This guerra It will be long. This is confirmed by the maps that strategists are preparing and the projects that engineers are outlining. The government has decided to quickly build new villages with prefabricated houses for the thousands of people evacuated from southern Gaza after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas last Saturday.
The first phase, writes analyst Anshel Pfeffer in Haaretz, focused on comb the attacked areas and clear them of the presence of terrorists, but there may still be people hiding near inhabited areas. These operations also allowed Zaka volunteers, escorted by troops, to recover and bury the bodies of the more than 1,200 massacred people.
“The next move,” Pfeffer continues, “is define the objectives of the military campaign and, above all, the inevitable land incursion. The prime minister cannot commit to a victory that we cannot then achieve.” In the other cyclical clashes with the fundamentalists who dominate Gaza, Netanyahu has always been careful to limit the definition of ‘mission accomplished.’
The July-August 2014 conflict lasted two months because the Israelis were unwilling to accept a ceasefire until they were sufficiently sure they had destroyed the tunnels built by the extremists who were spreading on the other side of the barrier. This time the situation is even more complex; The jihadists have held at least 130 hostages in those tunnels since Saturday.
The prime minister has given a name to the victory: “Eradicate Hamas, it cannot exist closer to our borders.” Land invasion is, therefore, inevitable. The tanks have surrounded the 42 kilometers long and 8-9 kilometers wide of the Gaza Strip, a total siege. There are 300,000 troops massing around the narrow sand corridor between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean.