Joshua Keating
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Monday that Israel’s war against Hamas would be waged “until victory,” with no pause for a ceasefire, and he compared the fight to World War II and the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks in the U.S.
But while Israeli troops and tanks moved deeper into Gaza Monday, entering the perimeter of Gaza City, Netanyahu and his commanders have opted for something far short of the massive D-Day-style invasion many expected when Israel mobilized 300,000 reservists in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of Israeli citizens.
Israel’s choice of a more limited operation, at least for now, was prompted by a number of constraints, including a desire to win the release of as many Hamas-held hostages as possible, the need to keep troops in reserve for a possible second front with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and doubts from the White House about Israel’s initial plans. This operation could also limit the number of Israeli casualties in the dense urban terrain where Hamas has been preparing for battle for years.
But a smaller-scale offensive presents dilemmas of its own, in terms of military tactics and political fallout.
A smaller-scale but longer war
As of Monday, Israeli forces appeared to be approaching Gaza City from two directions, and for at least several hours they had blocked a key road from the north to the south. This suggests they may be trying to cut off Gaza City and are effectively preparing for a siege, rather than sending in the bulk of their troops.
In an interview with the Economist, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett favored this drawn-out approach, saying, “Hamas doesn’t expect this at all. It expects a ground invasion for three to six weeks.”
Rafael Cohen, a senior analyst at the RAND Corporation, told The Messenger that while Israeli forces are operating on the periphery of Gaza City, “It’s going to intensify” in the coming days.
“As they move into more densely populated areas and more built-up areas," Cohen said, "there's going to be a more intense firefight, particularly as they begin to meet increasing levels of resistance.”
A picture taken from the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip on October 30, 2023, shows smoke billowing during Israeli bombardment.
War in the tunnels
A primary goal of the operation is to destroy or at least substantially damage Hamas’s vast subterranean tunnel network, nicknamed the “Gaza Metro,” hundreds of miles of underground paths that the group uses to build and store weapons, and move undetected.
This will not be easy. For one thing, as the freed hostages have testified, a substantial number of the more than 200 captives held by Hamas are in these tunnels. For another, many of the tunnels run under heavily populated areas. In recent days, attention has focused on the Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility, which Israel says sits above an underground command center for Hamas. This has raised fears that Israel is making the case that the hospital, which still cares for hundreds of patients too ill to evacuate, and where tens of thousands of civilians are sheltering, is a legitimate military target.
Israel’s unprecedented air campaign of the past three weeks has targeted the tunnels, but if the IDF is intent on wiping out Hamas’s military infrastructure–and rescuing the hostages–its troops will have to enter the tunnels themselves.
The IDF has special units known as Samur, Hebrew for “weasel,” that are trained in tunnel warfare, but it’s a daunting challenge, as Daphne Richemond-Barak, a professor at Israel’s Reichman University and author of a book on tunnel warfare, told The Messenger recently. For a modern army like the IDF, fighting underground takes away “all the things that they're good at, all their sophisticated military capabilities are completely neutralized when they’re underground,” she said. “There's no more intelligence, no more surveillance, no more technology.”
Endgames
Despite the more limited operation, Netanyahu and other Israeli officials remain adamant that the goal remains the elimination of Hamas.
Analysts say it will be impossible to destroy Hamas as an ideology, and nearly impossible to destroy it completely as an organization. For one thing, Hamas has a substantial presence in the West Bank, and its political leaders are in Qatar. The example of the war against the Islamic State has been frequently invoked by Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders, but it’s worth remembering that the Islamic State is still active–albeit in a much-degraded form–in several countries.
Eliminating Hamas will likely mean removing it as the governing authority of Gaza and destroying its ability to launch rockets and ground attacks into Israel.
Cohen notes that to accomplish this goal, operations that are limited to Gaza City and the northern half of the strip won’t be enough.
The IDF has told Gazan civilians to flee to the south of the strip, and Netanyahu said Monday that there was “no reason for civilians to die” in Gaza, because safety awaits in the south.
As Cohen notes, “If they're really intent on destroying Hamas as an organization and its military capabilities, then eventually they're going to have to push southward.”
The ticking clock
Some Israeli officials now predict the war will last for several months, if not longer. Netanyahu has tried to set the stage for such a struggle, calling it Israel’s “second war of independence.” But while a longer, more limited operation may put less military strain on the IDF, it would be more difficult politically for Netanyahu and his government. According to a poll released Friday by the Israeli newspaper Maariv, only 29 percent of Israelis favored a large-scale ground invasion, down from 65 percent on Oct. 19.
Israel has also not yet presented a specific plan for how Gaza will be governed, assuming Hamas is gone. On Sunday, the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, ruled out his government taking control of Gaza–an option that has been promoted by a number of Israeli politicians–without a comprehensive deal for Palestinian statehood.
“The Israelis have said they’re not interested in occupying [Gaza] but they might end up in a place where they’re occupying, at least temporarily, because there’s no better option,” said Cohen.
And while the U.S. has so far stood by its longtime ally–delivering munitions and vetoing calls for a ceasefire at the U.N.–the Biden administration has also become more pointed in its calls for Israel to respect international law and take measures to protect civilians.
Meanwhile, as the toll of the war mounts for the people of Gaza — now past 8,000, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry — international support for Israel’s war is already waning. That support may ebb further, even in a “limited” war, as the conflict drags on.
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