Tala Abu Nahleh and her family recount their harrowing experience as they desperately try to cross into Egypt.

As a small number of injured Palestinians leave the Gaza Strip, many more remain in urgent need of treatment abroad.

Announcement comes as US confirms first of its citizens able to leave Gaza via the Rafah crossing into Egypt.

Too much of the commentary on the war in Gaza begins with tactics, which are concerned with achieving small, concrete military objectives, such as taking a hill or launching an ambush. Tactics and operations (the combination of a number of tactical engagements) in turn support strategy, the matching of military and other means to political objectives. It is with strategy that an understanding of this conflict should begin. War is horrifying. But if we wish to understand its likely course, we should not start by focusing on the grimness of urban warfare, the particular hellishness of battles in tunnels, or the difficulties of separating civilians and combatants in an urban setting. Instead, we must ask how both sides conceive their objectives and the broadest ways in which they intend to use force to achieve them.

Both sides are driven by total objectives. For Hamas, this is nothing new: In its 1988 covenant, it committed itself to the annihilation of the state of Israel, and then and since, to the extermination of as many of its citizens as possible. Like most extreme Islamist movements, it distinguishes only loosely, or not at all, between Jews and Israelis. This objective justifies in its view the ultimate in violence, all of which was horrifically on display in the October 7 massacre, accompanied by the murder of children, rape, torture, beheading, and kidnapping. Behind its strategy is a long-term theory of victory: that such attacks, coupled perhaps with strikes by Hezbollah and Iran, or the risings of Palestinians in the West Bank, will cause Israel to collapse. In Hamas’s view, Israeli counterattacks on Gaza, which will inevitably kill many civilians, contribute to its objectives because they undermine support for Israel abroad, and inflame its many enemies.

[Ned Lazarus: I don’t see a better way out]

Hamas is not, like Anwar Sadat’s Egypt in 1973, using war to break a negotiating deadlock. It does not appear to care about the harms inflicted on Palestinian civilians—indeed, it gives every indication that it welcomes them. Its eschatological ambitions mean that any compromise or cease-fire is temporary and purely instrumental. “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people,” its founding charter proclaimed, and only Israel’s utter destruction can meet that challenge. All of this was always the case. One of Israel’s numerous failures ahead of this war was the inability of some Israeli leaders, and the majority of international political leaders, to fully understand Hamas’s worldview and its implications. There is no excuse for anyone to continue to do so.

Until October 7, the objectives of the current Israeli government with regard to Hamas were limited: to contain the movement, deter it from launching major attacks, use it as a foil against the Palestinian Authority, and punish its more egregious behaviors. After October 7, the Israeli objective became—had to become—the destruction of Hamas. With that, Israeli strategy has been transformed, and that is why so many analogies, including the 1982 Israeli attack on the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon and the American invasion of Iraq, miss the point. Everything changes when your strategic purpose, like that of your enemy, is annihilation.

An Israel that tolerated or merely absorbed October 7 could expect more and worse such attacks from other quarters, particularly from the far better armed and trained Hezbollah. Israel’s population, including workers in its most productive and advanced industries, could lose faith in the ability of their country to defend itself and simply leave. A Hamas left intact, moreover, would undoubtedly try to launch equally bloody attacks on civilians again.

The shift in Israeli strategic objectives will shape the military operations now under way. International public opinion has turned on Israel many times in the past, and is doing so again. But given that the issue is now, for Israeli planners, existential, they will care much less than ever before. They will also act with much less restraint than in the past. Israel’s own legal and moral inhibitions, though rarely acknowledged in Western media, have in the past restricted its use of force. Israel, for example, developed the practice of “knocking” on an apartment building with a nonexplosive bomb to get the inhabitants to leave before the real thing hit. Israelis, like their American counterparts in Iraq, would usually wait until an enemy leader was away from women and children before firing a guided missile at them.

During World War II, another existential conflict, the Anglo-American alliance employed a very different set of rules. Britain’s Bomber Command and the United States Army Air Forces alike deliberately targeted enemy civilian infrastructure and population centers. During the planning of air operations in advance of the D-Day landings, Winston Churchill went a step further, approving attacks against French railroad yards that he believed would kill up to 10,000 French civilians. Those are not the examples Israel follows today, and if Israel now exercises less restraint than it once did, it nonetheless remains a long way from these precedents.

