Almost four weeks into the nightmare of the Gaza war, which still threatens to expand into an even broader regional war, it feels like we have to pinch ourselves to make sure that this is truly the new reality. The change wrought by the war is total: in losses of life and in damage, in anxieties, in the country’s agenda and in the total upending of old political conventions from every possible aspect. The war in Gaza is already longer than the Yom Kippur War, to which it is often compared. And as opposed to that war, no decisive end, point of reversal or even a cease-fire look to be on the horizon.

In the Israeli media, an extensive discussion is underway about whether this is a war for survival. That appears to be an inaccurate description, because neither Hamas or even Hezbollah poses an immediate existential danger to Israel, which still possesses significant military and economic force. Nevertheless, this is a war of no choice. In 2011, the former head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, referred, on his retirement, to the dispute over an Israeli-initiated attack against Iran’s nuclear project. Wars, he maintained then, should start only when the sword is on your neck. In the case of Hamas’ attack on October 7, the sword was brandished first by the enemy and shed much blood, of civilians even more than of soldiers.

Israel found itself in a terrorist assault from Gaza when it was immersed in a deep domestic crisis and headed by a sputtering leadership. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is meant to be leading the country, is a haunted politician facing the end of his career, with the present troubles compounding the serious criminal entanglement into which he maneuvered himself with his own hands. Netanyahu does not enjoy the public’s confidence, and most of his efforts are invested in his personal survival. Despite the sweeping public support for the offensive thrust that is intended to deliver a brutal blow to Hamas and help return the hostages, it’s not clear whether the entry of the ground forces into northern Gaza will necessarily advance the realization of the high bar of expectations Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the top ranks of the Israel Defense Forces imparted to the citizenry. Their promises to eradicate Hamas are rhetorical declarations, and how they will be translated into deeds has yet to be seen.

The bitter blow we took at the start of the war ostensibly put an end to the years-long debate over whether a ground maneuver is needed in a war. After Operation Defensive Shield, the military operation in the West Bank in 2002, at the height of the second intifada (the operation was an important operational success), Israel refrained from executing long and aggressive ground moves in subsequent wars – in Lebanon (2006) and in the Gaza Strip (multiple limited operations). Various Israeli governments were skeptical about the skills of the land forces and were apprehensive about the impact that heavy losses of life would have on public opinion. At most, the IDF made do with symbolic moves, aimed at bolstering the public’s confidence in its capability, and then thrust for a quick end to the fighting.

This time, the consensus in the political and security leadership, and also apparently the stance of the majority of the public, is that it is necessary to defeat Hamas and that this cannot be done from the air, but requires the massive implementation of a maneuvering ground force. The sheer number of people murdered on the first day of the war seems to have immunized the public against fears of the additional price. Yet even so, the gradual entry of the brigade combat teams into the heart of Hamas’ infrastructure is also exacting a price from the IDF, one which could rise if the enemy sees that its key operational assets are being degraded and begins to hurl additional forces into its defensive efforts. For the parents of IDF combat troops who are in the Gaza Strip, this is a period of acute, unceasing worry. The parents – the soldiers of the last generation – are aware of the dangers entailed in movement in an urban environment, partially destroyed, with Hamas forces mostly hiding in a ramified network of subterranean tunnels.

The brigades on the ground are working in high cooperation with the Israel Air Force, which is attacking targets on a tremendous scale and is seeking to remove threats to the armored and infantry columns, even at relatively small distances of safety. Great destruction and killing are taking place here, and it also affects Palestinians who couldn’t or didn’t have time to leave the areas of hostilities in the northern Strip. The images of this destruction, in turn, are diminishing international support for Israel, despite the memory of the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on October 7.

The ground operation continues to take place amid an intentional fog of battle. The IDF is not presenting detailed arrows to show the movements of its troops – the maps being published in the media are based on estimates. It’s known that several divisional forces attacked Gaza City from the north and from the east. Published photographs show Israeli forces on the Gaza shoreline, meaning that there is an attempt at encirclement from the west as well. In the first days, the focus was on hitting the protective shell of Hamas’ defenses. Now it looks like there is penetration inward, into the urban area.

The defensive tunnels pose a problem for the attacking force. Hamas continues to operate mainly as a guerrilla force, striking on the surface and then disappearing immediately beneath it. In places where there is a direct clash, the Palestinians are sustaining large-scale losses. The aerial bombardments are bringing about numerous casualties among them, especially when air force bombs encounter Hamas underground ammunition depots.

The picture that Hamas’ commanders have is probably incomplete. The communications with their forces has been partially stymied, and many intermediate-rank commanders have been killed. The leadership is for the most part surviving, in Gaza, in Lebanon and in Qatar. At this stage the organization does not appear to be suffering from a significant shortage of rockets, as it continues to orchestrate volleys at the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and the coastal plain in the afternoons and evenings.

At the request of the United States, Israel this week allowed extensive humanitarian aid to enter the southern Gaza Strip. Despite the preoccupation with the issue of the supply of fuel to Gaza, security sources in Israel say that this is a less critical issue than it had seemed to be earlier. Hamas has relatively large stores of fuel, and even if it steals some of the humanitarian shipments, that is not what will decide the war.

What Hamas truly wants is a cease-fire in return for the release of the hostages who have foreign passports or dual citizenship. The organization is taking note of the international interest in freeing the foreign nationals, and is trying to press for a deal that will buy it a temporary respite from the military pounding. The organization likely assesses that Israel will have a hard time renewing the offensive afterward, amid growing international reservations and pressure from the Israeli public to arrive at a deal for the release of the rest of the hostages as well.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday expressed support for a “pause” in the fighting that will “give time to get the prisoners [hostages] out.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is due to visit Israel on Friday and is expected to meet with the war cabinet, will set forth the American position in greater detail. The support – both diplomatic and in the security realm – the United States is granting Israel is huge, and it’s arriving at the hardest time for the country. But with the aid come demands: to respect the international rules of war and to bolster the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

World-class achievement
On Friday afternoon, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah is scheduled to deliver his first speech since the start of the war. For several days, the organization’s media outlets have been relentlessly building up expectations for the speech. As Israel’s military operation expands, so too do Hamas’ entreaties to Hezbollah to demonstrate the required solidarity and fully enter the war. The view in the Israeli security establishment is that Nasrallah, in consultation with his Iranian patrons, will be the one to make the final decision on this issue. Tehran considers Nasrallah an expert on Israeli policy, and will heed his advice.

Iran and Hezbollah didn’t take advantage of the propitious moment that Hamas created for them on October 7 and did not join in the assault against Israel that day, as Hamas’ leaders in Gaza perhaps expected they would. The Shi’ite axis views Hamas and Islamic Jihad as assets, and is pleased to assist them in the struggle against Israel. But it’s not certain they want to risk vast damage in Lebanon and a serious blow to Hezbollah if it pushes Israel when its back is against the wall.

Nasrallah’s dilemma becomes more acute in light of the operational situation on the Israel-Lebanon border. In the first weeks, Hezbollah’s anti-tank missiles hit several Israel tanks along the border. Since then, the IDF has improved its defensive behavior and, more crucially, has honed its offensive response. A professional interplay of intelligence and firepower led to massive damage on a large number of squads that fired anti-tank missiles and mortars. The estimate of Hezbollah dead is already approaching 60, along with Palestinian terrorists who were killed. (The IDF stated on Thursday that another Shi’ite militia, the Imam Hossein Division, which Iran operated in Syria, is also taking part in the Lebanon clashes.)

Israel’s operational achievement is intensifying the pressure on Nasrallah to take action. It’s likely that he will try to look for a resounding response strike against Israel, possibly even before the speech. This brings to mind the attack on the Israeli missile boat INS Hanit on the third day of the 2006 Lebanon war. At midday, the air force bombed a group of buildings located in Dahiyeh, the Shi’ite neighborhood in south Beirut, that housed Hezbollah offices and apartments. That evening, Nasrallah delivered a speech from his bunker, in which he announced that Hezbollah had hit a Navy vessel off the coast of Beirut.

Will Nasrallah’s speech, or a serious military strike on his part, necessarily lead to a regional war? An analysis of the considerations of each side would seem to favor caution on the part of Iran and Hezbollah, not least because of the formidable American presence in the region and Biden’s threats against the Tehran regime. But what’s clear is that the gamble is very large, and with it increase the prospects that things will explode as a result of an uncontrolled escalation, even if that is not deliberately intended.

The Iranians are already stepping up the attacks on Israel via the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and are threatening to open another front with the aid of militias in Iraq and Syria. In an unprecedented move, the Houthis this week fired a ballistic missile with a 400-kilogram warhead 1,600 kilometers. Israel’s Arrow 2 system intercepted it successfully, a first-ever, world class achievement of its type, while an F-35 warplane shot down cruise missiles. Still, despite the clear provocations, Israel is not attacking Yemen for the time being. It’s apparently a question of priorities. Israel is focusing on Gaza, and also on Lebanon when necessary. The United States will assist it in defending from the south, and could also consider attacking there.

The cooperation with the United States, which is diverting defense systems to assist the Sunni states in the region as well, actually paints a more optimistic picture for the region after the war. Iran, with its offensive moves using proxies, is sharpening the danger it poses. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates will all need the Americans on the day after the war in order to defend against that threat. An important place in that regional alliance could still be reserved for Israel, depending on its ability to score achievements against Hamas and, if needed, also against Hezbollah.

But that day is not yet here. In the meantime, Jordan and Bahrain have recalled their ambassadors from Israel. Egypt is especially worried: by the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, by the danger of Israel trying to force hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees into Sinai (an idea being mulled openly by lawmakers and cabinet ministers) and by the damage Hamas could cause it. The regime of Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi abhors the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas in particular, viewing them as a concrete danger. But it cannot act against them during a tough war against Israel, as Egyptian public opinion supports them enthusiastically and condemns Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Fewer combat limitations
Blinken’s visit to Israel will ratchet up the tension within which Netanyahu is now operating. On the one hand, he very much needs the Americans to assist in the war effort in Gaza and perhaps also in Lebanon. The Biden administration is promising urgent security aid worth $14 billion and has already supplied a large part of the 3,000 tons of materiel that has arrived in Israel in an airlift and by sea since the start of the war. On the other hand, the Americans will ask for a quid pro quo in Gaza (in the form of restraint) and especially in the West Bank: in the first stage, they want the release of the taxes that Israel collects for the Palestinian Authority, which Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has irresponsibly frozen; in the second – almost immediate – stage, they expect Netanyahu to renew his support for the two-state solution and to promote moves that will abet this in the West Bank.

That’s not what the far-right parties in Netanyahu's coalition want to see. The Hardalim (Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, nationalists) and their allies see the war as a propitious moment, some of them even speaking of it as a godsend. Thus, while Hardali officers and soldiers are showing great dedication in Gaza, their camp's extremists are running wild across the hills of the West Bank. It’s easy to detect the fingerprints of Smotrich and his cohorts in events in the executive branch: the attempt to torpedo the transfer of the tax funds to the Palestinian Authority (even though Defense Minister Gallant and the IDF warned that this could ignite a conflagration in the West Bank), the transfer of coalition funds to the Haredim and the settlers, and heaping obstacles in the way of the efforts by the Shin Bet and the IDF to quell Jewish violence in the occupied territories.

The Hardali influence is also evident in the military sphere. For example, it’s affecting the dispute over the limits of necessary force in the fighting itself. Here the fault lines lie closer to the center of the political arena. The prevailing allegation on the right is that for years, from fear of the international court in The Hague and under the influence of liberal ideals, the IDF has accepted exaggerated limitations on its use of force in the wars in Lebanon and Gaza (there are also allegations about the rules of engagement in the West Bank). Supposedly, the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas in the communities around the Gaza Strip and in the Nova party ought to liberate the IDF from those constraints; because we are dealing with an ISIS-like enemy, the right wing argues, it can be fought by every available means, without relating in the least to the danger that uninvolved civilians will be hurt.

In practice, the IDF has in any case shed a good many of the limitations it abided by in the past. That has to do not only with the October 7 massacre, but also with the stubborn fighting that Hamas is waging from deep within the civilian population in Gaza. This time there is no “roof knocking” procedure, which warns civilians who are near a military site or a Hamas commander to leave the area before an imminent attack. Israel told civilians in the north of the Strip to move to the area south of Wadi Gaza. After most of them left, the army is now operating with less caution. At the same time, IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi is not making militant speeches to the soldiers and officers about overwhelming firepower or about revenge but is taking a businesslike line. However, there are officers in the reserves (such as Maj. Gen. Yiftah Ron-Tal) and also in the career army (such as the head of the Manpower Directorate, Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor) who are urging a fundamental change of the rules of the game in combatting terrorism.

