Is Israel preparing a ground invasion of Gaza?

Is Israel preparing for a ground invasion of Gaza? Some think that could Israel’s next step. Israel has already called up 300,000 reservists and announced a ‘complete siege’ – cutting off food, fuel and water – of the 362-square-kilometre strip of land home to just over two million people controlled by Hamas.

But is Israel getting ready for a ground invasion of Gaza look like today? What could the repercussions be? And has Israel invaded Gaza in the past? Let’s take a closer look: Is ground invasion of Gaza imminent? This seems to be the case. Sources told Axios that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US president Joe Biden over the weekend that they ‘have to go in’ and have no choice but to ‘respond with great force’. “We have to go in. We can’t negotiate now,” Netanyahu is reported to have said.

“We need to restore deterrence," Netanyahu added.

Biden, according to the report, did not attempt to dissuade Netanyahu from any such plans. “Our job is to make sure that at the end of this war, Hamas will no longer have any military capabilities to threaten Israeli civilians with,” an IDF spokesperson said on Sunday. “And in addition to that, we are also to make sure that Hamas will not be able to govern the Gaza Strip.” On Tuesday, Israel’s chief military spokesman said his country is ‘going on the offensive’. [caption id=“attachment_13230682” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] An Israeli family arrives at a police station in Lod, Israel, to provide DNA samples to help identify a relative missing since the Hamas militant attack near the Gaza border. AP[/caption] Chief military spokesperson Rear-Admiral Daniel Hagari on Tuesday said Israel has drafted a record 300,000 reservists since Saturday in its response to a multi-front Hamas attack from Gaza “We are now carrying out searches in all of the communities and clearing the area,” he said in a televised briefing. Military officials had previously said that their focus was on securing Israel’s side of the border before carrying out any major escalation of the counter-offensive in Gaza. We have never drafted so many reservists on such a scale," he added. Has Israel invaded Gaza in the past? While Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, it has gone back in on several occasions. It most recently did so in 2014. As per Al Jazeera, the seven-week war, which was sparked by the kidnapping and murder of three teenagers by Hamas, left over 2,100 Palestinians dead. Another 73 Israelis, including 67 soldiers, also died. As per Rand Corporation, Israel’s military advanced a ‘few kilometres’ into Gaza before withdrawing. Prior to that Israel mounted a ground invasion of Gaza way back in 2008. That invasion, which lasted around two weeks, saw more than 1,400 Palestinians being killed. Israel, meanwhile, lost 9 of its people. What would an invasion today look like? As per The Guardian, Israel’s incursions into Gaza tend to follow certain patterns. First, a barrage of bombs is aimed at military infrastructure such as government buildings, police stations, coastal installations, training facilities and the homes of senior officials.

Only then, after a sustained bombardment, are troops deployed.

Network18 Managing Editor Palki Sharma said, “Israel uses land-based artillery to strike Hamas targets and gunboats to strike from the sea. Once the defences have been levelled the troops enter.” “Israel has usually preferred these routes – Erez crossing in the north, Burej south of Gaza city and Philadelphi Route in the south. All three have been used in the past.” Indeed, the aerial bombardment of Gaza has already begun even as Israel’s forces fought pitched gun battles to reclaim villages and towns on the border. It has retaken control of southern Israel and the Gaza border is back under control. “We have only started striking Hamas,” Netanyahu said in a nationally televised address. “What we will do to our enemies in the coming days will reverberate with them for generations.” As per India Today, navigating the densely populated Gaza Strip and locating hostages will be a severe test for the Israeli forces. The Hamas’ use of its ‘metro’ system – an underground network of tunnels used to transport weapons and move undetected – will only compound the woes of Israel’s forces. [caption id=“attachment_13230662” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Palestinians transport a captured Israeli civilian from Kfar Azza kibbutz into the Gaza Strip on on 7 October after attacking Israel by land, sea and air. AP[/caption] As per The Guardian, Hamas operatives have transformed its once basic tunnels into cutting edge and concealed spots that can be used both as command centres and to deploy its militants. Israel’s once-vaunted surveillance advantage has also been dulled by the Hamas’ use of civilian drones. What could the repercussions be? Experts say Israel could probably retake Gaza – but only at a huge cost for its own troops, innocent civilians and the hostages. Sharma added that Gaza, being a concete jungle, would result in urban warfare. “There are plenty of places for Hamas to take cover in Gaza. Also more chances to lay traps. So if Israel invades, it would face a long and drawn out struggle. Not to mention casualties. Because Hamas now has more sophisticated weapons like anti-tank missiles and armed drones, an invasion could be costly for Israel. Having said that, Israel’s military is world class, they have experience operating in urban centres in Gaza and the West Bank. They’ve done all of it before. They’re also familiar with Hamas tactics. There’s no doubt about the outcome,” Sharma said. A piece in Business Insider predicted that an invasion would likely be an expensive operation, have to be carried out in terrible conditions, and would likely result in ‘intense urban combat’. It also mentioned that the mere presence of hostages kidnapped by Hamas and currently held in Gaza could make things incredibly difficult for Israeli troops. Retired US General Barry McCaffrey, speaking to MSNBC, described it as a ‘key dilemma’ for the Israeli Defence Forces. He said Israeli troops going into Gaza to retrieve hostages would be a “bloody mess” and be “catastrophic” for Palestinians in the area.

