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Rockets on a Palestinian refugee camp, tanks near Gaza City and more than 11,000 attacks on Hamas positions since the start of the war: the Israeli offensive is making progress. But in the five days since the ground offensive in the Gaza Strip began, the outside world has learned little about the Israeli army’s actions. Israeli military decision-makers have kept themselves – and the Gaza Strip – quiet.
The secrecy began late Friday afternoon when Israel shut down the Internet and telecommunications networks in the Gaza Strip and cut communications, senior U.S. officials said. There are good reasons for this.
Shortly afterwards, the air force bombed Gaza City with a huge hail of rockets intended to drive Hamas fighters into their network of tunnels. Shortly afterwards, a huge phalanx of tanks, armored vehicles, bulldozers, infantrymen and combat engineers entered the northern Gaza Strip undetected. Another column entered the central Gaza Strip and approached Gaza City from the south.
As soon as the operation began, army spokesmen stopped answering their phones. The information blackout was complete. It took three hours for the army to announce that it was “expanding ground activities” and six hours for a military spokesman to confirm that troops were in the Gaza Strip.
Israel is silent – with good reason
On Monday, the army still avoided calling its advance an invasion, saying only that troops remained in the area. “Everything takes place in the unknown,” says Andreas Krieg, a war expert at King’s College London, in an interview with Blick. “Only a few people should know what is going on in Gaza.” But why?
Jan Busse, an expert on Israel and Palestine at the Bundeswehr University in Munich, explains to Blick: “The Israeli forces want to keep the enemy in the dark.” They want to create an effect of surprise and thus keep the powers outside the Gaza Strip in the dark.
Moreover, this war is not just a war of tanks, fighter jets and soldiers. But also an information war. “On the one hand, it’s about misleading the enemy about what the next operational steps are,” says Busse. “In this context, Hamas is certainly also about keeping Israel in the dark about its own military capabilities.” On the one hand, Israel wants to deter enemies such as Hezbollah and Iran, but above all it wants to send a signal that civilian victims will be protected.
The war in Gaza will be bloodier than all wars before it
And that’s where it becomes crucial: in a second step, once Israeli forces reach Gaza City, the fighting in Gaza could turn into urban warfare, Busse said. The Gaza Strip is very densely populated. A war in densely populated areas is always bloody. In areas like the Gaza Strip, where approximately 5,300 people live per square kilometer, a war will wipe out entire populations.
Busse notes: “The number of civilian casualties is already very high; Hamas speaks of 8,300 dead.” The actual death toll cannot be confirmed. British War adds: “In other urban combat areas it would have been possible to give civilians space to move far away. But Gaza is an open-air prison, no one can go anywhere.”
However, these concerns do not seem to stop the Israeli army. As the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera and the British newspaper “The Guardian” reported on Tuesday afternoon, the first Israeli tanks have already reached residential areas in Gaza City.
But military expert Andreas Krieg sees great dangers here: “The Gaza Strip is more complex than anything other Western armies have done in the past ten years. It is an area that is spatially three-dimensional. It is not only above ground, but also underground. There is a tunnel system hundreds of kilometers long, some of which are reinforced with concrete and cannot simply be blown into pieces.”
Another problem facing the Israeli army: no one in Israel knows what will happen after the war. And will this conflict ever end? “It is an impossible situation for the Israeli forces,” Krieg said. “You need a clear political goal, but also a political strategy. And that’s what’s missing.” According to him, Israelis are in a situation where they are fighting an ideology. ‘And you cannot defeat an idea by military means. No one has done that yet.”
Ultimately, Krieg says, there is only one thing left for the Israeli army, civilians in Gaza and the rest of the world: “Just wait and see. Because no one really knows how bad this war will be.”
Source: Blick
I am Amelia James, a passionate journalist with a deep-rooted interest in current affairs. I have more than five years of experience in the media industry, working both as an author and editor for 24 Instant News. My main focus lies in international news, particularly regional conflicts and political issues around the world.