In another matter, the Hardalim have lost, and hopefully it will be a resounding defeat. For years, their rabbis fought a rearguard battle, in which retired secular generals also took part, against the integration of women as combat personnel. For the vast majority of the public, that debate ended on October 7. Even though women were attacked horrifically by Hamas, and even though many female soldiers were killed, taken captive or are still missing, the huge involvement of women as frontline combatants terminated the argument. Women – in the mixed Caracal unit and in the Home Front Command, pilots and drone operators, adjutancy and logistics officers – took part in the battles and fought courageously. That doesn’t mean that the IDF will open every last company in the Golani infantry brigade to women, but it’s likely that the approach henceforth will be one based only on merit. The battle waged by the rabbinate, which had its dirty aspects, is doomed to failure.

The same holds, in large measure, for the attempts to depict the IDF as the army of the so-called "Second Israel," in which privileged left-wing voters keep their sons far from danger while the rest fight to defend the nation. A perusal of the list of the members of the security forces who were killed on the first day of combat, in the weeks since and during the ground operation reveals a highly diverse picture. In the armored personnel carrier of the Givati Brigade, and in the battles in Kibbutz Be’eri and Kibbutz Kfar Aza, all segments of the population were represented. Those who hardly shared in the burden – Haredim and Arabs – will apparently have to find other channels in which to contribute, at least in the form of National Service and in the community. Many terrible things happened and will happen as a result of Hamas’ assault, but perhaps Israel has at least been freed from some divisive and demagogic currents over which it wasted its time in the past decade

The End of Israel’s Gaza Illusions

In the nearly four weeks since Hamas’s heinous October 7 attacks, Israel has begun a deep transformation that will be felt for years to come. As Israeli forces embark on the more difficult stages of a ground campaign to defeat Hamas, two themes have become particularly important. First, it is crucial to understand that this is not just another round of conflict in Gaza. To be successful, the country must countenance a war of exceptional scope and difficulty that could last for many months.

Israel will have to deploy military strategies drawn from long-war paradigms alongside a multiyear counterinsurgency campaign that also leverages diplomatic, informational, and economic tools. In this comprehensive mission, Israeli forces can learn much from prior campaigns, including some from earlier eras in the country’s history. But they will also need to be resolute, patient, and nimble in fighting a war that in many ways will be different from any previous one Israel has fought.

The second insight is that the horrific massacre of at least 1,200 Israelis by Hamas death squads marked a catastrophic collapse of Israel’s existing security strategy. The failure of Israeli intelligence and security forces and of their overseers in the government cannot be overstated. The old deterrence model—which assumed that Hamas could be contained through defensive technology and occasional limited and indecisive deterrence operations in Gaza—is dead. The Israeli defense establishment will have to consider bold new approaches at every level to prevent such disasters in the future. Never again.

In this regard, Israel’s political and security leadership has much to answer for. Although the full details have yet to be uncovered, stark findings have already come to light. Potential warning signs were ignored, dismissed, or downplayed, and misguided security priorities may have made the attack more deadly. In addition to a comprehensive postwar inquiry about what went wrong, the Israeli public will demand a full accounting from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about his own role in the debacle.

Much will depend on how well Israel can achieve its difficult war goals against Hamas and how quickly it can create a new and effective security paradigm in the conflict’s wake. Beyond Gaza, Israel will need to address the broader network of threats and armed groups backed by Iran now menacing the country on multiple fronts. These include threats from Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, as well as from within the Palestinian population in the West Bank.

THE DETERRENCE DELUSION
The deterrence model that previously guided Israeli security policies toward Gaza took shape over many years. After Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005 and Hamas forcefully took control of the strip in 2007, the Israeli government sought to contain Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), relying on intelligence early warnings, strong border defenses, and the occasional use of force to deter further aggression. Fairly frequently, flare-ups would arise that escalated to larger military conflicts, as was the case in 2006, 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2022, and May 2023. In each of these operations, it became clear that Hamas was acquiring stronger and better weapons, including longer-range rockets with larger warheads, along with drones that could pose aerial and naval threats.

It was also apparent that Hamas was building a large and increasingly sophisticated network of underground tunnels. During each conflict, Hamas did its best to punch through Israel’s defenses and reach the communities around Gaza’s border. But Israel’s antirocket defenses also improved, as did its antitunnel defenses, and these Hamas operations mostly failed—on the ground, underground, in the air, and at sea.  

Despite Hamas’s growing capabilities, these failures convinced Israel that its defense strategy was working: Hamas was unable to effectively strike Israel’s population; and it faced significant retribution for attempting such strikes and could be rewarded with material support for keeping calm. Israeli officials also concluded that trying to destroy Hamas’s forces outright would be too costly and might create dangerous new problems. That assumption was widely shared by Western officials: toppling Hamas, they feared, would result in a power vacuum that Israel would have to fill by directly ruling Gaza—a prospect that Israel has long shunned.

Limiting conflict with Hamas served Netanyahu’s goal of splitting the Palestinians.
Thus, the Israeli government kept conflicts with Hamas limited in scope and generally fairly short. Each flare-up lasted between several days and a few weeks—the 2014 conflict lasted almost two months—and usually ended with some kind of cease-fire arrangement mediated by Egypt and combined with economic measures. This limited-conflict concept, combined with Israel’s tacit acceptance of Hamas rule in Gaza, also served Netanyahu’s goal of splitting the Palestinian system: by allowing Hamas to maintain control of the strip, Israel could weaken the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and sidestep a political dialog with it.

But this approach also allowed Hamas, supported by Qatar, to acquire the resources it needed to transform its military into a highly capable army of terror. Despite the growing threat of Hamas’s rocket arsenal, for example, Israel chose not to forcefully disrupt Hamas’s weapons programs except during these intermittent, short-lived conflicts. In between, Hamas continued to develop new strategies to challenge Israel without crossing the threshold into a wider escalation. For example, beginning in 2018, Hamas began organizing the so-called Marches of Return—encouraging large numbers of Palestinians to gather near the border fence with Israel. Viewed in the West as demonstrations against Israel’s blockade of Gaza, these marches provided a way for Hamas to cover up its military activities. Hamas embedded its armed fighters in the crowds, using them as a cover to reach the border fence and try to launch attacks against units of the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli communities near Gaza.

The IDF was able to repel these attackers and prevent a border breach by dispersing the crowds with nonlethal weapons and targeting the leaders, killing hundreds over many months. Yet the marches also provided a way for Hamas fighters to prepare for its October 7 offensive. Thus, in the weeks before the October massacre, there were again large gatherings of people near the border fence. Six Gazans died when an explosive device blew up on September 13 in what was very likely part of the preparations for the attack. Also in the weeks before the October 7, tractors were brought to the border area under the pretext of agricultural work and to prepare for the border protests. Later, these tractors would be used to tear down the fence and open the way for Hamas’s death squads.

A DOUBLE RECKONING
On the morning of October 7, the last day of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, Israel woke up to a double catastrophe. The attack by about 3,000 Hamas terrorists against Israel’s southern communities and defense forces was utterly devastating for the Israeli population, leaving at least 1,200 Israelis dead and more than 240 kidnapped in Gaza. But it was also devastating for Israeli defense policy.

The government and security establishment had failed to prevent a well-known extremist group—one that it had been closely monitoring for many years—from carrying out horrific atrocities against Israeli civilians. The terrorists rampaged for hours through dozens of communities, shattering Israelis’ sense of security across the country. First responders heroically fought the attackers, many paying with their lives, but several hours passed before a more organized military response was able to reach the attacked communities. For many victims, it was too late.

Almost instantly, the concepts, policies, and beliefs that had for so long governed Israeli security doctrine came crashing down. Among them were the assumptions that the Palestinian conflict could be contained, that Hamas had put its own governance and the economic well-being of the Gaza Strip ahead of its jihadi ideology and its genocidal plans for Israel, and that simply having a far stronger military than Hamas’s was sufficient. It had become almost axiomatic that simply employing advanced ground and air defense technologies, such as the border fence and Iron Dome, with occasional recourse to airstrikes from the outside, could prevent major attacks, allowing Israelis to contain Hamas with moderate costs and relatively limited manpower.

A home destroyed in the October 7 Hamas attacks, Kibbutz Kfar Aza, Israel, November 2023 Evelyn Hockstein / Reuters
Israelis know there is no going back to the old model. On November 1, the Hamas politburo member Ghazi Hamad said that Hamas will repeat such attacks until Israel is annihilated. Unless Hamas is neutralized, the horrors of October 7 could be visited upon every home in the country. Therefore, unlike in any previous Gaza campaign, Israeli forces must not just reestablish deterrence but eliminate the Hamas threat entirely.

Since the attacks, this campaign has steadily advanced, step by step. In the days after the attacks, Israel’s Southern Command closed the Gaza border, preventing additional attacks into Israel and capturing or killing any terrorists remaining on Israeli land. Central Command began arresting hundreds of Hamas members in the West Bank, where Hamas seeks to undermine the PA and promote terror against Israel, and foiling active threats from Palestinian cities and refugee camps. Meanwhile, the Israeli air force has been hitting thousands of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. Finally, on October 27, Israeli ground forces entered Gaza and began slowly advancing toward Gaza City, the center of Hamas’s political organization and terror army.  

At the same time, Israel continues to face rocket and missile fire from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and even Yemen. The IDF’s Northern Command is engaged in continuous exchanges with Hezbollah on the northern border with Lebanon, where Hezbollah has been launching rockets missiles, drones, and deploying snipers at Israeli forces, positions, aircraft, and occasionally civilian communities, in an effort to divert Israeli defense resources away from Gaza. Since October 7, more than 50 Hezbollah fighters have been killed, as well as about a dozen Hamas and PIJ fighters who had been attacking alongside Hezbollah. Meanwhile, Yemen’s Houthis have fired drones and cruise and ballistic missiles, most of which have been intercepted by Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Israeli border communities have been evacuated, and sirens frequently send people into shelters and safe rooms across the country. These threats will continue for the foreseeable future.

MONTHS, NOT WEEKS
As Israel begins large-scale ground operations in Gaza, it is crucial to recognize that it will be impossible to defeat Hamas quickly. In contrast to most previous Israeli operations since the First Lebanon War in 1982, a long campaign will be necessary to degrade, isolate, and, over time, eradicate Hamas from Gaza, just as it took years for the U.S.-led coalition to deliver an enduring defeat of the Islamic State (or ISIS) in Syria and Iraq. To achieve lasting results, moreover, a long war cannot rely exclusively on force. It must include diplomatic, informational, legal, and economic efforts, supported by both regional and international partners.

Israel, then, will not be able to model its current campaign against Hamas on previous operations in Gaza. Instead, Israeli strategists will need to draw inspiration from the longer conflicts in Israeli history, including the 1948–49 War of Independence, the 1967–70 War of Attrition, and Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, which sought to uproot the threat of terrorism from the West Bank, after hundreds of Israelis were killed in the second intifada.

These long wars provide relevant lessons in how to conduct such a campaign. This is a model of war that involves continuous, full-mobilization and whole-of-society efforts in which military actions of varied intensity are conducted across multiple fronts and results are delivered not immediately but over a longer time span. These earlier wars also underscore the high costs and potential risks of long campaigns, including the exceptional resources needed for the war effort and war economy and the deep national resolve necessary to stay the course over months and even years.

Operation Defensive Shield, which ran from March to May 2002, for instance, was a focused operation to eradicate Hamas and PA terror cells, employing five IDF divisions in West Bank towns and cities. Effectively breaking the second intifada, this larger operation became a turning point that, along with continuing counterterrorism efforts, reduced the number of terror attacks and victims. But in contrast to what Israel faced in the West Bank in 2002, the current threat from Hamas in Gaza is much more complicated, with a heavily-armed enemy that is hidden in dense urban areas amid a very large civilian population. Thus it is necessary to bring a more powerful use of force, alongside efforts to avoid a humanitarian crisis and informational efforts to counter intense Hamas propaganda in the fight for world opinion.

To achieve lasting results, a long war cannot rely exclusively on force.
Specific aspects of the current war can also draw on special operations from earlier decades. For example, according to reports, the Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, has established an operations room to hunt down the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre, echoing Israel’s campaign to eliminate the Black September terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics. That effort required ongoing intelligence and operational efforts across the globe and political backing in a multiyear campaign; it resulted in some mishaps, but it established the firm understanding that Israel will not accept any such attacks on its people. Hamas leaders are naturally high on Israel’s target list, and several Hamas military leaders, some of whom were involved in the October 7 offensive, have already been killed during the fighting in Gaza.

