Israel and the IDF have managed some impressive tactical wins, which could turn into strategic wins.
However, it is still an open question to date, and each tactical win could end in strategic losses.
The IDF achieved operational control of northern Gaza by early January and of southern and central Gaza (other than Rafah and a small section in central Gaza) by February.
Those were publicly announced “wins.”
But even before that, by mid-November, the IDF had taken over the core parts of Gaza City, including key Hamas command centers at Shifa Hospital and the Hamas chief military headquarters.
During one of my visits to Gaza, I saw up close the dominant control the IDF had over Shifa Hospital, with basically no resistance anywhere in the area.
Regarding rocket fire, by mid-December, there was a steep drop in rocket fire as the IDF went in strong to southern and central Gaza.
Since mid-January, their rocket fire has been a trickle, with long stretches of days with no rockets at all.
And yet, in recent days, including Friday, Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday (though Tuesday’s rockets fell short), the rocket fire has sometimes been coming back.
Around half of the southern border residents followed IDF and government encouragement to return to their homes. But to what? Ongoing occasional rocket fire, even after an invasion that was finally supposed to gain them some quiet?
Do people think that the other half of the residents will return to the South when they hear fear and frustrations from their neighbors who went on ahead of them?
Likewise, the IDF was forced this week to do a second operation in Shifa Hospital, including killing 90 Hamas terrorists and arresting 160 suspects who have been sent for further Shin Bet interrogation.
Although the IDF seems to say that each time Hamas manages to fire rockets, the terror cell in question is eliminated, and each time Hamas reconstitutes itself, like at Shifa, the IDF comes back in to crush it – is this strategic progress?
If the latest rocket fire and Hamas’s “second coming” at Shifa are the last attempts of Hamas to regain its standing, and by next week, its terror threat will start to collapse, then a true strategic shift is starting to happen. Maybe even if this happens in the next month or so.
However, if the IDF cannot stop the rocket fire permanently and if Hamas returns to Shifa and other spots a third time, and even several months from now, the terror group still manages to rain occasional terror down on the home front and rebuild its forces to reach 100-200 fighters in the same spots, then the message will be that “operational control” does not stop rocket fire and does not stop Hamas from remaining the dominant power in Gaza.
The IDF would remain more powerful than Hamas in any direct straight fight, but how long will it be before the world and Israeli society tire of a new “forever war” with soldiers and Palestinian civilians regularly dying alongside Hamas terrorists?
According to the government and the top IDF echelons’ original estimates, the “main war” was to end in mid-January, and the low-intensity insurgency was supposed to be done sometime between mid-April and mid-September.
Who should Israel hand Gaza to after the war?
But if rockets keep falling and Hamas keeps rallying, and if Israel still has no plan for who to hand Gaza over to, when will be the point where the general public will decide that “absolute victory,” or even victory without rockets, is not achievable, and be ready to “cuts its losses.”
This gets more complicated if you work in a likely 40-45-day hostage deal and temporary ceasefire.
This would mean no rocket fire for a month-and-a-half (and a return of some dozens of hostages), but there are no indications that Hamas is willing to give up its rule in Gaza.
Does that mean that if Israel does not agree to Hamas’s terms at the end of the 40-45 days, then despite the IDF’s “operational control” in most of Gaza, Israel will receive a spike in rocket fire for some days or weeks if and when the deal falls apart?
Won’t Hamas be able to maintain its rocket fire longer, and won’t it be able to stage more returns Shifa-style, after it has 40-45 days to recover?
And why will any third party think seriously about entering Gaza to try to manage it in a more peaceful way when they know that Hamas has not been removed and has assassinated the heads of local Gazan clans who would dare to talk to Israelis about cooperation?
There is no question about some Israeli achievements.
Hamas will not be able to invade Israel again for years, if not longer.
It also will not be able to threaten to fire large numbers of rockets at Israel and areas beyond the close southern border for the foreseeable future.
But absent: 1) ending the rocket fire completely within a reasonable amount of time; b) creating a trend and momentum where Hamas can no longer quickly reconstitute large forces and really is limited to small uncoordinated cells of terrorists in single digits; c) developing a third party who starts to actually and successfully replace Hamas in food distribution, managing internal law and order, and starting to rebuild Gazan society (which includes killing, arresting, or expelling from Gaza the Hamas leadership) – Israel’ may still, unfortunately, manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
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