[The IDF’s ‘three-phase’ operation would increase Hamas’s
influence in the region rather than extinguishing it ]
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HOW ISRAEL’S GROUND INVASION OF GAZA WOULD PLAY OUT – AND WHY IT
WILL FAIL  
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Paul Rogers
October 25, 2023
The Guardian
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_ The IDF’s ‘three-phase’ operation would increase Hamas’s
influence in the region rather than extinguishing it _

Rubble litters a street between smoldering buildings hit by an
Israeli air raid on the Jabalia refugee camp., (Hatem Moussa/AP Photo)


 

The Israel [[link removed]] Defence Forces
(IDF) are poised to start ground operations in northern Gaza and the
intended outcome is clear – the termination of Hamas. But previous
experience suggests that despite being the far superior military
force, they will fail.

Israel is planning a “three-phase” operation. The first phase has
started with an intense air bombardment and will continue with ground
operations aimed at “neutralising terrorists and destroying Hamas
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words of Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant.

The second phase will involve destroying any remaining resistance and
this will be followed by the final phase, creating a substantial
buffer zone around Gaza [[link removed]].
With Hamas defeated, the strip will be cut loose from Israel and will
presumably become the responsibility of the international community,
perhaps including provision of power, water, food and other needs.

This war is the fifth between Hamas and Israel since 2008. The four
previous wars and related violence cost
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Palestinian lives and 308 Israeli lives. In the current war, at least
1,400 Israelis, including 279 soldiers, were killed and a further
3,400 wounded on 7 October. So far in the wide-ranging IDF
response, nearly 6,000 Palestinians
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been killed, including more than 2,000 children, and more than 16,000
peoplehave been wounded. A further 29 UN relief workers have been
killed.

In only one of the previous wars, July 2014, did the IDF mount a major
ground incursion – and its elite Golani Brigade then took serious
losses. This, and Hamas’s presumed preparedness makes it well-nigh
certain that, this time, the IDF will use very heavy airpower
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advance of any ground assaults. Counter-city destruction (devastating
an urban area before involving ground troops) is a frequent feature of
modern warfare, whether it is Russia in Chechnya and Ukraine or the
US-led coalition in Iraq, especially the destruction
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old city of Mosul just six years ago.

In Gaza, many more districts will be destroyed, and infiltration
tunnels will be hit repeatedly, many with the US-made GBU-28 “bunker
busting” bomb. Israel already has about 100 of these and it may now
have the more advanced GBU-72
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Given the utter determination of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to
destroy Hamas, many thousands more Palestinians will be killed and
tens of thousands wounded. If the war eventually ends, the
Palestinians of Gaza are likely to be contained in a far smaller area
and subject to intense surveillance.

This takes us to the strategic dangers from Israel’s point of view.
Instead of extinguishing Hamas, the war will result in tens of
thousands more very angry young Palestinians set to join the
organisation or a similar successor.

If the assumption is that this will be mitigated by heavy surveillance
of 2 million Palestinians crammed into a small part of Gaza, then this
ignores what is happening in the West Bank. There, more than 3 million
Palestinians live under an occupation that has only worsened under
Netanyahu’s hardline governments.

Moreover, the West Bank is very different from Gaza in two crucial
respects. One is the rapid expansion of Israeli settlements which have
a potent combination of ultranationalism and religious fundamentalism
among settlers. This is strongly supported by religious parties in the
Netanyahu government, some with a markedly “Kahanist
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view of the Palestinians.

The second is that the settlements are so widespread across that whole
territory, and many settlers are so determined to exercise control,
that tensions with the majority Palestinian population are very high.
The recent land grab
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Ein Rashash is just one example of repeated encroachment on
Palestinian land and has been paralleled by repeated acts of violence
across the occupied territories. From the start of the year through to
mid-September, 189 Palestinians have been killed
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more than 8,000 injured.

The atrocities of 7 October will add to the determination of settlers
to solidify their control over more territory, but the IDF will be
reluctant to get closely involved in what might be urban warfare.
There has just been a rare air attack on a suspected Hamas/Palestinian
Islamic Jihad (PIJ) site in Jenin, but the IDF contribution in the
West Bank has been much more of the order of intensive ground patrols.

These, though, have been resisted and in one incident earlier in the
year, one of the IDF’s most modern armoured personnel carriers,
designed specifically for use on the West Bank, was attacked and
disabled in an attack near Jenin. The IDF response was to use massive
force in a rare direct military incursion
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the nearby refugee camp in Jenin. This was expected to curtail
paramilitary activity, but the weekend’s air attack indicates it is
failing.

Essentially, an intense destruction of Gaza could end up displacing
the locus of conflict to the West Bank rather than actually ending it.
Across much of the global south and especially the Middle East
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an anti-Israel mood is growing that is radically different from
support offered on and immediately after 7 October. Hamas already has
support in the West Bank, and incompetence and corruption in the
Palestinian Authority is rendering that body irrelevant. While the
current international focus is inevitably on Gaza, the significance of
the West Bank is being missed as is its potential to be the site of a
neo-Hamas movement.

The Netanyahu government’s overall approach is making a very
difficult problem even worse. A humanitarian-oriented ceasefire is
still possible but will not happen unless the US, Britain and the EU
specifically demand it. If they don’t, they will bear part of the
responsibility for what happens next.

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_Paul Rogers is emeritus professor of peace studies at Bradford
University and an honorary fellow at the Joint Service Command and
Staff College_

* Israel-Gaza War
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* Ground Invasion
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* Hamas
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* fallout
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