2023-10-18 01:10:01
News has been circulating for days regarding a possible imminent Israeli ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and the question of when it might start. Now a spokesman for the Israeli army has spoken out – and suggested that an operation in which soldiers on the ground advance into the Gaza Strip area is by no means the only option. They are preparing for “the next phases of the war. There may be something else,” he said yesterday, making it clear that there are several options for what these phases might look like.
How exactly the military spokesman’s statement should be understood and whether it was perhaps just intended to distract, remained unclear at first. What is clear, however, is that the Israeli government has massed large amounts of military equipment and hundreds of soldiers on the border with the Gaza Strip, who might begin a ground operation at any time.
Too high a risk for Israel?
But it is also clear that the Israeli public considers the risks of such an operation to be very high. A house-to-house battle in Gaza with Hamas or an attempt to free hostages hidden in Hamas’s extensive tunnel system is likely to result in very high losses for the Israeli army. Extremely disturbing images would go around the world and then the question would arise: What does Israel actually want to do with the Gaza Strip? Because as an occupying power, it would then also have to manage this strip – with the corresponding effort and the corresponding risks.
Fear of a wildfire
Fears of a conflagration in the Middle East are also growing. Tensions have been increasing on Israel’s northern border for days. The Shiite Hezbollah militia in Lebanon repeatedly attacks Israeli positions and towns with rockets and mortar shells, whereupon the Israeli army fires on Hezbollah positions. There were already deaths on both sides. The threats are becoming more and more severe every day. Iran, which funds, supplies and trains Hezbollah, warned the Israelis not to invade Gaza. Then one would be forced to intervene: “If the Zionist regime enters Gaza, then the gates to hell will open,” threatened, for example, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament.
In plain language, this means that Tehran is giving Hezbollah the green light to attack Israel. Israel, in turn, warns the militia once morest such a step, saying they would retaliate “lethally.”
A war with Hezbollah would not only be Iran’s official entry into the conflict. It would probably be the greatest existential threat to Israel in decades.
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