GAZA WARIsrael’s Ground War Against Hamas: What to Know
A major ground campaign in the Gaza Strip will display Israel’s overwhelming military force, but the country faces a steep challenge in its goal of eradicating Hamas, as well as in finding a workable post-combat plan for the territory.
What does Israel intend to achieve with a ground war in the Gaza Strip?
Israeli officials have repeatedly said their goal is to eliminate Hamas. By crushing the terrorist organization, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes to reassert Israeli deterrence and show Israel’s enemies the high costs of attacking it. Israel has already launched a massive bombing campaign of the Gaza Strip and, more recently, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/23/israel-hamas-gaza-airstr.... Click or tap if you trust this link.">raids on the ground, while signaling that it will soon launch a major ground offensive.
In this phase of the war, Israel will face four principal challenges:
Urban warfare. This is an inherently difficult form of warfare because buildings provide fighting positions for defenders, and even reducing them to rubble can impede an offensive’s progress. Israel’s difficulties are multiplied in Gaza because of: (1) the presence of large numbers of Palestinian civilians who have no place to go; (2) Hamas’s seizure of at least 199 hostages, who could be used as human shields; and (3) all of the tunnels that Hamas has built underneath the Gaza Strip over the years, which allow Hamas fighters to hide from Israeli troops and emerge at unexpected moments.
Information operations. Israel usually comes under international pressure to end its offensives when they cause civilian casualties. But these are inevitable no matter the care taken by Israel’s military, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), because Hamas hides among the civilian population. In 2006, during the Second Lebanon War, Israel faced heavy pressure (including from the George W. Bush administration in the United States) to end its offensive against Hamas after it bombed an apartment building in Lebanon, killing twenty-eight people.
