Hamas Absorbs Heavy Barrage in Gaza
The terror group faces a stark choice.
The Chief of the General Staff, the Director of the Israel Security Agency, and the Commanding Officer of the IAF, in the IAF’s Underground Operations Center, commanding the strikes in Gaza overnight. (Israel Defense Forces)
Before trying to get to sleep on Monday night, I read that Hamas—amid the lack of progress in the hostage-deal talks since the last Israeli hostages (in this case, remains of hostages) were released on February 26—had been rebuilding its forces to a total of about 25,000 fighters, reorganizing its battalions and brigades, using not-yet-discovered tunnels or possibly building new ones, setting up rocket launchers, and even making renewed efforts to launch cross-border attacks.
It made for depressing reading, and I didn’t drop off before popping some Melatonin. Waking up very early in the morning—as I always do no matter how much or (more commonly) little I’ve slept—and groggily checking my Android screen, I saw that, since the wee hours, the Israeli air force had been subjecting Hamas in Gaza to a major drubbing.
It made sense. Hamas military commanders and government officials were killed and terror infrastructure was pounded. The message was that Israel would not wait passively again while Hamas planned murderous incursions. From now on, such plans will prove deadly to Hamas, not to Israel.
During the day, in Israel, relatives of the 24 or so live hostages still being held in tunnels in Gaza under horrible conditions cried out in anguish that the aerial bombing was endangering their lives. Although efforts were being made to avoid places where they might be, there was no denying that such a danger existed. The abysmal cruelty of Hamas has forced Israel to grapple with dilemmas that are beyond the human ken—and also beyond the capacity for empathy of the many international officials and national leaders who were already, like clockwork, denouncing the Israeli operation if not crowing about “genocide.”
But as veteran Israeli military-affairs commentator Ron Ben Yishai pointed out, a major objective of the Israeli barrage “was to apply military pressure that could break the deadlock in negotiations over hostage releases. Experience within the IDF and Israeli intelligence has shown that such pressure is the most effective way to push Hamas toward flexibility in negotiations.”
As of Tuesday evening, Israel was conveying to Hamas that, if it did not see fit to resume “genuine” negotiations instead of a charade aimed at giving Hamas time to rebuild and plan further rampages, the terror group would be subjected to escalating Israeli strikes.
This time around, Israel has two advantages that make the threat sound real.
First, with the demise of Hizballah and the Assad regime and the severe weakening of Iran, Hamas has no functioning allies left. The Houthis in Yemen have been threatening to resume launching projectiles at Israel, but they themselves are under US attack and some stray drones lobbed at Israel are highly likely to be intercepted and of no help to Hamas.
And second, indications are that this time around Israel has true American backing. There is no question that, from the outbreak of the October 7 war, the Biden administration gave Israel substantial support. But it was support with heavy strings attached, including constant harsh, public, unjustified accusations about the civilian death toll, and unrelenting pressure on Israel to devote huge resources to feeding and supplying a Gazan population that, on the infamous October 7 itself, had reacted with unbridled glee and, in large numbers, poured across the breached border to join the trained terrorists in the atrocities.
But it’s not only a matter of sturdier US support. As Ben Yishai points out, Israel is aiming to
create intense military pressure, coordinated with the US, on all remaining elements of the Shiite "axis of resistance” including Yemen’s Houthis, Hamas and Iran.
This coordination stems, in part, from the US administration’s desire to show regional and global actors that President Donald Trump’s threat to “open the gates of hell” was not empty rhetoric but part of a broader strategy that aims to extract a heavy price from Hamas, the Houthis and Iran itself.
In that regard, Trump’s warnings about holding Iran directly responsible for Houthi aggressions are encouraging.
If Hamas is at all realistic, it will look out from its Gaza enclave at a world in which democracies have gotten serious about defeating barbarians and get serious about freeing the hostages while it still can.
In WWII, the Allies and especially the U.S. took the position that winning the war as quickly as possible was the best strategy for saving the Jewish people. That was the justification for not bombing the tracks leading to concentration camps or otherwise diverting resources from the war effort to slow the Holocaust. Given their due diligence aid and resources provided to the doomed Polish partisans at the same time, this justification appeared (and still seems to certain historians) a thin cover for another less tenable rationalization.
In dealing with Hamas and the hostages, Israel faces a similar dilemma: how to save the captives while insuring the eradication of the evil regime holding them.
Israel is trying to square a circle but has done a better job than FDR. It has negotiated the release of many and rescued a few while applying military pressure to force the issue.
The problem with Hamas is the same as with Hitler: they see their cause as holy, their defeat as the fault of others and are prepared to sacrifice their civilians in the maelstrom of their own creation. There is no negotiation possible that will lead to a happy, quick result. It is a choice between two terrible options, and it is likely that, even if Hamas terrorists surrender in the end, they will do so only after murdering the remaining living hostages.
One looks around and can see the complicity of much of the world community which, at no point, could summon the moral clarity to proclaim with one voice on October 7 that Hamas must free the hostages unconditionally and immediately, and apply unremitting pressure on Qatar and Iran to insure that outcome. And they should have loudly proclaimed that, by its actions, Hamas has forfeited any right to rule or even exist as an organization. Nothing approaching that happened.
So, Israel faces a dilemma but its path forward is made a bit easier with the support of an engaged America. How to proceed is up to the duly elected government of Israel. There are no guarantees of a positive outcome but there are also great downsides to giving in to Hamas.
Everyone understands the emotional horror of those Israeli families who await their loved one’s release. Even so, these families do not speak with one voice. Sadly, today’s horror risks being repeated unless Hamas and its allies are comprehensively defeated and removed from Gaza. At that point, the question will be whether Israel can finally win the peace after succeeding on the battlefield.
With a resurgent Turkey and a still dangerous Iran, the Sunni states might seize the opportunity for a better and more secure future by expanding the Abraham Accords and accepting Israel as a legitimate neighbor. Only time will tell and many will try to undermine this vision.