Israel is preparing for a long battle in Gaza

The Israeli campaign in Gaza is likely to last for months. Benny Gantz, a member of the country’s three-man war cabinet, said Wednesday that the fighting, which aims to dismantle Hamas throughout Gaza territory, “will be expanded to additional centers and additional fronts as necessary.”

At the same time, there is much doubt about how feasible the Israeli strategy is to eliminate Hamas completely. Hamas is showing itself to be quite resilient, several experts, including Israeli ones, countered on Wednesday The New York Times. And the main Hamas leaders in Gaza, Yahyah Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, have not yet been caught. Israel offers bounties of hundreds of thousands of euros to people with a golden tip.

But even if Israel were to eliminate Sinwar and Deif, experts say Israel still runs the risk of a new generation of leaders emerging. And the revulsion against Israel does not diminish as a result of this war of extermination.

Daniel Byman, professor of security studies at Georgetown University in Washington, considers the Israeli strategy “too ambitious”. Others speak of a vague and unrealistic goal – for example, French President Emmanuel Macron states that total destruction of Hamas could take up to ten years. The Biden administration has ambassadors sent to Israel to push for more targeted operations rather than blanket destruction.

Conflicting goals

According to Byman, Israel is pursuing several goals with this war, including destroying Hamas, releasing the hostages, maintaining international support and restoring damaged confidence in Israel’s security apparatus. These goals are sometimes contradictory, he writes in the magazine Foreign Affairs: if many civilian deaths occur in the hunt for Hamas, Israel, for example, will lose international credit.

Israel, says Byman based on conversations with (former) Israeli military leaders, security officials, diplomats and politicians, nevertheless estimates that it is succeeding in destroying Hamas’s military infrastructure. The number of rocket attacks on Israel is decreasing and the group only controls a small area.

Israel itself estimates that it is succeeding in destroying Hamas’ military infrastructure

On Tuesday, Israeli forces reached the outskirts of Bureij, a densely built refugee camp in the center of the Gaza Strip, about a mile from the border with Israel. Satellite images captured dozens of armored vehicles advancing toward the area.

Bureij is one of eight camps that were established shortly after 1948 to accommodate Palestinians who were expelled from present-day Israel that year. Over the years, tents in those refugee camps were replaced by houses.

On Sunday, airstrikes in and around Bureij left dozens dead, according to Gaza Health Ministry officials. Satellite images showed newly destroyed buildings. This week, hostilities expanded to include three other refugee camps in central Gaza: Nuseirat, Deir al Balah and Maghazi.

A week ago, Israel told residents of the same area in central Gaza, where nearly 90,000 people lived before the war, to evacuate south. But in South Gaza, especially in the city of Rafah, schools and other shelters are already overcrowded. The humanitarian need is high.

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A Palestinian man mourns the deaths of his relatives killed during an Israeli attack on the Maghazi refugee camp.

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‘Voluntary migration’

The strategy of forcing Gazans to flee to a shrinking area is finite. The pro-government newspaper Israel Hayom reported Monday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted at “voluntary migration”: through Egypt, people who want to do so could find shelter in a third country.

According to the Prime Minister, contacts with possible receiving countries would be established. Netanyahu’s coalition partners have previously made similar comments. Some residents of Gaza are already answering the call: even though the border crossing with Egypt is formally closed, you can be allowed through for a fee.

Paula Gaviria Betancur, UN Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Displaced Persons, wrote recently: “As evacuation orders and military operations continue to expand and civilians are subjected to brutal attacks on a daily basis, the only logical conclusion is that Israel’s military operation in Gaza aims to deport the majority of the civilian population en masse.” She is concerned that Israel is guilty of forced displacement and collective punishment, both war crimes.

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