Israel to lay siege of Gaza; ‘ground action in strip not easy’
Gaza strip
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, October 9: With over 1200 people dead on either side of Israel-Gaza border, Israeli defence ministry has announced laying a siege of the Hamas stronghold with aims to cut supplies of food, water, and electricity. The Hamas launched a brutal attack on Israel from Gaza, leaving hundreds of people dead, while taking dozens hostage.
The strategic affairs commentators are hotly debating the idea of laying siege of Gaza while Israel is undertaking aerial attacks on the strip, claiming to have destroyed several of the Hamas bases. With Hamas troops still inside Israel and firing of rockets relentlessly, Tel Aviv is now faced with the task of keeping other fronts silent to avoid multiple warfronts.
“What is the idea—what’s the aim—of cutting off all food, water and electricity to Gaza? With no way out for anyone in Gaza, how does such collective punishment target and hurt Hamas more, or even as much as, the more vulnerable general noncombatant population,” wondered Philip Gourevitch, a journalist with The New Yorker in a post on X.
Israel is vowing sever punishment on Hamas stronghold in Gaza in reaction to the killing of the innocent civilians and children. “…even if it succeeds at weakening Hamas, a ground incursion carries major risks. The area’s dense urban terrain poses a significant obstacle to Israeli ground forces and creates enormous potential for civilian casualties. The 2014 crisis, for example, resulted in the deaths of 66 Israeli soldiers, six Israeli civilians, and well over 2,000 Palestinians (mostly civilians), despite the fact that Israeli forces penetrated only a few miles into the Gaza Strip during Operation Protective Edge,” wrote Daniel Byman and Alexander Palmer in Foreign Affairs.
With hostages taken by Hamas, the commentators are also opining that the scale of the Israeli operations in Gaza could be limited even while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is working his phone with the leadership of Egypt, Turkey, Saudia Arabia and others for a ceasefire. However, the efforts have not yielded any result as Israel is seething with anger to take punitive actions against Hamas.
The principle of proportionality in international law demands that Israel avoid excessive casualties and otherwise moderate its military response to focus on stopping the threat from Hamas. The logic of deterrence, on the other hand, often involves disproportionate casualties on the Palestinian side. Because Israel is highly sensitive to casualties, an equal exchange of deaths is, in Israeli eyes, a loss for their country.
The hostage situation is also likely to mount pressure on the Israeli leadership to give space to the backchannel negotiations for a ceasefire. Images of the Israeli children, who are kept allegedly in cages by the Hamas operatives in Gaza, are already going viral on internet.
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