Gaza war (part 4) - Israel's quiet turnaround
After 6 months of the ground war, I want to look at how Israel fared so far. Israel had the following objectives: Operational: 1. Destroy Hamas’s capacity to be threat. 2. Get their hostages back 3. Handle any threat from Hezbollah, West Bank, or others while operating against Hamas. Strategic: 1. Put any talk of a Palestinian state on the back burner (as it has been after Saudi and UAE normalized relations with Israel) Hamas had the following objectives: Operational: 1. Demonstrate that Israel was not invincible (either on Oct 7, or in subsequent fighting). 2. Get back some of their prisoners in exchange for hostages. Strategic: 1. Force the world community to seriously discuss the creation of a Palestinian state. 2. Start a larger war against Israel with the participation of Hezbollah, Iranian proxies and other Palestinians in the west bank. My view, as expressed in part 1 of this series, was that if the IDF suff...