Israel Invades Gaza

After bombing Hamas targets in Gaza for several days in a row, Israel decided to launch a major ground offensive Saturday. The Israelis believe that the air strikes have severely weakened Hamas, but not destroyed it. A possible short but aggressive ground invasion is thought necessary in order to wipe Hamas out in order to push the terrorist group out of power and replace it with the more moderate Fatah movement.

Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minster, said: “Our aim is to force Hamas to stop its hostile acitivities against Israel and bring about significant change.

“We have carefully weighed all our options, we are not war hungry but we should not allow a situation where our towns are constantly targeted by Hamas.

“The ground operation includes endangering the lives of the forces. I know that there are risks. It will not be easy or short, but we are determined. Now is the time to do what needs to be done.”

Ayman Mohyeldin, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Gaza, said: “Residents in the Beit Hanoun area say they have seen the movement of tanks into the territory.

“There is absolute fear and terror, it is pitch black, power lines have been cut throughout the strip, more than 250,000 people in northern Gaza are without electricity.

“The biggest concern is a ground invasion could result in urban warfare.

“Rockets are being fired from deeper and deeper within Gaza and if Israel’s intention is to prevent such attacks how far into Gaza, an area densely populated with civilians, will they need to go?”

Hamas said earlier today that they had killed several Israeli soldiers. The Israeli government, however, has not said anything about possible Israeli casualties.

As becomes clear from Barak’s words, Israel’s leaders have clearly listened to U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama who spoke a lot about hope and “change” in 2008. The “change” he refers to, of course, is a severely weakened, possibly destroyed Hamas.

The move to invade Gaza is risky for Israel. Its Arab neighbors and nominal enemies tolerated the air strikes against Hamas targets but they cannot continue to let Israel wreak havoc and destruction in the Palestinian territories. As co-blogger Bert de Bruin noted in a comment section at this blog a few days ago, Israel’s window of opportunity is short. Bombing Gaza for a week, followed by a massive ground invasion will almost certainly result in Arab leaders becoming more actively involved in the matter. Not because they want to, but because their people force them to.

Egypt has constantly held Hamas responsible for the violence, for instance. Only a few days ago, a leading Egyptian politician explained to the Egyptian and Palestinian public that Egypt does not care about Palestinians and especially not about Hamas. Sadly for Cairo, however, Islamists in his country think quite differently. They do not only pose a possible threat to Israel but also to the secular leadership of Egypt. Ignoring popular opinion about the matter too long weakens the Mubarak administration domestically.

As such, it could be argued that Israel waited too long already. It should, perhaps, have invaded after two or three days of heavy bombings. After all, after these first few days most Hamas leaders were in hiding, and the rockets and other Hamas weapons they still had were seemingly difficult for Israel to destroy by air strikes alone (they would have been destroyed otherwise already).

The above means that one can expect Arab leaders to become more vocal in the coming hours and days, possibly arguing for sanctions against Israel, possibly worse. Islamists in the entire region will focus all their might, power and influence on the Jewish nation-state, actively supported by several Middle Eastern nations. This may lead to more terrorist attacks in Israel in the coming two months than we have seen in the last two years or so.

Which leads to another reason why the ground invasion is risky for Israel: Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations will now undoubtedly try to commit terrorist attacks on a massive scale in Israel, against civilian targets.

Thirdly, Israel invaded Lebanon two years ago (or so) which resulted in a massive PR victory for the terrorist organization Hizbullah. The group was weakened by the attack, but not as much as the Israelis had hoped. The war was, generally, mishandled by the Israeli Kadima leadership; the same ones who are currently in power. If the Gaza is as ‘successful’ as the war in Lebanon was, Israel’s attack will end up emboldening Hamas rather than weakening let alone destroying it.

Interestingly enough, recent polls show that only 22% of the Israeli people support a ground invasion, partially because they fear that such an invasion will result in massive Israeli casualties. Lest one forgets, Israel has the draft. Many Israeli soldiers, the ones who fight and die, are not professional soldiers, much like Turkey. Professional soldiers choose to serve and possibly die. They willfully take that risk. Many Israeli soldiers do not, however.

In other words, Kadima, the ruling party, is playing with fire. If the ground invasion is successful, Hamas will be severely weakened, possibly destroyed. This will undoubtedly result in a surge for this center party in the polls. If it fails in any way, however, it will continue its free fall in the polls, probably resulting in a massive victory for the center right Likud party, which is more hawkish than its main rival.

Whatever the future, we can be sure about one thing: the war between Hamas and Israel is on. The objective of Israel is to stop the firing of rockets by Hamas. Israel will attempt to reach this objective by destroying smuggling tunnels of the terrorist organization, its arsenal of rockets, and by killing and capturing as many Hamas figures as possible. Israel probably hopes not only to weaken Hamas, but to weaken it so severely that Fatah will be able to take over control of Gaza once again. If it does, we can expect Fatah to do to Hamas what Hamas did to its rival last year: torture, executions, etc. In other words, a small scale civil war, or at least a power struggle, may take place after the Israeli offensive, depending on how weak Hamas will be.