EsadeGeo - EsadeGeo Daily Digest, 11/10/2023

Financial Times - Mehul Srivastava / Israel readies for Gaza mission as death toll mounts

• The death toll in Israel has reached 1,200 as the country discovered new evidence of mass killings by Palestinian militant group Hamas and prepared for a large-scale operation in Gaza following an unprecedented attack at the weekend.

• About 2,700 people are wounded, Jonathan Conricus, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, said in a statement posted early on Wednesday on X, formerly known as Twitter.

• He warned that the number would continue to rise as authorities uncovered more civilians killed in the unprecedented incursion on Saturday, in which Hamas militants over-ran towns in southern Israel.

• More Israelis have been killed in this single assault than in the five years of the second intifada, a cycle of violence that began in 2000 and included bus bombings, rocket attacks and shootings.

Related article: The Guardian - Bethan McKernan and Quique Kierszenbaum / ‘Emphasis is on damage, not accuracy’: ground offensive into Gaza seems imminent

The New York Times - Constant Méheut / Russia Is Denied a Seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council

• Russia failed to regain a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council after a majority of countries in the General Assembly voted against it on Tuesday, a sign that support for international efforts to isolate Moscow for its war in Ukraine remains significant after nearly 20 months of fighting.
• Russia lost the vote for the two council seats allocated to Eastern European countries — to Albania and Bulgaria, both supporters of Ukraine. Still, Moscow managed to secure 83 votes in its favor — just under half of the assembly — indicating its hopes the international community will move on from the war are not entirely unfounded.
• “It does support the Russian argument that they are not quite as isolated at the U.N. as they seem,” said Richard Gowan, a United Nations analyst for the International Crisis Group.
• The vote was the latest test of a Western-led campaign to diplomatically isolate Moscow for its assault on Ukraine. Since the start of the full-scale invasion last year, nearly 150 countries have backed United Nations resolutions demanding that Russia unconditionally withdraw from Ukraine, and several dozen nations have imposed economic sanctions on Moscow.

Politico - Stuart Lau, Veronika Melkozerova, Paul McLeary and Laura Kayali / NATO forced to do the splits over support for both Israel and Ukraine

• Defense ministers flying into the Belgian capital for a NATO meeting starting Wednesday were expecting to spend their time backing Ukraine — instead, they find their intel briefings full of a region mostly forgotten in the past two years: the Middle East.
• From the White House’s new military support for Israel to emergency meetings across European capitals, to a fumbled EU response to the crisis, NATO allies are grappling with a renewed sense of urgency over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hamas' surprise attacks on Israel over the weekend have led to the Israeli government's vow of total retaliation in the Gaza Strip, with a record number of 300,000 reservists already drafted within 48 hours.
• The timing is an inconvenience for the Ukrainians, who aim to galvanize further support from NATO countries in what will be the first defense ministers' meeting following a NATO leaders' summit in July that saw beefed-up pledges for Ukraine's security and military support.
• Oleksandr Merezhko, chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s committee on foreign policy, acknowledged the "fears" among his compatriots over whether the West can stay focused on Russia's invasion while also dealing with the ongoing Israeli-Hamas situation.

Financial Times - Richard Milne / Finland investigates potential sabotage to Baltic gas pipeline

• Helsinki is investigating whether sabotage caused a leak in a Baltic Sea gas pipeline and a break in a data cable between Finland and Estonia. In recent days, Finland and Estonia have reported a possible leak to the 77 km-long pipeline across the Gulf of Finland between the two countries, which opened in 2020.

• Sauli Niinistö, Finland’s president, said the damage to the pipeline and cable was down to “external activity” but that the precise cause “is not yet known”. Foreign minister Elina Valtonen later on Tuesday said the two undersea links “have probably been damaged on purpose”.

• The potential sabotage echoes last year’s explosions in the Baltic Sea, which destroyed the twin Nord Stream pipelines that connected Germany to Russia.

• The president said he had spoken to Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary-general, about the damage. Finland, which shares a 1,300km border with Russia, became the latest member of the Western military alliance in April, upending decades of non-aligned status after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Estonia has been a Nato member since 2004. 

Our opinions reads for today:

• Foreign Affairs - Suzanne Maloney / The end of America’s exit strategy in the Middle East

• Hareetz - Amira Hass / Arriving again at the cycle of vengeance