Mudguard

This is just getting ridiculous. Both whistleblowers just happened to die early deaths. Failure after failure with their aircraft. I hope law enforcement is looking into potential criminal wrongdoing with both things.

I'm interested in what benefits Google gets out of this. I had to click through several of the terms of service linked in the AlphaFold terms, and the most interesting terms to me were in the general Google Terms of Service section that governs the permission to use your content. Google states that you retain the rights to your content, but the terms let them potentially do a lot of stuff with it. One would be to help them improve AlphaFold's performance by outsourcing to the public data generation to help them evaluate their predictions. Users that publish a paper using the output of AlphaFold are supposed to cite a particular paper, giving Google an easy way to search for these papers. Good chance that the paper will measure the binding and dissociation constants, which Google can use to compare with their predicted Kd and Ka values. If the reseachers do any protein structure studies that would also be very useful. All this data can be used to help train the next generation of AlphaFold. I'm certain that they are doing this. Potentially they could license a contractor to work on derivative molecules for commercial use, but they might not be actively pursuing something like this at this time, since it's outside the scope of their main business. They do have a life sciences division called Verily though that could make use of this information.

That's interesting. Since Google is a for profit company, I wonder what type of license terms govern it's use. For example, if you enter in an interesting antibody/ligand pair that potentially has clinical and commercial significance, does Google and/or its partners have any ability to review the data you input into their model and do anything with it?

Good catch. I should have realized that from the background color behind the text in his post that it was a cut and paste job. I assume he's just a troll, so didn't bother engaging.

Very reasonable analysis, and I pretty much agree with everything he said. Unfortunately, near term, it doesn't look like a deal is going to be possible. They've been stuck at the same impasse for the last several months - temporary vs permanent ceasefire. Negotiations are back at square one, with no credible way to move either party off their positions. I think after Israel completes its Rafah operation, which could be completed in the next 2 or 3 months, they'll declare some sort of "victory", and would potentially agree to a permanent ceasefire then. However, I think the primary sticking point then will be the complete exit of the Israeli forces from Gaza. I don't think this will be acceptable to Israel, since it would clearly just lead to the immediate reconstitution of Hamas in Gaza. I'm not sure how long Hamas will hold to this requirement, but I don't think they'll give this term up for quite a while. If they hold out to 2026, there's a good chance that a more favorable government will take power and they can negotiate for better terms.

Yeah, I saw that. It's crazy. If they did something similar to pressure a US judge, that would be a criminal act under US law.

Depends on how you look at it. Israel isn't accepting the latest agreement, which sounds like it's different than the one they agreed to, but they are sending a team to negotiate. I'm not optimistic anymore though. Meanwhile, Rafah operations will still go ahead. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/live-updates-israel-urges-civilians-leave-eastern-rafah-cease-fire-hop-rcna150801

The problem is that there isn't much middle ground between temporary ceasefire and permanent ceasefire. It seems like it's an either or situation. Someone will have to give.

Aljazeera is claiming that the new proposal that was accepted by Hamas includes a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. If this is accurate, then the deal is DOA, and all this was a waste of time, and worse, was misleading and brought false hope to Palestinians in Gaza. There's zero chance that Israel would accept such terms and Hamas is well aware of it. But if this is the case, why haven't the other parties mentioned this yet? Not sure what to believe at the moment. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/5/6/israels-war-on-gaza-live-israel-pounds-rafah-as-truce-talks-stall

We need to see the terms of the deal that Hamas accepted. If's it's different than the proposal approved by Israel that they were considering last week, then it's really just a counterproposal, and Israel would be fully within their rights to reject the counterproposal. If it's the same as the one approved by Israel, well, that would look bad for Israel.

Hamas has apparently accepted a ceasefire proposal from Egypt and Qatar. No details yet on the ceasefire proposal. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-says-it-accepts-ceasefire-proposal-egypt-qatar-2024-05-06/#:~:text=CAIRO%2C May 6 (Reuters),Sign up here. If it's a temporary ceasefire for some of the hostages, say the 33 or so that were for the first phase, that wouldn't be surprising. I think a deal like this has potentially been on the table for a while. But if it's a temporary ceasefire for all the hostages, that would be really interesting to me. Would say a lot about the current state of Hamas if that's the deal. We'll have to see though what was actually accepted.

Technically, at least according to the NYT's account of a briefing from an Israeli military spokesman, Hamas attacked IDF soldiers near the crossing, but not the Kerem Shalom crossing itself. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/05/world/middleeast/hamas-rocket-kerem-shalom-israel.html Whether that's a good idea when it's predictable that Israel would close the crossing in response, probably not. On the other hand, since Hamas and Israel are at war, all Hamas fighters/terrorists and all IDF soldiers are legitimate targets. I don't think any civilians were injured in the attack.

I don't see anything in that article, which is essentially the same as all the others I've read recently, that suggests that the US is backing a permanent ceasefire. All I see is that the US has stated that Hamas should accept the last proposal from Israel, which is a trade of all hostages for a temporary ceasefire. The only thing the US has asked Israel to do is to protect/evacuate the civilians in Rafah before they commence major operations in Rafah. I also don't see anything that suggests that Netanyahu is considering accepting a permanent ceasefire. Acceptance of a permanent ceasefire would mean the end of his coalition, new elections, and the early end of his reign as prime minister.