The stunning Israeli failures that led up to the October 7 massacre will, in due time, be examined in excruciating detail by an investigative commission like that of the Agranat Commission following the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The senior leaders of the national-security establishment will undoubtedly resign or be forced from office after the immediate crisis is over. But the magnitude of their failure should not obscure the fact that the Israel Defense Forces is not merely an extremely large force (its mobilized ground forces today are roughly the same size as the United States Army) but one that is well equipped and in most cases well trained.

Assertions that Israel will find operating above and underground in Gaza impossibly difficult are questionable. Even assuming that those who make them fully understand the IDF’s capabilities (and most do not), the recent record of urban combat, including America’s conquest of Fallujah and the Iraqi retaking of Mosul, suggests otherwise. These battles may be very costly for attacker and defender alike, but one should not assume that Gaza is impregnable. It is not.

Israeli ground incursions into Gaza will work from intelligence about physical structures that has been collected over many years; they will be supported by information from numerous sensors, including new ones brought into the strip by ground forces as well as others activated from the outside. The IDF has the initiative, and Hamas will have to react, which is considerably more difficult than planning even the extremely complex and ambitious attack of October 7. As landlines are severed, Hamas leaders will have to communicate by phone or radio; as prisoners are taken and documents and computers are captured, they will reveal secrets; and there will undoubtedly be Palestinian civilians willing to share information about the terrorists whose raid brought this terror upon them.

Israel may not attempt to annihilate Hamas all at once. A pause may even occur for some kind of prisoners-for-hostages swap, although Israel’s new strategic objective means that if it is forced to choose between the lives of the hostages and the destruction of Hamas, it will, with bitter grief, choose the latter.

[Franklin Foer: Tell me how this ends]

What will ensue will be a set of relentless incremental operations of the kind that, in microcosm, led to the neutralization of Yasser Arafat in 2002–03 in his headquarters, the Mukataa. Again, because the strategy is different, the rules will be different. Henceforth, any Hamas unit training in the open will probably be attacked; so too will Hamas leaders or gatherings, whether or not civilians are present. The campaign will be bloody, and it will go on for a long while—months, possibly years. If there is a plausible alternative, given the strategic realities on both sides, someone should suggest it. No one, including those most deeply anguished by the suffering of Palestinian civilians, yet has.

The IDF’s image has long been shaped by the Six-Day War and daring raids like Entebbe in 1976. But its long-term strategic successes, and most notably the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, were the result of protracted conflict. This war will also last a long time, until the Israelis have satisfied themselves that Hamas is, if not utterly annihilated, reduced to near-complete ineffectiveness. It will be bloody on both sides, and it may eventuate in a larger Middle East conflict. But it is not going to be like Israel’s Lebanon War, or America’s Iraq War. Ameliorating the bitter, generations-long struggle between Arab and Jew for Israel and Palestine remains vital. Every war must end and may even end, after a long time, with some kind of reconciliation—after all, there is an Israeli embassy in Berlin, and a German embassy in Tel Aviv.

First, however, there will be—and alas, there must be—a war of an intensity and violence that we have not seen in a very long time.

The Rafah border opening represents a chance at life for dozens of Palestinians wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza.

Gaza's border with Egypt opened for limited evacuation today, allowing for just under 500 people to flee war-torn Gaza.

The Rafah crossing with Egypt opens to allow foreign nationals and injured Palestinians to leave Gaza.

Israel has launched what appears to be the first phase of a massive ground incursion into Gaza, vowing that Hamas must be eliminated or somehow rendered irrelevant, even at the expense of smashing Gaza to pieces.

But what then? Israeli officials have reportedly told the Biden administration that they haven’t engaged in any serious postconflict planning. That’s probably because none of their options is good and, despite a plethora of fantastical proposals, nobody is going to step in to bear the burden of Israel’s impossible dilemma or, put more simply, clean up its mess.

Israelis may feel that it doesn’t have any responsibility for realities in Gaza, given that Hamas has controlled the territory since 2007. But the rest of the world understands that the occupation has continued, albeit from beyond the borders of the Strip. Israel has all the while kept tight control over Gaza’s coastal waters, its airspace, its airwaves, and all of the crossings into the Strip except for a small one maintained by Egypt. Israel has made almost all of the major decisions regarding Gaza since 1967—including the reckless and self-destructive decision to bolster Hamas in order to split the Palestinian national movement between Islamists based in Gaza and secular nationalists in the West Bank.

