Obstacles In The Israeli Ground Campaign Against Gaza’s Militants From Hamas
It is day 18 of Israel’s response to a horrifying terror strike by Hamas that resulted in the cruel killing and abduction of 222 people, including foreign nationals, and the torture and death of over 1400 more. While the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been conducting cross-border raids into Gaza based on intelligence from the outset to target the leadership of Hamas, the terrorist organization, along with its backers Iran and Qatar, are unmistakably employing a military and information warfare strategy that already accounts for Israeli retaliation. In order to postpone the IDF land offensive and make the brutal Hamas terrorists seem more reasonable to the “Woke” Anglo-Saxon West, captives are periodically released in groups of two. The US is attempting to postpone the Israeli ground offensive in addition to the hostages held by this Iran proxy organization because its assets in the Middle East will be targeted by the other proxy groups, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
While Israel has no choice but to exterminate Hamas in Gaza, the weaponry and support given to Hezbollah by Iran during the 2006 war in Lebanon with Tel Aviv would calm even the most irascible Israeli generals since there is a real chance that the IDF will become entangled in Gaza. Simply said, Hamas serves as Iran’s cat’s paw in its proxy war against Israel, and the destruction of the terrorist organization and its leadership will damage Tehran’s reputation among Islamic jihadists.
Iran is currently the big winner in the Middle East conflict because it killed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambition to transform West Asia into a new Europe in a single blow and significantly slowed the development of the United Arab Emirates under President Mohammed bin Zayed as the new global hub. Tehran has also given its new friend China some breathing room because the Middle East is currently receiving more attention than Taiwan or the Indo-Pacific region as a whole. The Xi Jinping dictatorship has not even denounced Hamas terrorism; instead, it has simply discussed civilian casualties in general, despite the fact that Israeli corporations have continued to invest in China’s high-tech regions.
Although the US has stationed a carrier strike group under the command of the USS Dwight Eisenhower in the Persian Gulf to prevent Iran from intensifying its hostilities with Israel, Tehran may have given its Sunni proxies in Tel Aviv’s neighborhood enough weapons to keep the battle going for some time. The Middle East will be engulfed in a horizontal inferno, which will cause oil prices to skyrocket and harm the political prospects of countries that are about to have elections. This is another reason why the US should keep the conflict under control.
From Israel’s standpoint, the ground attack poses additional risks because Hamas’ military potential appears to have been diminished but not completely eliminated. Hamas continues to launch rockets into Israel through an underground tunnel system reminiscent of Viet Cong communist guerillas, while Shia Hezbollah keeps the heat on in Lebanon. Israel needs to win decisively in Gaza and cannot afford to fight on two fronts for an extended period of time. There are limits to universal pity, and time is running short.
