Israel foresees seven more months of war; Meta removes AI-generated influence campaigns

By Bloomberg

29 May 2024

Israel sees seven more months of war to defeat Hamas

Israel probably won’t be able to defeat Hamas before the end of the year, its national security adviser said, underscoring the difficulty the country faces in achieving its stated aim of crushing the Islamist group in Gaza.

“We have another seven months of fighting to deepen the achievement and attain what we define as the destruction of the governmental and military capabilities of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad,” Tzachi Hanegbi said on Wednesday in an interview with state broadcaster Kan. Islamic Jihad is a separate anti-Israel militant organisation that also has fighters in Gaza.

Hanegbi reiterated Israel’s position that the near eight-month war in the Palestinian territory was “justified” and “necessary” to preserve national security after the attacks by Hamas militants on 7 October, which killed about 1,200 people and abducted 250 others. The resulting conflict amounted to a battle with Iran, he said, which supports Hamas among other Islamist groups around the Middle East.

“Iran is a superpower that has sent its proxies to surround us in a sort of chokehold, in order to exhaust us,” Hanegbi said. “They know they are not going to conquer Tel Aviv, but they want to break us, they want us to lose our way of life. They want people to stop moving to Israel and want others to leave the country.”

His comments will do little to raise the spirits of mediators from the likes of the US and Qatar who would like Israel and Hamas to hammer out a ceasefire deal. Talks have been deadlocked for months, with the two sides far apart in their respective demands. Meanwhile, more than 35,000 Palestinians have died since the war began, according to health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza, while much of the enclave has been devastated by aerial and ground bombardments.

Israel says it has eliminated around 15,000 Hamas fighters during the campaign, but as many as 8,000 remain in the city of Rafah. Israeli tanks entered the centre of the southern Gazan town this week, as part of a long-planned incursion.

Hamas’ most senior figures — including its leader, Yahya Sinwar, and his military chief, Mohammed Deif — are at large and fighters have managed to regroup in parts of Gaza that the Israel Defense Forces cleared months ago.

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has never set a timeline for what he calls “total victory”, and Hanegbi said the army always stated 2024 would be a year of fighting, many analysts believe Hamas has been more resilient than the Israeli army expected.

Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the US and European Union, operates in a vast tunnel network that Israeli forces have struggled to destroy and can fire rockets into Israel, albeit with far less frequency than in the early days of the conflict.

The war has inflamed the region and led to widespread criticism of Israel. The International Court of Justice published a ruling last week that many countries interpreted as ordering a halt to military activities in Rafah. And the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as leaders of Hamas.

Meta removes AI-generated influence campaigns in China, Israel

Meta Platforms removed hundreds of Facebook accounts associated with covert influence campaigns from China, Israel, Iran, Russia and other countries, some of which used artificial intelligence tools to generate disinformation, according to the company’s quarterly threat report.

Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has seen threat actors rely on AI to produce fake images, videos and text to influence users on its sites. But the use of generative AI didn’t affect the company’s ability to disrupt those networks, Meta said on Wednesday in the report.

Among the disinformation campaigns, the company found a deceptive network from China sharing AI-generated poster images of a fictitious pro-Sikh movement, and an Israel-based network posting AI-generated comments praising Israel’s military under the pages of media organisations and public figures. The company said it removed many of those networks before they were able to build audiences among authentic communities.

“Right now we’re not seeing gen AI being used in terribly sophisticated ways,” Meta’s policy director of threat disruption, David Agranovich, said on Tuesday during a press briefing. Tactics such as creating AI-generated profile photos or using artificial intelligence to produce large volumes of spammy content, had not been effective so far, he said.

“But we know that these networks are inherently adversarial,” Agranovich said. “They’re going to keep evolving their tactics as their technology changes.”

Social media companies such as Facebook, ByteDance’s TikTok and Elon Musk’s X have struggled with the influx of fake and misleading AI-generated content on their sites. This year alone, doctored audio of US President Joe Biden and fake images of the Israel-Hamas conflict circulated on social media, gathering millions of views.

Brazil relocates ambassador from Israel amid diplomatic tension

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva relocated Brazil’s ambassador from Israel to another post after months of diplomatic tension over the country’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

Lula’s government said in an official decree that it had appointed Ambassador Frederico Meyer, who it had previously recalled to Brazil in February, to a role in Geneva, Switzerland.

The move marks a further cooling of relations between the two nations. Brazil has not had an ambassador in Tel Aviv since Meyer left amid a spat over Lula’s comments comparing Israel’s military actions to the killing of the Jewish population during the Holocaust.

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Lula unwelcome in the country and demanded apologies from both the president and Meyer.