The retired four-star general described Israel’s chances of rescuing hostages as an “almost impossible task.”

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McCaffrey said Israeli troops would have to take control of things on the ground and then go door-to-door. “Armor, infantry force, supported by fighter aircraft, dominate the scene and then try to find them in basements and tunnels,” McCaffrey added. “It looks like a long, bloody fight, in which the advantages of the Israelis will be partially neutralized by fighting in urban warfare,” McCaffrey told MSNBC. “I don’t know how they’re going to solve this without massive casualties in their own forces, never mind catastrophic damage in the Gaza strip.” McCaffrey, posting on X about the hostage crisis, said “there will be no good tactical solutions for the IDF.” Lt  Col Daniel Davis, speaking t_o NBC News_, compared the situation to Fallujah in Iraq in 2004. [caption id=“attachment_13230132” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Israeli soldiers drive in a tank by the country’s border with Gaza in southern Israel on 10 October. Reuters[/caption] “You had the US with Bradleys and Abrams tanks going against the type of jihadis Hamas will be,” Davis said. He said that was a a very brutal situation with troops needing to go door-to-door – and pointed out that Fallujah was far smaller than Gaza. Hamas most likely “had a pretty good idea what Israel was going to do in response” because of past fighting, the senior fellow at Defense Priorities added. Davis said preparations for urban combat could involve traps, defensive positions, bunkers and tunnels. “All of those kinds of things is going to make it extraordinarily difficult for Israel to get in there and probably will make the casualties very high,” he said. Hamas, remember, has already vowed to kill a hostage each time Israel bombs a civilian target in Gaza without warning. This, even as Qatari mediators have held urgent calls to try to negotiate freedom for Israeli women and children seized by the militant group and held in Gaza in exchange for the release of 36 Palestinian women and children from Israel’s prisons. A piece on the website Worldview noted, “Despite the high number of well-trained and equipped Israeli troops, plus airpower dominance, an Israeli invasion of the strip would be both tactically and strategically very challenging.” It added that the called up reservists had little experience in urban warfare and that such an operation would result in ‘a high casualty count on both sides’. The piece added that the operation would also escalate the chances of violence in the West Bank and result in Lebanon upping the ante – potentially resulting in Israel having to fight a battle on two fronts. An article in the Daily Beast argued against Israel retaking Gaza. The piece claimed that doing so would be a huge error on Israel’s part. It argued that while Jerusalem might be spurred to do so to take the territory from Hamas, it would result in a ‘virtual abattoir for Israeli conscripts’ to be picked off by insurgent forces in Gaza. [caption id=“attachment_13228432” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Palestinians walk amid the rubble following Israeli airstrikes that razed swaths of a neighborhood in Gaza City, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023. AP[/caption] “It might be galling for Israel to see Hamas emerge from the rubble and proclaim victory. But as long as there is an occupation, Hamas and more extreme groups will continue to find a constituency for their extremism. The only entity that can possibly control such militancy is a Palestinian state,” the piece contended. The Guardian piece described a full reoccupation of Gaza as extremely challenging for Israel. It added that keeping the area and managing it in the long term is ‘probably beyond Israel’s capacity’ “…Which suggests that if Israel does go for a full invasion its objective is more likely to be a comprehensive defeat of Hamas,” the piece concluded. With inputs from agencies