There are some very strange happenings in the Middle East which underscore the historic shifts grumbling just beneath the surface, ready to break through.

Firstly, to set the stage we turn to Israel, which appears to be concealing an operation that has gone off the rails, and is not yielding any of the expected results—and in fact has done little more than turn the world against them, creating a shockwave of anti-Israeli fervor that will steer sentiment for generations.

As we now know, Israel has withdrawn many of its brigades from the north, citing ‘rest and rotation’ when in reality it appears to be ‘reconstitution’, as the brigades took major attritional losses. Now in the wake of that, the latest bombshell reports state that resistance fighters have re-infiltrated the entire north, leaving the map looking like that of below:

I myself was skeptical—could Israel really have abandoned the entire north after “claiming” to have captured it?

But here’s the double bombshell: even ISW admitted it:

For the Kagan-run institute to admit this is huge. Their report below:

What does this mean? Has Israel suffered a total defeat in the north? Or have they “cleansed” it of ‘Hamas’ and are now taking a victory lap? To be completely fair and unbiased, we can’t say for certain as there is a deliberate informational blackout, particularly given all the reports we’ve seen from CNN and co. which openly state nothing is allowed to be aired without the full editorial oversight and approval of the IDF.

All we can do is infer from a variety of objective observations, such as the distinct lack of any mass eliminations or captures of resistance fighters, which is very telling.

During the entire time, there have been increasingly urgent secret talks between the US and Israel, with the Biden administration pleading with Netanyahu to curb his assaults.

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In the meantime, Israel has continued to press into Khan Younis in the south. But yesterday they suffered what was unanimously called the biggest ‘tragedy’ of the entire conflict thus far. During one of the IDF’s routine mining operations, consisting of rigging explosives on civilian buildings, resistance fighters were able to trigger a detonation with dozens of IDF still inside the building:

This led to ~24 IDF killed in a single blast:

This is only a symbolic culmination of what appears to be turning into a fiasco. If I didn’t know any better, I would surmise that Israel’s operation is mirroring Ukraine’s doomed Khrynki assault: where an inability to admit grave miscalculation has led to a sunk cost fallacy induced comedy of errors. Israel obviously can’t pull out now to save face, so it almost leaves one with the impression they’re floundering around, secretly panicking internally as to what to do because they’ve reached the conclusion that ‘Hamas’ is an intractable shadow they cannot brute-force their way through.

Recall that just last month Kirby admitted that Hamas had not been attrited at all, and an Israeli reserve colonel gave a tearful account of piled up IDF bodies which seemed to imply that they are taking far heavier losses than they’re admitting to.

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Now, on top of the releases of soldiers and withdrawals of brigades, Israel has reportedly offered an unprecedented two-month pause in the fighting:

There is more and more commotion within society, disagreement and in-fighting in the government over what direction to take. Earlier in the week the Knesset erupted with angry parents of hostages who are outraged at the government’s inability to get them back or negotiate their release: