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Beau says:
Beau clarifies that Israel's demonstrations are anti-Netanyahu, previews a significant US-Israeli meeting on RAFA alternatives, and questions the recent arms transfer's relevance.
Policymakers, activists, analysts
Insights on the potential impact of the US-Israel meeting and the importance of interpreting statements carefully.
#Israel #US #Netanyahu #ArmsTransfer #Geopolitics
Well, howdy there, there-to-know people, it's Bo again.
So today, we are going to talk about two news items
and a question, all related to the same thing,
and they're all worth going over this morning.
One of them is just clearing up
some inconsistent reporting about something.
One is talking about something
that is incredibly consequential.
And the other is going behind the headlines on something
and getting a little bit deeper.
OK, so let's do the clarification part first.
There are a bunch of demonstrations
that are occurring.
They are being described in a bunch of different ways.
One of them is they are anti-war demonstrations
occurring in Israel.
That is not how I would classify it.
Not in any way.
Sure, it's a huge crowd.
There are people in it who are opposed to the war in the way people think when that's
said.
There are also people in that crowd who are not happy with the way the war is being conducted
because they don't think it's going far enough. There are also people who are
there whose only concern is getting their people back and then there are
people who realistically it just seems like internal politics and they are just
opposed to Netanyahu. If I was to classify the demonstrations I would not
say that they are anti-war demonstrations. I would say that they're
anti Netanyahu. So the reporting on that is all over the place. I think that's
because the crowd, it is all over the place. They're coming from different
places. Okay, so on to the consequential news, the big news. According to
reporting today is the day. Today the United States and officials I guess
picked by Netanyahu are going to have the conversation about RAFA. It'll be
done via video conference and this is to help Netanyahu avoid embarrassment
because you know he canceled the delegation so if he sent one it would
make him look bad. So they're just going to do it, I guess, via Zoom. So what is
going to happen? Probably the most consequential conversation that has
occurred between the Biden administration and Netanyahu's
administration since the US sent the advisors there saying, don't do a
ground offensive. Pulling from some of the quotes, there are a couple of words
they kept popping up that can give us some insight into what may happen. The
US side is saying that they are going to present alternatives, plural, to going
entorafa. The U.S. position is trying to avoid an offensive entorafa. Alternatives,
proposals, all of the terminology being used by people who are talking about it
is plural. So what that means is the U.S. is going to give them a menu. They're
going to give them a bunch of different alternatives, different types of
operations that they could do instead of doing a ground offensive, a full-on
offensive in to Rafa. Everything on this menu is going to be better and cost less
and when I say cost less I'm talking about lives, than an offensive in to
Rafa. Doesn't necessarily mean that everything on this menu is going to be
something you're going to perceive as good. It's important to understand that
now. There is no way of knowing or finding out ahead of time what the
different menu options would be, but one would almost certainly be them saying,
you know, you have already degraded their warfighting capability. Anything that you
do now is going to be... it's going to be a loss because you'll end up force
generating more for the other side. So now is the time to figure out the exit.
That's probably where they'll start but it's unlikely that that's where it
finishes. It might move and again to be clear I'm making these up. They're
realistic options but nobody knows what they're actually going to propose. They
We could bring in a regional security force, you guys leave, and let the regional security
force conduct arrests.
By going up against them with your military, you're giving them legitimacy and try to exert
the pressure that way.
The other end of the spectrum could be something like with the technology that's available,
you don't have to put boots in.
You could do a highly targeted air campaign, a precision package, just going after their
leadership it would have minimal collateral.
Is that better than a full on offensive?
Just about everything would be better, but what does that description actually mean to
put it into American terms?
Think drones.
Probably wouldn't be exactly the same, but it would be pretty close to that.
It's not like that would be without loss.
So they're going to provide them various options in an attempt to avoid the full-on offensive.
So that's what we know and that conversation is supposed to start today.
Now if Netanyahu's team is just like, no, we're dead set on going in, that's when it would
switch from the people that are presenting this menu, and then it would become more of
a political thing, and then we find out whether or not Biden's going to use that leverage.
That's where it's at.
Okay.
So then the last item is a question.
And I love the question because it shows that people aren't just having, you know, immediate
knee-jerk reactions but at the same time I kind of have to... there's more to it
than what's in it. Okay, so the question is basically, hey, can you tell everybody
that the latest arms transfer has nothing to do with what's going on right
now? If you don't know, the US approved another transfer of weapons. Okay, so
So when that news broke, you had a whole bunch of people immediately be like, are you joking?
And then you had foreign policy people come out and say, this doesn't have anything to
do with what's going on right now.
You can say that about the planes.
You can say that and know that about the planes.
But that's it.
All of this stuff that was in this most recent package, it's not showing up for a while.
The planes, I think, are two years out, at least a year out.
It doesn't have anything to do with what's going on right now.
The rest of the stuff though, yeah, it's going to take months to get there, and you're probably
correct in saying that those particular items are not going to be used.
That's probably fair to say, but that doesn't mean it has nothing to do with what's going
on right now.
I don't have their internal inventories, I don't think you do either.
If the other stuff, the stuff other than the planes, is being sent over to replenish what
they're going to expend over the next month, no it does.
It does have something to do with it.
You can say, for sure, the planes don't have anything to do with it.
That's been a thing.
The other stuff, it may not, but it also might.
You can't say that definitively one way or the other.
If this is a situation where this is the stuff they plan on using in, I don't know, hypothetically
speaking, an offensive into Rafa, and they're just ordering the replacement
stuff for what they're going to use.
I mean, sure, maybe those exact devices didn't get used, but them being sent
freed up the use of the other stuff.
It's not that simple.
It isn't a thing of, this definitely doesn't have anything to do with it.
Some of it, sure, but you can't say that about the whole package.
But it's good to look beyond the immediate reaction to it, even if it does get more complicated
the more you look at it.
So that's what's going on.
The big news is the conversation, is the discussion about Rafa and what might happen.
That's what matters.
If that conversation goes well, then a lot of the other stuff, it becomes less emergent.
If it goes poorly, yeah, everything becomes more emergent.
We probably won't know right away.
I don't see either side coming out and immediately telling the truth, they'll talk about it,
but immediately telling the truth about how the conversation went.
The best thing you could hope for is that both sides come out and say that it was constructive,
something along those lines.
That means they got somewhere.
If there is discomfort expressed from the American team and the way they're relaying
the events, it didn't go well.
But you're not going to know a whole lot until later.
I would not trust the first statements on how this conversation went to be entirely
accurate.
Anyway, it's just a thought, y'all have a good day.
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