Can Israel permanently dismantle Hamas by invading Gaza?

On Saturday night, Israel announced that it is ready to implement a wide range of offensive options in the Gaza Strip. This includes a joint and coordinated attack on Gaza ‘by air, land and sea’.

The statement, which came a week after Hamas forces attacked Israel, has only increased speculation that Jerusalem will be looking to stage a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. It also comes in the backdrop of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to ‘crush Hamas’.

But how is Israel preparing for the attack? Will it be able to dismantle Hamas?

Let’s take a closer look:

How is Israel preparing for the attack?

The Israel Defense Forces said it is finalising the draft of hundreds of thousands of reservists. This, is as the logistics directorate works to provide troops with all the equipment they will need for the ground offensive.

“In recent days, the tools required for combat have been transferred to the assembly areas, and at this stage, the various units of the Technological and Logistics Directorate are working to complete the qualification of the tools and equipping them with advanced combat means, as needed,” the IDF said.

“IDF battalions and soldiers are deployed all over the country and are prepared to increase readiness for the next stages of the war, with an emphasis on a significant ground operation,” the military added, according to The Times of Israel.

The military is expected to launch a ground invasion in the Gaza Strip, but its extent and when it is carried out may be affected by operational considerations, as tensions grow on the northern border. Meanwhile, Israel’s National Security Council head Tzachi Hanegbi has reaffirmed that the cabinet’s war goal is to remove Hamas from military and political control over the Gaza Strip.

Hanegbi, however, declined to elaborate on planned next steps for the coastal enclave.

When asked about Israeli plans for alternative control, or return to occupation, of the Gaza Strip, Hanegbi told The Times of Israel, “We can’t report through you to the enemy on what is coming, we can tell Hamas that it is prohibited for it to be sovereign in Gaza.”

Hanegbi says that in a recent Cabinet meeting, the government approved a plan to “destroy” Hamas, as stated by the prime minister and defence minister.

“Hamas will not be the ruler, the sovereign in Gaza after the combat,” he was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

Earlier on Saturday, Netanyahu said Israel is ready with its fighters in the Gaza Strip at the front line.
“With our fighters in the Gaza Strip, on the front line. We are all ready,” Netanyahu wrote on ‘X’ on Saturday.

עם הלוחמים שלנו בעוטף עזה, בקו החזית. כולנו מוכנים.

(צילום: אבי אוחיון, לע״מ) pic.twitter.com/TiGzHcWhPK

— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) October 14, 2023

Netanyahu toured Kibbutz Be’eri and Kibbutz Kfar Azza, two of the worst-hit Gaza border communities in last week’s Hamas onslaught, his office announced, The Times of Israel reported.

As per a statement, Netanyahu “walked between the ruins of the houses where these terrible massacres took place.”

The prime minister was briefed by the IDF officers there, including the head of the paratrooper battalion.
NDTV quoted Netanyahu as telling soldiers, “Are you ready for what is coming? More is coming.”

The visit comes as Netanyahu’s first visit to the scene, more than a week after the attack that saw more than 1,300 Israelis killed, most of them civilians, as waves of Hamas terrorists breached the border.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has said that upon receiving the report of wounded following the infiltration of terrorists in Zikim, the soldiers of Unit 669 were rushed to the field.

עם קבלת הדיווח על פצועים בעקבות חדירת מחבלים בזיקים הוקפצו לוחמי יחידה 669 לשטח. הכוחות פעלו לחילוץ הפצועים תחת אש וירי פצמ״רים.

מתחילת הלחימה, חילצה יחידה 669 כ-200 פצועים בכ-45 חילוצים pic.twitter.com/udYHdKy4yW

— Israeli Air Force (@IAFsite) October 14, 2023

“The forces worked to rescue the wounded under fire and mortar fire. Since the beginning of the fighting, Unit 669 rescued about 200 wounded in about 45 rescues,” the IAF wrote on ‘X’.

