The war in Gaza is slowly entering a phase where it can either drag on for months without a decisive victory or it can escalate into a wider, dangerous conflict engulfing the region. There is also a third option: Israel calling it quits and agreeing to a UN Security Council-approved ceasefire plan. The question is whether Israel considers the current ground situation good enough to call it quits.
In the past few months, Israel has enjoyed the upper hand on most counts on the battle field. The successful assassinations of top Hamas and Hezbollah leadership have to be at the top of the success chart. It started with triple assassinations on July 30, when three key leaders were killed on the same night. Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in a targeted strike in a closely guarded area in Tehran. In Beirut, an airstrike killed senior Hezbollah military commander and No. 2 in hierarchy, Faud Shukra, while Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Forces of Iran, was killed in Damascus.
The pager attacks on September 17, followed by successive elimination of senior-most leadership of Hezbollah culminating in the assassination of its charismatic leader Hassan Nasrallah on September 27, was a major setback to the ‘Axis of Resistance’. And the killing of Hamas Chief and main architect of the October 7 terror attack, Yahya Sinwar, on October 16 capped off this series of successes and acts of redemption for the Israeli intelligence services.
The attack by Iran on October 1, targeting key military sites in Israel, was a setback, but Israel’s retaliation on October 26, targeting successfully three military sites in Iran, has levelled the scores. On the battlefield too, the Israeli defence forces have been mercilessly pounding the Gaza strip, especially the northern parts, killing and displacing people by hundreds daily. Its operations in the West Bank, which were accompanied by the entry of tanks and troops as a part of ground operation on August 27, have neutralised the resistance there, the focus of the operations being the Jenin camp as well as the areas of Nablus.
Content retrieved from: https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/israel-can-exit-the-gaza-war-with-an-edge-but-will-it-13831123.html.
