GAZA WARIsrael's Strategic Crisis
After the crisis caused by being caught by surprise on 7 October, Israel now faces a second crisis as its government struggles to find a strategy to meet its stated objective of pushing Hamas out of Gaza and rendering it incapable of further atrocities in the future.
After the crisis caused by being caught by surprise on 7 October, Israel now faces a second crisis as its government struggles to find a strategy to meet its stated objective of pushing Hamas out of Gaza and rendering it incapable of further atrocities in the future. Even before the uproar surrounding the tragedy at the Al Ahli hospital, the dominant issue was becoming the dire situation in Gaza rather the security of Israel. To understand how we have reached this point – so quickly – we need to go back to the way that Israeli strategy was set before its implications were fully appreciated.
The Land War in Israel’s Strategy
As the scale of the horrors of 7 October were being realized, the country was declared to be at war. That day, 300,000 reservists were called up and a military build-up began on the southern border in preparation for a major incursion into Gaza. Electricity and water were cut off and bombing campaign was launched to dismantle as much as possible of Hamas’s infrastructure from the air. Soon it was telling Gazans to move from the north of the territory to the south, as UN agencies described a developing humanitarian crisis. Initially the time allowed was 24 hours, presumably reflecting the urgency of the moment. This was never going to be enough despite many Palestinians moving as fast as they could from the north to the south of the territory, or searching for safe places, some of which have turned out to be very unsafe.
Yet after all this urgency, and talk of a coming land war, nothing has yet happened and Israeli officials are now suggesting that it is possible nothing will happen.
Because Israel started by talking up a ground attack it seemed as if it was almost obliged to launch one. There was an alternative – still to mobilize and prepare while insisting that such an attack was but one option under consideration. This is more or less where we are now, except that the government seems to have lost confidence not only as it comes to appreciate the challenges of a land operation but also the perplexing situation in which it finds itself.