Of course, the long-war paradigm has pitfalls of its own. Israel’s drawn-out campaign in Lebanon offers a cautionary tale. Beginning in 1982 with the successful eradication of armed Palestinian organizations in Lebanon and the deportation of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat from Beirut, the operation dragged Israel into Lebanon’s quagmire and devolved into a protracted war with Hezbollah, which effectively lasted until the Israeli withdrawal in 2000. This legacy explains much of Israel’s reluctance over the past two decades to wage large and decisive ground operations, contributing to the rationale for the limited conflict approach to Gaza.

It is thus realistic to expect that the unfolding war against Hamas in Gaza will not be limited to a single, finite offensive. Instead, it will probably take shape around an extended series of military operations, each degrading specific Hamas capabilities, until the group can be defeated. As has already become clear, the war effort is now focused on an intense offensive in Gaza, combining heavily armored ground units with extensive firepower from air, land, and sea and supported by a large array of intelligence. The ground forces are facing well-prepared enemies above and below ground, who are using civilians and sensitive locations, such as hospitals, both as human shields and as fodder for anti-Israel propaganda. Israel will need to defeat Hamas in the open and in urban areas, in the tunnels, on the beaches, in the air, and in the international media.

But Israel cannot neglect other fronts in the meantime. In parallel to the Gaza operation, a strong defensive strategy has to be maintained to thwart all incoming threats. And given the critical support of the United States in this war, Israel also has to draw some lessons from coalition warfare, which is unusual for its military and strategic culture. Recalling British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s words, Israel would do well to remember that the only thing worse than having allies is not having them, and it must make a continual effort to communicate and coordinate with its partners in the world and in the region.

Defining what it means to defeat Hamas is also important. Beyond a military defeat and ending Hamas rule in Gaza, the war needs to address Hamas’s power elsewhere and in other dimensions. Uprooting the group as an ideological and social movement, one that now has deep reach in Palestinian society, will demand more than just crushing it on the battlefield. Hamas’s radical ideology and narratives, which are a threat to moderate Arab states as well as to Israel, must be countered by local and regional voices. Having Qatar’s Al Jazeera on Hamas’s side gives Hamas an important advantage among Arab populations across the region, which are stirred by constant visuals of destruction and suffering in Gaza. Initial Israeli military wins must be followed by continuous efforts to prevent Hamas’s resurgence and to allow the ascendance of a moderate alternative. In other words, Israel must find ways to rally Palestinian and regional parties to bring about a sustainable solution.

THE HUMAN STAIN
The unprecedented nature of the October 7 attacks has also left Israel with difficult humanitarian dilemmas. One is the mounting numbers of Palestinian fatalities, which the Hamas Health Ministry reports has exceeded 9,000, along with many more injured. This number does not differentiate between combatants and civilians. To uphold international law and maintain legitimacy for its necessary war in Gaza, Israel warned north Gaza residents to evacuate to the southern part of the strip, decreasing the risk of their becoming collateral damage in Israeli strikes on Hamas targets. Hamas, however, urged residents to stay put and has continued to use them as human shields.

Crucial for Israel is the question of the more than 240 hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, including both Israelis and foreign nationals. Alongside its military operations, Israel, with the help of international and regional partners and mediators, will need to do everything it can to secure the hostages’ safe release. In this context, military operations cut both ways. On the one hand, they can serve to raise pressure on Hamas to release the hostages and they may increase the possibility of rescue operations—as was demonstrated by the rescue of one hostage by Israeli forces three days after the ground offensive began.

But military operations also raise the risk to the hostages themselves, who are used by Hamas as human shields. Hostage release deals may be conducted before the fighting ends by holding humanitarian pauses or opening safe corridors, and Hamas will do its best to exploit any suspension in fighting to unhinge Israel’s military operations and heighten the tensions between the Israeli public, the government, the armed forces, and foreign countries whose citizens are among the hostages.

At the same time, the Israeli government has had to evacuate dozens of Israeli communities from the southern border area around Gaza and the northern border with Lebanon. Currently, about 130,000 Israelis—more than one percent of the populace—are internally displaced. Israel must care for this large displaced population and guarantee its security from cross-border threats in Gaza and Lebanon before the residents are able to return. This will demand not only adopting a new and robust defense posture but also convincing Israelis that they will not find themselves in another October 7 ordeal, or worse. Some voices have already called for the IDF to establish security zones to push enemy threats away from Israel’s southern and northern borders—deep into Gaza and Lebanon.

Although Israel can do much in its current offensive in Gaza, Lebanon remains a major problem. After the 2006 war, Hezbollah blatantly crushed the concept of a buffer zone with Israel, which had been mandated by UN Security Council Resolution 1701. The growing numbers of dead Hezbollah combatants are proving both that Hezbollah’s elite Radwan units are deployed on Israel’s border and that Hezbollah poses an imminent threat to Israel’s northern communities, which are now evacuated. If diplomacy and economic tools, along with limited force, fail to remove the threat, other much more costly options will have to be considered.

NEW GAZA, NEW ISRAEL
Once Israel has achieved its military objectives against Hamas, it will need to deal with larger questions. The first is how to stabilize Gaza. Israel cannot be responsible for Gaza’s governance, but the Israeli government will have to act responsibly and allow interested parties and partners to provide for the needs of the Palestinian civilian population there and prevent the resurgence of terrorist threats. Global and regional partners, including the Gulf states, as well as the members of the Abraham Accords and Israel’s older regional partners, Egypt and Jordan, will be critical in supporting a moderate, legitimate, and responsible Palestinian administration; providing political backing and financial support; and helping it face the daunting task of reconstruction, governance, deradicalization, and stabilization.

The effort to normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, until recently the focus of much attention by the U.S. and Israeli governments, took a major hit by the Hamas attack, which aimed to derail it. Although it is less likely to make significant and formal progress while the war is unfolding, Saudi Arabia remains a relevant player in helping shape Gaza’s future and Israeli-Palestinian relations, perhaps even more so now. The role of Qatar, however, must be limited. It has funneled billions of dollars to Gaza, furnishing Hamas with resources it has used for building its terror army, supporting its cause through the powerful reach of Al Jazeera across the Arab world, and hosting Hamas’s political leadership in Doha.

In essence, Gaza must ultimately be governed by capable Gazans and Palestinians, who are provided with regional and international support, as well as careful oversight to prevent the resurgence of terrorism. The PA could have a potential leadership role there if it can pull its act together and rally popular, regional, and international support, commit to preventing terrorism, and overcome likely violent counterefforts by Hamas, which will surely try to regroup after the major Israeli operations end. Delegating security and basic governance to moderate Palestinian groups would be in line with the approach taken by Israel’s defense establishment toward the West Bank, where Palestinian security forces share Israel’s goals of countering Hamas and other extremist groups. But it is much less in line with the current Israeli government’s right-wing members, who see the PA as an agent of terror that is no better than Hamas.

Sooner or later, the Israeli public will demand accountability and change.
Although U.S. President Joe Biden has expressed his hope for a two-state solution, the current circumstances have made that vision seem beyond reach. Preserving the two-state option for the future was already a challenge, given the PA’s abysmal situation and Israel’s increasingly polarized politics in the years and months before October 7. Since then, it has become even more far-fetched. Yet Arab and Western leaders insist that the PA has to be part of the Gaza endgame. The PA itself, while unenthusiastic about actually governing Gaza, already links its role there with a wider framework addressing the Palestinian theater as a whole. One may assume that the aftermath of the war will include some political process with PA and regional participation, perhaps as part of wider integration efforts.

Most important for Israel will be devising a new security approach to protect its borders and keep its population safe. Ultimately, Israel’s national security begins at home. After the Netanyahu government was established in December 2022, political turmoil about the government’s judicial overhaul and protests swept the country for months, weakening its resilience, defense, and deterrence and contributing to its enemies’ sense that it was ripe for attack. West Bank strife drew forces and attention there, at the expense of the Gaza border, while maintaining understandings with Hamas about economic measures deepened the common belief that escalation was unlikely. All these factors contributed to the disastrous intelligence, military, and policy failures that allowed October 7 to happen.

Israel’s chiefs of defense and intelligence have already accepted responsibility for their part, and they will surely resign after the war ends. Netanyahu has so far declined to take responsibility for the catastrophe occurring under his leadership and continues to maneuver between deflection and denial, promising “answers after the war.” The long-war concept, so far indefinite in duration, could allow the current government to stay in power despite the unprecedented crisis in Israel. Yet although the timeline is still unknown, the Israeli public, currently mobilized for the war effort, will sooner or later demand accountability and change.

THE WAR AT HOME
Almost a month since the October massacre, the war in Gaza has just begun. Waging it, Israel will need to attain its goals and continue fighting for Hamas’s enduring defeat over years to come. Even if a wider war is avoided now, including in the north and with Iran, Tehran’s ring of terror armies around Israel will still need to be melted sooner or later, and surely before Iran attempts to become a nuclear-armed power. Israel’s next defense leadership will need to rebuild and rebolster its intelligence and early warning capability, its decisive military power, its defense forces, its civil defense and first-response capability, its border defenses, and its community protection arrangements.

Given that Iran is waging a multifront warfare against Israel and the threat of its proxy terror armies is increasing, Israel will need to make countering Iran’s “axis of resistance,” a highest national priority for years to come. At the same time, Israel must avoid triggering a “lost decade” in its economy, as occurred in the mid-1970s following the strategic surprise of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Beyond flexing its military muscle, Israel will need to cultivate and strengthen its relations with regional and global partners, advance the U.S.-led security architecture in the Middle East, and seek bold new paths to break out of the dead-end conflict with the Palestinians.

Israel will require a long and painful healing to regain its balance, its defense posture, and its composure. But first and foremost, it will need to come to terms with the fact that this war is different from any it has fought in many years and that it must transform its approach to security. Both will take a long time and extraordinary effort. But unless Israel commits unwaveringly to these fundamental tasks, it could soon find itself in another terrible crisis. The unifying energy that has brought the country together since the attacks gives hope that it can rise to the challenge.

ASSAF ORION is Liz and Mony Rueven International Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He was formerly the head of strategic planning on the Israel Defense Forces General Staff.
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Cairo has understandable concerns about unsustainable refugee flows, Sinai terrorist threats, and longer-term Palestinian political aspirations, all of which need to be taken into account when pushing for humanitarian corridors into Gaza.

Egypt has re-emerged as a pivotal actor in the Middle East thanks to the Israel-Gaza War. Its revived influence was epitomized by the summit Cairo convened on Saturday for a number of Arab and European leaders. Although it didn’t produce a unified statement from the parties, underscoring the challenges of finding common ground, it was the crucial player in drawing top leaders together after several Arab countries refused to meet with President Joe Biden earlier in the week.

Egypt’s importance is not just as a leader among Western-allied Arab countries, however. The country is a critical partner for the Biden administration on all issues related to Gaza because its control of the Rafah crossing—currently the only point of entry into the embattled Gaza Strip since Israel closed all crossings on its borders after Hamas’ October 7 terror attack—allows Egypt to dictate and leverage the terms by which humanitarian assistance can enter the Palestinian territory.

It’s understandable if Washington, which provides Egypt with over $1 billion per year in military assistance, is frustrated that Cairo isn’t allowing American citizens and other nationals to exit Gaza via the crossing, as Egypt has seemingly made their departure contingent on the entry of aid. It’s also understandable if humanitarian groups are frustrated that Egypt won’t open its border for a humanitarian corridor to let out hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Gazans who are trying to take refuge in the south of the Gaza Strip, which Rafah sits on, as the most intense fighting rages in the north.

But Egypt’s positions reflect serious, and legitimate, concerns. First and foremost is the fear of a massive refugee flow if the crossing were opened. A decade after the Syrian civil war started, Egypt claims to host 9 million refugees from different countries, with no horizon of repatriation for most in sight. For Egypt, a deluge of Palestinian refugees would not only pose humanitarian and economic challenges—Egypt is currently experiencing a devastating economic crisis—but also security and political ones.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in uncharacteristically explicit remarks, on Wednesday warned that transferring Palestinians into Sinai will turn the peninsula into a launching pad for attacks against Israel, eliciting Israeli reprisals, triggering war between the two countries and upending the longest peace between Israel and any Arab country. Additionally, the movement of Palestinian refugees out of Gaza would evoke memories of the mass displacement that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948. Egypt fears that such an eventuality would bring an end to any future prospect of Palestinian-Israeli peace based on a two-state solution, instead bringing a diplomatic void and inflaming Arab public opinion.

This concern is so widely and deeply held in the region that, even as Palestinian civilian casualties mounted after October 7, other Arab countries supported Egypt in its vehement opposition to opening the Sinai for refugees. Indeed, after concluding a tour to several Arab capitals, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Al-Arabiya TV that he heard “from virtually every...leader that I’ve talked to in the region that that idea is a nonstarter, and so we do not support it.”

