Will Israeli invasion of Gaza backfire?

President Biden took "a bold gamble" by heading to Israel this week, said Donald Macintyre in The Independent. 

Even before hundreds of Palestinians were killed by a massive explosion at a Gaza hospital on the eve of his arrival, it was set to be a fraught diplomatic mission. It risked associating him with Israel’s expected ground invasion of Gaza, and making the US look one-sided. And that risk was magnified by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas pulling out of his meeting with Biden in protest at the hospital blast, which Israeli forces and Palestinian militants blamed on each other. But the White House clearly decided that the mission was nevertheless worth pursuing. 

The visit was an opportunity for Biden to show solidarity with Israel over the Hamas atrocities of a fortnight ago; to discuss the plight of the 200 or so hostages held by Hamas, several of whom are American; and to air US concerns about "the mounting humanitarian catastrophe" inside Gaza, wrote Macintyre.

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What did the papers say?

"Israel is in no mood for restraint," said The Economist. In the past, it has engaged in periodic, limited operations to cut Hamas down to size – "mowing the grass", as some used to call it. But this time, in response to the massacre of more than 1,400 of its people, it's out to eradicate the group completely. "I don't care what happens next," as Eitan Shamir, director of an Israeli think-tank, puts it. "Whatever it is, it starts with destroying Hamas." 

Israel has blocked supplies of food, water and fuel to Gaza, and last week warned all non-combatants to evacuate the northern half of the territory, in anticipation of a ground invasion.

Removing Hamas won't be easy, said Con Coughlin in The Daily Telegraph, but it's not impossible. After all, the West did ultimately succeed in destroying through force the threat posed by al-Qa'eda and Islamic State.

Israel's anger and desire for vengeance are understandable, said Ian Birrell in The i Paper, and it, of course, has a right to defend itself. It should be wary, though, of lashing out in an indiscriminate way that only fuels a cycle of violence.

Gaza is a densely inhabited sliver of land the size of the Isle of Wight. Two-thirds of its 2.3 million impoverished inhabitants are under the age of 24. Aerial bombardments of such a territory will inevitably claim many innocent lives: health authorities in Gaza say 3,000 people have already been killed.

The bombing and siege amount to "collective punishment", which is against the laws of war, said The Guardian. As for giving northern Gaza's 1.1 million people 24-hours' notice to move south, that, too, shows a contempt for civilian lives, given that most of Gaza's hospitals are in the north. This is about more than just revenge, said Emad Moussa in The New Arab. It reflects Israel's long-harboured ambition "to empty Gaza and make Palestinian Gazans Egypt's problem".

A full ground invasion of Gaza, as Israel appears to be planning, would be a very risky proposition, said Colonel Tim Collins in the Daily Mail. The standard military ratio says you need ten soldiers for every defending fighter to achieve superiority. So Israel would need a force of around 400,000 to take on Hamas's 40,000 estimated operatives. But this war would be fought in narrow streets unsuited to tanks, against an enemy moving through a "hidden labyrinth of tunnels and bunkers underneath the city". Such a campaign could descend into a "bloody quagmire", inflaming the Arab world. "Even if Israel wipes out the top ranks of Hamas – many of whom are safely abroad in sympathetic Middle Eastern countries – and occupies the Gaza Strip, what then?"

It's hard to see what victory would look like for Israel in a military campaign, agreed Dan Sabbagh in The Guardian. As the former MI6 chief Alex Younger put it last week: "You cannot kill all the terrorists without creating more terrorists."

What next?

The reality is that there are no good options for Israel, said The Economist. An occupation of Gaza is "unsustainable" and continuing Hamas rule in the territory is "unacceptable". As for handing over control of Gaza to Hamas's Palestinian rival, the weak and corrupt Fatah, that's "untenable".

Perhaps the best that can be hoped for is a "short period of martial law" in Gaza while Arab intermediaries help find new Palestinian leaders acceptable to both sides. Israel can't eradicate Hamas but it can isolate, diminish and delegitimise it, said Thomas L. Friedman in The New York Times. That's how the US neutralised Isis and al-Qa'eda. But this course requires "patience, precision", and willing allies. Sending thousands of Israeli reservists into "an urban war in one of the most densely populated places in the world" is no solution.