Israel Brief: Sunday, May 31
The army crosses the Litani and takes Gaza to 70 percent while the talks, the courts, and the memoranda are still deciding whether to begin.
One actor in this picture is answering when, and everyone else is still arguing whether. The 36th Division is on Beaufort Ridge for the first time in twenty-six years and Netanyahu has ordered Gaza control to 70 percent, while the Pentagon channel deadlocks, Tehran negotiates back the strait its launchers can no longer hold, and Brussels, the Hague, and Pretoria answer all of it with paper. The home front carries the bill the diplomacy will not — Safed and Karmiel back under sirens, a soldier lost to a drone on the ridge. The week’s disposition is sharpening on the one axis that matters: the field is moving faster than anyone negotiating against it can keep up.
This weekend's Israel Brief finds one actor answering when while everyone else still argues whether. The 36th Division is on Beaufort Ridge for the first time in twenty-six years and Netanyahu has ordered Gaza control to 70 percent, while the Pentagon channel deadlocks and Brussels, the Hague, and Pretoria answer all of it with paper. Read past the flash bullets and the full edition lays out the contest of clocks: why the next 72 hours are decided at Beaufort and not the negotiating table, the shareholder letter aimed at the one node in the Kristof libel pipeline with a stock price, and the EU sanctioning an Israeli NGO for petitioning an Israeli court.
The ones with something to lose by waiting reset the short ones, on the ridge and in Gaza and at the Treasury desk, because a fact established on the ground is the only kind that does not expire.
The Israel Brief is the Mitzpe Institute's read on Israel and the region — most mornings, Sunday through Thursday. More at mitzpe.org.