Additionally, Egypt has privately held that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is ultimately Israel’s problem, and that the latter should bear any political or territorial costs of its resolution. During the Trump administration, an American proposal to build infrastructure in Sinai to serve Gaza was roundly rejected by Cairo, which saw it as a potential slippery slope that could draw it into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Egypt is also concerned that opening the crossing could allow in Hamas and its sympathizers. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sisi’s most serious domestic political rival. And Egypt has faced Islamist terror in the Sinai Peninsula since the 2011 revolution that toppled the Mubarak regime.

For all these reasons, shortly after Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, Egypt sealed the border. By 2018, according to Human Rights Watch, Egypt had razed the entire Sinai city of Rafah on the Egyptian side of the borders, destroying thousands of homes and displacing 70,000 persons, to create a nearly mile-wide buffer zone to prevent the movement of weapons and terrorists in tunnels between Egypt and Gaza. To emphasize the point, Egypt even flooded those tunnels. Two years later, in 2020, Egypt built a 20-foot reinforced concrete wall that reaches 16 feet below ground.

This wall has helped ensure the war in Gaza doesn’t spill over into Egypt. Like other Middle Eastern states, however, what is happening in Gaza is having an impact within Egypt, where there is a significant reservoir of support for the Palestinians. For the first time since the Mubarak days, the Egyptian government has organized anti-Israel protests to try to come out ahead of public opinion on supporting the Palestinians and better control the demonstrations.

The very staunch US support for Israel, which reflects longstanding American policy, sharpened further by the brutal nature of Hamas terror and Biden’s own convictions about it, has inevitably created additional tensions in the Arab world. The view that the US is complicit in the human suffering in Gaza is widely held in the Arab world, partly out of compassion and partly out of political opportunism. This, naturally, complicates Egypt’s engagement with the US and helps explain why the meeting with Biden last week was canceled, after (later disproven) reports of Israel targeting a hospital in Gaza circulated.

However, the delicate way the US approached the cancellation, framing it as a response to the period of mourning announced by the three Arab countries and expressing sympathy for the victims, helped ease pressure on Sisi, who would have been criticized by his public for appearing with the US president at such highly charged times, and was no doubt appreciated in Cairo. Subsequent US policy, focusing on delivery of aid into Gaza, also signaled support for Egypt’s position, buying some goodwill from Cairo.

Still, if Washington is committed to the objectives of both supporting Israel in its campaign to degrade, if not eradicate, Hamas and at the same time providing critical humanitarian support to Palestinian civilians, the US will need to coordinate with its Arab allies. For reasons of geography, history and diplomatic heft, Egypt is the linchpin.

Ghaith al-Omari is the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute. David Schenker is the Institute’s Taube Senior Fellow and director of its Rubin Program on Arab Politics.

What will victory in Gaza mean for Israel?
NOVEMBER 4, 2023 07:28

The IDF invasion is progressing, and the military is starting to seriously “clean” even some deeper parts of northern Gaza of Hamas terrorists. This has left top IDF officials, if not euphoric, feeling that they have taken control of the war narrative.

But even if they are achieving their daily tactical objectives and even if they say their success is moving faster than they expected, it is extremely unclear how much fundamental progress has been made in toppling Hamas regarding many key parameters.

To date, about a week into the invasion and despite its many successes, the IDF is far from having killed or arrested the vast majority of Hamas’s forces. It also has not succeeded in even slowing, let alone eliminating, its rocket fire on either the Gaza border communities or the Tel Aviv area. In addition, the IDF – and the country – suffered a reeling blow this week when dozens of soldiers were killed in Gaza.

But let’s frame these challenges and setbacks against the IDF’s clear successes.

What have the IDF's clear successes been in Gaza?
After an initial horrific first day on October 7, the positive trajectory for the IDF versus Hamas has been clear.

Within days of October 7, 1,500 Hamas terrorists in Israel’s South were killed, and by the end of the first week, Hamas was cleared out of the South.

Israel then spent a couple of weeks hammering Hamas with unrelenting airstrikes.

About a week ago, the IDF started a slow-motion, incremental invasion of northern Gaza, with some smaller incursions also into other parts of Gaza.

At press time, the IDF had killed thousands of Hamas terrorists, including the 1,500 killed in the early days.

With large numbers of troops, the IDF has penetrated into Gaza neighborhoods that it had not entered in nearly 20 years, including the Shati refugee camp near the coast, the Zeitun neighborhood, and the al-Furqan neighborhood.

SO FAR, the mix of using armored personnel carriers in conjunction with artillery, tanks, drones, and aircraft is mostly succeeding in flushing out Hamas’s would-be ambushing forces without a significant loss of life to IDF forces.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad are estimated to have a fighting force of 15,000-50,000. Whatever “thousands killed” means, which the IDF has said it has achieved, that is nowhere near even the lower estimate of enemy forces in Gaza.

How much of Hamas’s forces must be killed to render it unable to maintain control of Gaza is hard to say, but it is difficult to see that happening if less than 60%-80% of its forces are not arrested or killed.

So how does the IDF achieve this, which it has not to date?

Some of this depends on where Hamas is hiding.

If a majority of its forces are in tunnels in the north, then once the IDF blankets the north with more troops and destroys or enters the vast network of tunnels (some estimate 1,300 for all of Gaza), it will find and arrest or kill most of Hamas.

But what if a majority of Hamas forces are hiding in Gaza’s dozens of hospitals? A recent UN estimate said that 117,000 Palestinians are taking refuge in Gaza’s many hospitals.

If only 10% of those “refugees” double as Hamas fighters who are temporarily fading into the civilian populace, how will the IDF be able to know when it encounters Hamas terrorists? And when will the IDF make the difficult decision to approach and take control of sensitive locations like the hospitals in question?

Of all of the hospitals, Shifa Hospital, which is in northern Gaza, is known as the most important because many top Hamas officials are said to hide there anytime war breaks out. When will the IDF take over Shifa, and will it use air power and artillery or go in with special forces?

As soon as the IDF does “take the plunge” to systematically take away tunnels as well as hospitals, mosques, and UN facilities, as hideout spots for Hamas, the terrorist group will drive up the cost in IDF deaths and Palestinian civilian deaths.

Israelis have not flinched all that much to date from losing a couple dozen soldiers in the war’s recent fighting, given that Hamas slaughtered over 1,000 civilians and killed around 1,400 Israelis total in the first day or so of the war.

But when the invasion starts going systematically into the areas where Hamas is hiding, and a couple dozen dead Israeli soldiers rises to over 100 - or reaches the 2014 IDF intelligence estimates of the cost in lives of an invasion being 500-1,000 IDF soldiers - will the Israeli public still maintain support?

Another possibility is that most Hamas forces fled to southern Gaza with the one million civilians who fled there from northern Gaza.

The IDF has activities in the south, but the invasion has not started there in a serious way.

If most Hamas terrorists are in the south, then until the IDF starts invading there in a serious way, the true fight will not have started (this despite approaching a month into the war).

WITH ALL of these questions in the air, a fundamental question for Israeli resilience and toleration of continuation of the war will be whether the IDF can reduce rocket fire substantially.

The IDF has excitedly announced that several top rocket commanders and anti-tank commanders had been killed and countless rocket crews had been bombed, but as of Wednesday, Hamas was still managing to fire at a steady pace both at the Gaza border communities and at Tel Aviv and other areas in the center of the country.

If Israeli soldier casualties go up and rockets continue without a quick end in sight, and without killing enough Hamas forces to bring an effective end to Hamas’s ability to control Gaza once the IDF leaves, support in Israel for a continued invasion of several months could falter.

Likewise, the longer the invasion continues, with all of the visual, public relations, and diplomatic problems it carries, the greater the pressure will be from the US and the EU for Jerusalem to halt the invasion – whether “the job” is finished or not.

The latest attack on the Jabalya refugee camp, which seems to have hit many civilians as well as many Hamas terrorists, or some similar future incident, is a case in point.

The US and EU will say that Israel did far more than ever before against Hamas, that they gave the Jewish state greater backing for this than usual, but that the cost in Palestinian civilian lives has gotten too high (it already dwarfs the number of Israeli civilians killed, even if the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry numbers are exaggerated), and that it is unclear whether the IDF can succeed in any reasonable amount of time to fully uproot Hamas in any scenario.

An interesting twist is whether simply killing top Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif would be enough to topple Hamas without cleaning out a majority of its forces. Chances are probably not. As powerful as that duo is, there were many Hamas leaders before them who were killed, and the terrorist group and other terrorist groups in Gaza have always made comebacks.

As long as the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not resolved or someone ruling Gaza is powerful enough to maintain stability and avoid conflict with Israel, simply killing top leaders is unlikely to end the anti-Israel “resistance,” which is a decades-old ideology.

This also fuels the next question that we are not even close to: who will Israel try to hand control of Gaza over to?

The question is “try,” because no one may be willing to take control: whether the Palestinian Authority, the UN, a Western coalition, an Arab coalition, or a hybrid of the above. And anyone who dares to take control may fall to whatever Gaza resistance comes next.

In a small but more positive trend, Hezbollah is being somewhat pushed backward from Israel's northern border, The Jerusalem Post understands.

Though the Lebanese terrorist group has and will still manage to fire off rockets and anti-tank missiles, constant preemptive strikes by IDF drones, aircraft, artillery, and tanks against Hezbollah terrorists approaching close to the border have sometimes forced the group to attack from slightly deeper in its territory.

While this is more of a tactical win than a strategic win, combined with the strategic picture of Israel succeeding at keeping Hezbollah from intervening with more of its war powers, it has freed up Israel’s hand in the south.

Whether that free hand will move fast enough and skillfully enough to end the Hamas threat after over 15 years remains the open question.•

The last time Israel invaded the Gaza Strip nearly a decade ago, its troops pummeled an overmatched Hamas fighting force. They destroyed tunnel systems and sealed off smuggling routes, costing the Islamist group two-thirds of its missiles by the time they withdrew.

Now, as Israel steps up a new invasion, it faces a more-potent enemy that has rebuilt its arsenal with help from Iran. Since the operation started on Oct. 27, Hamas has attacked the Israeli army with explosive-laden drones, anti-tank missiles and high-impact rockets—the sorts of weapons that have transformed the battlefield in Ukraine.

With 26 fatalities in a week of operation, Israelis are dying at more than twice the rate as in 2014, when 67 lost their lives during a seven-week campaign.

At the heart of Hamas’ ability to respond to the invasion is the group’s longstanding relationship with Iran, which has continued to support the Palestinian militants with money and technical expertise. In the months leading up to the Oct. 7 attack, hundreds of Hamas fighters went to Iran for military training, The Wall Street Journal has reported.  

Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official, said that while he expects Israel to ultimately triumph, the sophisticated arsenal meant Israel would have to brace for a long-haul struggle. “Hamas is a military power that is significant thanks to Iran,” said Melamed. “They are armed to the teeth.”

The Islamist group has used the expertise to develop local skills in arms manufacturing, cobbling together weapons from materials available in the Gaza Strip, despite an Israeli and Egyptian blockade of the territory, weapons it is now using to fight the Israeli army.

Some analysts say that even if Israel manages to deplete Hamas’ military capabilities, the destruction wrought to achieve that goal may prompt a lengthy insurgency once the campaign is over.

The U.S. fought several wars against militant groups, including al-Qaeda and the Taliban, only to face lengthy and stubborn insurgencies. Eradicating Hamas will perhaps be even harder, analysts say.

“Hamas has very, very deep roots, and that’s different from al Qaeda, which was smaller,” said Dan Byman, senior fellow and expert in counterterrorism with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

Even if a defeat for Hamas deters Palestinians from joining the group, the Israeli offensive will fuel anger among Palestinians, who might join other armed groups. Israel hasn’t offered any indication of what comes after the military operation. It likely won’t maintain a permanent ground troop presence in the strip, and there are no settler communities that appear willing to live there. Crucially, Byman said, even the U.S. had tangible support in the populations where it fought insurgencies.

“The U.S. had advantages, a lot of Iraqis and Afghans who wanted to work with them,” he said. “There are no Palestinians eager to work with Israelis in Gaza.”

Marwan Abdel-Al, a senior official in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Syria-based secular armed group with operations in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank, said in an interview in Lebanon that Hamas and its allies are better equipped to respond to an Israeli ground invasion than in the past.

“Today, it’s totally different from 2014,” he said, pointing to drones, as well as the type of advanced guerrilla methods developed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Russian Wagner mercenary group.

The Front said it participated in the Oct. 7 attacks and that it continues to lob missiles into Israel from Gaza.

Abdel-Al warned Israel will get bogged down, like Germany did in Russia during World War II or the U.S. in Vietnam. “The guys there, on the ground,” he said, “they are ready.”