In the wake of Israel Hamas war in the Gaza Strip which claimed the loss of thousands of lives on both sides including civilians, an agreement has been reached under which Israel will allow foreigners to leave the war-torn Gaza, Times of Israel reported on Saturday.

As per The Times of India, the Gaza health ministry has said that 300 people were killed in Gaza alone on 14 October.

Egypt, Israel and the United States have agreed to allow foreigners residing in Gaza to pass through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, under which Israel agreed to refrain from striking areas the foreigners would pass through on their way out of the Palestinian territory.

The Israeli publication added that Qatar was involved in the negotiations and the participants received approval from the Palestinian terror groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Moreover, the agreement does not involve anything about the release of hostages being held by Hamas.

A second official at the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing point says they received “instructions” to reopen it on Saturday afternoon for foreigners coming from Gaza.

The first official said negotiations were still underway to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza through the crossing point.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

Israel has ordered a mass evacuation of Palestinians from the northern Gaza Strip.
It dropped leaflets from the air and redoubled warnings on social media for more than 1 million Gaza residents to move south.

The military says it is trying to clear away civilians ahead of a concentrated campaign against Hamas militants in the north, including in what it said were underground hideouts in Gaza City.

Hamas, meanwhile, has urged people to stay in their homes.  Desperate Palestinians have scrambled to escape from northern Gaza on Saturday or huddled by the thousands at a hospital in the target zone in hopes it would be spared.

The UN and aid groups say such a rapid exodus along with Israel’s siege of the territory would cause untold human suffering. The World Health Organization said the evacuation “could be tantamount to a death sentence” for the more than 2,000 patients in northern hospitals, including newborns in incubators and people in intensive care.

Will it be able to dismantle Hamas?

That remains an open question.

Samy Cohen, an emeritus researcher at Sciences Po and president of the French Association for Israel Studies (AFEIL), told The Conversation Netanyahu’s statements are ‘pure political rhetoric’. “Hamas is not an army that can be defeated on the battlefield and surrendered to. It is a highly decentralised paramilitary organisation whose fighters, who hide in tunnels, are very difficult to flush out. The Israeli air force will not be enough,” Cohen said.

Cohen pointed out that a ground invasion would lead to several victims on both sides – both Gazan civilians and Israeli soldiers. Cohen also pointed out that hostages would be a complicating factor.

Other experts say that while Israel may be able to take Gaza physically, its stated goal of ‘destroying Hamas’ may be harder to meet.

An article in Foreign Policy noted that Israel has held off on an incursion for ‘several reasons’ in Gaza.

“The Israeli security apparatus has long believed that decapitating Hamas will require far more than a one-off, short-term military operation, and a wider campaign presents a host of challenges to Israeli authorities. It was not an accident that Israel unilaterally decided to evacuate the strip in 2005, decades after occupying the territory in 1967,” the piece stated.

It noted the Israelis would need to go back into Gaza and stay in to permanently disable Hamas.
“Without boots on the ground, it cannot stop Hamas, but being on the ground means not just spending vast sums of money to take responsibility for the Palestinians post-conflict but also inevitably losing a lot of lives on both sides,” the piece noted.

A piece in The Guardian noted that the goal behind ground invasion aimed at wiping out Hamas only works with complete occupation – essentially what the US attempted in Afghanistan after 9/11.
The newspaper quoted HA Hellyer, an analyst with the Royal United Services Institute think tank, as saying Israel would have to first destroy “all governing capacity in Gaza” and substitute it with a military regime.
This is against the backdrop of fending off an insurgency.

It quoted the International Institute of Strategic Studies’ West Asian expert Hasan Alhasan as wondering whether “there is any viable military strategy short of a total ethnic cleansing of Gaza that would lead to a permanent defeat of Hamas.” He also wondered if “Israel is walking into a trap set by Hamas”.

Alhasan argued that Hamas can “regenerate in a generation or two” due to its youth having memories of the horrific violence.

The newspaper also quoted ex-MI6 chief Sir Alex Younger as saying, “You cannot kill all the terrorists without creating more terrorists.”

With inputs from agencies