The Israeli army carried out a “raid” – that is how they defined it, instead of an incursion – in Gaza in the early hours of yesterday, an armored convoy that included an excavator designed to target the network of tunnels, the most feared threat to a ground operation that did not arrives.
“The day when this will happen is not far away, it will begin when the conditions are right,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said last night. Western military sources describe these raids as “usual” before a large-scale offensive. In this case, to verify Hamas’ response capacity, especially that of its anti-tank weapons.
Why is the second phase of the war delayed? Nobody has an answer, but voices are beginning to be heard in favor of speeding up the intervention, in order to avoid psychological wear and tear in the troops and reduce social anxiety. “It can’t go long,” says Alon Pinkas, advisor to former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a Labor Party and a big detractor of Prime Minister Netanyahu.
To date, the delay has been attributed to pressure from Washington for various reasons. The fate of the 220 hostages, of more than forty nationalities, the need for time to reinforce the US military muscle in the region and give room for underground diplomacy aimed at framing the conflict, so that when the war land begins does not overflow the borders of Gaza and Israel.
Western military analysts agree that this type of waiting, with the troops deployed and ready to enter combat, is counterproductive and sows doubts about the real difficulty that awaits them.
As the days progress, the conviction that the operation is extremely complex also increases. Even the US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, entered into the matter and evoked the nine months it took to retake Mosul from the Islamic State, a clearer scenario than Gaza, although he highlighted the progress – to be verified – of Israel in technology and weapons for detecting the tunnels.
The Gaza Strip is 340 square kilometers and it is estimated that the tunnels exceed 500 kilometers, with some excavated more than 80 meters deep. A kind of apocalyptic defense well prepared by Hamas in recent years, in the same way that its terrorist raid on October 7 was not improvised or Pancho Villa-style. A couple of years ago, the head of Hamas in the strip, Yehya al Sinwai, stated that contrary to what Israel boasted, they had more than 500 kilometers of underground labyrinths intact.
“I am not going to speculate on the number of kilometers but it is high and built under schools and residential areas,” an Israeli army spokesman said yesterday. As long as the fighting does not begin, any speculation or opinion is possible and there is no shortage of those who remember the overconfidence of the United States with the Vietcong guerrillas and their tunnels.
The attention on Gaza overshadows the small-scale – but daily – skirmishes and clashes on Israel’s border with Lebanon. There are exchanges of gunfire and modest missiles daily, with a toll of forty Hizbullah guerrillas and seven Israeli soldiers killed since October 7. Here the pro-Iranian militia of Hizbullah has the gas nozzle to increase or not the confrontation with Israel, to drag or not drag Lebanon – whose weak State is close to bankruptcy – and, in short, to express Iran’s threats on the ground. to Israel.
“We are prepared for any contingency in the north. Hizbullah has suffered many casualties. However, Israel has no interest in expanding the war,” the Israeli Defense Minister said yesterday. As always, a territory smaller than the surface of Catalonia concentrates the interposed and not necessarily altruistic interests of some countries: the United States, Europe, Syria, Turkey, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar… The only thing left is Let China break in.
