Over 1,350 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s bombing of Gaza in six days that followed a surprise attack by Hamas that left at least 1,200 Israelis dead on October 7. Israel has also mobilised some 300,000 military reservists and is moving troops and weaponry towards the Gaza border, preparing for an invasion. U.S. President Joe Biden has said responding to Hamas’s attack is Israel’s “duty”, throwing America’s full support behind Israel’s actions.
Israel has attacked Gaza four times since Hamas took over the tiny enclave, sandwiched between the Mediterranean Sea and Israel proper, in 2007. But those were air strikes or brief incursions. Gaza, a 365 sq. km strip of land with 2.3 million people, has no air defence and Israel can bomb the territory at its will. But this time, given the magnitude and brutality of Hamas’s attack and the shock it has left on Israel’s national psyche and the holes it has punched into Israel’s security model, the response is expected to be more forceful. As the war is set to escalate and expand with a ground invasion, what are Israel’s options?
Broadly speaking, Israel’s options are linked to the objectives it sets. In the past, Israel had carried out military operations aimed at both weakening and destroying militant outfits. And they produced mixed results — Israel won the battles with short-term gains but faced long-term setbacks. When it comes to Israel’s military operations against non-state actors, history always suggests caution. Take the case of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon.
Operation Litani
In March 1978, Israel invaded southern Lebanon (Operation Litani) to push the Palestinian militants north of the Litani River. The attack came a few weeks after the Coastal Road massacre in which Palestinian militants hijacked a bus and killed 38 Israelis. Israel pushed the Palestinian militants out of southern Lebanon and handed the territories to the South Lebanon Army, an Israeli proxy militia commanded by Sad Haddad, and pulled back later in the year, calculating that the Palestinian threat from across the border was neutralised.
But as attacks into Israel continued from southern Lebanon, Israel decided to invade Lebanon again, in 1982, but this time, under the Likud government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, it set ambitious goals for itself. Israel wanted to eject the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) from Lebanon, remove Syrian influence from the country and establish a pro-Israel government (of Bashir Gemayel) in Beirut, which, Begin said, would bring “40 years of peace” for Israel.
Israel forced the PLO to relocate from Lebanon, but after Bashir’s assassination, Israel’s plans went awry. It continued to occupy southern Lebanon, but Iran, which became an Islamic Republic in 1979 after the revolution, saw an opportunity in Israel’s occupation, and helped create Hezbollah. The Shia militia group mobilised Lebanon’s historically marginalised Shia community and resisted Israel’s occupation, forcing the Israelis to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000, 18 years after the war began, and rewarding itself with political benefits. So if Israel sent troops to Lebanon in 1982 to finish off the Palestinian resistance, it ended up facing a far more powerful militia in southern Lebanon.
War with Hezbollah
In 2006, Israel would attack Lebanon again — this time to weaken Hezbollah, after a cross-border ambush by the Shia militants. Israel would carry out devastating air strikes on Lebanon and then send troops in for a ground war, which would last for 34 days. But throughout the war, Hezbollah would effectively resist Israeli troops on the ground and continue to fire rockets and short-range missiles into Israel.
The war would finally come to an end after a ceasefire. Israel claimed that it substantially weakened Hezbollah by destroying its military infrastructure, but the war boosted Hezbollah’s political standing in Lebanon and ever since, the group has amassed a huge stockpile of missiles and other weaponry, preparing itself for the next big combat with Israel. Hezbollah is now estimated to have amassed more than 1,00,000 rockets, a Brigadier General in the Israeli Defence Forces, told this writer in November last year on the Israeli-Lebanese border, requesting anonymity. “Hezbollah is a tough enemy. I give them a lot of respect. They have very good military equipment. They are very well-trained,” he said.
Military goals
Cut to the present. If Mr. Netanyahu wants to destroy Hamas’s military infrastructure and weaken the Islamist outfit, he would carry out a limited operation — his troops would go in, meet their immediate goals and pull back. But this would mean that Hamas would remain in Gaza, like Hezbollah did in Lebanon after 2006, and as the Palestine issue remains unresolved, Hamas would continue to enjoy the support of Palestinians and Israel’s regional rivals and over the years, it would rebuild itself. If Mr. Netanyahu’s objective is to destroy Hamas, he will have to topple the Hamas government, bring the enclave under Israel’s direct military occupation, after a gap of 18 years, and be ready to fight a long urban war of attrition with a militia group in an overcrowded, impoverished hostile enclave, while at the same time continuing the military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem. The consequences, like in the case of the 1982 Lebanon invasion, are hard to predict.
Not doing enough is also not an option for Mr. Netanyahu, a rightwing leader who built his career on Israel’s security and uncompromising positions on the Palestine issue. It is an irony that Israel’s biggest security crisis unfolded on his watch.
