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Israel touts high-tech evacuation plan amid rising Gaza death toll

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Israel touts high-tech evacuation plan amid rising Gaza death toll

Israel has defended its conduct of war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip by touting a high-tech evacuation plan for civilians, amid pressure from allies to reduce the number of casualties in the besieged coastal enclave.

The Israeli military’s ground offensive against the Palestinian militant group is turning to the southern part of the strip that is now home to about 80 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3mn population.

Israeli officials say they are adopting a different approach during this phase of the war to the one used in the north, where air strikes and then a ground invasion by the Israel Defense Forces led to the deaths of thousands of civilians.

The way “we’re going to operate [in southern Gaza] is going to be probably a bit different”, IDF spokesperson Richard Hecht told journalists on Monday.

“We need the time to defeat Hamas, and if we don’t make sure we make these efforts in the humanitarian sphere, in minimising the deaths of civilians, we may lose our legitimacy.” 

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But with hundreds of people reported killed in Gaza despite the new high-tech measures, Israel’s evacuation plans have been criticised.

Richard Ponzio, a former adviser at the US state department and a senior fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Centre think-tank, called the measures “woefully insufficient given the severe effects on civilians . . . since the resumption of air strikes and overall fighting”.

Civilians have borne the brunt of the war that was triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, when militants killed 1,200 people and took about 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

Israeli officials’ estimates of how many people have been killed in the enclave since the war began appear in line with figures issued by the Hamas-run Gaza health authority, which says more than 15,800 have died.

But the Israeli officials say that a third of those deaths — more than 5,000 — were militant combatants, resulting in a ratio of two civilians killed for every fighter.

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Gaza health officials do not distinguish between combatants and civilians but say about 70 per cent of the dead and wounded are women and children.

Israeli soldiers in southern Israel, near the border with Gaza, on Monday © Amir Cohen/Reuters

Israel’s western allies have denounced the toll on ordinary Gazans as excessive, with US vice-president Kamala Harris insisting over the weekend that “Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians”.

The Israeli military says Hamas embeds itself in heavily populated areas, but insists it is trying to avoid civilian casualties.

It does this from a military base in Be’er-Sheva, 40km from Gaza, where Israeli soldiers and reservists process information on population movements inside the enclave using data from mobile phone, radio and television signals, as well as open-source information from local Telegram groups.

This helps generate a coloured map showing the projected population density of Gaza’s residential areas. 

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The fast-changing map is used by the IDF to issue evacuation orders to civilians, according to Israeli officials.

Localised evacuations have been introduced in southern Gaza since the collapse of a week-long Israel-Hamas truce on Friday. It is a different method to that used by the Israeli military in northern Gaza, when civilians were given a sweeping order to leave.

“Currently our operations are much more precise,” said a senior IDF official. “The efforts of evacuation are much more precise [and] we’re taking much more time to make sure the efforts are effective.”

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A block map sent to civilians by the Israeli military is supposed to help them move to areas deemed safer by the IDF, in addition to evacuation warnings delivered by leaflets, phone calls and messages.

But with many civilians unable to access the internet, aid workers have questioned whether people can view the IDF’s online map.

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The approach to evacuations is unusual, some experts say. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen an attempt to issue an evacuation order of this granularity and complexity in a highly dynamic military and kinetic environment,” said Hardin Lang, vice-president at Refugees International, a non-governmental organisation, and a former UN official.

UN officials have disputed the notion that anywhere in the strip is protected, given that Israeli strikes have hit hospitals, schools and shelters. “There is no safe place in Gaza,” UN human rights chief Volker Türk said on Sunday.

A senior IDF official said: “I won’t tell you we’re not doing mistakes. This is part of the challenge of war.”

Gaza residents say Israeli evacuation warnings are often issued at very short notice.

Hossam Fatehi, a father of five displaced to near the city of Khan Younis in the south of the enclave, said he and his family scarcely had time to flee a tower block after a warning — which came from screaming residents contacted by the IDF — before bombing started.

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“We heard the sound of breaking glass and shrapnel,” he said. “I was looking around and behind me to check if one of us was killed or injured. I didn’t think we would survive.” 

Gaza civil defence said about 20 Israeli strikes destroyed six towers in the development where Fatehi and his family, including his elderly mother, had been staying with relatives.

Ponzio said continuing civilian casualties in Gaza would heighten the pressure on Washington to rein in Israel. The death toll “steps up the pressure on the Biden administration to take more serious action to pressure Israel back to the negotiating table”, he said.

Additional reporting by Heba Saleh in Cairo and Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv

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Big Oil calls on Kamala Harris to come clean on her energy and climate plans

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Big Oil calls on Kamala Harris to come clean on her energy and climate plans

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The US oil industry and Republicans are demanding Kamala Harris clarify her energy and climate policy, as the Democratic candidate tries to please her progressive base without alienating voters in shale areas like Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state.

