Aaron Bastani: Shortly after the 7 October Hamas attacks, Israel urged 1.1m Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza. Their reasoning was simple: by removing civilians from the territory, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) could undertake a ground invasion – alongside bombing campaigns and continuing to starve Gaza of water, energy and food. Taken together, such measures would destroy Hamas, they claimed. While the media has accepted this strategy as credible, the likelihood of success remains unclear. Hamas is evidently able to store thousands of missiles in its hidden network of underground tunnels. So why shouldn't the same hold true for water, energy and food? And even if Israel was able to clear the tunnels in northern Gaza, similar networks would persist in the south. After all, between 2007 and 2013 more than 1500 tunnels are believed to have traversed the border between Gaza and Egypt. The extent and effectiveness of these subterranean labyrinths is hard to overstate. In other words, dismantling Hamas would require not only a ground invasion of northern Gaza, but the south as well. Rather than displacing over 1m people, as is presently Israel's stated objective, 2.4m Palestinians would be forced to move. |