The US reportedly has asked Israel to delay its Gaza ground invasion to make time to rush extra missile defenses to America’s military bases across the Middle East, as it becomes increasingly clear they would come under attack when tanks roll in. No doubt Benjamin Netanyahu will oblige his most important ally — it should take just a few days. But the better reason for the prime minister to take his time is to be sure he’s doing the right thing for Israel, not to mention its own damaged reputation.
CNN says the US has sent Israel high-powered US military advisers who are counseling against an all-out invasion altogether. They’re said to argue that the cost of such house-to-house fighting could prove untenable in lost Israeli and civilian Palestinian lives, the fate of more than 200 hostages, and the potential for Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah to get involved.
One of the advisers was a Marine commander in the second battle of Fallujah, which involved about 13,500 troops on one side and, at most, 4,000 insurgents holding the city of some 250,000 people. The fight took six weeks and cost the lives of more than 60 US-led troops and up to 800 civilians, plus many more wounded. The fighting was brutal.
Israel’s force would be many times larger, but so too that of Hamas, which unlike the assortment of insurgent groups in Fallujah has had time and resources to prepare its defenses, including a vast network of tunnels. (Fallujah had tunnels too, but many fewer.) The area Israel has indicated as a battle space began with a population of about 1.1 million.
This is a huge military task. No doubt a highly motivated Israel military is equipped to do it as few others can, and there is strong domestic demand for Netanyahu to take decisive action after a massive failure of intelligence and security on his watch. With so many reservists called up and the economy in limbo, there are financial costs to waiting, too. Yet those costs will escalate dramatically once Israel commits, and the cliché that wars are much easier to begin than end also happens to be true.
There is at this point no element of surprise to be lost, while Hamas — already under intense aerial bombardment — will only weaken with time. So it’s worth waiting to put in place a full strategy not just to crush Hamas militarily, but at the same time avoid a wider war and exit the battlefield with a plan and the international support Israel will need to help with building a new reality in Gaza.
That makes it also a political challenge, because Israel will still have to live with the vast majority of Palestinians who are not Hamas, as well as its Arab neighbours, when the fighting is over. Hamas, from everything it has said and done, is clearly hoping for a massive Israeli response that will set the region on fire and divert Israel’s forces well beyond the tiny strip of land that it has run so poorly. It showed beyond doubt on Oct. 7 that it remains dedicated to the destruction both of Israel and of Jews as a people. It must be hamstrung as Islamic State and Al-Qaeda have been, but that’s unlikely to be a quick or simple task.
Taking the time needed to remove as many non-combatants from harm’s way — and to make sure they are supplied with food, water and shelter — makes not only diplomatic and moral sense, but also military. The same goes for making time for more hostage negotiations. The kind of strategy the US advisers are proposing — targeted airstrikes and special force actions, more akin to US tactics in recapturing Mosul from Islamic State in a much larger operation to retake a city of 1.7 million — may or may not be the right one for Israel. Yet anything that could lower risks and collateral damage, while still attaining the goal of crippling Hamas, is worth consideration.
Ultimately it is up to Israel and its generals to decide how to defend their country, and Bloomberg News has reported that a recalibration could already be underway. Yet the advice from close friends against letting anger — and therefore Hamas — decide the pace has few downsides. Netanyahu surely knows that even if dramatic action is popular now, that would change quickly if the war went badly. Such a mistake would not be forgiven. The potential human, military and strategic costs of rushing in are large. As the great Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu said, “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war.”
Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.
Credit: Bloomberg
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