Netanyahu’s announcement to move on to the third phase of the Gaza war was for days the center of debate in the social sphere divided on the meaning of this phrase: withdrawal or start of a new offensive against Hamas. The verdict is that in any case this is the political end of Netanyahu.
The discussion on the third phase of the war starts from the battle of East al-Maghazi, fought days ago by the “Al-Qassam” Brigades, which led to the killing of 24 Israeli officers and soldiers and the wounding of dozens, which will perhaps go down in history Israeli military and Hamas for two main reasons. On the one hand, the unprecedented planning, preparation and implementation in the history of guerrilla warfare that did not exist before and the well-oriented use of Hamas intelligence that perhaps Israel did not expect.
Furthermore, Hamas’s ability to use the weapon of communication to bring Israel to international courts. In East al-Maghazi, while Israeli officers and soldiers were setting a trap for the owners of two buildings to blow them up, they fell into a trap when the “Qassam” men took the initiative to blow up the soldiers Israelis while they were trying to mine the two buildings. According to the Qassams, “locally manufactured smart projectiles” would have been used.
And that’s when Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, announced the start of the third phase of the aggression against the Gaza Strip. According to some military analysts in the social sphere, the battle of Al-Maghazi has highlighted some weaknesses of the special combat units. Even in Israel, on the other hand, the same military analysts are analyzing the errors in the field by reformulating the tactics of urban guerrilla warfare. Which is a bit like what is also found in the Ukrainian-Russian theater where both parties learn from the mistakes made. Thus the new units of drones with infantry and drones with artillery are born.
According to some, after the death of the 24 soldiers, Netanyahu fully realized that it was very difficult to achieve all his objectives in the Gaza Strip. Among the reasons is the need to mobilize another 250,000 soldiers from the reserve forces who, however, do not have the same military training as the elites. And again the fear that the West Bank will open an even more violent front than that of northern and southern Gaza where Hamas has had plenty of time to prepare in the previous 15 years. Finally, the fear that moving on to targeted air strikes, special operations and establishing something like an alternative security authority in the Strip will be very difficult to achieve and will in any case require more time than Israel has as it is always under the international spotlight.
What Netanyahu proposed at the beginning of the war to Hamas was the withdrawal of forces 110 days after the start of the war, if the results were disastrous for Israel. Who was not used to major defeats on Palestinian soil. The 110 days have arrived and Israel fights in Khan Younis, advances but at very high costs.
According to the most critics, the main turning point in this war is that Israeli intelligence has failed to monitor despite its advanced equipment and its network of spies and experts. While Hamas has demonstrated that it has spies everywhere and that it has prepared for war with Israel, aware of not having the same means, it has asked for and obtained from its “friends” weapons suitable for the context and for urban guerrilla warfare.
Netanyahu, we read in the social sphere, will not remain in power for another six months, and the same can be said about the continuation of the Gaza war during this period, and the chances of his army and forces will be no better than those of the first three months.
One analyst writes: “Anyone who fails to achieve any of the proposed objectives for this war, especially the destruction of the Hamas movement and the return of prisoners will fail in this next, longer phase, especially after withdrawing most or all its forces, since land warfare is what determines the final results of wars, success or failure.”
Antonio Albanese e Graziella Giangiulio