Israel has been very clear about their goals in Rafah, their goals of "destroying Hamas", and that they plan to occupy Gaza indefinitely. With respect to Rafah, they claim that there are some remaining battalions that they want to dismantle. I should add though that I think it will be very difficult to declare victory, at least complete victory, without recovering all the hostages. Almost every time Netanyahu gives a speech it's about how they are going to achieve a great victory. Personally, I think it's laughable to call what they've done a victory, but it's obviously a part of his propaganda strategy. Dismantling the Rafah battalions, at least to an extent that they will declare the battalions dismantled, won't take more than a couple months, if they can operate freely in Rafah (bulk of civilians evacuated). It shouldn't be any different than what they've done in Gaza City and Khan Younis. It's clear that Netanyahu desperately wants to declare some sort of victory as soon as possible. He just can't stop talking about it, and he needs a political win. But I also agree that Netanyahu would like for the conflict, whether its with Hamas, Hezbollah, or some other party, to extend past 2026. Maybe he'll claim victory over the Hamas army/organized fighting force/whatever it's called, like how Bush prematurely declared victory on an aircraft carrier, and shift the narrative to rescuing the remaining hostages and hunting down Sinwar and other leaders still in Gaza during the indefinite occupation phase of his strategy. The resistance in Gaza post "victory" is likely to be very active, and maybe that'll be enough conflict for Netanyahu.

I agree that "defeated" is a fuzzy term. But it's clear that Israel is going to only "victory" after it goes into Rafah and conducts an operation there. I think that it would be difficult to declare victory if they don't kill or capture Sinwar.

Sinwar and other military leaders are still in Gaza. Also, if Hamas is functionally defeated in Gaza and rendered an underground resistance movement, it's not going to matter that much to Israel that a handful of political leaders have survived and are located outside of Gaza. If Israel really wants, they can then assassinate those leaders too. It's clear that they have no qualms about doing so.

This was never going to be a quick war, with the extensive tunnel systems, all the hostages, and the ability of Hamas terrorists to just put on civilian clothes and blend right back in with the civilian population. I agree that there will be a resistance in Gaza, whether it's residual Hamas members or a new organization, but the resistance isn't going to be the party in power in Gaza, at least not while Israel occupies Gaza. Yeah, the terrible Oct. 7th attack by Hamas, and the brutal response by Israel, just perpetuates the cycle of violence for at least several more generations. It's hard for me to see a good outcome from this. It seems like all the likely outcomes range from bad to worse.

OK. Do you think that Israel can defeat Hamas so that Hamas is no longer a power in Gaza? Just want to make sure this isn't a matter of semantics. To me, destroy and defeat are the same in this context.

I don't think Israel can actually eliminate every single member of Hamas. But I think they can functionally eliminate Hamas as a power in Gaza, and that they can eventually eliminate Sinwar and the other leadership that remains in Gaza. It's clear that Israel's goal is to destroy Hamas as a group functionally, and not literally every single member. Do you think Israel can functionally destroy Hamas? As for the negotiations, I think a short term deal for some, but not all, of the hostages is possible. Also, Israel has incentives to go through the motions with the negotiations, even if they know that it's ultimately pointless, in order to appease internal groups that are demanding that they do everything possible to get back the hostages. It's going to take a while to recover the hostages by force, so they are going to have to keep participating in these negotiations, while continually blaming Hamas for being unreasonable for rejecting their proposals, in order to keep these groups at bay.

To be clear, I don't support what Israel is doing in Gaza, but this is currently where I see things heading. Israel and Netanyahu in particular have every incentive to destroy Hamas, regardless of the cost to the Palestinian people. The only thing that would change this is if Israel agrees to a permanent ceasefire, which I don't see happening. Netanyahu's coalition would collapse if he tried going down that route, and there has been no indication that they are even willing to consider a permanent ceasefire.

What false premise? That Israel is going to destroy Hamas, which is their stated goal?

That's why Israel needs to occupy Gaza indefinitely, to continually suppress these new Hamas replacement groups. Israel is well aware of this. They have meaningless leverage, which is functionally no leverage. Hamas is facing an existential threat, and any meaningful leverage needs address that. Something that ensures the survival of the group, otherwise what is the point? Which is why I can't see Hamas accepting the current proposal. Why would they agree to a proposal that leads to their destruction?

The proposal will lead to the destruction of Hamas as an organization. Under the current proposal on the table now, the Hamas leadership currently outside of Gaza will live on, but be in charge of nothing. Israel's stated goal is to destroy Hamas, which they will be able to complete much more easily once they have all the hostages back. It will be trivial to flood all the tunnels, which they have already telegraphed that they want to do. After that, it will just be a matter of time for them to functionally eliminate Hamas from Gaza. They will have to essentially occupy Gaza indefinitely afterwards, which is something else they've stated that they will do. Sure, of course the US needs to work through Egypt and Qatar, because we don't have a direct line of communication with Hamas. But I don't think either Egypt or Qatar has meaningful leverage that they can apply to Hamas to force them to accept the current agreement that is being proposed.

Yeah, I edited my post to address that. If Israel's proposal included a term that allowed leadership to exit Gaza safely in return for the hostages, that would be something, although everything I've read suggests Sinwar has no interest in leaving and would prefer to be become a martyr. But if that's not in the proposal, it's meaningless if they move their HQ to Egypt if Israel just destroys Hamas after they get all their hostages back.

What leverage does Egypt and Qatar have that they are applying on Hamas? ETA: I don't see a new HQ as meaningful leverage when the proposed agreement leads to their destruction.