In the Upper Galilee, on Israel's northern border with Lebanon, the air is thick with acrid smoke from forest fires sparked by bombing. Civilians have been evacuated, and soldiers are guarding the crossings. Every hour or so, Hezbollah missiles explode on the Israeli side of the border and are responded to with volleys directed at the Iranian-backed militia. Israel is a country on the verge of going to war. In the east, it bombs Syrian airfields believed to be used to deliver weapons to militants. In the west, a US strike group with one aircraft carrier is stationed in the Mediterranean, and a second is on the way to try to deter Iran and its allies. In the south, a large Israeli invasion force awaits the order to enter the Gaza battlefields.
Two weeks after Hamas' attack on Israel, the ground invasion has not yet begun. One of the reasons for the delay is the desperate diplomatic frenzy that is carried out in extremis. On October 20, Hamas released two Israeli-American hostages following talks mediated by Qatar. The next day, an international conference in Cairo called for a ceasefire. A limited amount of aid is now reaching Gaza through Egypt, and negotiations continue for the release of more hostages.
The delay also reflects the debate within the Israeli government about the type of war it wants to wage: hard and fast or patient and long? On October 19, the chiefs of operations finalized operational plans, and the war cabinet met in Tel Aviv. The meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Beniamin Netanyahu, ended without conclusions after seven hours. Tense relationships and stress may be impeding decision making. The impetuous Minister of Defense, Yoav Galant, supported by some generals, wants to launch another short and intense war. Netanyahu shows chronic indecision.
However, Israel is also under pressure from allies to realign its plans and move away from its usual approach of rapid “shock and awe” offensives toward a more contained and prolonged campaign. On October 22, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that US military advice to Israel focused “on the way they do things and the best way to achieve the results they seek”; At the same time, he acknowledged that “Hamas is an active threat that must be confronted.”
All Israeli wars are fought with an eye on the clock, because international condemnation is growing and in the end the United States qualifies its support. In 1973, the United States called for a ceasefire that stopped the Yom Kippur War even though Israeli forces were advancing. In 2006, he imposed a ceasefire before Israel could achieve its objectives in Lebanon. As one Israeli official says, “the margin of our international legitimacy is limited.” Typically, that aims to use maximum force to inflict punitive damage and restore deterrence quickly before room for maneuver is exhausted. This time it may be different.
Israel's stated goal is expansive: destroy Hamas' capabilities and oust it from power. This involves laboriously clearing a 500-kilometer labyrinth of tunnels and fighting house-to-house combat. A general involved in the operations says that “to completely eliminate Hamas's rocket-launching capabilities, we must eliminate the rocket operators,” who often fire from civilian buildings. In 2016-2017, it took Iraq, with the help of a coalition, nine months to destroy Daesh in Mosul, before being able to occupy that city of two million inhabitants.
The United States also seems to want a longer and more contained campaign. On the surface, Biden could not show more support for Netanyahu's government. “I am a Zionist,” he told the war cabinet on his visit to Israel. The president has brought to Congress a $105 billion emergency funding bill that includes $14 billion for Israel; In addition, the United States continues to increase its forces in the region: on October 21 it announced the deployment of more Patriot air defense battalions and a THAAD anti-ballistic missile battery. And Biden also provides diplomatic cover: On October 18, the United States vetoed a draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a “humanitarian pause” and on October 21 proposed another that affirmed Israel's right to self-defense. However, the White House has also made clear that it expects Israel to comply with the laws of war and minimize civilian casualties. Biden has urged Israel, “even if you feel anger, do not let it consume you.”
Finally, Israel's war cabinet may be weighing the Arab world's response. A new very rapid increase in civilian casualties in Gaza would increase the chances of a response from Hezbollah and Iran, and from that second front that Israel fears. On October 19, the launch of missiles in the direction of Israel by Iranian-backed militants in Yemen served as a reminder of the explosive potential of Iran's various puppets (the missiles were intercepted by the US Navy). And, equally important, this increase in civilian casualties would lead to a deepening of the distance with respect to some Arab states with which Israel had been improving relations before the October 7 attacks, among them the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. . Saudi Arabia has not explicitly let the normalization of diplomatic relations fall off the table.
A more controlled and prolonged campaign would still carry enormous risks for Israel. Their forces could be bogged down: in 2014, some soldiers were trapped in Shujaiyeh in northern Gaza and had to be protected by heavy artillery. Eado Hecht, an Israeli military analyst, has warned of the existence of 40,000 Hamas fighters and other groups who would “play deadly hide-and-seek with our forces for a long time.” A prolonged mobilization would harm the economy: reservists make up a large portion of the workforce, as do the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have had to leave areas near Gaza and the Lebanese border. The country already suffered a prolonged recession after the long periods of national mobilization in the wars of 1973 and 1982.
The best way to try to expand Israel's “margin of legitimacy” with its Western and Arab allies would be to signal that it is willing to participate in some kind of plan for the Palestinians in case it manages to oust Hamas. On October 21, Biden tweeted “we cannot give up on a two-state solution.” Gaza will need a credible Palestinian administration with the support of Arab countries to rebuild and prevent the return of Hamas. In this sense, Netanyahu, who is fighting for political survival, is doing his country no favors by denying, as he did on October 21, that the best long-term solution for Gaza is the reestablishment of control by the Palestinian Authority, which governs in the West Bank and has condemned Hamas attacks. Netanyahu is the architect of a two-decade strategy of ignoring and isolating the Palestinians, dividing them between a Gaza ruled by Hamas and a West Bank led by a weakened Palestinian Authority. Such a failed approach is one of the reasons why Israel is on the verge of going to war against Hamas. Israel's lack of a plan for the Palestinians could also now compromise its ability to sustain a long campaign.
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Translation: Juan Gabriel López Guix
