Analysis: Tension mounting between need to destroy Hamas while preserving lives of hostages and Palestinian civilians
. As the camera zooms in closer, steel tubes come into view. Then there is a sudden flash and the building explodes.. In this case, according to the IDF, the air strike destroyed a Hamas missile launch site hidden near a kindergarten and mosque.
But these military operations are being conducted in a territory that is, in parts, more overcrowded than Manhattan. The Israeli bombing campaign, subsequent ground attacks and the order for civilians to leave the north of Gaza, have already displaced more than 1 million people, reduced neighbourhoods to rubble and destroyed more than 200 schools and universities, including 29 run by the UN.
IDF officials have acknowledged that the air campaign and ground attacks will exact a deadly toll on Gaza’s 2.3m population, which is crammed into a sliver of land 40km long and 12km wide The IDF insists it seeks to abide by international law and to minimise casualties by using precision attacks on pre-selected targets identified by Israeli intelligence. It also accuses Hamas of breaking international law by using civilians to shield its estimated 30,000 fighters and of storing armaments in a 400km network of tunnels, many of which run under and exit into civilian sites such as hospitals and schools.
US intelligence says between 100 and 300 people died as a result of an explosion outside the hospital in Gaza on October 17th.The IDF’s latest attack, which continued into Saturday, was the biggest in a series of four, rapid-fire raids that Israel has launched into the strip over the past week and which analysts said served several purposes, chief among them to throw Hamas commanders off balance.
The IDF also says it has killed dozens of Hamas’s military commanders, including the group’s deputy head of intelligence Shadi Barud, who planned the October 7th raid. But it is widely believed most senior leaders and fighters remain safe below ground. Israeli bombing in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on October 29th. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images
Such strikes illustrate how Hamas has embedded its military infrastructure deeply within the wider Palestinian population, which has little ability to refuse the group
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