Three reasons why Israel has still not launched its ground offensive into Gaza

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that Israel was preparing for a ground invasion of Gaza, but stopped short of saying when it would happen. The IDF is primed for the assault, its tanks are ready and waiting, and the political leadership is thirsting for revenge. So what’s holding Israel back? There are three likely reasons:

One, the American factor.

There are reports that the administration of President Joe Biden has advised Israel to delay the ground invasion into Gaza — both to buy more time for hostage negotiations and, more importantly, to strategise to ensure that the operations do not turn into a disaster with unacceptable loss of Israeli and Palestinian civilian lives.

Yonatan Touval, a Board Member at Mitvim, the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, and a foreign policy analyst specialising in conflict resolution and regional diplomatic affairs, said in a post on social media site X: “US official confirms to me that key reason for IDF ground invasion delay is US request to complete prep[aration]s for broader conflict… Prep[aration]s incl[ude] deployment of THAAD and Patriot air defense systems in Gulf (poss[ibly] also Jordan + northern Iraq) and arrival of USS Ike [aircraft carrier USS Dwight D Eisenhower] + 2k marines.”

#UPDATE: US official confirms to me that key reason for IDF ground invasion delay is US request to complete preps for broader conflict.

Preps incl deployment of THAAD and Patriot air defense systems in Gulf (poss also Jordan + northern Iraq) and arrival of USS Ike + 2k marines.

— Yonatan Touval (@Yonatan_Touval) October 24, 2023

Also, with more than 200 hostages being held in unknown locations in Gaza, the odds that Israel would be able to rescue all of them by force are clearly not that good. The Israelis have a global reputation for effective action in hostage situations, but it has never dealt with such a large number of hostages at the same time.

Given that four hostages have been released by Hamas after mediation by Qatar — which has set a first principle of the possibility of more such releases against some unknown tradeoffs from the Israeli side — there is fresh speculation that a delay in the ground offensive could be part of a calculated attempt to try to bargain harder for more hostages to be released before any military onslaught commences.

And while the Israelis are said to have a lot of expertise in hostage rescue and have Special Forces units such as the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (formerly called Unit 269), battleground Gaza poses some serious challenges for even these elite units. One of them is to negotiate the vast array of underground tunnels that crisscross the entire Gaza Strip.

Two, the challenge of the ‘Gaza Metro’.

Any ground offensive launched by the IDF into Gaza will mean the forces would have to deal with the vast network of highly-developed tunnels that stretch for hundreds of kilometres — a network commonly called the Gaza Metro. Hamas had recently claimed the network is more than 400 km long.

This labyrinth runs deep under the Gaza Strip, snaking through under its major cities — Gaza and Khan Younis — and running well up to the two key border crossings with Israel in the north and Egypt in the south. The tunnels are said to house Hamas command centres, and are equipped to stockpile weapons and essential goods, and to accommodate people. The tunnel exits also double up as rocket launch sites.

Israel has attempted to bomb the tunnels in 2014, 2017, and in 2021, but has not had much success. There are also concerns that at least some of the 200-odd hostages are being held in these tunnels, and any strike on this network could potentially endanger their safety. Lloyd Austin, US Secretary of Defence, when asked how the proposed ground invasion of Gaza compared with the operation for control of Iraq’s Mosul that he commanded in late 2014, said that the IDF’s challenge in Gaza is tougher.

“This may be a bit more difficult because of the underground network of tunnels that Hamas has constructed over time and the fact that they’ve had a long time to prepare for a fight. So I think you’ll see a fight that’s characterised by a lot of IEDs (improvised explosive devices), a lot of booby traps, and just really grinding activity going forward. Now, one of the things that we’ve learned is how to account for civilians in the battle space, and they are part of the battle space and we, in accordance with the law of war, we got to do what was necessary to protect those civilians…,” Austin told ABC’s ‘This Week’ show on October 22.

Three, the combat-readiness of the IDF, and the spectre of a two-front war.

Eliminating the massive infrastructure that Hamas has built up in Gaza over the years is easier said than done. According to Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in the 1990s and a Marine Corps analyst during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the IDF may not be geared up to physically go into Gaza and perhaps face an ambush for which Hamas has long prepared.

Ritter has pointed out that most of the 360,000 reservists that Israel has called up are people who did two-and-a-half years’ compulsory military service in the IDF but who can’t really be called combat-ready. While some IDF units such as their special forces units are extremely capable, the infantry units and the armoured units, according to Ritter, are mostly reservists who have been pulled in from policing duties in the West Bank — and are not quite ready for a conventional ground battle against a determined adversary.

The other concern for both Israel and the US would be the prospect of an extended, bruising military conflict in Gaza forcing the IDF to commit the bulk of its reservists in that battle zone. If Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shia militia based in southern Lebanon, were to open a front to Israel’s north at the same time, the IDF could face problems allocating resources and manpower for the two-front engagement.

Hezbollah is a far more potent fighting force than Hamas, and has access to more sophisticated weapons and longer-range missiles. Iran has issued a warning that it could get into the conflict if the situation in Gaza were to worsen.

Analysts have also flagged concerns that reports of mounting civilian casualties could lead to an escalation of Palestinian unrest in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which too, would require Israel to commit forces and resources to contain.

Finally, there is the larger question of who will administer Gaza, even if Israel were to succeed in eliminating Hamas from the enclave. It would be near impossible for Israel to occupy the Gaza Strip indefinitely, and the successors of Hamas can be expected to be even more radical and extremist.