As such, Israel has promised to wipe out Hamas.
To do this, the IDF would need “to eliminate every launching pad, every rocket, every weapon, every training site” and for that “you need to deploy on the ground 10s of 1,000s of pairs of boots,” Barak said. “I don’t like to use the word inevitable, but that’s the most probable development, namely that in a few days, a much wider force will enter into the Gaza Strip.”
The former prime minister does not shy away from how difficult a ground invasion would be for Israeli forces.
“We would love to have it [the incursion] in the meadows of Oxfordshire,” he said, referring to a county in rural England, “but it’s not; it’s Gaza. It’s a built-up area with fighters there, and they will fight back. I don’t want to idealize it or say it’s going to be a cakewalk. But with enough force and enough enthusiasm, we will win.”
He also knows it will most likely kill even more civilians.
So far, Israel has held back from a ground assault, instead prosecuting a relentless bombing campaign on Gaza.
It says it only targets Hamas positions, but these airstrikes have killed thousands of people including hundreds of children, damaging hospitals, schools and other critical infrastructure. After years blockading the strip, Israel has also enforced a “complete siege,” cutting off power, food, fuel and water to its people, half of whom are under 18, before turning the water back on days later.
Biden’s visit appears to have produced a breakthrough that could allow some humanitarian aid into Gaza as soon as Friday.
Many experts, humanitarian groups and the European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, say Israel may have breached international law by exercising collective punishment in response to the surprise Hamas terror attack, which killed some 1,400 people.
Barak says any ground operation must follow international law. However, despite Israel’s commitment to do so, “you cannot ignore the fact that already there are many citizens killed, and probably there will be more.”
He said this is “because Hamas deliberately uses them as a human shields,” voicing a frequent Israeli point that the militant group fills residential buildings and streets with its weapons and fighters, which Israel has pledged to destroy.
Ksenia Svetlova, a former Israeli lawmaker and now senior policy fellow at the Mitvim Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, a think tank, believes that the current government is not doing enough, rhetorically at least, to differentiate between Hamas militants and Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
“Israel should avoid making any kind of frightening statements toward the civilians,” she said, “and do just the opposite: to remind all the time, that while fighting the bad guys, while fighting the terrorists, it makes every possible effort to safeguard the life and well-being of the civilians,” she said.
Iran, which backs both Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants, has warned Israel that it may take “pre-emptive action” in the event of a ground invasion into Gaza. Israel has traded missiles with Hezbollah across its northern border with Lebanon in recent days.
Raising the temperature further, Arab nations quickly blamed Israel for Tuesday’s hospital blast, which the U.S. and many Western experts have said was most likely a misfired Palestinian militant rocket.
But Barak said the mounting regional tensions will not change Israel’s calculus “one iota.”
On Oct 7. “we never lost so many people in a single day, and such a large number of Jews have not been killed since the Holocaust,” he said. “But Israel is still strong.”
Not everyone here is so bullish.
Though rockets from Gaza kill relatively few Israelis, if Hezbollah joins the fight, then “you cannot even compare their abilities and the quality of rockets that they have,” said Svetlova, of the Mitvim institute.
“This is a great danger.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
