What is Israel calculating before entering Gaza?

Israel’s Calculations Before Entering Gaza

For several days Israel has been hinting that its massive army is ready to invade Gaza to wipe out Hamas once and for all. 300,000 reservists of the Israel Defense Forces-IDF have been called up so far. On the other side of the Gaza border, the small towns, fields, and fields of the Israeli side are now filled with thousands of soldiers armed with tanks, ammunition, and heavy weapons.

Israeli air and naval forces are targeting suspected hideouts and arsenals of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Many civilians are killed and wounded in these attacks, and a small number of Hamas leaders are killed.

An explosion at a hospital in Gaza that killed a large number of people has heightened tensions in the region, although both sides have denied responsibility for the attack and blamed each other. But why is Israel not yet announcing the operation in Gaza? There are many reasons behind this.

[1]
The Biden Factor
President Joe Biden’s hasty trip to Israel this week shows how worried the White House is about the changing situation. Washington’s concerns are twofold: the mounting humanitarian crisis and the spread of conflict across the Middle East.

The US president has already made it clear that Israel is against reoccupying Gaza, which Israel withdrew from in 2005. In his words, it would be “a big mistake”.

Officially, the main reason for his visit to Israel is to provide strategic support to America’s closest ally in the Middle East, as well as to hear Israel’s plans for Gaza.

But the undisclosed reason is Mr. During the trip, Biden will talk about making concessions to extremist governments like Benjamin Netanyahu. The US wants to know, if Israel enters Gaza, when and how it plans to withdraw.

If Israel wants to launch a full-scale military operation in Gaza, the presence of Air Force One in Tel Aviv does not look good for either America or Israel.

[2]
Iran factor
In the past few days, Iran has issued clear threats saying that Israel’s heinous attacks on Gaza will be answered appropriately. Now what does that mean?

Iran funds, arms, trains, and in some cases controls various Shia armed groups spread across the Middle East. The most effective of these is Hezbollah in Lebanon, whose position is right next to Israel’s northern border.

Hezbollah engaged in a bloody and devastating war with Israel in 2006 when all of Israel’s modern weapons succumbed to the enemy’s planned attacks and hidden mines.

Since then, Hezbollah has reorganized with the help of Iran and is believed to have at least 150,000 rockets and missiles, many of them capable of hitting long-range and specific targets.

As a result, there is a threat that if Israel launches an offensive in Gaza, Hezbollah may launch a counterattack along Israel’s northern border, which could push them into a war on both sides.

However, there is no guarantee that Hezbollah forces will engage in such a war. Especially when there are two US warships in the Mediterranean ready to help Israel at any time.

Rather, it assures Israel that any strikes from Hezbollah will be countered by US air power.

However, it may be recalled that during the 2006 war, a sophisticated anti-ship missile of Hezbollah managed to hit an Israeli warship.

[3]
Human factors
The Israeli government has imposed a humanitarian disaster on the rest of the world by completely eradicating Hamas from Gaza. As the death toll of Palestinian civilians began to mount in sustained Israeli airstrikes, the world’s sympathy towards the Israelis after Hamas’s unprecedented attack on October 7 slowly shifted to the end of the airstrikes and the protection of innocent Gazans.

If the Israeli forces ever launch a ground operation, the number of casualties will continue to rise. Israeli soldiers will die, too, from ambushes, snipers, and booby traps – and most of the fighting will likely take place in miles of tunnels spread underground.

But in that case, in the end, the common people may have to pay the price.

[4]
Big intelligence failure
It’s a very bad time for Israeli intelligence. The Shin Bet, their domestic intelligence agency, has come under heavy criticism for failing to anticipate such a deadly attack by Hamas.

They are supposed to have a network of informants and spies inside Gaza who monitor the movements of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders. But what happened on that fateful Saturday morning is still considered the biggest intelligence failure in the country’s history since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Israeli intelligence agencies have been working non-stop for the last 10 days to overcome it. They are working to identify the names of hostages held by Hamas and find out where they are being held.

They are also helping the IDF with information on where Hamas leaders are hiding. As a result, it is also likely that they wanted more time to gather information so that when the military operation began, they could go to a specific location rather than wandering around the rubble of northern Gaza and being attacked.

Despite a series of Israeli airstrikes, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group continue to operate and are sure to have plans and decoys for Israeli troops. Which could become more dangerous for the Israelis if the tunnels are underground.

Israeli intelligence would aim to locate their locations and alert the IDF.