Whether it's strategy or revenge, Israel is likely to prevail in Gaza offensive — but then what?
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told ground troops Thursday to be ready for the order to invade
"Now is a time for war," declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week amid signs a major ground invasion of Gaza was being planned.
On Thursday, Israel looked determined to carry out that promise as Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told ground troops to be ready for the order.
"Whoever sees Gaza from afar now will see it from the inside," he said. "I promise you."
Israel's well-trained and well-equipped army is likely to prevail, although experts say such a huge ground operation risks worsening and widening the conflict. But one key question remains unanswered, said Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli political analyst and pollster in Tel Aviv: What happens after a military victory?
"There is no doubt in my mind there are figures in the government and the military asking the same question," she said. "And I am not at all sure they do have answers."
There has already been more than a week of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, killing at least 3,785 Palestinians and wounding 12,500, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said on Thursday.
Israel says its main target is Hamas, the militant group responsible for the surprise attack on Oct. 7 in which more than 1,400 people in Israel were killed, including several Canadians. About 200 people were taken as hostages to Gaza.
The unexpected timing and unimaginable violence left Israel angry and shaken.
What could happen on the ground?
Some in Israel worry the offensive would be motivated mostly by a desire for revenge.
"I think that's the primary driver of this willingness to tolerate our casualties and to go into a major, major military operation," said Benjamin Miller, a political science professor at the University of Haifa.
The desire for retribution is strong among the public and even among some military and political leaders, he said.
Nizar Farsakh, a former advisor to the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, who now teaches international affairs at George Washington University, chalks it up to fear.
"Part of the brutality that you're seeing from Israel is precisely because they're petrified," he said. "They just realized that they are completely ill-equipped to face Hamas."
Destroying Hamas may mean sacrificing many Israeli soldiers.
Observers say the militant group has between 20,000 and 30,000 fighters, no match for Israel's advanced army. But Hamas has the advantage in urban fighting because of its familiar home turf and a network of tunnels they've built over 16 years, through repeated confrontations with Israel.
"Undoubtedly, they're setting traps for the Israeli soldiers," said Nomi Bar-Yaacov, an analyst with the London think-tank Chatham House. "Gaza is likely to look like a bloodbath" if they try to fight their way in, she said.
Hamas has been getting ready for this for so long, said Farsakh, it "probably prepared something that defies or goes outside of the imagination of the Israeli intelligence agencies."
What will happen to Hamas?
The most senior Hamas leadership isn't in Gaza; it's in the Gulf, said Janice Stein, professor of conflict management at University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs. And she says Hamas will be hard to dislodge because it is as much a movement as it is a political party, with community roots.
"You can't wipe out social movements," she said.
But in practical terms, it is also the administrator of Gaza.
Hamas has governed Gaza and its 2.3 million residents since it split with its Palestinian rival Fatah and seized control of the territory in 2007, prompting Israel's ongoing blockade of the territory.
If it is eliminated, who would run Gaza on a day-to-day basis? The Palestinian Authority, which administers the occupied West Bank, has not had a significant presence or popular support in Gaza since it was evicted by Hamas in 2007.
As for Israeli forces, "it would be very costly for Israel to hold Gaza forever," said Miller. It would also present a much bigger challenge: The population in Gaza is more hostile to Israel than it is in the West Bank, and it includes more Islamic fundamentalists.
What will happen to Palestinians?
For Palestinian civilians, the implications of a major ground offensive is expected to be as devastating as the current air campaign, especially if it involves heavy fighting in urban residential areas.
Already, "Palestinians are traumatized," said Farsakh.
Many may not like Hamas's policies, he said, but most would "stand in the rubble of their own houses and cheer the fighters on" out of the frustration of no change in their circumstances in decades and a feeling they need to "up the ante."
"Palestinians are the ones that are feeling the urgency most, and therefore, they are the ones that are supporting desperate initiatives," said Farsakh.
They also feel this reminds the world the issue is still unresolved and relevant, he said.
Some Israelis are certainly thinking about that fact again, said Scheindlin.
"As long as the military conflict is unresolved and people's national self-determination is denied," there will never be a normal life in Israel, she said.
Others on the political right, Scheindlin said, will conclude "the only option we have is a complete military destruction of Palestinian political leadership and military capacity and total control over Palestinians."
