How will the Israel/Hamas war end?

This war has been building up for so long it is difficult to see how or when it will come to an end. In Israel's view it will end only when Hamas has been totally eliminated. It took the mighty US-led coalition five years to defeat the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq but the Isis ideology lives to this day with several franchises existing and operating in different parts of the world. The territory Israel has to contend with is much smaller. The Gaza Strip from end to end is only 25 miles long by just over six miles wide. But Gaza city and the north are densely packed urban areas while the south is more agricultural. But the challenge to defeat and eliminate Hamas is almost as complex as it was for the US coalition to eradicate Isis. However, for geopolitical and humanitarian reasons, the defeat of Hamas cannot take five years. Benjamin Netanyahu talks of it being a long war ahead, but I doubt the world at large will allow five years of war in a place as tiny as Gaza. There will be growing pressures for a ceasefire and for an accommodation. But the reality is, Israel will not and cannot agree to any deal with Hamas that allows them to survive as rulers of Gaza, able to reconstitute its weaponry and threaten Israel again in the future. So as of now, there is no end solution in sight.

The war in Gaza could last for months

So mighty are the challenges facing the Israeli Defence Forces in defeating and eliminating Hamas in Gaza, the war is likely to last for months or longer. It also means that Israeli troops will have to occupy Gaza, even if they manage to destroy the whole Hamas network, because the Strip cannot be left ungoverned and ungovernable. A replacement administration will have to be found and who will want to take over a destroyed country and an angry population? Destroying all the hundreds if not thousands of tunnels will take for ever. So this is a longlasting war, and the longer it goes on the more difficult it will be for Israel to extract itself from Gaza. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu knows this which is why it has begun the retaliatory fightback with such hesitation. Not from the air because there have been non-stop bombing raids, but on the ground. No war can be won from the air, so if Hamas is going to be defeated and destroyed as an organisation, Israeli troops are going to have to take on the job which means there will be multiple casualties. It's going to be a huge tragedy with massively dangerous and unpredictable consequences for the region and for the world.

Israel and its sponge bomb method of blocking tunnels

The Israeli military has devised a way of blocking off some of the multiple tunnels dug by Hamas under Gaza by firing “sponge bombs”, consisting of a chemical compound which forms a rapidly hardening foam. While the Israeli defence forces will need to engage in close combat in the tunnel network, the sponge-bomb foam will seal off the smaller entrances along the way, preventing ambushes by Hamas. Sponge bombs were not designed to destroy tunnels but to reduce the odds for the Israeli soldiers by filling up at least some of them with the hardened foam to ease their path down the so-called Gaza Metro. “The threat of Hamas tunnels will be one of the most significant challenges to contend with,” John Spencer of the Modern War Institute at the US West Point Military Academy, said during a discussion on the issue this month. “Many miles of these tunnels crisscross below the surface of Gaza, some as deep as 230ft underground, and collectively they offer Hamas fighters the means to protect themselves against the Israeli offensive, manoeuvre undetected below the surface and launch attacks before returning to the security of the tunnels,” he said. “Is it feasible to seal them? Can they be destroyed with bunker-buster munitions or other explosives? Are there other ways to render them unusable?” he asked. The sponge-bomb concept is one of the devices expected to be used to seal gaps where Hamas members might be hiding and to help flush them out while attempting to rescue the 200 or so hostages still being held in the tunnel complex that stretches for hundreds of miles. The innovative form of defensive warfare will only play a small part in meeting the threats posed by the layers of tunnels. But IDF soldiers have tried out the sponge-bomb technique at the Tze’Elim army base near the border with Gaza where there is a mock tunnel system for training exercises. The use of sponge bombs is not without risk. The chemical-based foam can be hazardous to work with , and some Israeli soldiers have lost their sight through mishandling during training, The Telegraph reported.