Hamas has been manufacturing rockets for more than two decades. The first generation of Qassam rockets, cheap sugar-fueled rockets that Hamas began producing during the Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada, around 2001, had a range of 2 to 3 miles. The third generation, Qassam 3, had a range of about 10. Now, Hamas has shown missiles with a range of up to 150 miles, covering basically all of Israel.

In the past, Iran produced rockets in Sudan and smuggled them into Gaza via tunnels from Sinai with the help of Egyptian Bedouins. That has largely been stopped now, since Egypt flooded the tunnels and Sudan initiated a rapprochement with Israel and distanced itself from Iran. Instead, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have moved to indigenous production and are manufacturing both explosives and the weapon from raw materials, according to analysts.

To manufacture rockets, Hamas has used steel piping for metal in motors and warhead casings. It has used unexploded Israeli artillery heads for explosives. Other elements, like the fusion system and fins are easy to build and weld together, and fuel for the rocket’s propellant can be smuggled in.

Hamas’ most-potent defense may be its extensive tunnel network that runs beneath Gaza like an underground city, storing fighters, fuel, weapons and, since Oct. 7., hostages.

“The tunnels really change everything,” said Daphné Richemond-Barak, professor at Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel, and author of a book on underground warfare. “The tunnels neutralize any military advantage.”

Hamas’ tunnels have been extended and reinforced since the 2014 war, likely with counsel from Iran, which keeps some of its own military facilities underground, Richemond-Barak said, adding that Hamas has also been inspired by Islamic State’s use of similar tunnels.

“This is probably the most sophisticated network of tunnels seen in any type of war,” she said.

The tunnels also run to the sea, which can be used for smuggling, to launch unmanned underwater vehicles and as conduits for Hamas frogmen, according to Lenny Ben-David, an expert in Hamas weaponry with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a think tank.

The central role of the tunnels partly explains the scale of the Israeli bombardments. Israel says Hamas stores weapons and command centers under civilian buildings, including hospitals. Israel has also deployed a special-forces unit specialized in searching and destroying tunnels, called Yahalom.

To get to Hamas’ weapons, the Israeli military must “peel off the top layer of Gaza,” Ben-David said.

Israel says it has hit more than 11,000 targets in Gaza, population two million, using missiles, bombs and artillery.

The campaign has taken a tremendous toll on Palestinians in the Strip, killing more than 9,200, the majority women and children, according to health authorities in Hamas-controlled Gaza. The toll, which couldn’t be independently verified, doesn’t distinguish between militants and civilians. An estimated 1.5 million people have been displaced, many of them fleeing south or taking shelter in schools, hospitals and international aid facilities.

Earlier this week, repeated Israeli airstrikes targeted Jabalia, a refugee camp that has become a warren of permanent homes. Gaza hospital officials said hundreds of people were killed and injured in the strike. The Israeli military said it had struck an underground bunker killing dozens of militants, including a senior Hamas commander who played a key role in the Oct. 7 massacre.

Smoke rises following Israeli strikes on the Tal Al Hawa neighborhood in Gaza City. Photo: mohammed saber/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Privately, Hamas has expressed confidence it can sustain a long-term campaign before it runs out of arms, according to officials in the region. A few days after the Oct. 7 attack, Hamas told Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian the militants “can continue for months on their own,” Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said in an interview.

Back in 2014,  Hamas mostly relied on Soviet-era projectiles with no guidance system that dated as far back as 1969, according to a United Nations report published the following year.  Drones were a rarity in Hamas’ hands and were generally crude models with limited strike capabilities.

In this war, Hamas has published videos of targeting Israeli troops with munitions dropped from drones, a Ukraine-style battlefield innovation, and damaged two tanks and several military vehicles.

Israeli forces have also faced attackers equipped with North Korea-made F-7 High-Explosive Fragmentation rockets; Kornet man-portable anti-tank guided missile, a model developed in Russia but often copied by Iran; and locally-produced “Al-Yassin” Tandem anti-tank rockets.

A new addition to the battlefield has been paragliders, which Hamas used to penetrate Israel on Oct. 7 as a form of airborne infantry. To avoid detection in Gaza, Hamas fighters received training in paragliding in Iran, according to people familiar with the matter.

This week, Hamas published a video displaying a guided underwater vehicle called Al-Asef described by Hamas as a “torpedo,” which appears similar to an underwater drone that Israel in 2021 said the militant group had tried to fire at one of its vessels.

Hamas has acquired these weapons despite attempts by Israel and Egypt in the aftermath of the 2014 war to reduce the flow of weapons going through tunnels connected to Gaza with the Sinai. Over time, some of those routes were rebuilt and smuggling resumed, according to Middle-East security officials.

More importantly, Israel failed to seal off access by sea to Gaza’s 25 miles of coastline. Smuggling by sea, especially via fishing boats used by local Gazans, has been much more difficult to monitor for the Israeli military.

The sea route may explain the presence of specialty assault rifles that turned up on the bodies of dead militants on Oct. 7. The AK-103-2 were initially manufactured by a Russian government factory and exclusively bought by Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi following the lifting of an arms embargo in 2003, said Adam Rousselle, a researcher at the Militant Wire, a network of experts that examines weapons used by non-state actors.

A team of Hamas operatives exported large amounts of weapons sent from Libya to Gaza possibly as recently as 2017, according to a Libyan prosecutor’s file reviewed by the Journal. The group received the assistance of the two former leaders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an al-Qaeda affiliate, said a Libyan security official.

During its rampage at Kibbutz Holit, a rural settlement 1.2 miles from the Gaza Strip, Hamas used Iranian made man-portable surface-to-air missiles, according to Calibre Obscura, an open source analyst that specializes in identifying weapons used by non-state actors. The armed branch of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad posted a video of an attack on the settlement with anti-tank guided missiles. Both weapons were produced by subsidiaries of the Iranian ministry of defense in the 1990s.

Hamas has also developed a robust domestic weapons-manufacturing capability that partly relies on Iranian technology transfers.  

It has built a drone called Ababil, developed after Iranian design. Hamas also has a domestically produced drone called the Zouari, named after a Tunisian engineer, Mohammed al-Zawari, who helped develop the weapons and was assassinated in Tunisia in 2016, a killing Hamas blamed on Israeli intelligence.

“We have to destroy these places and not allow them to be built again,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli national security adviser and now senior fellow at the conservative Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies think tank, referring to Hamas’ military infrastructure. “That’s why the IDF after the war will maintain freedom of action in Gaza, whether with airstrikes or troops on the ground.”

Israeli Intelligence has formed a unit to hunt down the perpetrators of the October 7 attacks, echoing the bloody campaign to eliminate the Black September terrorists behind the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.

According to unattributed briefings given to the Israeli press and others, Israel’s two main security agencies, the Shin Bet and Mossad, have launched a joint operation to track down and eliminate all those involved in last month’s massacre.

The unit is named after the First World War-era Jewish underground organisation “Nili”, an acronym for a Hebrew phrase which translates as “the Eternal One of Israel will not lie.”

It is said to be targeting Hamas’ 2,500-strong Nukhba commando division which led the October 7 massacre, together with those, both in and outside Gaza, who were involved in its direction and planning.

“It is significant [that] the Mossad is involved,” said Dr Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow at King’s College London and author of several books on Israeli intelligence. “It means they are also going after people who are outside the occupied territories and Israel”.

Similar to 1970s’ Operation Wrath of God
The Telegraph has talked to two senior sources closely linked to Israel’s defence-security bureaucracy who say the plan is both “likely and necessary”, Dr Bregman has talked to a third.

“The unit is dedicated to hunting down and eliminating every individual who played a role in the massacre”, the Jerusalem Post reported.

The initiative is being compared to Operation Wrath of God, a covert mission authorised by Golda Meir, the then Israeli prime minister, in 1972 to assassinate those involved in the Munich Olympics massacre, in which 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team were murdered.

After its initiation, more than a dozen Black September and Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) operatives were killed in targeted killings across Europe and Middle East.

Some 20-35 individuals were placed on the initial kill list and the operation ran for more than 20 years. It is not known how many died in total.

“The aim was not so much revenge but mainly to make them [the Palestinian terrorists] frightened,” David Kimche, the former deputy head of Mossad, said later. “We wanted to make them look over their shoulders and feel that we are upon them.”

‘Israel will not accept attacks on its people’
Writing in Foreign Affairs on Friday, Assaf Orion, a former head of strategic planning on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) general staff, cited the reported establishment of the new unit as an example of Israel rethinking its recent strategic approach to terrorism.

The effort to neutralise those responsible for Munich “required ongoing intelligence and operational efforts across the globe and political backing in a multiyear campaign”, he said. “It resulted in some mishaps, but it established the understanding that Israel will not accept any such attacks on its people”.

Dr Bregman said the new operation was part of Israel’s bid to eradicate Hamas, something he suspects can never be done but is nonetheless being attempted. He said Shin Bet and the IDF would deal with Hamas’ Nukhba division, others who crossed into Israel on October 7 and the Gazan leadership of Hamas – an operation that is already well underway.

‘Overseas assassination missions come with huge risks’
The targeting of Hamas’ political leadership overseas would be “much more difficult” and would need political sign-off at cabinet level, he said.

“The fact that the body includes Mossad means that Israel will also go after Hamas members who are not in the Gaza Strip, but also living in places such as Qatar and Turkey,” he said. “It will go on for years”.

Ret Col Miri Eisin, former deputy head of Israel’s Combat Intelligence Corps, told Scripps News that the Nili would be “very focused on the top echelon” of Hamas’ leadership.

“It’s going to be using a variety of capabilities, both in gathering the information and being able afterwards to target all of the different Hamas terrorists,” she added.

Dr Bregman cautioned that overseas assassination missions come with “huge risks”, diplomatic and otherwise.

For example, in September 1997, two Mossad agents and a support team were caught in Jordan after spraying Khaled Mashal, the former Hamas leader, in the ear with poison.

Jordan was furious and forced Israel to provide an antidote to bring Mashal out of a coma. It also had to release Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, who then returned to Gaza .

“It’s a difficult business,” noted Dr Bregman.

On Saturday Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, vowed: “We will get to [Hamas Gaza chief] Yahya Sinwar and eliminate him.

“If the residents of Gaza get there ahead of us, that will shorten the war.”

Israel this week used its Arrow missile-defence system to shoot down a ballistic missile outside of Earth’s atmosphere, in what is believed to be the first combat ever to take place in space.

The ballistic missile was launched from Yemen by the Iran-backed Houthis, and flew almost 1,000 miles over the Arabian peninsula on the way to its target, the Israeli port city of Eilat.

While the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has released few details about the interception, the Air Force is known to operate several batteries of the Arrow 2 system, which uses a hypersonic interceptor to take out incoming missiles in space.

The Israeli defence ministry released a video showing the moment of interception, with the faint cylindrical shape of the incoming ballistic missile barely visible in the false-colour image, before an explosion smears across the screen.

In a statement, the IDF said that air force systems tracked the missile’s trajectory and intercepted it “at the most appropriate operational time and location.”

Photographs from Eilat showed a trail of smoke from the Arrow interceptor, while residents reported hearing a large explosion from the ground.

Yemen’s Houthis also released footage purporting to show the missile being launched as part of a barrage of drones and other long-ranged weapons aimed at Israeli towns and cities.

The ballistic missile, which was fired on Monday, is said to have been a Qader missile – an improved version of the Iranian-designed Shahab 3.

At more than 50-feet long, the Qader carries a high-explosive warhead and has a range that puts all of Israel in striking distance of the Houthis, which have now declared war on Israel and are a key part of the Iran-backed alliance set against the country.

It is precisely the threat that Israel’s Arrow system, first deployed some 25 years ago, was designed to counter.

A joint US-Israeli project, Arrow sprang from the need to give Israel a way to defend itself after Israeli cities were hit by Iraqi Scud missiles during the first Gulf War.

Where other missile-defence systems were originally meant to shoot down aircraft and had to be adapted to the job of shooting down longer-range ballistic missiles at much higher altitudes and speeds, Arrow was the first to be designed specifically for that task.

‘Proof Israel has ability to act against Iran missile program’
The system had previously been used in 2017 to shoot down a Syrian S-200 surface-to-air missile which missed an Israeli warplane and was heading towards an Israeli town. But Monday’s interception was the first time that it was used for its original purpose.

“The successful interception is about much more than protecting the residents of Eilat and dealing a blow to the Houthis’ boastfulness,” an Israeli defence official said. “Primarily, it proves to Iran, which was behind the launch and supplied the missile, that Israel has the ability to act against its missile program, and this has much broader implications for the regional conflict.”

