Dorcha Lee: Israel winning the war in Gaza is no longer a foregone conclusion

As the conflict wages on in Gaza, Hamas shows no sign of giving up, and cracks are showing in Israeli leadership

Displaced Palestinians inspect their tents destroyed by Israel’s bombardment, adjunct to an UNRWA facility west of Rafah in Gaza. Picture: Jehad Alshrafi/AP Photo

Sometimes it take just one horrific incident to change the course of a conflict. In Mogadishu, on October 3, 1993, when an elite US Army Ranger unit took heavy casualties (18 dead and 73 wounded) one ranger’s body was filmed being dragged through the streets of the Somali capital.

That incident, re-enacted in the film Black Hawk Down, broke the will of the US administration. They withdrew all their forces from Somalia and the warlords won. In Bosnia, on February 5, 1994, it was one mortar bomb that hit a crowded marketplace in Sarajevo and killed 68 people. This persuaded the US to allow Nato to intervene and bring the war to an end.

The Israeli missile attack last Sunday week — which killed 45 Palestinian men, women and children, and wounded hundreds more in a Rafah displaced persons (DP) camp — is the catalyst that has brought about the latest ceasefire proposals. The missile triggered a fire in a tented area and most of the dead and injured were burned. The video clips included a father being shown the decapitated head of his daughter, with the rescuer gently turning the head in a small plastic bag to facilitate identification.

Retribution, salvation, and atonement are appropriate biblical words that come to mind when considering the present-day apocalypse in Gaza. Even as Rafah reeled from air attacks, Rio rocked. Just three weeks ago, 1.5m fans gathered on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for Madonna’s free concert, where the 65-year-old gave the performance of her life to an ecstatic crowd. High on a mountain in the distance, the massive statue of Christ the Redeemer with outstretched arms, seemed to give divine protection to the event. 

The same weekend, six time zones to the east, 1.4m people in Rafah waited in vain for salvation. The vast majority had been displaced from central and northern Gaza . They were hungry, exhausted, and traumatised. As word was received that the ceasefire talks had ended, they heard that they were about to be moved on again.

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Around the same time, the IDF declared that the Hamas threat in northern and central Gaza had been neutralised and that there were only about four Hamas battalions left (3,000 combatants), mainly concentrated in the south. The IDF regrouped its troops and armour in preparation for one final ground offensive to wipe out the remaining Hamas units in Rafah. However, the military situation was not as it seemed.

Hamas reemerged in both northern and central Gaza. The IDF had to mount a week-long operation to restore control in the northern city of Jabalia. Air strikes sharply increased in central Gaza. 

Moreover, there is increased speculation that the number of surviving Hamas fighters is much greater than previously thought. Two fringe newspapers have suggested that the bulk of Hamas fighters — or over 15,000 — have survived, mainly in the tunnels. The IDF, by announcing that 20% to 40% of the tunnels had been neutralised, have inadvertently confirmed that 60% to 80% of the tunnels are still operational.

It would be wrong to view the war in Gaza purely in terms of the current Israeli military action in Gaza. Leaving aside the terrible humanitarian consequences, the Hamas-Israel conflict has evolved into a classic 21st century hybrid war, where military and non-military means are combined to achieve political objectives. The non-military means include information warfare, psychological warfare, political warfare, lawfare and economic warfare.

For a brief moment, Israel held the high moral ground and international sympathy over the murderous attack by Hamas on the October 7 last. The attack, however, was not an end in itself.

The main objective was to provoke an Israeli overreaction, which has led to the humanitarian crisis we are witnessing today.

International opinion, already concerned about the loss of civilian lives in Ukraine, is incensed by the even higher loss of civilian lives in Gaza. 

Despite fielding a professional team of IDF spokespersons to present their position in the international media, Israel has decisively, and irretrievably, lost the information war. This factor alone could pressure Israel into ending operations.

Few could have expected that Hamas would also come out in front in the psychological war. True, the extensive barrages of rocket attacks on Israel, had little or no physical impact on Israel, but their psychological effect was to keep the population on edge. 

Hamas’s main psychological weapon, however, was the way they used the 252 hostages. The drip-drip effect of releasing only a few bodies, over a long period, is prolonging the agony of the hostages’ families. It must also be having a demoralising effect on the Israeli population at large. Street protests to get the hostages home are getting larger by the day.

Satellite images by Maxar Technologies show the before and after views, on May 26, 2024, top, and May 29, 2024, bottom, of southern Gaza and Rafah that spotlight the aftermath of the recent airstrike near the large tent camp and an UNRWA facility. Picture: Maxar Technologies via AP)

Hamas shows no sign of giving up, but cracks are appearing in the Israeli political and security leadership. Public interviews by former senior Israeli personalities are undermining the government’s efforts. A former prime minister has stated that the Israeli side looked down on Hamas as inferior, but that in reality “they were as intellectually sophisticated as we are”. 

Two former directors of Shin Bet, the agency tasked with internal security, claimed that they had warned the government for years of the rise in Hamas’s military capabilities and urged for pre-emptive strikes.

One very despondent director added that “Hamas is an idea, and it is impossible to defeat an idea”.

As regards both political and lawfare strands, pressure is steadily building up on Israel with pro-Palestinian initiatives at the United Nations in New York and with more states recognising Palestine. Israel has more to lose in the legal processes started by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.

It is no longer a foregone conclusion that Israel will achieve its objective of winning the war in Gaza.

Dorcha Lee is a retired army colonel and defence analyst