How Hamas rule in Gaza has been disastrous for Palestinians

One can ony feel desperately sorry for the 2.2 million Paestininans living in Gaza. They made the mistake of voting in Hamas to rule the Strip but now have every reason to blame them for the appalling disaster that has befallen them. One thing that has become clear is that instead of spending money to improve the lives and livelihoods of the Palestinian people, Hamas has diverted all the funds they could muster into building weapons laboratories, constructing tunnels to hide in, and spending their time and energy into plotting a terrorist strike against Israel. Never mind the Palestinian people who needed food and jobs and social care. Gaza, as all commentators are saying, is now hell on earth. It is being steadily destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in the hunt for Hamas hideouts and the people are all cooped up in southern Gaza in the hope of saving their lives. One woman on TV the other night said she was living with more than 40 people in one house. The so-called two-state solution under which Israel and Palestine would exist as two separate nations has been a dream for decades but now seems further away than ever. The future for the Palestinian people is grim.

Nothing is going to stop a massive Israeli invasion of Gaza

There is no question the invasion of Gaza has been delayed, even nearly called off possibly, but the remark by the secretary-general of the United Nations, which effectively said that Hamas's action in slaughtering more than 1,000 Israelis in cold blood, including women and children, was not carried out "in a vacuum" but was brought on by years of Israel's blockading of Gaza, will surely finally give Benjamin Netanyahu the extra incentive and motivation to go ahead with a massive ground offensive. The words of Antonio Guterres will put fire in the bellies of every Israeli soldier lining up on the Gaza border. Neither the US nor Britain has called for a ceasefire because they recognise that Israel has the right to defend itself and take revenge on Hamas. So it's going to happen, partly thanks to the UN chief's unwise selection of words. Whether a ground invasion will then lead to a much wider regional conflict we have no way of knowing. But the UN chief's statement has underlined the divisions around the world about Israel and the manner in which it has had to protect itself over the years and act against its enemies living all round its borders. Antonio Guterres needs a lesson in history.

The release or rescue of the 220 hostages in Gaza has to be the number one priority

Everything now depends on what happens to the 220 Israeli and foreign hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza. A full-scale ground invasion by the Israeli army won't solve the hostage crisis. It might make it worse. But of course this is exactly why the Hamas terrorist group took hostages because they knew it would complicate Israel's offensive plans. The handful of hostages released on health grounds is all part of the Hamas plan, to try and win support around the world, to try and show that they have compassion in their hearts. The grisly videos relased by the Israeli Defence Force of Hamas terrorists murdering and terrifying Israelis in their day of slaughter on October 7 demonstrate that whatever compassion they might have is purely for tactical reasons. The hostage crisis is now the top priority but Hamas will exploit it to their advantage. This is what terrorists do. In the end Israeli commandos will launch more and more raids to find and release the hostages but judging by the images of the narrow tunnels under Gaza where most of the hostages are probably being held, the risk of high casualties, both among the hostages themselves and the Israeli troops involved seems unavoidable.

Will the Israel/Hamas war boost Biden's chances of winning the 2024 election?

It sounds cynical but in foreign policy, as well as with domestic issues, everything has political repercussions for those involved in the decision-making. Thus, the disastrous Israeli intelligence failure to spot Hamas plotting the attacks on October 7 could eventually be the downfall of Benjamin Netanyahu. But could Joe Biden's strong but cautionary support towards Israel following the Hamas atrocities boost his second-term presidency hopes? It's too early to predict but Biden's approach so far would seem to be both practical and sensible. In other words, he has given his full support for Israel's determination to eliminate Hamas, including by a ground invasion but he has appealed for the Israeli military to be as selective as possible and not to indiscriminately bomb and shell Gaza, packed as it is with more than two million Palestinian people, men, women and children, albeit the majority of them supposedly taking shelter in the "safer" south. Provided Israel abides by Biden's wishes, then when the war comes to an end it may well help Biden to win the 2024 election. But many civilians in Gaza have already died as a result of persistent Israeli bombing, so there is no guarantee that the Biden appeal will play a part in actually saving lives. Bombing from the air, even with precision-guided bombs, inevitably kills civilians. That is the bitter message of every war. So if the retaliatory strikes by Israel against Hamas lead to thousands of civilian deaths, Biden might well lose the 2024 election.