Israel’s foreign affairs ministry said it had not yet received an official notification about the change, and that it will summon Brazil’s charge d’affaires for a meeting on the matter Thursday.

Read more: Colombia plans to open an embassy to Palestine in Ramallah

Lula has yet to go as far as Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, a fellow South American leftist who cut off diplomatic ties with Israel after accusing it of “genocide” earlier this month. Petro last week ordered his government to open an embassy in the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah.

The official decree does not name a replacement for Meyer. Brazil’s charge d’affaires to Israel will lead the embassy for an indefinite period.

Xi hosts Arab leaders as China’s ‘soft power’ expands in Mideast

President Xi Jinping will meet Arab leaders this week seeking deeper ties in a region where China does plenty of business — and increasingly diplomacy, too.

Xi will address the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in Beijing on Thursday with heads of state from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Tunisia among the attendees. Talks are likely to focus on fast-growing trade and investment, and regional security concerns amid the Israel-Hamas war.

As the Biden administration backs Israel in the conflict, China sees eye-to-eye with Arab nations, supporting an immediate ceasefire and recognition of a Palestinian state. That alignment is helping Beijing to extend its political sway in countries that until recently saw China chiefly as an economic partner — and win new allies in its global contest for influence with the US.

Xi’s visit to Saudi Arabia in late 2022 was hailed as a landmark by both countries. Last year, China followed up by brokering a surprise accord between the kingdom and Iran, the Islamic world’s biggest rivals. The détente has held up even amid the strains caused by the Gaza war, and there are signs it’s been followed by an acceleration of investment between China and the Middle East.

Beijing-based Lenovo Group announced a deal on Wednesday to sell $2-billion of convertible bonds to Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and build research and production facilities in the kingdom. State oil firm Saudi Aramco is in talks to buy a $1.5-billion stake worth in a Chinese petrochemical firm, while carmaker China FAW Group is part of a push to make electric vehicles in Egypt. UBS analysts estimate that growing Chinese ties to the Middle East could add more than $400-billion to global energy-related trade by 2030.

Outlining the meeting’s agenda at a briefing on Monday, Chinese vice foreign minister Deng Li cited a tenfold increase in trade with the Middle East over the past two decades.

For Beijing, the crucial import is oil. China gets more than one-third of its crude from members of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, with the lion’s share coming from Saudi Arabia.

In overall trade, the UAE — even though its economy is only half the size of Saudi Arabia’s — has become a bigger partner for China.

The UAE plays a “key role in the Belt and Road Initiative” — Beijing’s global infrastructure drive — and has more than 6,600 Chinese brands registered in the country, Bloomberg Intelligence wrote last week. By the end of 2022, which is as far as Beijing’s official data goes, the UAE had got about $12-billion in Chinese direct investment — four times as much as the Saudis.

While China’s economic and diplomatic weight in the region is rising, the US remains the key security partner for Gulf Arab states. It has major military bases in countries like Bahrain and Qatar and supplies defence technology.

White House says Israel’s Rafah strike doesn’t cross red line

The White House said an Israeli strike on an encampment in Rafah that left dozens dead was devastating but would not cause President Joe Biden to freeze additional arms shipments to the country.

“As a result of this strike on Sunday, I have no policy changes to speak to,” White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.

The US would be monitoring the investigation into the incident and expected Israel to learn lessons from the airstrike, Kirby said. But Kirby said the bombing — which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as a “tragic mistake” — was short of the large-scale military operation that the US has warned Israel would carry consequences.

“We don’t support, we won’t support, a major ground operation in Rafah, and we’ve again been very consistent on that,” Kirby said. “And the president said that, should that occur, then it might make him have to make different decisions in terms of support. We haven’t seen that happen.”

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said 45 people, including children, were killed and an additional 249 people were wounded in the strike, prompting condemnation from leaders around the globe. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for an immediate ceasefire in Rafah following the bombing, which came just days after the International Court of Justice called on Israel’s military to stop its offensive in the area.

US pier for Gaza aid removed for repairs after rough seas

The temporary pier the US military built to help deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza was being removed for repairs after damage from rough seas and turbulent weather, according to the Pentagon.

It would be towed to Ashdod in southern Israel for restoration, defence department spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters on Tuesday.

It was the latest setback for an improvised effort costing about $320-million that has had a limited effect on the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Biden ordered the construction of the pier as land crossings into Gaza remained constrained by fighting and pressure grew on his administration to do something about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the enclave. Much of the territory has been reduced to rubble since Israel began a campaign against Hamas militants on 7 October. DM

Read more in Daily Maverick: Israel-Palestine War

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