Quote (Goomshill @ Oct 13 2023 10:11pm)
What kind of DMZ can be enforced without manpower not available to Israel that would actually hold back a Hamas raid like this one, without minefields?
The thing about minefields is that they aren't barbaric if nobody actually goes into them.
But look at it from a practical point of view. Hamas can't actually be destroyed. Israel can go cull some of the leadership and their weapons caches and blow up building and have a big cathartic stompdown and then what? There will still be millions of Palestinians in Gaza, they will still be millions radicalized against Israel and supportive of Islamic Jihad / Hamas, and no other country will take them in. Israel isn't going to commit a genocide and wipe them all out, so where does that leave them when this is done?
Until now Israel has gone for that bubble boy treatment of soft containment. They relied upon a flimsy border with automated surveillance and interceptor missiles because they believed the threat to them was small incursions by single terrorist cells and a bunch of impotent rockets. Hamas committed a massive cross border raid that first knocked out all their automated systems and communications and then flooded the area with overwhelming manpower. They used Israeli highways to move their mechanized troops rapidly. Nothing about the status quo ante can possibly fend off that kind of attack, nor can they avoid future attacks of the same kind if all they do is pulverize Hamas and leave Gaza highly populated.
But look at Korea and Sudan and Ukraine. Look at what a DMZ can do when its heavily fortified, filled with mines, layered defenses, a no-mans-land with shoot to kill orders. Paragliders wouldn't stand a chance, raiders wouldn't be able to simply break a hole in a chain link fence and stream across a border like they're mexicans and then massacre people like they're mongols. They'd just be a bunch of corpses and vehicles stranded in a minefield and left to rot.
I maintain, this is the only logical outcome that satisfies the conditions. What's Israel's endgame, otherwise? If all they do is go blow up a stretch of Gaza like Cast Lead 2.0 then their best case scenario is they suppress Hamas for a few years- even months- before they've rearmed, smuggled enough weapons and materials to pose the thread of more raids. What do they actually need to carry out attacks like we just saw? Civilian vehicles. Light arms. Knives. RPGs and grenades and drones to take out a garrison and responders, and then cover it by launching their usual barrage of missiles. There's no way you can hold back that kind of armament with a blockade, because they were already doing it.
Israel has the capability to basically neutralize the Palestinian danger at range. Missiles don't do shit against the Iron Dome / David's Sling / etc. A couple people dead for every 100,000 missiles launched. Meanwhile a few unwashed barbarians with AK-47s break across your border and they can kill a dozen helpless jews each.
This will end with a DMZ, and probably an actual honest to god minefield around the whole perimeter
If this is the outcome, I think most of us would agree that it's probably one of the less bloody and more optimal outcomes. Would certainly be optimal compared to having street battles and 'real' modern war as we've seen in places like Bakhmut.
I can maybe see them pushing a mile or whatever distance into Gaza and making that no mans land. Part of me still believes one of their bigger goals is to make life so insufferable in Gaza that most just want to leave. I said this before, their huge mistake was not kicking all these people out in the 60-70s when they won those wars one after the other.