Benjamin Netanyahu has said his army will focus on clearing Hamas forces from the south of the country, but revealed that he is also poised to launch a major military response to the incursion.
Israel is very unlikely to disclose its attack plans in advance. But, based on the precedent of previous Gaza wars, there are indications as to how the situation may unfold in the near future.
Israel’s first priority on the ground is clearing Hamas fighters from the parts of southern Israel where the Islamist group has infiltrated up to 14 towns.
According to local media reports, those towns include Sderot, which has around 25,000 residents, and a number of smaller communities near the border with Gaza.
Palestinians wave their national flag and celebrate by a destroyed Israeli tank at the Gaza Strip fence east of Khan Younis southern Saturday. The militant Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip carried out an unprecedented, multi-front attack on Israel at daybreak Saturday, firing thousands of rockets as dozens of Hamas fighters infiltrated the heavily fortified border in several locations by air, land, and sea and catching the country off-guard on a major holiday. (AP Photo/Yousef Masoud)
It was unclear on Saturday if Hamas intended to hold those areas or simply kill as many Israelis as possible before retreating to Gaza.
As of Saturday afternoon, there were reports of stand-offs between Hamas fighters with hostages holed up in the southern areas and Israeli troops.
Any Hamas fighters still in the south are unlikely to survive an encounter with the full force of Israel’s military, which is far better equipped. Israeli special forces squadrons will most likely be deployed to rescue any hostages still on the Israeli side of the Gaza border.
If Hamas retreats or is cleared from the south, Israel may move straight to a large-scale ground and aerial assault on the Gaza Strip, as was the case in 2014′s Operation Protective Edge.
During that war, Israeli troops bombarded Gaza with air strikes in retaliation for the kidnap and murder of three Israelis in the West Bank. This was followed by a full-scale Israeli ground invasion that aimed to destroy Hamas attack tunnels and other sites being used to battle Israel.
More than 2000 Palestinians and around 70 Israelis were killed in the 2014 war, an indicator of how high the loss of life could be, should a fresh ground invasion of Gaza occur in the coming days.
However, any ground assault may be complicated by the presence of Israeli hostages inside Gaza, with as many as 35 taken there by fighters in the first wave of the Hamas attack.
Israel’s elite special forces squads, such as the SAS-style Sayeret Matkal, may be deployed on those missions – although Israeli officials are not currently commenting on how an attack may unfold.
The moment Israel invades, Hamas would presumably launch a defence operation of the Gaza Strip. But while the group, and its allies such as Islamic Jihad, have large stockpiles of rockets, its ground fighting has not been seriously tested since 2014.
Typically, Hamas would be considered no match for the US-funded Israeli military, and that is very likely to remain the case.
But Israel seems to have been caught completely off-guard by Saturday’s attack. And that implies there could be other areas in which Hamas may have some nasty surprises in store for the Israeli military.
It is unclear how long a Gaza-Israel ground war could last, although Protective Edge in 2014 took nearly two months before ending with a ceasefire. The smaller-scale May 2021 war lasted only two weeks, and no ground invasion was involved.
Hizbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, has praised the Hamas assault but not yet signalled whether it will join the fray.
If Hizbollah troops did invade northern Israel, it would be yet another major escalation. The group is far better armed than Hamas and the other Gaza-based factions, with tens of thousands of military-grade, long-range missiles on hand.
There is a possibility of Hizbollah forces in neighbouring Syria getting involved as well, forcing the Israelis to fight on multiple fronts. The Israeli military has been preparing for such a scenario for years but, even with advanced air-defence systems, the death toll could be very high.
A full-scale Hizbollah assault could open the door to a second Israeli ground response in southern Lebanon, while an additional wave of attacks by Palestinian groups in the West Bank could see Israel’s troopers diverted there.
On Saturday an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei said the regime “congratulates the Palestinian fighters”, adding that “we will stand by the Palestinian fighters until the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem”.
A direct confrontation with Iran remains unlikely, but for years Israel has warned that the group has been funding and encouraging Palestinian groups in the West Bank and Gaza.
Hamas has traditionally been viewed as more independent from Iran than Hizbollah, a proxy group that would not launch a major strike on Israel without Tehran’s approval.
However, the extreme seriousness of Saturday’s attack, in which Hamas fighters have gunned down dozens of Israelis in their homes, suggests that equation may have changed.
