The Israel Air Force has attacked more than 500 targets in the Gaza Strip in the last 48 hours, a trade of barbs with the near equal number of rockets fired at Israel, 30 of them long range to Tel Aviv northward, since the operation began.
As Palestinians and Israelis take cover on either side of the Gaza border, it seems both have forgotten why this war started in the first place.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tiptoed into this operation last week carefully and hesitatingly, knowing neither side was interested in an escalation. Netanyahu knew that an all-out war would end not only in bloodshed, but in further international isolation for Israel.
When his foreign minister and faction partner Avigdor Lieberman publicly split with him over their policy in Gaza, Netanyahu was forced into action: a ruthless aerial campaign over the Strip to prove Israel's steadfastness in responding to rocket fire. This was a reality even right-wing Netanyahu wanted to avoid, but the barrage of rockets and the political pressure left him little choice.
As the operation enters its third day, Netanyahu is helpless to the fact that a ground incursion may be next on the agenda. This is certainly Hamas' aspiration, seen by its naval incursion Tuesday and subsequent failed attempt on Wednesday.
A ground incursion would mean fewer losses for Gaza, as the battles pinpoint on its own territory where it can fight with more control using weapons it has en masse that are easier to attain than the long-range missiles no longer readily available from its former benefactors in Iran. This would also give it a chance to wipe out Israeli forces in a way impossible under aerial strike – Hamas has already fired anti-aircraft missiles at Israeli jets, but its arsenal is limited and cannot be wasted for that effort.
Netanyahu said at the outset that neither Israel nor Hamas wanted escalation. The fragile Palestinian unity pact served for both as a deterrent. Hamas is weaker than ever, abandoned by Syria and Iran, and humiliated by Egypt, which has outlawed its allied Muslim Brotherhood and acted brutally to destroy the smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Sinai. Hamas' call to the Palestinian Authority was desperate, a last-ditch attempt to hover above water and maintain political and military legitimacy while hobbling on its last leg.
Israel recognized this weakness and sought to prevent reconciliation, in order to keep Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority clean and willing to concede to the conditions neither side managed to agree on in the exhausting nine months of failed peace negotiations.
Egypt's efforts to stymie Hamas' terrorist activities have been even significantly harsher than Israel's: it has repeatedly flooded its tunnels with sewage and destroyed hundreds of homes in the vicinity, damming not only Hamas' military capabilities but also its economic income, swallowing the profits that the Islamic organization has made over the years in illegal imports and taxation.
In the recent escalation, Hamas has suffered more losses in terms of strikes and casualties than Israel – hundreds of aerial attacks and more than two dozen killed – but has scored a victory with its surprise launching of at least three M-302 missiles, the longest-range projectiles in its cache, capable of reaching 200 km when lightly loaded and 150 km with a significant amount of warheads (145 kg). Its accuracy rate is within one kilometer, like its mid-range counterpart, the M-75 (similar to the Iranian Fajr). With just around 50 of these M-302s left in its arsenal, Hamas cannot afford to fire them at Israel with abandon.
These long-range missiles have already hit near Haifa's power station, and in Hadera – near the country's main power plant, and the only Israeli city to have absorbed missile attacks from both Gaza and from Lebanon in 2006. Hamas has also fired its mid-range missiles at Dimona, a mere few kilometers from Israel's nuclear reactor.
Its attacks are not indiscriminate: less targeted perhaps within Tel Aviv, to scare the public with albeit marginally inaccurate launches, but precise in attempt to demolish the infrastructure at energy and army bases. In addition to the few dozen M-302 remaining, there are a few hundred more M-75 mid-range projectiles in the Gaza cache, most in Hamas' cache and the rest overseen by the Islamic Jihad.
As the battle between Gaza and Israel escalates, the highways of Israel are now quiet, a far cry from the boiling Arab and Jewish riots over the kidnappings and deaths of the three Israeli and one Palestinian teens last week. Details of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir's murder, apparently at the hands of Jewish extremists, are still under gag order, but the anger and calls for revenge have subsided into oblivion. If nothing, the Gaza front has calmed the embers in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
One should remember, however, that these were the embers that sparked the Gaza escalation. Without the rockets and the aerial strikes, media discourse and public outrage would still be focused on sectarian divides and a third intifada, and a demand to hunt the perpetrators of all four teenaged deaths, who have still not been verified or tried – and in the case of the West Bank kidnapping, have not even been found.
The cost of civilian life ranks high on Netanyahu's agenda, following the lessons of the previous Gaza wars in 2012 and 2009, and especially in Lebanon in 2006; less so in Gaza, where Hamas has stored caches of long-range missiles under civilian buildings, inviting Israeli strikes. Hamas has little to lose these days; its political, military and economic stability is at stake and it will not survive without the reinstated support of Iran or Syria, or alternately, a strong Palestinian Authority that recognizes it demands and bounds.
Fears of a Jewish-Arab backlash within the bounds of recognized Israel have been put on the back-burner for now, as have the prospects of renewed peace negotiations, while Israel and Gaza focus on the next mission at hand: destroying the other's resolve and securing international support.
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