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Can anyone explain what is going on in Gaza? Israel seems to be doing another ground operation, but their goal and why are murky.
Israel policy on it is a bit schizophrenic. Officially, there are two goals - destroying Hamas and freeing the hostages. Unfortunately, the IDF seems to be unable to find the hostages by itself, at least within the boundaries that are set now by the government. And Hamas does not want to make any agreement that does not involve, basically, restoring the situation to pre-October 7, with Hamas in power in Gaza, IDF fully outside Gaza, and basically resetting the board to the situation where Hamas can recover and resume what they were doing and prepare for the next round to come soon.
Obviously, this is not acceptable to Israel. On the other hand, Israel does not want to administer Gaza - day to day control over Gaza means persistent deployment of armed forces into densely populated hostile areas, which will inevitably lead to great increase of casualties on both sides, and is usually horrible for morale. On yet other hand, there's no viable alternative which is acceptable to Israel - all the ideas of "somebody" taking over from Hamas are crushed by the facts that a) nobody wants to do it and b) Hamas is still alive so "somebody" will have to fight them and really nobody wants to do it. I mean, the offer is to fight a guerilla war against motivated, well supplied and entrenched opponent, with broad support among local population, and the prize is a control of one of the shittiest places on earth with no noticeable resources, warlike population and no possibility of making any profit from it ever. Who'd buy that? And with Hamas in control, October 7 will inevitably repeat as soon as the IDF is out.
So, what Israel is doing is increasing its control over Gaza territory, while specifically not declaring the full takeover. The goal of it is twofold: a) more control over the territory means more chance to eliminate Hamas resources and somehow get lucky in the hostage area, though absent a miracle the chances of that are small, but we're talking about Jews here, miracles happen all the time; and b) more pressure on Hamas means more place for piecemeal agreements where at least some hostages could be released in exchange for temporary relieving the pressure. The pressure of course includes control over resources - the last ceasefire let enough resources to come in Gaza to physically last several months, maybe more, but who controls those resources and how is much more complicated. A lot of them are controlled by Hamas, but people of Gaza, even with their deep hatred for Israel, know that too and know Hamas has much more than it gives out. So that is another way to put pressure on Hamas and force them to both dole out some of their hoards and erode their stance with the local population. Of course, Hamas aren't stupid either, and the less hostages they have, the more reluctant they are to part with them. Currently, 23 hostages are believed to be alive, and Hamas does not want to give up more without some permanent gains.
Obviously, this situation is not sustainable, however Israel currently doesn't seem to have a solution that is both feasible and acceptable. So the strategy is to continue pressuring Hamas as much as the local and international politics allows, in hope either of softening them enough to amend their negotiation position (by either convincing some people or killing enough of them that somebody more reasonable comes to lead) or something external happening that improves the situation. Maybe US signing up to population evacuation plan, maybe some Arab sheiks going crazy and agreeing to take responsibility for Gaza, maybe Hamas making some spectacular blunder that would temporarily shut up the wokes in Europe and allow Israel to drastically increase the pressure, or there's a revolution in Iran and Hamas is left without a sponsor. Who knows. Or maybe Israeli government suddenly finds its cojones and declares that it's ready to take over Gaza now, at which point we're back to 2005. It could also be resolved the other way - the right-leaning government is toppled, the left comes to power in the next election, and agrees to Hamas deal described above, at which point we're back to October 6.
So the near term goal is to erode and weaken Hamas as an organization. Official long-term goals are described above, but they are more of an aspirational nature, as nobody knows how it's possible to actually achieve them in reality, at least in the near term.
Wasn't Oct 7 mostly IDF incompetence, and not hamas prowess?
"IDF" is not a good term here. While some of the people responsible are top of the IDF command, it's by no means ends there. Pretty much all Israeli establishment has been captured in the worldview that allowed it to happen, and sole dissenting voices have been dismissed as kooks. Israel military intelligence has a special "contrarian" unit whose sole task had been to produce scenarios challenging the established way of thinking and poking holes in established paradigms. Sort of advocatus diaboli. They weren't able to make a dent in the wall of denial that something like Oct 7 is possible even in theory. And it's hard to call it "incompetence" per se - many of the people involved were highly knowledgeable, smart and competent professionals - but within the limits of their world model. Escaping those confines is hard for any person, and it turned out that this particular world model, while very attractive - in fact, so attractive that many people still cling to it right now, unable to part with it even with the benefit of the hindsight - this model is spectacularly wrong. How to prevent it from happening again is a very hard question, I am not sure Israel will find an answer, though I sincerely hope they do.
On the other hand, Hamas spent 18 years meticulously organizing and preparing for this kind of attack and followup confrontation with the IDF. It's not random that IDF can not locate the hostages, or eliminate Hamas in one sweep, and not because they are a bunch of bumbling fools - they aren't. Hamas made a lot of preparations for this exact scenario, including developing a system of underground communications, storages and munitions, and associated warfare paradigm that still has no adequate answer from the IDF side. It's not to say Hamas is now stronger than the IDF, they are not, by far, but they came prepared and successfully exploited - and continue to exploit - the weaknesses in IDF's military approach, be it sensitivity to casualties from both sides, or unwillingness to stay on the ground for a prolonged period of time, or vulnerability to propaganda efforts targeted at the wokes in Europe and the US.
So it was both. Hamas did their homework, for 18 years, and Israel didn't and completely ignored what Hamas has been doing, because it didn't fit their worldview. The result was the catastrophe of October 7.
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