ISRAELI Defence Minister Yoav Gallant is threatening the Israeli Defence Forces will “continue operating with full military power” in Gaza after the “short pause” of the ceasefire.
 
Let’s hope Gallant is wrong, and the current ceasefire holds long enough to break the momentum of war.
 
But if Gallant’s soldiers do go back into battle, we can be sure they will be getting lots of advice. The Western powers want to tell the IDF how to do war, but nicer. Are their top military tips really any good?
 
British newspapers claim the SAS are on hand to offer counter-insurgency advice. But given that British forces essentially lost to the Taliban, and the  SAS are currently subject to an independent inquiry into whether their “night raids” during the Afghan conflict descended into murders which built Taliban support, this advice might not be useful.
 
More seriously, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to Netanyahu about “concrete steps that can and should be taken” to minimise civilian deaths. US officials would not reveal these secret methods, but officials briefed the New York Post on two techniques.

The first: keep on bombing — but use smaller bombs. The US sent Israel more, but smaller, bombs in an attempt to persuade the IDF to reduce their use of 2,000-pound devices.

But there is less enthusiasm in Israel than in the US for sizing down, and if you send a nation munitions, it is hard to specify how they use them. If you don’t want a country to drop bombs, don’t give them bombs.