It has been a while since we have provided
an update on the war in Gaza. Ever since the Israelis withdrew most of their troops from
the Gaza Strip, the intensity of battles has significantly decreased. But this has not really
improved the humanitarian situation in Gaza, as airstrikes and shelling persist, and thousands of
civilians still find themselves in the crossfires of the war between Israel and Hamas. Israel
has launched another ground assault on Gaza, this time on the southern city of Rafah,
but many have started to question whether Israel has a clear endgame to the war
and if it has reached any of its goals. We will discuss these questions, describe
the situation on the battlefield and talk about the increasing threat of this war to
the regional stability in the Middle East. The fans of modern warfare would surely enjoy our
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much more. Thanks for supporting us! BATTLEFIELD
Following a devastating October 7 attack by Hamas on the Israeli communities
bordering Gaza, killing hundreds of civilians, Israel initially responded with a blockade and
brutal campaign of airstrikes against the Gaza Strip, targeting both what they claimed to be
the Hamas infrastructure and the civilian areas, including residential buildings, hospitals,
schools, mosques. This was followed by a ground invasion of the Northern and Central parts of
the Gaza Strip on October 27. The Israeli Defense Force quickly gained ground, and took control
of key roads and highways. Hamas and other Palestinian groups were not in a position to fight
in a conventional way, thus, opted to use guerilla tactics against the IDF. This did not do much to
prevent the Israeli advance in the Gaza Strip, but exacted a relatively high cost on the
Israeli army. Hamas actively used its tunnel infrastructure and ruins of destroyed buildings
to carry out ambushes on the IDF. It is difficult to say exactly how much Israeli equipment these
hit-and-run tactics have destroyed or damaged, but social media channels of Hamas have been
regularly posting videos of Israeli tanks and vehicles being hit by RPGs and explosives planted
on them. According to the Armada Rotta blog, there are visual proofs of the destruction of 2
Israeli Merkava tanks 1 Achzarit Armored Personnel Carriers, along with damages to a further
31 tanks, 13 armoured vehicles and three infantry mobility vehicles. There may well be more
destroyed IDF equipment, but it is simply next to impossible to verify the amount of their losses
with the available evidence. In early April, it was reported that 260 Israeli soldiers had been
killed since the ground invasion was launched. More than 1000 have been injured. Predictably,
Hamas claims to have killed more Israeli soldiers. At the peak of its ground assault in late
December, the Israeli army had four divisions operating from Khan Younis in the South to
the Northern edge of the Gaza Strip. But on 1 January 2024, the IDF withdrew from North
Gaza, claiming that they had destroyed the Hamas infrastructure there, which signalled the end
of the highest-intensity period of war in Gaza, at least for the time being. However, almost
immediately after they left, Hamas started firing missiles and shelling the Israeli territory,
indicating that the IDF did not actually manage to destroy Hamas. The IDF’s central axis of advance
eventually reached the city of Khan Younis, but they withdrew from there in April. A single IDF
brigade remained in the Netzarim corridor, created by the Israelis. At this point, occasional battles
occur around this area, but their intensity is lower than what was happening before 2024. The
most noteworthy battles continued occurring in and around the al-Shifa hospital, as the IDF conducted
several raids on this hospital, claiming that it hosted the Hamas infrastructure on its territory.
For weeks now, the Israeli government has been telegraphing its intention to attack Rafah,
a southern city of the Gaza Strip, which, in comparison with Gaza City, Khan Younis
and other major settlements, has been less destroyed and hosted the refugees from the rest
of Gaza. The Israeli command states that Rafah is the last military stronghold of Hamas. Their
argument is that destroying the infrastructure of this organization in Rafah and taking control
of the Philadelphi smuggling route on the border with Egypt would derail the capacity of Hamas
to operate as a military organization. As usual, the Israeli air force conducted a series
of airstrikes on Rafah before conducting a ground invasion. On May 7, the 401st Armored
Brigade captured the Gazan side of the Rafah border crossing. Israel has already ordered
civilians in Rafah to evacuate to Al-Mawasi. IMPLICATIONS OF THE WAR ON
THE BROADER REGIONAL SITUATION In our videos, we have already talked about the
potential of the war in Gaza to ignite a wider conflict in the region. And the battle of Rafah
is interesting to analyze from that perspective. Netanyahu’s insistence on a ground assault on
Rafah was vehemently opposed by virtually all relevant international actors, including Israel’s
closest ally, the United States. Americans have publicly and privately urged Israel not to launch
an attack on Rafah. The White House spokesperson John Kirby told the reporters a day before the
ground assault that President Biden reiterated personally to Netanyahu that the United States
does “not support ground operations in Rafah”. But this has not stopped Congress from voting
to provide Israel with an additional aid package of 17 billion dollars. The European Union has
also urged Israel not to attack Rafah, stating concerns about dire consequences for the civilian
population. Egypt is worried about the Rafah offensive due to the potential influx of refugees
from Gaza. According to the Wall Street Journal, Egypt has warned Israel that their decades-old
peace treaty may be suspended if the Israeli army launches an offensive on Rahaf and if the
Palestinian refugees flee Rafah for Egypt. Saudi Arabia, whose peace talks with Israel have been
on hold since the start of the war, has also strongly urged Israel against attacking Rafah.