On Thursday, the vice-president said she no longer supported a ban on fracking, the technology that unleashed the shale revolution. But Harris’s reversal has not quelled attacks from Donald Trump or US executives that she would damage the country’s oil and gas sector.

The heads of the US’s two biggest oil lobby groups said the Democratic candidate must also say whether she would keep or end a pause on federal approvals for new liquefied natural gas plants, and whether she supported curbs on drilling imposed by the Biden administration.

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“Based on what we know of her past positions, the bills that she has sponsored, and her past statements she’s taken a pretty aggressively anti-energy and anti-oil and gas industry stand,” said Anne Bradbury, head of the American Exploration and Production Council.

“These are significant and major policy questions that impact every American family and business, and which voters deserve to understand better when making their choice in November,” she said.

Mike Sommers, chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, Big Oil’s most powerful lobby group, said Harris should say whether she would stick with Biden administration policies that had unleashed “a regulatory onslaught the likes of which this industry has never seen”.

Trump, the Republican candidate, has accused Harris of plotting a “war on American energy” and has repeatedly blamed her and President Joe Biden for high fuel costs in recent years.

On Thursday, he vowed to scrap Biden administration policies that “distort energy markets”. The former president has called climate change a hoax and his advisers have said he would gut Biden’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act.

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The debate over Harris’s energy policy comes as she and Trump court blue-collar workers in Pennsylvania, a huge shale gas producer that employs 72,000 workers — a potentially decisive voting group in a state Biden won narrowly in 2020.

Harris said in 2019 that she supported a fracking ban but told CNN on Thursday she had ditched that position and the US could have “a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking”.

US oil and gas production has reached a record high under Biden, even as clean energy capacity has expanded rapidly.

But gas executives in particular have been alarmed at a federal pause on building new LNG export plants, which supply customers from Europe to Asia, saying the policy will stymie further US shale output.

Toby Rice, chief executive of Pennsylvania-based EQT, the US’s largest natural gas producer, said Harris should lift the restrictions, which he argued would compromise energy security.

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“Ignoring her anti-fracking statement four years ago for a second, can we talk about the recent LNG Pause that was put in place this year?”, he said. “This is a policy that has received massive criticism from all sides — our allies, industry and environmental champions . . . a step backwards for climate and American energy security.”

While Biden put climate at the centre of his and Harris’s 2020 White House campaign, Harris has been largely silent, and made only a passing reference to climate change in her speech at the Democratic convention.

“It looks like the Harris campaign has concluded that it’s safer to avoid antagonising producers or climate activists by skirting these issues entirely,” said Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners.

Climate-focused voters are less vexed than energy executives by the lack of explicit policy from Harris.

“Let’s be clear: the most important climate policy right now is defeating Donald Trump in November,” said Cassidy DiPaola of Fossil Free Media, a non-profit organisation. “All the wonky policy details in the world won’t matter if climate deniers control the White House.”

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Last week the political arms of the League of Conservation Voters, Climate Power and the Environmental Defense Fund unveiled a $55mn advertising campaign backing Harris in swing states, focused on economic rather than climate issues.

In contrast, Trump has courted oil bosses who are backing his pledge to slash regulation and scrap clean energy subsidies. His campaign received nearly $14mn from the industry in June, according to OpenSecrets, almost double his oil haul in May.

Additional reporting by Sam Learner

Climate Capital

Where climate change meets business, markets and politics. Explore the FT’s coverage here.

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Why the U.S. isn't ready for wars of the future, according to experts

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Why the U.S. isn't ready for wars of the future, according to experts

AI and technology will be at the center of modern warfare, experts say.

Anton Petrus


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Anton Petrus

Earlier this month, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, and the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, wrote an article for Foreign Affairs arguing that the future of warfare is here.

They say that the U.S. is not ready for it.

Their article opens with Ukraine and describes warfare that features thousands of drones in the sky, as AI helps soldiers with targeting and robots with clearing mines.

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The authors argue technological developments have changed warfare more in the past several years than the decades — spanning from the introduction of the airplane, radio and mechanization to the battlefield. And while this new tech has been used minimally in current conflicts, it is only the beginning.

“Today, what we’re experiencing is the introduction of drones on the ground and drones at sea, and also driven by artificial intelligence and the extraordinary capability that that’s going to bring,” General Milley told NPR.

“Now, it’s not here in full yet, but what we’re seeing are snippets, some movie trailers, if you will, of future warfare. And you’re seeing that play out in Gaza. You’re seeing it play out in Ukraine. You’re seeing it play out elsewhere around the world.”

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Evolution on the battlefield

Schmidt says that this transition is going to happen much quicker than some may expect.

