- Israel is carrying out an unprecedented onslaught on the
Gaza Strip, with the intention of wiping out Hamas. - Gaza
authorities say 3 500 Palestinians have been killed in bombings, and an
Israeli ground invasion is expected. - There is uncertainty about whether Israel
can completely eliminate Hamas, and the fighting may spread beyond the current
borders.
Israel
is vowing to wipe out Hamas in a relentless onslaught on the Gaza Strip but has
no obvious endgame in sight, with no clear plan for how to govern the ravaged
Palestinian enclave even if it triumphs on the battlefield.
Codenamed
“Operation Swords of Iron”, the military campaign will be unmatched
in its ferocity and unlike anything Israel has carried out in Gaza in the past,
according to eight regional and Western officials with knowledge of the
conflict who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.
Israel
has called up a record 360 000 reservists and has been bombarding the tiny
enclave non-stop following Hamas’s assault on southern Israel on 7 October,
which killed about 1 400 people, mostly civilians.
The
immediate Israeli strategy, said three regional officials familiar with
discussions between the US and Middle Eastern leaders, is to destroy Gaza’s
infrastructure, even at the cost of high civilian casualties, push the
enclave’s people towards the Egyptian border and go after Hamas by blowing up
the labyrinth of underground tunnels the group has built to conduct its
operations.
FOLLOW IT LIVE | DEVELOPING: Israel says it will allow aid into Gaza through Egypt – as long as none reaches Hamas
Israeli
officials have said that they don’t have a clear idea for what a post-war
future might look like, though.
Some
of US President Joe Biden’s aides are concerned that while Israel may craft an
effective plan to inflict lasting damage to Hamas, it has yet to formulate an
exit strategy, a source in Washington familiar with the matter said.
Trips
to Israel by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd
Austin this past week had stressed the need to focus on the post-war plan for
Gaza, the source added.
Arab
officials are also alarmed that Israel hasn’t set out a clear plan for the
future of the enclave, ruled by Hamas since 2006 and home to 2.3 million
people.
One regional security force said:
Israel doesn’t have an endgame for Gaza. Their strategy is to drop thousands of bombs, destroy everything and go in, but then what? They have no exit strategy for the day after.
An
Israeli invasion has yet to start, but Gaza authorities say 3 500 Palestinians
have already been killed by the aerial bombardment, around a third of them
children – a larger death toll than in any previous conflict between Hamas and
Israel.
Biden,
on a visit to Israel on Wednesday, told Israelis that justice needed to be
served to Hamas, though he cautioned that after the 9/11 attacks on New York,
the US had made mistakes.
The
“vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas”, he said. “Hamas
does not represent the Palestinian people.”
Aaron
David Miller, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, said Biden’s visit would have given him a chance to press Israeli leader
Benjamin Netanyahu to think through issues such as the proportional use of
force and the longer-term plans for Gaza before any invasion.
‘City
of Tunnels’
Israeli
officials, including Netanyahu, have said they will wipe out Hamas in
retribution for the attack, the deadliest in Israel’s 75-year-old history.
What
will follow is less defined.
“We
are of course thinking and dealing with this, and this involves assessments and
includes the National Security Council, the military and others about the end
situation,” Israeli National Security Council director Tzachi Hanegbi told
reporters on Tuesday. “We don’t know what this will be with
certainty.”
“But
what we do know is what there will not be,” he said, referring to Israel’s
stated aim to eradicate Hamas.
A picture taken with a fisheye lens on 18 January 2018 from the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip shows the exit of a tunnel, that Israel says was dug by the Islamic Jihad group, leading from the Palestinian enclave into Israel, near southern Israeli kibbutz of Kissufim. Israel uncovered and destroyed the tunnel in late October.
AFP Jack Guez/AFP/Pool
This might be easier said than done.
“It’s an underground city of tunnels that make the Vietcong tunnels look like child’s play,” said the first regional source, referring to the Communist guerrilla force that defied US troops in Vietnam. “They’re not going to end Hamas with tanks and firepower.”
Two
regional military experts told Reuters that Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine
al-Qassam Brigades, has mobilised for an invasion, setting up anti-tank mines
and booby-trapped explosive devices to ambush troops.
Israel’s
coming offensive is set to be much bigger than past Gaza operations that Israeli
officials had previously referred to as “mowing the grass”, degrading
Hamas’s military capabilities but not eliminating it.
Israel
has fought three previous conflicts with Hamas, in 2008-9, 2012 and 2014, and
launched limited land invasions during two of those campaigns, but unlike
today, Israel’s leaders never vowed to destroy Hamas once and for all.
In
those three confrontations, just under 4 000 Palestinians and fewer than 100
Israelis died.
There
is less optimism in Washington, though, that Israel will be able to completely
destroy Hamas and US officials see little chance that Israel will want to hold
onto any Gaza territory or re-occupy it, the US source said.
A
more likely scenario, the person said, would be for Israeli forces to kill or
capture as many Hamas members as they can, blow up tunnels and rocket
workshops, then after Israeli casualties mount, look for a way to declare
victory and exit.
Clouds
of war
The
fear across the region is that the war will blow up beyond the confines of
Gaza, with Lebanon’s Hezbollah and its backer Iran opening major new fronts in
support of Hamas.
Iranian
Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned of a possible “preemptive”
action against Israel if it carried out its invasion of Gaza. He said last
weekend that Iran would not watch from the sidelines if the US failed to
restrain Israel.
Arab
leaders have told Blinken, who has been criss-crossing the region this past
week, that while they condemn Hamas’ attack on Israel, they oppose collective
punishment against ordinary Palestinians, which they fear will trigger regional
unrest.
Popular
anger will ratchet up across the region when the body count rises, they said.
Washington
has sent an aircraft carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean and is
concerned that Hezbollah might join the battle from Israel’s northern border.
There has been no sign, however, that the US military would then move from a
deterrent posture to direct involvement.
The
regional sources said Washington was proposing to re-energise the Palestinian
Authority (PA), which lost control of Gaza to Hamas in 2007, although there is
huge doubt whether the PA or any other authority would be able to govern the
coastal enclave should Hamas be driven out.
Miller,
a former US Middle East negotiator, expressed deep scepticism about the
potential for establishing a post-Hamas government to rule Gaza.
He said:
I could paint you a picture more appropriate to a galaxy far, far away and not on planet Earth on how you could combine the UN, the Palestinian Authority, the Saudis, the Egyptians, led by the US marshalling the Europeans, to basically convert Gaza from an open-air prison to something much better.
In
the meantime, calls for the creation of humanitarian corridors within Gaza and
escape routes for Palestinian civilians has drawn a strong reaction from Arab neighbours.
They
fear an Israeli invasion will spark a new permanent mass wave of displacement,
a replay of the 1948 Israeli war of independence and 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Millions of Palestinians who were forced to flee then have remained stranded as
refugees in the countries that hosted them.
East
Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 war and then annexed, and Israeli
settlement expansion across occupied territory are at the core of the conflict
with Palestinians. Netanyahu has openly embraced the religious and radical
far-right, promising to annex more land to be settled by Jews.
Hundreds
of Palestinians have died in the West Bank since the start of the year in
repeated clashes with Israeli soldiers and settlers, and there is widespread
concern that the violence might engulf the territory as nearby Gaza burns.
“Whatever
worst-case scenario you have, it will be worse,” a second regional source
said about the potential for the conflict to spread beyond Gaza.
(Aditional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Washington, Jonathan Saul
in Jerusalem and Andrew Mills; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Pravin Char)