Since the October 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel, and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza, the Houthis have launched drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles at Israel on four occasions.

The Houthis have vowed there would be more such attacks “to help the Palestinians to victory”.

U. S officials said they have privately outlined several steps to Israel to reduce civilian casualties in its military campaign in the Gaza Strip, including using smaller bombs, when going after Hamas leaders and infrastructure.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Friday during a visit to Israel that he had spoken to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about “concrete steps” that the United States believes Israel could and should take to minimize civilian deaths, a message he repeated on Saturday in Jordan after meeting with Arab leaders who demanded an immediate cease-fire.

Mr. Blinken said Israel could put in place the American recommendations “while still achieving its objectives of finding and finishing Hamas terrorists.”

The secretary of state did not specify in his remarks what those “concrete steps” entailed, and his spokesman, Matthew Miller, declined to comment on them.

But U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the meetings were private, said there have been a number of conversations in which they have advised their Israeli counterparts to take a more deliberate approach in their operations.

U.S. officials told the Israelis that they could reduce civilian casualties if they improved how they targeted Hamas leaders, gathered more intelligence on Hamas command and control networks before launching strikes, used smaller bombs to collapse the tunnel network and employed their ground forces to separate civilian population centers from where the militants are concentrated.

The Americans say Israel’s forceful response to the attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, in which more than 1,400 people were killed and more than 200 were taken hostage, reflects the importance that it places on re-establishing deterrence against attacks from adversaries in the region. The Israeli military’s aura of power was shaken by the Oct. 7 attack, the officials say.

The unfolding humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where the Hamas-run health ministry says more than 9,400 people have been killed, has provoked outrage in the region, in the United States and around the world, leading the Biden administration to be more vocal in saying that Israel has to do more to protect civilians.

Blinken urged Israel to agree to a series of pauses in the fighting to facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza and the exit of foreign nationals from the enclave, but Mr. Netanyahu rebuffed the idea, saying any pauses would be contingent on the release of all Israeli hostages.

In the first two weeks of the war, roughly 90 percent of the munitions Israel dropped in Gaza were satellite-guided bombs of 1,000 to 2,000 pounds, according to a senior U.S. military official. The rest were 250-pound small-diameter bombs.

Asked about the U.S. request to use smaller bombs, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces, Maj. Nir Dinar, said: “We don’t comment on munitions and our conversations with allies.”

Israel used at least two 2,000-pound bombs during an airstrike on Tuesday on Jabaliya, a dense area just north of Gaza City, according to experts and an analysis conducted by The New York Times of satellite images, photos and videos.

American military officials say that the smaller bombs are much better suited to the dense urban environments of Gaza. But Israel has over the years built up stocks of larger bombs, originally intended to target hardened Hezbollah military positions in Lebanon.

The United States is now trying to send more of the smaller bombs to Israel, said the senior military official. If the United States can get those smaller munitions to Israel, American officials hope they can help Israel mitigate the risk to civilians.

The United States has also increased the amount of intelligence that it is collecting in Gaza: American drones are flying over the enclave, searching for hostages held by Hamas and other groups, and U.S. military satellites have been redirected to monitor the enclave. The United States is also using aircraft on the two carriers in the Mediterranean to help collect additional intelligence, including electronic intercepts.

The Pentagon has restricted support for congressional travel to Israel.
While the United States has increased the amount of intelligence that it is sharing with Israel, U.S. officials stressed they are not helping Israel pick targets for strikes.

American officials believe the less judicious Israel is, and the greater the Palestinian death toll, the more quickly pressure will build on its leaders to end the military operation. A more targeted campaign, U.S. officials tell them, could go on for longer and do more sustained damage to Hamas’s military wing.

“We do our best to destroy Hamas only, without harming the civilians,” said Iddo Ben-Anat, a deputy brigade commander leading part of the Israeli invasion of Gaza.

Arab leaders met with Mr. Blinken in Amman, Jordan, on Saturday, and demanded an immediate cease-fire, increasing pressure on the Biden administration to do more to rein in the Israeli campaign.

But Mr. Blinken publicly rebuffed the idea, saying, “It’s our view that a cease-fire now would simply leave Hamas in place, and able to regroup and repeat what it did on October 7.”

Democratic lawmakers and terrorism experts have said the higher the civilian casualty toll, the greater the resentment that will build in Gaza, resentment that Hamas can use to build further support.

Representative Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts and an Iraq war veteran, said the America’s biggest mistake in that conflict was trying to provide “military solutions to fundamentally political problems.”

“Israel is not going to win their war against Hamas, which they have every right to fight, by military means alone,” Mr. Moulton said. “And often the wrong military means, like bombs that kill too many civilians, make the political endgame harder to reach.”

At the news conference in Tel Aviv, Mr. Blinken appeared to obliquely acknowledge that risk, arguing that while Hamas needed to be defeated “physically,” the international community needed to ensure that Hamas does not gain more followers in the process.

Mr. Blinken said that Hamas must be fought not just with military might, but also with “a better future, with a better vision” for the Palestinian people.

“Because in the absence of that, even after Hamas, those who sing the siren song of nihilism will find open ears,” Mr. Blinken said.

Changing Israel’s approach is a critical priority for the Biden administration.

Mr. Blinken’s public comments that “we provided Israel advice that only the best of friends can offer on how to minimize civilian deaths” underscored the shift in the administration’s position. U.S. officials say their private messages to the Israelis have been more blunt.

The change in approach follows a string of Israeli strikes that have caused particularly large numbers of casualties, including the strike on Tuesday on a refugee camp in the Jabaliya neighborhood that targeted a Hamas commander.

It is not clear how effective Israel’s campaign against Hamas has been. One senior U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details, said the operations so far have not come close to destroying Hamas’s senior and middle leadership ranks.  Other U.S. officials said Hamas is not analogous to Al Qaeda or the Islamic State, and has a far deeper bench of experienced midlevel military leaders, making it hard to assess the impact of killing any individual commander.

U.S. officials have been encouraging the Israelis to model their ground campaign against Hamas leaders on an approach that was employed by Stanley McChrystal when he commanded U.S. Special Operations forces as a lieutenant general in a targeted-killing campaign against Al Qaeda in Iraq that was at its most intense in 2006 to 2008.

That campaign, which killed the group’s leader in 2006, demonstrated to U.S. military theorists that the use of small teams of commandos, combined with precision strikes from drones and manned aircraft, can be effective at flushing out and targeting key leaders, and weakening their organizations.

Israeli officials have said the situation in Gaza is very different. None of the special operations raids the Americans carried out in Iraq took place in urban areas as dense as Gaza City.

Israel believes that some Hamas leaders are hiding in a vast tunnel network underneath the most populous parts of northern Gaza. Sending commando units into those tunnels would be a suicide mission, according to people briefed on the discussions between the United States and Israel.

American officials said the Israeli military has been looking for ways to force Hamas leaders to change their positions or alter their communications, moves that could help Israeli intelligence better pinpoint their locations and then strike them.

U.S. officials believe there are other ways to bring Hamas leaders out of the tunnels with operations less harmful to civilians in Gaza. They say that the ground force that Israel has put into Gaza should be able to begin to separate civilians from the militants, either through troop-intensive clearing operations or by conducting raids into parts of Gaza City designed to isolate militants.

The wall of a school had shattered into rubble. The minaret of a mosque was tilting to one side. The roof of a beachfront villa had vanished, leaving a maroon sofa exposed to the elements.

Along the northern coastline of Gaza on Saturday afternoon, the signs of the Israeli invasion were in plain sight. And all of these places, damaged in an Israeli attack, had served as a place of refuge for Hamas militants who tried to repel the assault, the field commanders who manage the Israeli army’s combat troops said on Saturday.

Israeli military leaders brought a small group of journalists into northern Gaza on Saturday for two hours to witness the extent of the advance. A reporter for The New York Times was among them.

Thousands of troops began their incursion down the coastline on Oct. 27, one part of a three-pronged invasive force that aims to vanquish Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that controls Gaza and led a brazen raid on Israel last month that killed roughly 1,400 people.

Eight days later, the Israeli army has fought its way several miles to the south, reaching the outskirts of Gaza City, Hamas’s stronghold, and establishing control over the northern stretch of Gaza’s coastal road.

Less than a month ago, the northern coastline of Gaza was a quiet seafront. On Saturday, it was a giant Israeli military camp.

Long lines of infantry marched south along the road, blowing plumes of dust into the air. In the sand dunes east of the road, long rows of tanks and armored vehicles dominated the landscape, stretching toward the horizon.

Many buildings were wrecked, their walls sprayed with bullet holes. Some were most likely hit from the air during an Israeli bombing campaign that has killed more than 9,000 Gazans, according to Gaza’s health authority, which is controlled by Hamas.

Palestinian residents had fled south, abandoning the seafront to the Israeli soldiers and a few stray dogs and cats.

An Israeli officer accompanying the journalists, Lt. Col. Iddo Ben-Anat, projected an image of quiet confidence.

“It’s like catching a mouse,” Colonel Ben-Anat said of the enemy. “You have to find him. You know he’s there. You don’t know where he is — but you know when you catch him, he’s done.”

But all around him were the sounds of an unfinished and undecided war.

Shortly after the journalists entered Gaza through a hole in the wall lining its perimeter, a mortar shell landed close to the armored vehicle that carried them south.

A few minutes later, a roadside bomb exploded as the vehicle passed by, creating a brief fireball and sending sand toward the sky. Gunfire rattled constantly.

Bloodier battles await the Israelis in Gaza City, where Hamas fighters are believed to have entrenched themselves in a network of underground tunnels hundreds of miles long.

For the civilians in the city, that was a terrifying prospect.

Saher Abu Adgham, 37, a Palestinian graphic designer, had been searching the streets of Gaza City for firewood to boil some rice. As dusk approached, he bedded down at home in case the Israeli army advanced at nightfall.

“I am afraid to go out one night and meet a tank,” Mr. Abu Adgham said in a phone interview.

MICHAEL CLARKE | ANALYSI
Has Israel set itself an impossible military task?

Israel’s military objective in the Gaza war, constantly repeated by its politicians and commanders, has become a national mantra: “Hamas must be destroyed.” A similar loud insistence by Cato the Elder to the Roman Republic that “Carthage must be destroyed” drove all before it, until, in 146BC it finally, and dreadfully, was. Carthage was defeated for the third time, its city torn down, its population murdered, the site itself ritually cursed.

But the annihilation of Carthage immediately overstretched Rome in the Mediterranean and, just 12 years later, a century of domestic crisis commenced that ended the republic for ever. So can Israel destroy Hamas without inflicting a comparable fate on Gaza — or creating a terminal crisis for itself in the aftermath?

Israel can certainly defeat Hamas, but destroying it will be a different matter, and that challenge is likely to increase as Israel’s campaign goes on. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) went into this operation with more than half a million mobilised regulars and reservists — against Hamas’s 30,000-50,000 armed men. The IDF can easily build up to a ratio of five or six to one against Hamas across Gaza, even with troops occupied on other fronts.

Supported by one of the most capable small air forces in the world, the IDF has an arsenal of the best home-produced and US-supplied equipment anywhere. Israel’s military has its own vulnerabilities, of course, but none that should prevent it from prevailing over Hamas, regardless of its adversary’s tunnels, attack drones and booby traps. It is not yet clear whether Hamas units are choosing to fight all-out against the advancing IDF, or merely trying to hamper its progress while they seek to escape southwards. But if Hamas decides to go toe-to-toe with the IDF, even in Gaza’s densely urban environment, it will only end one way.

A trap for Israel?

Israeli commanders acknowledge it will be a difficult campaign and could entail heavy IDF losses, but they sounded confident this week that the operation was going to plan. The preliminary bombing of phase one — more than 11,000 targets hit — was followed by the “break-in” phase two. Phase three is designed to capitalise on earlier gains, cutting across the Wadi Gaza coastal wetlands in the centre of the strip to isolate the northern half of the territory. That demarcates a battle zone in the north and the IDF are moving from all sides to surround Gaza City within it, simultaneously attacking what they believe are command bunkers and key tunnels in nearby Jabalia — refugee camp and all. They have taken control of segments of the Salah al-Din highway that runs up the middle of the strip, from the Rafah crossing in the south to the Erez crossing in the north. Controlling this road just south of Gaza City gives the IDF an ability to monitor civilian movement and hamper Hamas attempts to escape.

The IDF, however, are moving carefully to avoid being suckered into Hamas traps, and they are wary in case Hamas intends to fight all-out only inside Gaza City. It will be at least another week before we, and the IDF, can be sure it has not been lured into an urban killing ground inside the city. For now, the IDF appears to be going for key points as its forces converge from different directions, occupying them securely before moving outwards to unite one strong point with another.

