{"id":10692,"date":"2023-10-26T13:58:37","date_gmt":"2023-10-26T13:58:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/26\/israels-allies-fear-it-could-be-walking-into-a-trap-in-gaza-as-hamas-and-its-backers-seek-a-wider-conflict\/"},"modified":"2023-10-26T13:58:37","modified_gmt":"2023-10-26T13:58:37","slug":"israels-allies-fear-it-could-be-walking-into-a-trap-in-gaza-as-hamas-and-its-backers-seek-a-wider-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/26\/israels-allies-fear-it-could-be-walking-into-a-trap-in-gaza-as-hamas-and-its-backers-seek-a-wider-conflict\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel\u2019s allies fear it could be walking into a trap in Gaza as Hamas and its backers seek a wider conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"

As they watch airstrikes and hot-barreled howitzers pound targets in Gaza, check and recheck their personal weapons, communications and webbing, there can be very few among the thousands of Israeli soldiers poised for combat who don\u2019t quietly wonder: \u201cIs this a trap?\u201d <\/p>\n

Hamas, and its backers in Tehran, would have certainly planned to meet a fierce Israeli ground offensive after the terrorizing infiltration of Israel. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible \u2013 even probable \u2013\u00a0that the singular horrors inflicted on so many civilians were intended by Hamas to guarantee a massive Israeli response, no matter the cost to\u00a0civilians in Gaza. <\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s next moves will determine the shape of things to come \u2013 perhaps for decades. It all comes down to Gaza. <\/p>\n

Hamas has riddled the Strip\u00a0with networks of tunnels. It will have laced the landscape above ground with booby traps, and will have plans to meet the IDF with\u00a0anything from swarms of suicide bombers to snatch teams to take soldiers hostage. <\/p>\n

US generals and other officials have been sharing their experiences of urban warfare on a large scale with Israel. <\/p>\n

It took Iraq\u2019s military \u2013 backed by American, British and other special forces along with relentless air strikes \u2013 nine months to drive ISIS out of Mosul in 2017. <\/p>\n

The\u00a0northern Iraqi\u00a0city was largely emptied of civilians but fighting was house to house. ISIS used tunnel systems it had built to ambush government troops who painfully took Mosul\u00a0brick by bloody brick. <\/p>\n

The bomb-making skills of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group and close ally of Hamas, have metastasized across the Middle East. In Gaza, Israeli troops will know they face improvised explosive devices built with charges that can cripple a tank. They\u2019ll know that Hezbollah\u2019s abilities to destroy armor will have been further refined since Israel last did serious battle in Lebanon in 2006 and was shocked by the sophistication of the militia. <\/p>\n

Hamas now has anti-aircraft capabilities \u2013 Israel\u2019s Apache helicopters providing close support to infantry will be vulnerable to one man with a\u00a0SAM\u00a0(surface to air missile). <\/p>\n

No doubt Hamas also has crews of propagandists ready to make \u201ckill videos\u201d of their attacks on Israeli troops. Nothing is more likely to inflame, or radicalize, angry young men than films of gore and daring \u2013\u00a0ISIS taught us that. <\/p>\n

Phase two<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s safe to assume that Hamas would have planned for widespread carnage in Gaza. Indeed that may be the objective of phase two after the October 7 attacks. <\/p>\n

\u201cAny miscalculation in continuing genocide and forced displacement can have serious and bitter consequences, both in the region and for the warmongers,\u201d said Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Sunday. <\/p>\n

His words aren\u2019t meant as analysis \u2013 they\u2019re a threat. <\/p>\n

The White House knows this. A trap sprung against Israel could have wide and dangerous consequences leading to the sort of \u201cClash of Civilizations\u201d that followed 9\/11. <\/p>\n

A major concern for President Joe Biden will be the welfare of US hostages in Gaza and for the other 200-plus\u00a0souls held by Hamas and other groups in the enclave. <\/p>\n

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has, for many years, drawn a straight line between Hamas and the so-called Islamic State.\u00a0 He already sees the Israel-Hamas conflict\u00a0as a clash of civilizations. <\/p>\n

\u201cHamas are the new Nazis. They are the new ISIS and we have to fight them together just as the world, the civilized world, united to fight the Nazis and united to fight ISIS,\u201d\u00a0he said at a press conference during the visit of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week. <\/p>\n

Hamas\u2019 latest atrocities were a Grand Guignol of horror, but the militant movement isn\u2019t ISIS. Hamas has in fact worked hard, and violently, to snuff out ISIS elements in Gaza who represented a form of political Islam that it deeply opposed. <\/p>\n

Hamas does hope to establish a Palestinian state based on the teachings of Islam. But it has no pretentions to a caliphate. Crucially it also has no history of attacks outside Israel and the Palestinian territories, nor has it harnessed the internet into worldwide attempts at radicalization. <\/p>\n

But Hamas is committed to the destruction of the Jewish state. World leaders have recoiled from its latest atrocities and have been vocal in supporting Israel. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe struggle [against terror groups] must be without mercy,\u201d said French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday in Israel. <\/p>\n

