In trying to crush Hamas, Israel must avoid a second tragedy if it invades Gaza

Destroying Hamas may be desirable, but a rushed invasion of Gaza could be catastrophic.

Published Oct. 13, 2023, 8:30 a.m. ET

My friend in central Israel was sobbing on the phone as she spoke.

A psychotherapist who has volunteered to counsel survivors of the Hamas attack, she is helping two young women who escaped from the music festival where 260 Israelis were slaughtered.

“Their two boyfriends threw themselves out of the shelter where they were hiding in order to save the women, and they were shot dead,” she recounted through her tears. “The terrorists left because they didn’t realize the women were still hidden. One of them was texting on her phone with her dad for seven hours while the terrorists were shooting outside, and she had made her goodbyes.”

Many Israelis are attending funerals this week for the 1,200 dead. At my friend’s former workplace, several people lost relatives, and her brother-in-law knows a whole family that was wiped out. In her hometown, a funeral was held Friday for “a beautiful 23-year-old woman” who was murdered at the music festival. “It’s everywhere,” she told me. “The numbers are staggering. It’s like the Holocaust.”

Yet my friend reflected what I’ve heard from many ordinary Israelis — and from security experts. “I feel caught between two waves of tragedy,” she told me. “I am waiting for a futile invasion. I know it will lead to a disaster.” Specifically, she fears that a ground invasion by the 300,000 Israeli troops massed on Gaza’s border could draw them into a death trap prepared by Hamas.

Based on past Israeli history in Gaza and in south Lebanon, those fears are very legitimate — unless Israel demonstrates far better leadership than what the Netanyahu government showed this past week. And unless it has an exit strategy for getting out of Gaza after an invasion if it decides to send its soldiers in.

The emotional pressure to destroy Hamas is running high at the moment and calls for revenge even higher. That’s not surprising in a country of 9.7 million people, around 73% of whom are Jews. Almost everyone is only one or two degrees away from one of the dead, wounded, or missing.

Moreover, as anger mounts against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his government’s shocking intelligence and security collapse — not only failing to anticipate or prevent the Hamas attack, but being unable to rescue besieged towns and kibbutzim around Gaza for many, many hours — his war rhetoric keeps getting more inflamed (at this writing, no one except the education minister has yet apologized for the government’s dereliction of duty, and many families of kidnap victims have heard no word from officials).

So rather than face up to its negligence, the government’s temptation is to overpromise revenge. “We will wipe this thing called Hamas, ISIS-Gaza, off the face of the Earth,” Netanyahu has declared.

That may be a desirable goal, but Israel’s own history shows how difficult it is to eradicate a terrorist group from a crowded, overbuilt area such as Gaza. Troops will have to move house to house between several-story buildings, alleyways are booby-trapped, and militants can fire from hidden tunnels and traps, and also have drones.

Israel tried ground incursions before in 2009 and 2014 and pulled out after having done major damage to Hamas sites (and causing severe casualties to civilians). But Hamas leaders survived and maintained power.

One must not forget that Israel also sent troops into Lebanon in 1982, expecting to stay 48 hours and dislodge PLO fighters. I won’t forget the day in late 1982, when I arrived in the city of Tyre to see a blown-up building in which 75 Israeli soldiers had been killed. Israel got stuck in southern Lebanon for many years, trying to keep down Hezbollah fighters until it pulled out in 2000. They are still entrenched and now possess 150,000 Iranian-supplied rockets and missiles.

Trying to remove terrorists from urban sanctuaries is one of the most difficult, if not impossible, military tactics. It inevitably causes enormous casualties among civilians caught in the cross fire and among the invading forces (especially if the militants are ready to become martyrs.)

I saw this myself in Mosul in 2016, where Iraqi commandos had to blow up, flatten, and destroy the entire old city, where ISIS was entrenched, and still took 50% casualties doing so. Gaza, with 2.2 million people and built-up cities where Hamas lives among civilians, would make Mosul look like a picnic.

“The objective of eliminating Hamas is not attainable,” said strategic policy analyst and Israel Policy Forum fellow Nimrod Novik, “because it is an ideology, not just a movement. The implication is you need to go door-to-door. It would take months and have an incredible cost in lives” — probably including the lives of all Israeli hostages. “It makes no sense.”

Yet, if the government does want to risk a ground war, it is essential that it first designs an exit strategy for the troops and a plan for who would rule Gaza if the Hamas government could be overthrown.

“Israel can go in and reoccupy Gaza, but what would it achieve?” asked Ori Nir, vice president of Americans for Peace Now and a former West Bank correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “That is not a viable option. You still need someone to run the strip.”

Otherwise, Israel might get stuck with a military reoccupation, which would guarantee the reemergence of Hamas or a successor, as well as a constant guerilla war that would tie innumerable Israeli soldiers down.

All this is not to say that the objective of destroying Hamas is not sought-after. But it is to say that a rushed invasion could lead to a further deluge of casualties — not only of Israeli troops but of thousands of Gazan civilians — without achieving that goal.

One can only hope that the addition of two former Israeli army chiefs of staff — Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, both members of opposition parties — to a wartime unity government will provide wiser military strategists and slow the rush to invasion, all while devising a more feasible military (and diplomatic) plan for the short and long term. However, it’s not clear if Netanyahu will listen to their advice.

Clearly, there are no good options for taking out Hamas. But it would be catastrophic if Israel plunged into a second disaster following the calamity last week.