can Israel achieve its aims in Gaza invasion?
Ethnic cleansing? Hopefully not.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Israeli prime minister gave a speech on Wednesday night that sounded like a rallying cry for a ground assault, but it was carefully drafted, committing to nothing specific and saying the place and manner of any attack would be “determined unanimously” by the war cabinet and the army commanders.
US military leaders were reportedly shocked at the vagueness of Israeli planning for the offensive, the blithe optimism about the urban warfare it faced, and the wishful thinking about Gaza’s long-term future post-Hamas.
The southern half will not be spared bombing, as the people there have discovered, and the IDF is expected to mount “search and destroy” attacks aimed at Hamas members, civilian and military, but the Israelis will try to avoid holding any ground there.
“Urban operations are always very difficult, but those in this case likely will be fiendishly so – with snipers, suicide bombers, 300 miles of tunnels, and improvised explosive devices, against terrorists who do not wear uniforms, know the area intimately, will use civilians and hostages as human shields, and have been preparing for this fight for months, if not years,” Petraeus said.
An Israeli general spoke hopefully in private of regional powers stepping in with investment to rebuild Gaza, and somehow overseeing a transition to a non-Hamas regime, possibly the Palestinian Authority.
It was in pursuit of that project that Netanyahu, boosting the standing of Hamas in Gaza, sliced up the West Bank with settlements and gave radical settlers free rein to prey on the Palestinian inhabitants.
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