Israel Has Shunned Ground Operations for Decades. Is It Still Looking for a Way Out?

Winfield Myers

Israeli leaders have said in no uncertain terms that this war will only end when Hamas no longer runs the Gaza Strip.

“It’s only the beginning,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the first week of the war. “Our enemies have only just begun to pay the price. I won’t detail what will come next. But I’m telling you, it’s only the beginning.”

“We will destroy Hamas, and we will win,” he pledged.

US President Joe Biden, speaking publicly and definitively more than a week after Hamas massacred 1,400 people across southern Israel, agreed that Hamas must be eliminated.

IDF commanders are reportedly champing at the bit, leaking to journalists that a ground invasion has to begin soon.

Read the full article at the Times of Israel.

Lazar Berman is the Times of Israel‘s diplomatic reporter and a Middle East Forum Writing Fellow.

Lazar Berman is the diplomatic correspondent at the Times of Israel, where he also covers Christian Affairs. He holds an M.A. in Security Studies from Georgetown University and taught at Salahuddin University in Iraqi Kurdistan. Berman is a reserve captain in the IDF’s Commando Brigade and served in a Bedouin unit during his active service.
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I recently witnessed something I haven’t seen in a long time. On Friday, August 16, 2024, a group of pro-Hamas activists packed up their signs and went home in the face of spirited and non-violent opposition from a coalition of pro-American Iranians and American Jews. The last time I saw anything like that happen was in 2006 or 2007, when I led a crowd of Israel supporters in chants in order to silence a heckler standing on the sidewalk near the town common in Amherst, Massachusetts. The ridicule was enough to prompt him and his fellow anti-Israel activists to walk away, as we cheered their departure. It was glorious.