They seal the Hamas tunnels as they encounter them, leaving them for the specialists. The Israeli air force bombs and strafes ahead of the ground troops in a closely combined air-ground operation, while naval vessels off the Gazan coast offer artillery support. At the end of this phase of the campaign, however long it may take, it is likely the IDF will occupy all the territory — at least above ground — from the Erez crossing in the north to the Wadi Gaza, including Gaza City.

But occupying half of Hamas’s territory will still leave the job less than half done. From this point onwards, the IDF’s campaign will face challenges that are unique in modern urban warfare and counterinsurgency. Many allude to previous allied operations as comparable examples: the fight to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from Isis in 2016-17; US operations in Fallujah in 2004 amid the Iraq War; or Israel’s incursion into the Jenin refugee camp in 2003. But their applicability is limited, considering what the IDF will face when it has taken the north.

No escape

As modern battlefields go, the entire 360 sq km of the Gaza Strip makes it pretty small, and yet 2.3 million people are trapped inside it with no possibility of escape. No examples in modern history — not Mosul, Fallujah, Mariupol in Ukraine, nor Grozny in Chechnya, Kandahar in Afghanistan, Saigon in Vietnam or Phnom Penh in Cambodia — offer cases of a battlefield where civilians had so little chance to get away, if they chose, before the onslaught of a superior military power.

Even Berlin in 1945 gave German civilians some opportunity to escape westwards and throw themselves on the mercy of US and British forces rather than face the advancing Russians.

The Palestinians of Gaza have no comparable opportunity, and since more than half the population of the north has moved beyond Wadi Gaza, Israel will have to face its southern battlefield with a population of about 1.8 million in a density approaching 10,000 people per square kilometre. That’s comparable with the population density of central London, in an area about half the size — say from the Thames up to the North Circular Road.

To “destroy Hamas” amid a compacted and already severely distressed civilian population will require some unique thinking. In these circumstances most ancient-world leaders would have resorted to a straight massacre. But modern military commanders will have to develop some new approaches to urban warfare and counterinsurgency if they are to “destroy” Hamas amid this population.

For the time being, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, is holding his organisation back from direct confrontation with Israel. But this may not last and Nasrallah may not be in full control of his forces. This window of restraint may close soon, so if Hamas has to be destroyed, then it has to be destroyed quickly. If Hamas survives in any tangible form, then it wins, and has a good chance of witnessing the wider anti-Israeli war it probably hoped to provoke when it launched its attack.

The one respect in which this war is completely traditional is in its tendency to throw up unexpected consequences, setting off trains of political events it will find difficult to control. The most important strategic decision any government takes is the first one. Israel has taken it, and the wider consequences will play out as they will. The second critical strategic decision will be taken when Israel looks at southern Gaza. The IDF will either have to reformulate its “Hamas must be destroyed” objective, or think of ways of achieving it that gets Israel off the road on which Cato the Elder set Rome: defence through annihilation.

Michael Clarke is visiting professor of defence studies at King’s College London

From the perspective of Hamas, it seems Friday’s speech by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah promised more than it delivered. After building tension and anticipation for more than a week, Nasrallah sounded pressured and apologetic and looked unwell.

The October 7 Hamas attack, he said, was 100-percent Palestinian. Hezbollah did not know about it in advance and was surprised by it. Along with praise for the achievement of Hamas (which slaughtered innocent civilians), Nasrallah claimed that Hezbollah has been engaged in warfare with Israel since October 8.

The Shi’ite organization has fired rockets and anti-tank missiles into Israel from Lebanon, killing six soldiers and one civilian. It has lost dozens of fighters in battles with the Israel Defense Forces, pinned down Israeli reserve forces along the border to protect the north and causing the evacuation of large numbers of civilians from border communities. Nasrallah implied that Hezbollah may intensify its attacks (there were several incidents along the border Saturday).

While he drew some red lines – Hezbollah will not allow the collapse of Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip and will respond to the killing of Lebanese civilians by killing Israeli civilians – he did not state exactly what he intends to do. It all suggests that like his Iranian patrons, Nasrallah is willing to fight Israel to the last drop of Palestinian blood.

Israeli and U.S. intelligence believe that policy on this matter is decided jointly by Tehran and Beirut, and that since the U.S. assassination in 2020 of Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, Nasrallah has been very influential in setting policy for the radical anti-Israel axis.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, last week.Credit: Hadas Parush
Regarding moderating factors, Beirut and Tehran may be taking into consideration the U.S. military presence in the area, the high state of alert of IDF forces in the north and the risk that a regional war would lead to the destruction of civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and much of Hezbollah’s military capabilities.

In this regard it is worth noting IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi’s statement, in a remark referring to the northern front, that the Israel Air Force has not yet deployed most of its capabilities in this war.

Three vital warnings are needed here: One, a scenario of miscalculation cannot be ruled out. Hezbollah could intensify its attacks further into Galilee, causing the IDF to respond in kind in Lebanon, at which point things could get out of control. Prof. Shimon Shapira, an expert on Hezbollah, told Haaretz that Nasrallah said that the possibility of the Lebanon front sliding into full-fledged war was real. The main headline in Iran’s most important newspaper, Kayhan, declared that Hezbollah considered all options to be open.

Two, Nasrallah’s remarks could be designed to conceal a surprise attack (although the IDF is better prepared for such an eventuality). Three, after October 7 one should be cautious in reading the enemy’s intentions. Intelligence agencies, to their credit, are more modest in their assessments than they were before the war.

Fierce fighting
In the Gaza Strip, fierce battles between the IDF and Hamas continue after Gaza City was in effect surrounded. The IDF is using a “shredding” tactic, progressing slowly and systematically, accompanied by immense amounts of firepower, including from the air. The airstrikes often last just minutes, in accordance with the demands of the ground forces and with little margin for error.

The IDF is employing, for the first time on such a large scale, an ability to rapidly integrate intelligence, technology and firepower. One of the vulnerable aspects still concerns the ability to kill many Hamas fighters in ground battles. Some officers believe that reports of hundreds of dead terrorists are not sufficiently confirmed. This is a well-known trap when fighting in built-up areas, and Israel should be wary of focusing on exaggerated body counts, such as happened to the Americans during the Vietnam War.

The difficulty lies, among other factors, in the definition of the mission. The government and IDF described it as the destruction of Hamas rule, denying it its military capabilities. This is a goal with a path that is not entirely clear, which almost invites the counting of enemy bodies. Commanders and reservists who participated in previous operations in the Gaza Strip say there is no comparison between the intensity and destruction this time and that of previous rounds of fighting. In Beit Hanoun, where reserve forces are operating, there are entire neighborhoods that have been completely flattened during the battles there.

Haaretz military correspondent Yaniv Kubovich joined the forces operating in the southern part of Gaza City for a few hours on Friday and was impressed by the intensity of the firepower being used, by the resolve of the combatants and by the high professional standards of commanders on the ground. The IDF is in real war mode, and is not conducting only a limited operation.

This involves casualties on our side, given the intensity of the fighting. Hamas, as was assessed in advance, is almost not attempting to block the movement of IDF forces. The organization is relying on its defensive tunnel network, sending its fighters up through shafts to launch anti-tank missiles and to deploy explosive charges close to IDF armored vehicles. Hamas is also employing attack drones.

This may lead to several problems. The IDF has introduced large forces into the northern Strip, moving in large numbers of armored vehicles. This, in a war against guerilla forces hiding underground, provides the enemy many targets. Many of the confrontations are at the initiative of Hamas forces. When a ground force identifies an enemy nearby, it usually quickly calls in the air force to neutralize it, but there are costs to our side as well.

For now, despite pressure exerted by the IDF, there is no apparent significant effect on Hamas command and control, which continues to function. At the same time, the focus must be the demolition of defensive tunnels. Some of these were dug not very deeply and can be destroyed from the air with no great difficulty. This depends mainly on the quality of intelligence provided by Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet security service.

U.S. calls for a pause
While Nasrallah was speaking in Beirut, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was holding a news conference in Tel Aviv. On his third visit here since the war began, and on his way to a summit meeting with Arab foreign ministers in Amman, Blinken seemed more sensitive to the suffering of Israelis living near the Gaza border than do some of Israel’s official spokesmen.

However, between the lines, one can sense that U.S. patience with IDF operations in the Gaza Strip is waning, given the prolongation of the fighting. Blinken called on Israel to allow increased aid to reach Gaza, warning of a humanitarian disaster there. He noted that pauses in the fighting would help the efforts to release Israeli hostages.

His Israeli interlocutors opposed any cease-fire that excluded the release of all hostages, clarifying that the military operation continues in full strength and that no fuel would be allowed into Gaza. The Washington Post reported, based on diplomatic sources who sound suspiciously like Blinken himself, that there is a Hamas proposal to release all civilian hostages (but not soldiers) in exchange for a five-day ceasefire. Israeli officials are not relating to this proposal publicly.

Given the growing public protest around the hostage issue (with families announcing Saturday they were setting up camp outside the Kirya, defense headquarters in Tel Aviv), an open Hamas proposal such as this could cause sharp internal controversy in Israel, especially if adopted by the international community.

However, even if Israel agreed to such a deal, with hostages released in exchange for a temporary cease-fire, the more the IDF penetrates urban areas, the harder it will be to halt fire since the army will be in close proximity to Hamas fighters, causing it to avoid risks that would endanger IDF forces. A further issue is that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and senior IDF commanders expect to have a period of months in order to defeat Hamas as they promised to do. But a deal may put pressure on Israel to not resume fire after the deal is completed.

Several other issues came up during Blinken’s visit and in talks between the Pentagon and the IDF. First, the U.S. is asking Israel to leave dealing with the regional arena to the U.S. The Americans are involved in intercepting launches from Yemen and if needed, may take care of the Houthi rebels there. This apparently applies also to the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, which so far are focused on harassing U.S. bases in that area. Second, the Biden administration is trying to arrange a visit to Israel by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy next week.

This will be an important U.S. message to the world regarding the formation of a three-way alliance, an anti-Russian and anti-Iranian one. Israel has evaded this for years, but now there is no choice (and is also the ethical thing to do).

Benjamin Netanyahu also gave a speech Friday. The prime minister usually doesn’t allow questions, and his speech was devoid of real empathy for what Israeli citizens are experiencing. When mentioning fallen soldiers, he again focused on members of a specific group within Israeli society. He never talks about the massacre in the border kibbutzim, or the courage of the emergency response teams there, just as he never bothered to visit communities along the Gaza border over the years.

In general, Netanyahu believes for some reason that he is totally exempt from conducting condolence calls during the war. But somehow he has plenty of time for visits to army units, from which the Prime Minister’s Office shares photos of him surrounded by soldiers. This is a total waste of his time and that of IDF officers, as are the pointless discussions of the security cabinet, as opposed to the war cabinet. There is no escaping the conclusion that even in the midst of the country’s most important war in 50 years, the prime minister is occupied first and foremost, above all else, with himself and with rescuing his shaky political future

Israel is struggling to lay out a clear exit strategy in the Gaza Strip and has not decided whether it wants to kill Hamas' leadership or accept a deal to exile its members.

Regardless, a political source said Sunday, Israel will insist on having security control of the Gaza Strip after the end of the ongoing war with Hamas. "I don't see a situation in which Israel does not have ultimate security responsibility in the Gaza Strip," they said.

Meanwhile, political officials have only partial knowledge about the conditions and locations of some 240 hostages held by Hamas. The overwhelming majority of the hostages are thought to be alive, according to assessments.

The officials believe that despite the negotiation efforts led by Qatar, the parties are not on the verge of a deal to release the hostages. The prevailing assessment that a deal is highly unlikely, they said, led to the decision to launch a significant ground operation in Gaza.

Officials also believe the military pressure on Hamas in recent days is having an impact and hope it will nudge Hamas in the direction of a hostage release deal. "We're seeing something, [but] it hasn't borne fruit yet," said a political official. "But we weren't seeing anything before."

Political officials aren't ruling out the possibility of a humanitarian pause in the fighting, but only if it includes the release of the hostages. "Even if there's a ceasefire in exchange for the hostages' return, it will be temporary, and Israel will continue working to topple Hamas," the source said. They also criticized former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen's attempt to portray himself as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's envoy in the hostage rescue efforts.

"Yossi Cohen wasn't appointed to serve as an envoy on behalf of the prime minister," said the source. "He initiated a meeting with an Arab leader with the prime minister's permission. In addition, he had several meetings about a policy issue and was in touch with the national security adviser. The prime minister directed him to work under the current Mossad chief, David Barnea. Parallel channels could complicate things."

According to the source, "The negotiations with the Qataris are managed by the current head of the Mossad together with Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon's command center for intelligence on the hostage and the head of the Shin Bet. They report to the war cabinet."

