How the wheels came off Israel’s Gaza invasion

When the Israel Defense Forces announced Hamas had been “dismantled” in northern Gaza, the troops had good reason to believe that their job was done.

In the densely-populated neighbourhood of Jabaliya, the devastation from weeks of heavy fighting was extreme. Entire streets and blocks no longer exist, replaced by deep craters created by Israeli air strikes and demolition crews.

Despite the destruction, Hamas has mounted a resurgence in the area, bombarding Israel with rocket fire from the ruins of the city.

On Wednesday, Jabaliya was once again swarming with Israeli troops.

Markava tanks from the 82nd Battalion of the IDF’s 7th Brigade had led the charge, advancing deep into what was once the largest refugee camp in Gaza.

Paratroopers of the 202nd Battalion brought up the rear, occupying the ruined buildings as they sought to root out the resurgent Hamas terrorists.

At 7pm, a tank crew, on high alert for signs of an ambush, spotted the barrel of a rifle sticking out of a building and unleashed two shells from the vehicle’s 120mm main gun.

They had no idea the building was the field headquarters of the 202nd battalion’s deputy commander. Five Israeli soldiers were killed and another seven were wounded, three of them seriously.

Wednesday’s friendly-fire incident, detailed by Israeli media on Thursday, brought the toll of troops who have died in the war against Hamas to 278.

The Sisyphean war

It is also symbolic of what Israeli troops say is increasingly becoming a Sisyphean task as they retread already scarred ground in northern Gaza, dealing with resurgent Hamas in the same areas they captured months ago.

With Israeli generals now openly briefing against the country’s civilian leaders and decrying the lack of a political objective for their war effort, a sense of futility has begun to permeate the Gaza offensive.

Herzl Halevi, the IDF chief of staff, last weekend reportedly lashed out at Benjamin Netanyahu for refusing to come up with a “day after” strategy for running Gaza.

“We are now operating again in Jabaliya. As long as there isn’t a diplomatic move to develop a governing body in the Strip that isn’t Hamas, we’ll have to act again and again in other places to dismantle Hamas’s infrastructure,” Channel 13 quoted Lt Gen Halevi as saying. “It will be a Sisyphean task.”

The IDF would not comment on the reports.

The sense of futility surrounding the Gaza operation was further underlined earlier this week by a top White House official, who said the United States did not think Israel could achieve a “total victory” against Hamas, in a clear rebuttal of the promises of Mr Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister.

Washington does not think that a “sweeping victory… is likely or possible,” Kurt Campbell, the US deputy secretary of state, told an event on Monday.

Tensions between Mr Netanyahu, to whom fresh pockets of Hamas activity are evidence of the need for a “total victory” in Gaza, and his critics, who are alarmed by his refusal to allow a new civilian administration to oversee the enclave, have exploded into the open.

Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, broke ranks on Wednesday to challenge Mr Netanyahu, urging him to “make tough decisions” and come up with a strategy to absolve Israel of the task of occupying Gaza – something seen as vital for ending the war.

At the same time, fighting has intensified on Israel’s northern border, raising serious questions about where the war is going.

Army left vulnerable by political indecision

The lack of a clear set of political objectives or criteria for ending the war appears to have put the Israeli military in a vulnerable position, forcing it to react to threats rather than pre-empt them.

“Our Israel army doesn’t know what to do: If you want us to create a military regime, please tell us; if you want us to occupy this area, we need to understand that we have to take the responsibility for the civilians,” Yohanan Tzoreff, a terrorism expert and former Israeli government adviser on Gaza, told The Telegraph.

“That’s the reason why the IDF left Gaza City in the first place. And when you leave a place, the terror organisation will come back and want to show they’re still in power.”

In comments echoing those grievances, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said on Wednesday that Israel needed a “clear and concrete plan for the future of Gaza” as “we cannot have a vacuum in Gaza that’s likely to be filled by chaos”.

But Mr Netanyahu snapped back a few hours later, saying it was “pointless to talk about the day after while Hamas is still intact”.

“There is no substitute for military victory,” Mr Netanyahu said. “There is only one substitute for victory – defeat. My government will not agree to this.”

Deja vu

But frustration with the elusive war goals is felt on the front line, too.

During most of this winter, Israeli troops took their time to regroup and focus on the remaining area under Hamas’s control including Khan Younis, which was captured in April, and Rafah, where the IDF started operating only last week.

Israeli troops largely withdrew from the north and centre of Gaza, having decimated Hamas battalions there and destroyed what at the time was thought as most of their infrastructure, including tunnels used to store weapons and provide shelter for the fighters.

But the IDF has had to scramble and go back to several of those areas in recent weeks and go back into battle with Hamas cells.

In mid-March, the IDF had to deploy to Gaza City’s Al Shifa Hospital to wrestle back control of it from Hamas as they discovered regrouped Hamas forces there, including a senior commander who was subsequently killed.

On Saturday, the IDF issued evacuation orders for Jabaliya and went back to the densely populated neighbourhood following intelligence indicating Hamas forces were gathering there.

The IDF’s 196th battalion are having déjà-vu moments in Jabaliya, where they fought for an entire month in November.

“It’s frustrating to see this, seven and a half months after the war began,” one of the company commanders in the 196th Battalion inside Gaza told Haaretz newspaper earlier this week.

“But it looks like we have to come back and take care of each individual rocket launcher.”

However much firepower Israel uses in Gaza, the army still assumes that it would have to go back in to deal with new pockets of fighting, active and retired military personnel said.

When the IDF first started operating in the north, the goal was to destroy organised points of resistance, but it is fair to assume that from each battalion of 1,000 people, some 300 would have escaped.

“We need to reach a point within six to seven months when the IDF reduces the infrastructure of terror to such an extent that it will look very much like what we see in the West Bank,” said Brig Gen Amir Avivi.

Israeli forces, backed by air strikes that caused a staggering loss of life and devastation of the area, took control of most of the Gaza Strip in less than three months of fighting by early January.

Keeping up the pressure

Once Israel has removed most of the weapons and Hamas infrastructure, it will be able to cut down the number of troops inside Gaza dramatically.

The main stumbling block to reducing the level of hostilities in Gaza lies in Rafah, the only city in Gaza untouched by fierce fighting that also hosts about 1.4 million people where Hamas is still believed to have several organised battalions intact.

But it increasingly appears that Israel will not be able to launch a fast and ferocious invasion of Rafah as international opposition to it, including from the US, is hamstringing the Israeli government.

Israel’s hesitation to launch a full-scale operation on Rafah is playing into Hamas’s hands, emboldening it to regroup, the Israeli military fears.

“One principle of the war is always be in attack mode and keep pressuring the enemy,” Brig Gen Avivi said.

“When they see [an operation is] not continuous and you’re not pressuring them all the time, then it gives your enemy time to reorganise and regroup,” he said.

“They see they can’t win on a battlefield. They rely on international pressure to stop the war – and this is working for them not bad at all.”

By contrast, for the time being at least, Israel’s troops must fight on without a clear view of how the conflict will end.