May 20, 2021 · 0 Comments
By Gwynne Dyer
“We didn’t want this conflict, but now that it’s started it has to end with a sustained period of quiet,” said Mark Regev, spokesman for Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. “That can only be achieved by Israel taking out Hamas – their military structure, their command and control.” Or, as the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) would put it, by “mowing the grass.”
That sounds a bit cold-blooded, but Hamas, the dominant Palestinian organization in the Gaza Strip, has an equally pragmatic view of its periodic wars with Israel. Both sides are in a conflict that neither side can win conclusively (although Hamas is vastly inferior militarily), and so they engage in occasional bouts of attritional warfare.
A similar pattern of resilience has been observed in other previous periods of hostilities, the report said.
“As such, we do not expect the current events to materially disrupt Israel’s robust economic recovery, which will remain supported by rapid vaccination progress and a strong pre-pandemic macroeconomic position,” Moody’s said, forecasting growth at close to 5% this year, after a contraction of 2.6% in 2020 amid the pandemic. The economy shrank 1.7% in the first quarter of this year, but growth is expected to accelerate in the summer, the report said.
Sectors such as tourism and hospitality – already hardest hit by the pandemic – are likely to be more negatively affected by the conflict, but account for a relatively small share of the economy.
The Israeli military has tried to kill the military commander of Hamas, Mohammed Deif, at least twice since Operation Guardian of the Walls began 10 days ago. While it is not known when the strikes took place but both times he got away at the last minute
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May. 20, 2021 6:20 AM
Wednesday, the tenth day of the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip, saw two dramatic developments. First, four rockets were fired from Lebanon at Acre and the Haifa Bay communities. Immediately after that, the White House released an official statement about the content of a phone conversation, the fourth since the beginning of the operation, between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This time, Biden ratcheted up the tone and told Netanyahu that he expected significant de-escalation that same day. These events seem to be bringing us closer to the end of the operation, but the potential for destruction has not yet been exhausted.