In Search of Strategy

To be fair, there’s a reason the nation’s attention is diverted toward Gaza: Hamas is proving to be resourceful at recapturing areas that the IDF has already spent too much in blood and toil pacifying. This, even as the enemy’s redoubts were thought to have been winnowed down to Rafah at the border with Egypt.

For months, soldiers of the 98th Paratrooper Division have been engaged in grueling training ahead of the invasion of Rafah, the most complex combat environment they’ll face in Gaza yet. But the best-laid plans, the poet said, often go awry. Last Shabbos morning, the division had to embark on an extensive operation around Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip, returning to an area that had been cleared by the IDF months ago and remained under full operational control for some time.

Veterans of the Vietnam War recounted the frustration of fighting over the same ground for years, or losing territory to the Vietcong in their rear when they advanced forward. In Gaza, the situation seems to be exactly the same. IDF forces have been operating in the Gaza Strip for over six months, and wherever they leave, Hamas comes back in a big way.

“At the end of the day, there’s no such thing as a vacuum. It doesn’t matter how extensively we purify an area, if we don’t control it, someone else will. And that ‘someone else’ is Hamas,” says Lt. Col. R., an officer in one of the reserve divisions operating in the area, which has been in service continuously for the past seven months. “Everywhere the IDF has operated in the past two weeks is an area we’d already cleared. Zeitoun, Jabaliya, Khan Yunis, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanoun. We already operated there, we lost precious men, we secured the territory and held it, and as soon as we left, Hamas reestablished itself. Sometimes we saw it on the very same day. At 8 a.m., we left location X, and by one o’clock in the afternoon, Hamas had already launched rockets or led an anti-tank ambush from there.”