But even without the IDF’s assault on Rafah, the potential for regional destabilization
continues to be massive. While there is a hot war going on in Gaza, a potential conflict
between Israel and Iran has been the largest cause of worry for its disastrous potential consequences
for global security. It is not a secret that Iran supports Hamas and other groups in Gaza, along
with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and a myriad of anti-American and anti-Israeli
groups in Iraq and other countries of the Middle East. Since the start of the war, Houthis have
been attacking vessels moving through the Red Sea, accusing them of supporting Israel’s war effort.
Hezbollah and the IDF continue exchanging fire along the Lebanese border. Israel has also not
been sitting idly and has been targeting Iran’s military infrastructure throughout the Middle
East. On April 1, the conflict between Israel and Iran reached a very risky point of tension,
when the Israeli Air Force launched a deadly airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus,
killing 16 people, including Brigadier General Zahedi of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iran immediately stated that it would retaliate. Despite calls of Western countries not to respond
and Israel’s warnings about their own retaliation, Iran launched a massive missile and drone
barrage on Israel 12 days later on April 13. The IDF spokesperson Hagari stated that Iran
fired 170 drones, more than 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles. The Iranian chief of
staff, Bagheri claimed that the primary target of the Iranian attack was the Nevatim Airbase,
which was used to attack the Iranian consulate. The Israeli air defense, the American, British,
French and Jordanian jets were used to down the vast majority of Iranian missiles and drones.
7-9 missiles struck Nevatim and Ramon airbases, but the damage was reportedly minor. Even before
the Iranian Shahed drones completed their long and slow travel to Israel, Iran’s representative
in the UN declared that the matter was concluded from their side. Still, Israel vowed to retaliate
against the Iranian attack. You already know where such back and forth could lead, but Iran decided
to downplay the April 19 Israeli missile or drone attacks, according to different sources,
which reportedly did some damage to an air base near the Natanz nuclear site. Some Arab
media outlets claimed that the United States managed to persuade the Israeli government not to
retaliate strongly against Iran in exchange for tacit approval of the Rafah offensive, but
it is impossible to prove this allegation, as, at least, publicly the Biden administration
continues to urge restraint from Netanyahu with regards to their plans in Rafah. On May 9, Biden
warned Israel that if it enters Rafah, the United States will stop some of the weapon supplies: “I
made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah,
I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with
the cities – that deal with that problem.” WHAT HAS ISRAEL ACHIEVED AND WHAT IS ITS END GOAL?
So, the war in Gaza is about to enter another hot phase with the battle of Rafah. But many
keep asking this question: what has Israel achieved in this war so far? Does it have a clear
understanding of what a victory would mean, and is the Rafah offensive going to bring this victory?
All of this is unclear at this point. Israel’s prime minister has declared two main objectives
of this war. Destruction of Hamas and release of hostages. What would qualify as the destruction of
Hamas? A Reuters article from October 2023 cites a source that claims that the organization has some
40k fighters in its ranks. For obvious reasons, it is difficult to know exactly how many men fight in
Hamas, but we can take this number as a benchmark. IDF officials have made different claims about the
casualties suffered by Hamas, ranging from 10000 to 13000 Hamas fighters killed since the start of
the war. The Israeli defense minister claims that they have destroyed 18 out of 24 battalions of
Hamas. According to Reuters, a Hamas official told them in February that they had lost 6k fighters,
but later other Hamas officials denied this number. So, recognizing that it is an extremely
flawed method, but in the absence of a better way of moving forward, we can choose a middle ground
between the aforementioned claims and speculate that Hamas has lost somewhere between 8 and 10k
fighters. So, about a quarter of the available manpower after half a year of intense battles.
