The Battle of Gaza, Israel Suggests, Is About To Be Joined in a High-Stakes War That Could Affect the Future of the Entire Middle East

Nearly two weeks after Hamas launched its war against Israel, a Gaza ground invasion significantly raising the stakes in the Mideast seems imminent. A victory in what may prove a difficult war could widen the region’s peace camp. A war cabinet that includes new members in a unity government was completing plans on Thursday at Tel Aviv’s Hakirya, the Israeli equivalent of the Pentagon. Prime Minister Netanyahu visited troops on the Gaza border earlier. Several top officers of the Israel Defense Forces are indicating that the invasion is near.“We will transfer the war to enemy territory,” the IDF’s recently installed commander of the southern command, Brigadier General Yaron Finkelman, said Thursday. “You, who are now seeing Gaza from afar, will soon see it from the inside,” he told troops on alert on the Gaza border since October 7. The defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said the Gaza war will be hard and long. “We will be precise and lethal, and we will win,” he vowed. As they spoke, the largest barrage of rockets since the start of the war was launched on northern Israel.The prospect of the addition of a northern front tops Israel’s worries about a widened regional war, even as Hamas is targeted. “Hezbollah is trying to split our forces,” a former IDF commander, Brigadier General Amos Gilad, told Kan radio.“We need to keep cool heads,” the general added. “The mission must be to destroy Hamas as a governing, terrorist, and military force that could also spread its power to Judea and Samaria.”Critics say Mr. Netanyahu is waiting too long, as he tends to other missions before the Gaza invasion is launched. On Wednesday, President Biden spent hours in Israel, where he expressed some of the strongest statements of support ever heard from an American leader.Mr. Biden also secured an Israeli agreement to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza through its southern border with Egypt, even after Israel had vowed to impose a siege on the strip. On Thursday another visitor, Prime Minister Sunak of Britain, vowed to support Israel’s right to defend itself.Mr. Sunak, too, stressed the need to tend to the requirements of noncombatant Gazans. The United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, traveled to Egypt Thursday to start coordinating aid deliveries. Diplomacy and pressure over Gaza’s humanitarian requirements may have delayed the implementation of Israel’s ground war plans. The need to prepare for a two-front war, in Gaza in the south and against Hezbollah in the north, has also complicated the decision to invade.Most poignantly, direct confrontation with Hamas is hampered by concerns over hostages. On Thursday the IDF released new data, saying 203 hostages are being held in Gaza, including 30 minors and up to 30 elderly people. Between 100 and 200 Israelis are unaccounted for.Then there was the propaganda Hamas spread Tuesday. Difficult to refute evidence emerged a day later that a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket fell short of its intended target in Israel, landing instead in a parking lot next to Gaza City’s al-Hali hospital.A European Union official, who spoke with the French News Agency, said the rocket’s impact killed between 10 and 50 people. Even after such evidence emerged, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera and other Arabic outlets have been insisting that the IDF deliberately killed 471 people in the hospital.Throngs of raging protestors attacked Israeli, Jewish, and American targets across the Mideast, in Europe, and beyond. All such complicating factors, though, pale in comparison to the danger facing Israel if it fails to obliterate Hamas.A dimming of its image as a formidable military power that never loses wars could erode its ability to deter enemies and, paradoxically, end decades of Mideast peacemaking, the context for which, history suggests, is most propitious when Israel is — and is perceived to be — strong.In 1977, President Sadat of Egypt made peace with Israel. Jordan followed suit, and in 2020 four Arab countries joined the Abraham Accords. Before the 1973 Yom Kippur war, all Arab League members vowed to obliterate Israel. The shift occurred only when some of them realized that beating Israel militarily was not possible. Peace deals ensued.The Iranian Islamic Republic and its proxies nevertheless are unconvinced. Hezbollah’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, is promoting a theory that Israeli society is like “cobwebs” that can be undone with the smallest of pressure. Allowing Hamas to remain in power after it committed the worst Arab massacre in Israel’s history would damage the country’s invincibility. It could also end all hopes of adding more Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia, to the peace camp. So, yes, diplomatic backing for Israel is crucial, a former prime minister, Naftali Bennett, told Israel Channel 11 during a visit with troops in the south. Yet, he added, “ultimately, what will decide our fate here is not how many presidents are visiting us, but whether we can obliterate Hamas.”

The Battle of Gaza, Israel Suggests, Is About To Be Joined in a High-Stakes War That Could Affect the Future of the Entire Middle East

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