Next Steps in the Israel-Hamas Conflict
Video Transcript:
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, Stratfor cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Video Transcript:
Negotiations over a ceasefire are continuing in Cairo among Egyptian officials and representatives of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The main parties to this conflict – Hamas, Israel and Egypt all share an interest in avoiding an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.
Hamas wants to achieve a symbolic victory through its long-range rocket attacks against Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but does not necessarily want to pay the price of seeing its leadership and infrastructure devastated in an Israeli ground invasion. Israel must neutralize Hamas’ long-range rocket threat, but does not want to necessarily go through with a ground invasion that could draw Israeli forces into a bloody urban battle with Hamas. Finally, Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood, can score some political points in demonstrating solidarity with the Palestinians, but cannot withstand the pressure that would come from the US and Egypt in cracking down on the border and securing rockets if Israel expands the operation.
Notably, a Fajr-5 long-range rocket has not been launched in the past 24 hours. This raises the core intelligence question of this entire conflict: Has Hamas exhausted its supply of Fajr-5 rockets, or does it hold some in reserve? If the former, a ceasefire becomes more probable. If the latter, Israel faces a major dilemma.
Should Hamas – or any other Gaza entity - retain the capability to threaten Israel’s biggest population centers at will, Israel faces the political imperative to protect the Israeli homeland at whatever cost. And that cost could be very high.
Israel would also have to grapple with a fundamentally new dynamic in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one that would give Hamas a major symbolic victory that would resonate in the region and cripple Fatah’s already weak position in the region.
There is also the question of Iran, who has presumably supplied Gaza with these long-range rockets. If Iran can continue to indirectly threaten Israeli population centers, is there any action Israel can take mitigate this Iranian threat beyond the negotiation that Tehran desires? What would be the cost of retaliatory action against Iran?
We must also bear in mind the immense economic cost Israel is incurring. Israel has so far called up 35,000 reservists and has given the authorization to call up 75,000 total reservists. That means that very large percentage of males between the ages of 22 and 45 are being taken out of the local economy. That is a very difficult economic position to sustain over a long period of time. Within the next 24 hours, Israel will likely have to decide how much longer it can keep these troops in forward position.
Finally, and most critically, there is the question of the reliability of Israeli intelligence. One major intelligence failure has already been committed: long-range rockets have made their way into Hamas hands. How confident can Israel now be in its intelligence when it comes to highly complicated search and destroy operations to decimate Hamas’s rocket supply? Will it be good enough to risk a ground operation? We should have an answer to that question in the next 24-28 hours.
