Israel-Hamas war, Day 5Israel to focus on Hamas tunnel system, then seek a “Syrian solution” to Hamas problem
Since Hamas violently seized power in the Gaza Strip in summer 2007, the organization invested millions of dollars in following Hezbollah’s example and build a vast system of tunnels and bunkers under residential areas, using the Palestinians living above ground as a human shield to the Hamas war machine underground. Israel cannot destroy these underground tunnel systems without destroying the cities above, in the process killing and injuring an untold number of Palestinian civilians. In a move similar to the tactics followed by Israel during the 2006 war with Hezbollah, the Israel Air Force (IAF) will drop leaflets on cities in the northern part of the Gaza strip, instructing residents to leave their homes and move south. These leaflets will be accompanied by automatic phone calls to everyone in these areas to reinforce the message that they must leave. Once the residents have left, in effect turning towns into ghost towns, the IAF will have the freedom to use much heavier ordinance in bombing and destroying large portions of Hamas’s tunnel system underneath. As to how the war will end: The “Syrian option” – that is, allowing a defanged Hamas to remain in power – now appears to be Israel’s goal.
As we wrote on Thursday, owing to the different conditions at the beginning of the current Israeli operation against Hamas relative to the opening conditions of the two earlier rounds against the militant group – Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9 and Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012 — “Israel appears to be following a different strategy than it did against Hamas in 2012 and 2009, but similar to the one it followed against Hezbollah in 2006 (minus the initial surprise attack on Hezbollah’s mid-range missiles)” (see “Operation Solid Rock, Day 3: Hamas’s rocket force commander killed, Iron Dome’s effectiveness impresses,” HSNW, 10 July 2014).
News from Israel now appear to confirm this analysis.
The war so far
We should first highlight the main developments in the war so far, all pointing in one direction: Israel’s sustained air attacks against Hamas targets have been devastating, while Hamas’s rocket attacks against Israel have been ineffective. A comparison of two figures bears this out: The Israel Air Force (IAF) has dropped about 1,100 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip. If we add up the weight of the explosives in all the warheads of the 700 or so rockets Hamas has fired into Israel, that figure will be about 1.2 tons. This is a ratio of 1,000:1. In addition:
- More than 1,200 Hamas targets have been destroyed
- More than 700 buildings and structures have been destroyed, among them the homes of more than eighty Hamas military and political leaders
- About 2,000 Hamas rockets have been destroyed
- Hamas still has about 200 mid-range rockets, and about 8,000 short-range rockets
- Hamas has fired about 700 rockets into Israel, with about 180 of them heading toward populated areas and the rest landing in empty fields
- Of the 180 rockets heading toward populated areas, 170 have been intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system
- Not a single Israeli has been killed in those rocket attacks, and the only casualties are one seriously injured and three lightly injured when a rocket landed on a gas station in the city of Ashdod
- 151 Palestinians have been killed so far
