Four pings on the Gaza war as climax in Rafah nears

These pings will be short.  Basically, I’m doing little more than teeing up posts on X/Twitter from the last week.  As each day gives hindsight on the day before, we see the signal of what’s going on emerge more clearly from the background noise, and find both concern and hope renewed.

The last comprehensive(-ish) summary is this one, from 9 May 2024.

At that point we were aware that the Biden administration had suspended a shipment of air-delivered bombs to Israel.  The shipment involved 2,000-lb and 500-lb bombs, which had been approved for shipment in March 2024 and were actually in fulfillment of a sales contract from 2008.  They weren’t part of the aid package Congress voted on for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan.  The reason for the suspension, according to the administration,