will necessary to influence a change in Houthi (Iranian?) policy.
America wants to avoid a larger war. They might take a cue from what Pakistan did when Iran fired into their territory. Sending messages is only effective if you do something that gets their attention first.
Wetherhorn 