Can Netanyahu regain public trust?
In the face of the Hamas attack, Israel's society has united, broadly backing this government's direction for the first time since it was elected a year ago.
But just under the surface, there is a feeling of "abandonment and betrayal" from a leadership that was caught by surprise by Hamas, said Scheindlin.
"There's an enormous sense of breach of trust between the people and the state," she said, "including the security establishment and the vaunted IDF (Israel Defence Forces)."
If the invasion fails to achieve its goal, if it takes too long — or if Israeli casualties are too high — support will evaporate, said Miller.
Already, families of the missing have organized demonstrations in front of Israel's Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv, holding placards reading "Shame!" and pictures of victims.
"I want to make sure that it's loud and clear that the first priority should be bringing [the hostages] home," said one protestor, Inbar Ravid.
The last time Israel had to deal with a hostage situation in Gaza it involved just one captured soldier, Gilad Shalit. A ground incursion by the IDF failed to find him, and he was eventually exchanged for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners let out of Israel's jails in 2011.
Managing the rescue or release of some 200 Israeli hostages, and dealing with the expectations of their families and the country, will be even more contentious for a government already under fire. And it may overreact in order to try to regain public trust, said Farsakh.
"So, they're trying to create as much casualties on the Palestinian side to show the Israeli government … is answerable to the Israeli citizens," he said.
There was a political split among Israelis even before Oct. 7. Anger over legislation to overhaul the judicial system to give politicians greater power over judges — laws introduced by Netanyahu and his ruling coalition of ultra-nationalists — sparked months of huge demonstrations across the country.
Pollster Scheindlin says the split — and the anger — have only been "reinforced" by the war.
That leads Stein to conclude, "Netanyahu is finished."
His right-wing allies, including hard-line settler groups, are being blamed for focusing too much of the army's attention on the West Bank, she said. The implication would be a shift toward the political centre, said Stein.
Outrage in the Arab world
Look no further than the Arab world's reaction to a single event — the hospital blast that is said to have killed hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza City this week — and it's easy to imagine the outrage an all-out Israeli invasion would spark.
It's a "dark and dangerous abyss" into which the region could be pushed, said United Nations Mideast peace envoy Tor Wennesland at a Security Council meeting this week.
After the explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, each side pointed at the other. Palestinian officials blamed an Israeli air raid while Israel said the blast was caused by a failed rocket launch by the Islamic Jihad militant group, which denied responsibility.
People protested from Tunis to Tehran. In Amman, Jordan, police pushed an angry crowd back from the Israeli embassy while in Beirut, security forces fired tear gas and water cannons at protesters near the U.S. embassy.
The Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah called for "a day of unprecedented anger" from its base in southern Lebanon. Observers are watching the group closely for signs that it might use the opportunity of Israel's focus on Gaza to attack from the north.
Iran itself has threatened action against Israel if it doesn't stop its "genocide of Palestinians," using an alliance of militant groups called the Axis of Resistance. It includes Hamas and others in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
There has long been popular sympathy for Palestinians at street level throughout the Middle East, even as "normalization agreements" with Israel have been signed by several government in the region. Those agreements have included barely a nod to Palestinian rights, with no insistence on the two state solution — an independent Palestinian state next to the Israeli one.
A similar normalization agreement was being negotiated in earnest between Saudi Arabia, Israel and the U.S. when this conflict broke out — one with the potential of "transforming the Arab-Israel conflict," said Robert Satloff, a Mideast expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Bringing together Saudi Arabia, "the custodian of the two holy mosques in peace with the Jewish state would be the ultimate affirmation of Israel's presence in the Middle East," he said.
Now, talks with Israel have been put on hold by Saudi Arabia, made politically unpalatable by the war.
But while Israel is accused of being too aggressive by some in the Middle East, Israelis fear it could look vulnerable if it doesn't act decisively now, said Miller.
"If Israel doesn't respond very strongly, very powerfully to this kind of atrocity, then Israel's standing in the region, its deterrence and eventually its integration and acceptance in the region will be challenged because, supposedly, the Arabs will perceive Israel as weak and as fragile," he said.
Clarifications
- A previous version of this story said Hamas was elected to govern Gaza in 2006. In fact, the 2006 elections were for the Palestinian Legislative Council, which included the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.Oct 20, 2023 3:28 PM ET
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