Now Israel, apparently regretting this policy after the horrendous Hamas-led killing spree on October 7, has embarked on an offensive that will almost inevitably leave much of Gaza a smoldering pit of devastation. Yet, apparently, it still hopes to then withdraw, passing local authority to … somebody else. But this scenario is a fantasy. No third party is plausibly willing or able to police and rebuild Gaza on behalf of, and in coordination with, Israel.

[Hussein Ibish: Israel is walking into a trap]

One common proposal suggests that an expeditionary or police force, drawn from stable Arab countries, should secure Gaza as Israel withdraws. Given its geography and history, Egypt would have to be a central player in any such effort. But the Egyptians have made a foreign-policy priority of not getting sucked back into Gaza since 1979. They are not about to change their mind.

Another frequently suggested candidate is the Palestinian Authority. But the regime that Mahmoud Abbas leads in Ramallah has nothing to gain from reentering Gaza in the aftermath of Israeli devastation. Even in the decade before this war, Abbas rejected numerous Egyptian proposals to have the PA take over government ministries in Gaza, or supply security on the Palestinian side of crossings into the Strip. Hamas was apparently willing to accept these initiatives but also insisted that it would not disarm. Abbas reasonably feared winding up responsible for the impoverished population of Gaza, but without sufficient resources, and in the shadow of a heavily armed militia that could turn to violence whenever it liked.

If the PA was afraid of returning to Gaza back then, it will hardly be enthusiastic about stepping in behind Israeli forces after a devastating ground war. Gaza’s needs would be immense, and riding into power on the backs of Israeli tanks would mark the PA with a political kiss of death among Palestinians. Maybe, if a third party were to secure Gaza for a time after Israel withdraws, the PA might be willing to come in to replace it. But then we are back at square one: Who’s going to be that third party?

Some Israelis are quietly talking about the return of Mohammed Dahlan, the former Fatah leader in Gaza who has been living in exile in the United Arab Emirates since Hamas’s violent takeover in 2007. Dahlan still has supporters in Gaza, but he’s broadly unpopular among Palestinians and remains on terrible terms with Abbas and his inner circle. Without the backing of Ramallah, Dahlan can’t effectively return the PA to power in Gaza.

What about United Nations peacekeepers? Imagine a UN peacekeeping mission in charge of an utterly ravaged society that was already nonfunctional and on the brink of humanitarian catastrophe. Now imagine it battling the insurgency that Hamas is plainly planning to unleash on the Israelis, and which is one reason the Israel Defense Forces wants to get out as quickly as possible once they have finished wreaking havoc. The UN and its member countries will almost certainly not be willing to accept responsibility for policing the rubble and caring for more than 2 million impoverished and largely displaced Palestinians in a tiny and overcrowded area that has been reduced to ruins.

Hamas’s main aim since its founding in 1987 has been to take over the Palestinian national movement, including the Palestine Liberation Organization, with its precious international diplomatic presence, UN observer-state status, and more than 80 embassies around the world. In service of this aim, Hamas hopes to lure Israel into Gaza, where it can mount a long insurgency against the Israeli occupiers. Hamas will then claim to be taking the fight to Israel, while the secular nationalists in the West Bank sit around waiting for negotiations that will never take place.

[Franklin Foer: Tell me how this ends]

Such is Hamas’s path to leadership among Palestinians. If the Israelis skedaddle, Hamas won’t simply abandon the planned insurgency. It will carry out the plan against whatever power appears to be representing Israel’s interests, whether Arab, UN, or even Palestinian.

No third party is going to step into Gaza to fight the insurgency planned for Israeli troops, rebuild the infrastructure and society shattered by war, and solve the long-standing problem of governance that Hamas’s armed presence has ensured will endure. Israel is on its own, and so it must find an alternative both to leaving Gaza quickly, thereby allowing Hamas to reemerge, at least as a political entity, and to staying and battling the inevitable insurgency.

Whatever Israel decides to do now that its ground attack in Gaza is under way, it needs to understand that no deus ex machina will swoop in and save it from the accumulated consequences of its actions since 1967. When the smoke clears, yet again, Israel and the Palestinians—and not anyone else—will be left to cope with their self-inflicted disasters.

Reports claims foreign nationals and 81 seriously injured Palestinians will be allowed to cross.