Israel-Hamas war: Israel offensive 'fraught with danger'

so a big big diplomatic moment today in Tel Aviv but take let's take a look at what's happening on the ground I'm joined by military analyst sha Bell uh and Sean we know that that Israeli troops are massing on the ground just talk us through what what we know about what is happening there uh from a military perspective Jane the grand offensive will be Frau with a lot of difficulties and I no doubt they're delaying this because they just need to work out what their objectives are because it could be very risky but as you say the armor is massing um On the Border you can't use armor particularly in an urban environment so it's a real question about what you're going to do with the armor but I think it's worth looking at a bit more detail about the area they go into this is Gaza but it's overlaid with a sort of density map of where the population is and you can see the white areas are where most of the population is if we lift that map off and look an overlay now at the uh the satellite imagery you can see large areas of green such as the areas down here now those areas are where armor could operate so they're less built up less built up less of a risk for um the idf's armor and therefore does create the opportunity for the Israeli forces to move into the Gaza area not to go into an urban environment but to actually put even more pressure on those Urban environments intimidate the forces there and create a sort of phased approach to any operation and it would allow them to pause and then think about what to do next rather than this rather binary go in and get into the urban environment or not and and how more risky is that than what they have been doing up to now which is bombardment from the air I think what we're seeing at the moment is trying to see what their objectives are for this campaign and I wouldn't be at all surprised if whilst the public view is is about destroying Hamas how do you do that and what their first phase of that is they've been doing a clearly a detailed bombing campaign a lot of that's Precision strike here's a before picture in Gaza we've also got the after picture which doesn't show much Precision but is specifically trying to Target Hamas infrastructure and whilst they're doing that they'll also be hoovering up intelligence they'll be looking at satellite imagery they'll be intersecting Communications they'll also be asking allies for any intelligence they've got to try and track where the Mass leadership are also where the hostages might be and if they do end up getting into an urban uh um environment and the tanks can't be used because Hamas probably has anti-tank weapons anyway it'll have to be the Infantry going and that will be incredibly difficult if you remember from back moot the Russians moving into bmot it they they took it but it took 30,000 casualties to do it and when they look behind them there was nothing left of the city that's almost certainly something the IDF will not want to do um for for um into the Gaza and what about Hamas what does it have to gain out of this it's been quite difficult to work out what hamas's objectives are here because um they did a really good plan they overwhelmed the Iron Dome system they went into Israel see some hostages and went to wear game but they they know that the IDF will respond and they will be prepared for that the challenge is that this isn't a a war this is a um you know a proper War would be conventional forces this is not this is visceral hatred that is driving all this there is no military answer to this it's got to be a political answer in the end so the question is who benefits from all of this friction in the area and one of the ways of looking at that is to say that the uh the Arab countries that neighbor Israel have gradually normalized relations Jordan did it in 82 Egypt by you did it in '94 Saudi was star to normalize relationships with um Israel all of that means that it was starting to accept the Israeli state but of course the one country that doesn't want to see that happen is Iran um it absolutely doesn't and it's been funding Hezbollah and Hamas as well so whil we haven't got any proof the dark shadow of Iran does hang very heavily on the timing and the uh the implications of this attack okay Sean thanks very much for that for now

Channel: Sky News

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Id: Qc-D-LGosCM

Length: 3min 43sec (223 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 12 2023