We are getting conflicting reports on how much longer the fighting will go on, with reports of 2 more weeks, that it may end tonight, and that Hamas has rejected the cease fire terms.

We’ll know its over when its over, I guess.

Part of the reason for this is that
there appears to be a rift between Hamas in Gaza and their nominal leaders in Syria, with the latter taking a much harder line….Which is easier for them, because they, and their neighbors are not in the cross fire.

On a tactical level, we now have reports of ubiquitous recording of events on video by the IDF, on the theory that this will be an effective defense against accusations of war crimes.

This means, at the very least, that there are elements in the IDF who believe that they are following טוהר נשק, because people who believe that they are committing war crimes don’t video tape it these days.

Additionally, we have reports of extremely close coordination between UAV’s and ground forces.

This is because they are under the direct control Army, and not AF units, which is something that the US Army should note, because the USAF wants direct control of anything larger than a seagull.

I would also note that IDF armor is doing very well, unlike in Lebanon in 2006.

I think that this is because there is no longer an Air Force man as chief of staff, and so they have moved away from the US “long range PGM” model, and back to maneuver warfare.

It doesn’t hurt that their APCs are the heaviest in the world (contra the direction of the US Army with its light weight FCS manned vehicles), and that the Merkava has a number of systems, remote machine guns and a 60mm mortar, that are very effective in urban combat too.

Finally, we have a video of a trip to a missile factory.

I will note that you can hear children in background at one point, and whether this is evidence of human shield use, or simply an artifact of living with 1.5 million people in a space the size of Washington, DC, is left to the reader.

H/T Danger Room for the vid.

Also, I will post on Jeffrey Goldberg’s NY Times OP/ED later.