This does not answer how many new members Hamas has gained due to the inevitable radicalization
of ordinary Gazans as a result of widespread destruction and civilian loss. The fact that right
after the withdrawal of the Israeli troops from North Gaza, it has been used by Hamas militants
to shell Israel demonstrates that Hamas maintains its fighting capacity. The Israeli command has
claimed that they have found 1600 tunnel shafts and destroyed hundreds of them, but the scale
of the Hamas tunnel infrastructure is very vast, even more so than Israel had expected. A retired
IDF general, Yaakov Amidror, said: “I’m also not sure there’s enough TNT in Israel to destroy
all the tunnels.” Tunnels have helped Hamas preserve manpower and its military and political
leadership. Which can be another criterion to use for our analysis. Has Israel been able to destroy
the leadership of Hamas? Well, yes and no. The IDF has managed to kill some Hamas leaders. Saleh
al-Arouri, whom Netanyahu apparently referred to as the number 4 of Hamas, was killed in an
airstrike in Lebanon in January. Marwan Issa, who the Israeli media believes to be the number
3 was killed in March 2024 in another Israeli airstrike on Nuseirat. Several other senior
military commanders have been killed as well. But two main leaders of Hamas operating in Gaza
are still alive. Yahya Sinwar, the most senior political leader of Hamas in Gaza and Mohammed
Deif, an elusive head of al-Qassam Brigades - the military wing of Hamas and the mastermind behind
the October 7 attack are still alive. The leader of the political bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh,
is currently in exile in Qatar and alive as well. So, the situation is quite similar to the one
with Israel’s damage to the manpower of Hamas. It is considerable, but probably not at the level
to disrupt the operation of Hamas. The key leaders are still alive, while a war as devastating as the
one going on in Gaza right now inevitably hastens the rise of new ones. Thus, the fact that the
resistance to the IDF invasion of Gaza is still active and does not look like going away anytime
soon, even if the IDF succeeds in capturing Rafah, indicates that Israel has not yet achieved its
goal of destroying Hamas. The question is whether it is a viable goal at all. The expert on the
Arab-Israeli conflict, Nathan Thrall, said, “After Israel declared that it had defeated Hamas in the
north, you see that every week, Israeli soldiers are dying in the north, so it’s evident that Hamas
will continue to exist after this war, whether Israel invades Rafah or doesn’t invade Rafah.
Hamas is a major power on the ground and will remain so at the end of this war.” Israel’s former
national security adviser, Eyal Hulata, argues that "There is no way this will end when Israel
can say we are victorious. Israel lost this war [on] the 7th of October. The only question now is
if we are able to remove from Hamas the ability to do this again. And we might succeed, and we might
not." Another Middle East expert, Khaled Elgindy, said that the current Israeli policy in the name
of destroying Hamas, which causes mass civilian casualties in Gaza, will create new threats
to Israel’s security: “I think even American officials realize, belatedly, that it’s complete
madness, that people are allowing this horror to continue as though the goal of destroying Hamas
was more important than anything else in the world, including Israel’s own future security.
It’s divorced from reality because even if you destroy Hamas, you’re creating something that
will be much worse than [in?] the future. Because now you have 30,000 people who are dead, 17,000
orphans … what is their view of Israel and the United States going to be when they grow up?”
What about another stated goal of Israel’s military campaign - the release of hostages
captured by Hamas on October 7? This issue is causing a lot of anger and concern in Israel
lately, as the people in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem have been protesting the government’s perceived
inaction or indifference to the plight of hostages. It has been the trigger of a political
crisis of sorts in Israel, raising calls for the government to resign. In November 2023, Israel and
Hamas managed to strike a deal, which led to the release of 105 hostages, but an estimated 134 more
still remain in Hamas captivity. There are only a handful of confirmed cases of rescue of hostages
as a result of military operations. On April 24, Hamas released a video of an Israeli hostage,
Hersh Goldberg-Polin, in which he stated that some 70 hostages had been killed by the Israeli
airstrikes. Obviously, hostages can be inclined to say the things that their captors force them to
say under duress, but it is beyond doubt that at least some captives may have inadvertently been
killed in Israeli airstrikes. Some others could have been tortured by Hamas or succumbed to the
injuries suffered during the October 7 attack. It is impossible to know exactly how many hostages
remain alive, as only Hamas is in a position to have this knowledge. The US, Qatar and Egypt have
been trying to broker another deal to ensure the release of remaining hostages, but the sides
remain far apart in their expectations. In a nutshell, Hamas wants the release of remaining
hostages to be tied to a permanent ceasefire, while the Israeli government seeks only a
temporary halt of fighting until the release of all hostages is secured. So, Israel has managed
to achieve the release of more than a hundred hostages thanks to the ceasefire agreement
in November, but barring an unexpected turn of events, Israel does not seem likely to
make sure that the rest of the captives are freed in the short term. Thus, Israel has only
partially achieved this goal of the war as well. On top of not being able to achieve or
only partially achieve the stated goals of its military campaign, Israel has also
damaged its international reputation on a massive scale. More than 30k Palestinians have
already been killed in Gaza as a result of the Israeli air strikes and ground invasion,
with the humanitarian situation already being well past the point of disaster. Israel
has been accused of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and regular war crimes, as the international
sympathies, which were on their side on October 7, have definitively turned against them in the face
of the horrifying situation in the Gaza Strip. CONCLUSION
The battle of Rafah is going to be another major talking
point of the war in Gaza. But many question how it is going to bring Israel closer to its
stated goals of dismantling Hamas and releasing hostages. Hamas has been weakened but is still
capable of waging a guerilla war against the IDF, and it will likely be the case, even if Israel
decides to station its troops in Gaza permanently. Many hostages still remain in Hamas captivity, and
a deal to ensure their release or any larger deal to end the war for good does not appear imminent
at this point. The brutal war in Gaza continues. As Khaled Elgindy said, “I think (the war) has
already far exceeded anybody’s expectations in terms of (its) duration and intensity and scale
and deadliness, and there’s no end in sight.” We will talk more about this war
in the coming weeks, so make sure you are subscribed and have pressed the bell
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