But he added a caveat that, arguably, is rooted as much in realpolitik as it is in ethics: An effort to avoid getting the West sucked into a conflict that could, or would, be seen as a war against Islam (again). <\/p>\n

That \u201cstruggle,\u201d he said, \u201cmust be without mercy, but not without rules.\u201d <\/p>\n

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Atatra, Gaza<\/div>\n
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SATELLITE IMAGE \u00a92023 MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Some 1,400 people were killed in the Hamas-led raids inside Israel. The death toll in Gaza is climbing beyond 5,700, according to Palestinian health officials.\u00a0The Israel Defense Forces\u00a0say that they\u2019re trying to minimize civilian casualties. <\/p>\n

A state of near-total siege has been imposed on the 2.3 million population. The UN says 1.4 million people have been displaced inside the thin strip of land. <\/p>\n

A ground operation by Israel, though, would inevitable mean these figures shoot up. On both sides. <\/p>\n

There have been pro-Palestinian marches throughout the world protesting at the level of destruction visited already on Gaza by Israel. If a land incursion gets underway it will be much worse \u2013 and the protests more loud. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile Israel\u2019s enemies \u2013 all dedicated to the destruction of the state itself \u2013 have been meeting in Lebanon. <\/p>\n

Hezbollah leader\u00a0Hassan Nasrallah met a deputy head of Hamas, Saleh Al-Arouri, and the secretary-general of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziad Al-Nakhla, on Wednesday. <\/p>\n

\u201cAn assessment was made of\u2026 what the parties of the resistance axis must do at this sensitive stage to achieve a real victory for the resistance in Gaza and Palestine and to stop the treacherous and brutal aggression against our people,\u201d Hezbollah said in a statement afterward. <\/p>\n

One can be sure that minders from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Brigade, Tehran\u2019s leading international military and intelligence arm, were on hand. The Quds brigade has trained, funded and guided all three groups for many years. <\/p>\n

They\u2019ll be looking to exploit Israel\u2019s next moves in Gaza as their own \u201cphase two\u201d of the October 7\u00a0attacks. <\/p>\n

Hezbollah has\u00a0already been drawing Israeli forces away from an exclusive focus\u00a0on Gaza by skirmishing along Lebanon\u2019s southern border.\u00a0The US has blamed Iran for sending Iraqi proxies to hit American logistics bases in Baghdad. The cauldron of conflict has been kept simmering with attempts by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen\u00a0to fire missiles towards Israel, which\u00a0were\u00a0shot down by the US. <\/p>\n

Americans and many European nationals are being told to leave many Middle Eastern countries close to Israel; even\u00a0the Australians too have three planes on standby to handle evacuations. <\/p>\n

John Kirby, the spokesman for the US National Security Council, said Monday that the administration was \u201cwatching very, very closely\u201d for signs Iranian-backed militia groups are planning to ramp up attacks on US military forces stationed in the Middle East. <\/p>\n

Consumed by rage<\/h2>\n

Iran may be trying to draw US\u00a0Washington\u2019s\u00a0attention away from the Israeli theater\u00a0\u2013 but it may also be trying to goad the US into more conflict. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t look at what has happened here to mothers or fathers or grandparents, sons, daughters, children, even babies and not scream out for justice \u2013 justice must be done \u2013 but I caution this, while you feel that rage, don\u2019t be consumed by it,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cAfter 9\/11, we were enraged in the United States. While we saw justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.\u201d <\/p>\n

Those mistakes led to the US-led invasion of Iraq, a widespread belief that Islam was under attack from the West, chaos in the Middle East, the so-called Islamic State or Caliphate itself \u2013 and world-wide terror attacks. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen President Biden warns the Israeli government not to repeat the mistakes it made in Afghanistan, he is speaking from significant lived experience. As we all know now, the US overreacted after 9\/11 and lost so much of the goodwill initially generated in the immediate aftermath, whether that was in terms of the \u2018war of choice in Iraq\u2019 and its aftermath or the expansion of the war in Afghanistan,\u201d said Karin von Hippel, director of the Royal United Services Institute and a former adviser to the US military on combating terrorism. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s the conventional wisdom. <\/p>\n

Martin Sherman, head of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies and a long-time advocate of a harder line against his country\u2019s regional rivals or enemies, disagrees. <\/p>\n

He believes that Israel should go into Gaza, and hard. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that the Arabs will ever really come to terms with Israel\u2026 the minimum that Israel can strive for is to be greatly feared and the best it can hope for is to be grudgingly accepted,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The IDF soldiers poised in their mustering points\u00a0for what may be a major battle\u00a0in Gaza might\u00a0also wonder if, years from now, their sons may be back there again, striking out to be \u201cgreatly feared.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As they watch airstrikes and hot-barreled howitzers pound targets in Gaza, check and recheck their personal weapons, communications and webbing, there can be very few among the thousands of Israeli soldiers poised for combat who don\u2019t quietly wonder: \u201cIs this a trap?\u201d Hamas, and its backers in Tehran, would have certainly planned to meet a <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10693,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10692","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}