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“Autonomy and abundance are going to transform wars very, very quickly,” he told NPR.

“The only reason it hasn’t happened is, thank goodness, the U.S. is not at war, [but] others are. If you study Ukraine, you see a glimpse of the future. Much of the Kursk invasion that recently happened was due to their ability to use short and mid-range drones to support combined operations on the ground.”

Now that the human element of physically being on a battlefield can be replaced by remote operations, Schmidt argues that this will set a new, more precise method of fighting that would also be dramatically less expensive than traditional methods.

“I’m worried, of course, that this will ultimately set a new standard and actually lower the cost of war. But if you think about it, this technology is going to get invented one way or the other, and I’d like it to get invented under U.S. terms.”

Feeling underprepared

Both Milley and Schmidt say that even if major efforts are made to address this change, the red tape involved with approvals from the Pentagon make it difficult to take quick, effective action.

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“Not even the president of the United States can fix the procurement process of the Pentagon,” Schmidt said.

“The procurement process is designed for weapon systems that take 15 years. In the Ukraine situation, innovation is occurring on a three to six-week timeline, and we need to find a way to get the Pentagon on that tempo. The only way to do that is with other authorities and other approaches, and with an understanding that you don’t design the product at the beginning and then develop it over five years. You do it incrementally, which is how tech works.”

Milley agrees that in order to keep up, entire systems of operating within the military will need to be revolutionized.

“We are in the midst of really fundamental change here. And then from that, you have to have an operational concept. And then from that, you’ve got to identify the attributes of a future force. And then from that, change the procurement system in order to build the technological capabilities, modify the training, develop the leaders, et cetera. Our procurement systems need to be completely overhauled and updated.”

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Donald Trump says he will vote against abortion rights in Florida

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Donald Trump says he will vote against abortion rights in Florida

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Donald Trump said he would vote against an amendment to Florida’s state constitution guaranteeing abortion rights, raising the stakes on an issue that is mobilising Democrats and threatening his White House bid.

The former Republican president had sent mixed signals and avoided taking a stance on the proposed amendment, which will appear on the state ballot in November’s election.

But on Friday, he told Fox News that he would be voting “no” on the measure, which would protect abortion rights until viability and negate a law signed by Republican governor Ron DeSantis in Trump’s home state that bans abortions after six weeks of gestation.

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Trump said that while he disagreed with a six-week ban because “you need more time”, Democrats had “radical” policies on abortion. “It is just a ridiculous situation where you can do an abortion in the ninth month,” he said.

The former president has been caught between the need to maintain the support of staunchly conservative, religious voters who are opposed to abortion, and the political imperative of winning over moderate and independent voters who favour abortion rights.

Trump and other Republicans have been on the defensive over abortion ever since the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, including three justices he appointed during his presidency, overturned the right to an abortion nationally in 2022. That has prompted Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country to pass increasingly strict abortion laws, including the six-week abortion ban in Florida.

Opinion polls consistently show that the majority of Americans oppose such strict measures, and Democrats, including Trump’s rival in the race for the White House, US vice-president Kamala Harris, have relentlessly pounded Trump on abortion rights — and raised concerns that other reproductive practices, including in vitro fertilisation and contraception, could be at risk if he is re-elected.

Earlier this week, Trump had scrambled to say that he would ensure funding for IVF procedures, and on Thursday he had suggested that in Florida he would vote to make sure that abortion was not limited to the first six weeks of pregnancy.

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But that comment triggered a backlash from the right, forcing him to clarify his position opposing the amendment on Friday.

Harris said in a statement that with his comments on Friday to Fox News, Trump had “just made his position on abortion very clear: he will vote to uphold an abortion ban so extreme it applies before many women even know they are pregnant”.

“I trust women to make their own healthcare decisions and believe the government should never come between a woman and her doctor,” Harris added.

Trump’s struggles to define his positions on reproductive rights come after his campaign attacked Harris for changing stances on a number of issues, including healthcare, energy and immigration, in order to appeal to centrist voters.

Trump’s latest comments on abortion came hours before he was set to address a national conference for Moms for Liberty, a conservative women’s group, in Washington. The Florida-based political organisation was formed to protest Covid-19 pandemic mask and vaccine mandates and now advocates to stop public schools from teaching about LGBT+ identities and structural racism, among other issues.

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Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of the group, told the Financial Times earlier on Friday that Trump “really understands and cares about parents and parental rights” and urged anyone who had “an issue” with his stance on abortion to look at the Democratic party’s positions.

“Just wait until you see what the Harris-[Tim] Walz ticket, how anti-life they are,” Justice said. “People need to understand, we need to move our country forward, we need to unite to do that, and if there is anything that we can come together on, it should be our children and their health and safety and development.”

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