While Netanyahu’s political future is in question, a political source believes a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia is still attainable and that the parties hope to reach it soon. “There are wise people in both Saudi Arabia and Israel,” they said. “The activity we started before the war can be continued afterward – but on the condition that we win.”

Meanwhile, political officials acknowledge that they intend to switch tack and increase the amount of humanitarian aid allowed to enter Gaza. Alongside the fierce international pressure, officials admit that limiting the aid to pressure Hamas has turned out to be ineffective, as Yahya Sinwar, Hamas' leader in Gaza, is undeterred by the suffering of Gazan civilians and isn't helping to rescue Hamas' hostages.

Officials are increasingly concerned about a shortage of food and water leading to unrest among Gaza residents and an escalation of violent confrontation between them and IDF troops. They say that allowing the entry of extensive aid would boost the international community's support for significant operations against Hamas and willingness to send munitions to help deter Hezbollah and Iran in the north.

Regarding the north, the source said, “Hezbollah cannot currently breach the border because of our forces’ preparedness and readiness, so the idea of occupying the north is gone.” As for the evacuated residents of the north being afraid to return to their homes for fear of an attack like October 7, they said, “settlement in the north will be able to return because of the scale and intensity of the victory over Hamas. The IDF will prepare differently for border breaches and not just for the infiltration of squads into the towns. The IDF will be bigger. We’ll invest in the military.”

The Palestinian Authority's role in the future governance of Gaza is also unclear. Members of the government portray it as a radical entity whose aim is to destroy Israel and are struggling to decide if it should be part of Gaza's future.

"It's not enough to reconstruct Gaza," said the source. "There should be a process of denazification. This culture [of wanting to kill Jews] still exists in the Palestinian Authority." The official also referred to the Palestinian Authority’s threat that it wouldn’t use the tax revenue that Israel, which collects it on the PA’s behalf, has decided to transfer without the sum designated for Gaza. The threat isn’t being taken seriously, and a political official said, “If they want it, they’ll get it; if they don’t, they won’t.”

Meanwhile, officials say the human loss is relatively small compared with early predictions. This is due in part to the use of what is being termed the "elephant path" method: a slow advance by large formations allowing direct contact between the IDF and Hamas terrorists. According to officials' estimates, most of the civilian population of Gaza, around 800,000 people, has managed to flee the battle zone.

Four sandbags surround Jonathan. Above him is a dusty blanket serving as an improvised sunshade, behind him a peeling wall with a hole, under which is sprayed the word Dromi (“southern” in Hebrew). This is his secure spot in the heart of the Gaza Strip, his machine gun emplacement, which he finds the most beautiful position.

“We try to build the nicest possible emplacements,” brags Jonathan, a fighter in a brigade under the 36th Division, in front of his comrades. The positions close to him are different yet similar, all of them built with available materials, such as crates, blankets and anything on hand. “We set up really creative positions,” he adds. Creativity is in the eyes of the beholder.

It’s midday Friday on the ruins of a village south of Gaza City. The soundtrack of tanks, incessant shooting in the distance and heavy engineering equipment clearing the roads is in the air. These are relatively quiet moments. Here there are only ruins of a village that was, and evidence of lives that moved to the south or of people no longer alive. There are remnants of closets and drawers, tables with no legs, perhaps doors.

From the roofs of the few houses left standing, one can see the houses of Gaza. After the air force bombardments, one can see far, across many ruins, toward the refugee camps of Nuseirat and Bureij and the beach. We can almost touch the water.

From this village, terrorists of the Nukhba force set out on October 7 to attack Kibbutz Nahal Oz. Residents of this village also set out to pillage the kibbutz and steal the electric scooters. Now they are everywhere, stuck in the ground, some of them close to tunnels shafts leading to Gaza City. This is where Hamas video clips meet reality.

Many questions arise when you’re in the Gaza Strip with the war taking place all around. But an issue that comes up frequently on TV panels, social media and on Israel’s streets seems redundant when encountering the sights of Gaza. If the public is asking what the government’s priority was, the toppling of Hamas or the return of the hostages, looking at the intensity of the force that was used here leaves no room for doubt – Hamas comes first. “The IDF is conducting this operation as if there are no hostages,” says Col. Y., a brigade commander in the 36th Division. He immediately adds, “The people responsible for the hostages are operating as if there is no ground operation here.”

Y., who lives in Alon Shvut in the West Bank, is 38, married with six children. He is one of 12 siblings, seven of them mobilized since October 7. He cites the operation to extricate Ori Megidish as an example of these dual goals. “We don’t ignore any scrap of information about the hostages,” he says, but the war machine now in Gaza will be hard to stop and restrain.”

Caution, a ‘sting’ on the road

The entry into Gaza starts, symbolically, at the Kibbutz Be’eri gate. We join a deputy brigade commander, Lt. Col. G. He leads a small group of journalists (three, including this writer) to a staging area from where forces entered Gaza. “You don’t need helmets yet,” he says, trying to lighten the atmosphere. “Put them on when we near the fence. We’ll pass through roads cleared today by the Engineering Corps. They are relatively safe from explosive devices.” A sigh of relief, at least a partial one.

G. lives in Petah Tikva and is married to a doctor working at the Schneider Medical Center for Children. He has yet to meet his two-week-old daughter. This is his third campaign in enemy territory. In the Second Lebanon War, he was platoon commander in the Nahal Brigade, and he was a company commander in Operation Cast Lead. During that campaign, terrorists opened fire and threw grenades at his force. G. lost two of his men, and suffered shrapnel wounds all over his body. He needed a long rehabilitation process, but here he is again.

After a short drive, we reach the staging area, where we meet Col. M., standing alongside a Namer, the army’s most advanced armored personnel carrier, first used in this war. He asks everyone to put on safety belts. “It’s not because of the police,” he says with a smile. “It’s so that in case we go over a mine we don’t fly into the vehicle.” Driving along the fence northwards, we pass points at which many terrorists and rioters broke through on their way to nearby kibbutzim. Temporary repairs in several locations give some protection against incursions for now.

We stop suddenly, near Nahal Oz. “Two terrorists were seen on the road we’re supposed to travel on,” says M., “One of them whas an RPG.” He then took charge. Some tanks fired at the armed Palestinians. Another force then checked that the road was clear. “You probably think we arranged this for you,” he says. You lucked out, it was right in our way.”

That wasn’t our only surprise. There was also a warning that Hamas was planning to raid a house in an area already under Israeli control. “Make sure you have tanks giving you cover from the north and from the south against snipers,” Y. tells the area commander. “I’m on my way.” The brigade commander points to some green lights that came on inside the vehicle. “That’s the armored shield protection, we’ll be fine,” he assures. But we know soldiers using this device have been hurt anyway during the fighting.

“Snipers, anti-tank missiles and raids pose the main threats,” explains Col. Y. “The enemy is quite cowardly, but when he tries, he can sting us. I tell my soldiers we have to complete the mission first, then protect ourselves. We’re here to win.”

With the growing numbers of army forces, there is also a growing risk of friendly fire incidents. “There are clear section boundaries for all the forces, determining who fires and, mainly, when not to shoot,” says Y. “Friendly fire concerns are higher than a terrorist shooting at these vehicles.”

After entering Gaza, the scenery changes. We pass by farmland, now devoid of trees or bushes, only marked by tracks left by tanks and heavy equipment. Here and there, we see craters and destruction wrought by airstrikes.

Then we reach the first point, the house about which there was a warning of a Hamas raid. It was once some kind of vacation home. Now the yellowish building has no windows, looking like it’s in a stage of demolition. “We need to move quickly to the building because of snipers to the south,” Y. tells us. We point our smartphones at him. “I’m giving you a briefing and you’re pushing cameras in my face,” he says with laughter mixed with seriousness, or vice versa. The dangers are real here, he stresses. “In every area with ruins, try to stay unseen and hide behind shelters.”

Brigade commander Y. climbs to the second floor of a ruined building in a village from which one can see the “vacation” house. A shaft to a tunnel is in its yard, says another officer. “This is a place for observation and snipers,” he adds. “We’ll try to hit it with mortars. The command is given and the mortars start firing. The first attempt fails. The shells land east of the building. The second attempt is more successful. The building sustains direct hits and the target is neutralized.

Throughout our journey we saw no one but soldiers. Even though an estimated 300,000 people remain in northern Gaza, they’re not seen. It’s a ghost strip. A yard with an electric scooter in it lies at the foot of the house, which the officers use as an observation post. But this isn’t just another scooter. He notices it came from Kibbutz Be’eri, based on a sticker or an inscription. A scooter not from here. That’s the whole story.

The same yard has two shafts, says Lt. Col. R., a battalion commander. Early on in the war, he was injured at Kibbutz Kissufim, but he’s back. Like G., he’s yet to see his two-week-old son. He only heard the circumcision ceremony through a secure line. With resolve, he insists on explaining why it was more important for him to be here. “The hostages were apparently brought here first,” he says. “The shafts suggest they were taken through tunnels into Gaza City, which is very close.”

A corner of sanity

The devastation in Gaza is immense. Entire neighborhoods look like junkyards. Here and there, houses still standing stick out. Some have become, by necessity of warfare, rest and shelter spots for soldiers. At the entrance to one of these buildings, a combat trooper sits to eat, a table before him – half a front door, on closer inspection. He found it among the rubble, he says. “I’m having a decadent feast of tuna, beans, and hummus,” he declares. “That’s what we’ve been eating here for two weeks. Welcome to our villa.” His comrades, back from operational duty, try to get some rest in the “villa” living room. The lucky ones who managed to grab a mattress sleep well. Others just flop down on the floor, lay their heads on their helmets, and dream of a comfy pillow.

Soldiers hung a sign reading “smoking corner” along the staircase leading upstairs. The roof is off limits for smoking, for fear of snipers. Between the ubiquitous soundtrack of war, the smoke of bombings and the dust of bulldozers, it seems that the smoking corner is a kind of corner of sanity for many troopers.

Within this house, and others, a rare sort of Noah’s ark is happening. Soldiers from the paratroopers, Golani, Kfir, combat engineering, and various brigades all share the same spaces. “Can you believe Golani and paratroopers are fighting here in the same force?” asks Col. Y., alluding to the sense of unity he perceives in the public. “If they are fighting together, and armored brigades 7 and 188 are fighting together on the ruins of Netzarim and are driving down the Gaza shoreline side by side, then anything is possible in life. This is the first time they’re fighting together. This is a crazy event.”

The reason is that the army is fighting for the first time in formations of brigade combat crews, which include infantry, engineering, and armored troops, making them a more effective force. These formations cause the brigades to move forces between themselves. So the saying that the leopard shall lie down with the kid before a Nahal soldier will break bread with a Golan soldier has become somewhat outdated.

Major A., the commander of the brigade’s command post, stands on a roof. When informed that he was about to enter Gaza, he decided to embark on a personal mission. “Before we entered, I spoke with the soldiers, and told them that wherever we arrive, we’ll fly the Israeli flag – and we’re keeping our word,” he says. After hanging the flag on the latest conquered outpost, he wanted to celebrate with some pink candy. “That’s from the Barbie movie, bro,” a comrade muttered to him, souring his sweet tooth. “What Barbie? What does Barbie have to do with me?” he replied, tucking the packet back in his combat vest.

Draining the swamp

Toward the end of the tour, Col. Y. says he was surprised to some extent by how events played out in the first days. “The resistance is less than we thought we’d find here,” he explains. “There was resistance, and there were combat casualties, but we’re holding the ground very strongly.” He says Hamas fighters are active mostly during the day.

The way back is replete with the same sights and sounds that attended the ride in. We see ditches, perhaps dug by Hamas, perhaps remnants of an IAF bombing. Only special forces handle the ditches. The mission of the forces under Y. is “to open logistics routes and keep them open and clean of IEDs and anti-tank threats,” he explains. In general, the maneuvering of the divisions in Gaza is a constant motion of aggressive, precision fighting against targets vital to Hamas rule. They don’t necessarily go after rocket launchers or armed militants. In the words of the commanders on the ground: They aim to drain the swamp and not deal with the mosquitoes. “A soldier, in the end, has to locate and kill the enemy, find ditches and find intelligence, so that we can win without any dilemmas,” Y. summarizes. “To the soldier, the mission is very clear.”

When we get to the start (and end) point, near Kibbutz Be’eri, on Friday afternoon, we feel some relief. There are a bit more laughs, we take off the helmets, even loosen the ceramic combat vests a bit. A moment before the armed personnel carrier stops, Lt. Col. G. thinks of another front. “What will happen with Nasrallah’s speech?” he asks, “Will a war start in the north, too?”