As Biden arrives, Israel’s war aims are ambitious, and incomplete

Amid the anguish and shock over Hamas’ devastating Oct. 7 cross-border assault, Israeli officials have used many different terms and euphemisms for their war aims in Gaza.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the goal is to “crush” the Islamist militant group that has ruled the Palestinian territory for the past 16 years. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said Israel will “eliminate ... Hamas from the face of the Earth.”

And former military chief Benny Gantz, an opposition politician brought into the coalition last week as part of an “emergency unity government,” has said the objective is to “change the security and strategic reality” of the entire area.

Yet how Israel means to achieve these objectives, at what cost to the people of Gaza while not triggering a wider Middle East conflagration, and what would follow on the ground in Gaza, remain unclear.

The consensus is that Israel will mount a massive ground invasion to root out what is assumed to be a well-prepared and dug-in enemy, something it had previously avoided because of the costs to both sides. Israeli military officers are clear this will not be, as one said in reference to countless previous hostilities, “just another round with Gaza. It’s something else.”

Unprecedented visit

President Joe Biden is set to arrive in Israel Wednesday for an unprecedented wartime visit, as rockets from Gaza still rain down on much of southern and central Israel and Israeli fighter jets continue to bombard the coastal enclave.

His goal will be to find some middle ground between – as he has said – his “iron-clad support” for Israel’s security in the wake of the horrific Hamas atrocities, and his desire to also ensure that Gaza does not collapse into a humanitarian disaster.

Over 1,400 Israelis were killed in the Hamas attack, mostly civilians including children and older people, according to Israeli authorities. Nearly 200 Israelis have been taken captive in Gaza. Both numbers are still expected to rise from the worst attack in the Jewish state’s history, say Israeli analysts.

Inside Gaza, some 2,800 people have been killed in Israeli strikes, and 9,700 wounded, according to Gaza health officials, and Israel has laid what some senior officials have described as a “siege” around the territory, cutting off water, electricity, and the entry of goods, including medical supplies.

U.S. officials have said their immediate goal is to alleviate the humanitarian situation inside Gaza. Yet Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has been traveling around the region, has so far been unable to broker a deal that would move aid convoys from Egypt in, and dual-national foreign-passport holders out.

At the same time, the United States has solidly backed Israel in the military realm, deploying two carrier strike groups to the region. Airlifts of U.S. munitions and other advanced weaponry land in Israel near daily. President Biden himself has warned Iran and its Shiite militia proxy Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, to not fully enter the conflict.

“Don’t,” the president said last week, in a pointed address to both parties.

Israeli officials and the general public have been greatly appreciative of the U.S. president’s solidarity, with his public remarks last week aired repeatedly on television as a sort of rallying cry in lieu of commercials (which given the wartime footing and national grief have all been suspended).

Skirmishes with Hezbollah

Israeli analysts are hopeful that the threat of direct American military involvement may yet deter the powerful Hezbollah, which has a vast arsenal of rockets and precision missiles at its disposal, and spare Israel the costly need to fight on two fronts.

The U.S. military deployment “makes clear to our enemies that if they think about joining the attack against [us] there will be an American intervention. Israel will not be alone. This strengthens us, and also stops them from taking adventurous risks,” Israeli national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said Tuesday.

Since the outbreak of hostilities in and around Gaza, there have been near daily cross-border anti-tank missile and mortar attacks by Hezbollah into northern Israel, as well as attempted incursions, with retaliatory Israeli air and artillery strikes. Both sides have taken casualties. Despite the often-heavy fire, Israeli officials maintain that it still has not reached the level of open war.

If it came to it, one senior Israeli military officer said, “we’re ready and of course we can” fight on two fronts simultaneously. But Israeli officials are clear that they would rather not.

The focus for now, they maintain, is Hamas in Gaza. The objective as laid out by the Israeli cabinet?

“To destroy the military and governance capabilities of Hamas” and other Gaza-based militant groups, Mr. Hanegbi said, and to ensure that “Hamas will no longer be the sovereign ruler ... able to threaten us from Gaza.” 

Israel has already mobilized some 360,000 reservists and massed at least four divisions in southern Israel, bordering Gaza. Most analysts expect a major and deep ground offensive into Gaza, perhaps in the coming days, although President Biden’s visit to the region will almost certainly delay its start.

All previous Israeli governments shied from such a step precisely due to the heavy toll it would inflict on Israeli forces and Palestinian civilians as they fought their way through the densely packed territory’s cramped warrens and refugee camps. 

“We saw how Hamas organized and coordinated its offensive,” says veteran military analyst Amos Harel. “I’m sure they’ve prepared defensively just as well.”

Yet it now appears the Israeli public, as well as its military and political leadership, is firmly behind just such a move.

“No doubt a ground operation will be there,” retired Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, formerly the head of Israeli military intelligence, said on a call with journalists. “The idea that we don’t want to enter on the ground was based on the price. Since the price [of the Hamas attack] was so high, we won’t hesitate” this time.

Focus on northern Gaza

Israeli officials will not speak about their future operational plans in order not to tip their hand.

But in pure military terms, Israel has so far bombarded Hamas targets in Gaza from the air and sea and land, preparing the way for what are likely to be columns of armor and infantry, backed up by naval units, special forces, and close air support, analysts predict.

The Israeli military has for the past week warned residents of northern Gaza to head southward “for their own safety.” According to the United Nations, some 600,000 Gazans have already moved to the southern environs of the territory.

Most analysts expect the Israeli ground offensive to focus, at least in its initial stage, on Gaza City in the north, the territory’s largest population center and the hub of Hamas’ governing and military capabilities.

The inclination, Israeli analysts and officials contend, is not to reoccupy the entirety of Gaza – Israel withdrew all its settlers and army in 2005 – but rather to move in with force and begin destroying Hamas weapons stores and rocket arsenals, and to kill fighters and senior leaders.

Most worrisome for military planners is the extensive underground tunnel network, termed the “Gaza Metro,” that Hamas has been building for years.

“You’re dealing with this enemy on his own turf,” Mr. Harel warns. “He’ll dictate terms, too, and he’s been preparing.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu has framed the current campaign as an existential fight for Israel’s place in the Middle East, and has begun preparing the public for what may lie ahead.

“Victory will take time; there will be difficult moments. ... Sacrifice will be required,” he said in parliament Monday.

But the Israeli public appears ready for the sacrifice, not least to ensure the ability of the shattered communities of southern Israel to return and rebuild.

Need for deterrence

Batia Horin, a grandmother from the Kfar Azza kibbutz where at least 100 people were slain, has now been evacuated to a different kibbutz in central Israel. She and her entire family mercifully survived; many of her neighbors did not.

“No one will go back to the [region bordering Gaza] if Gaza won’t be eliminated. I know that’s an abstract term. What it really means is that there shouldn’t be anything that can threaten [us] ... and all the other communities.”

Major General Yadlin allowed that such war aims were “ambitious,” but the atrocities committed by Hamas fighters during their assault were “pictures that Israel cannot tolerate.”

And, he added, it was also a question of deterring other actors across the region.

“At the end of the operation, the rest of the Middle East should contemplate what the consequences would be for trying to do this on another border.”

To the question of what may come after in Gaza, and after Hamas, if Israel indeed emerges “victorious”?

Israeli officials have no clear answer yet.

“We still don’t know what will be,” Mr. Hanegbi, the national security adviser, said Tuesday. “But we definitely know what there won’t be.”