Consider this step one of the most obvious initial offensive strategy for fighting the war Gaza launched late last week: siege. The IDF has mainly finished its defensive strategy of restoring control over the areas in which Hamas terrorists seized communities near Gaza, racking up a total of 1500 enemy terrorists killed over the course of the war.

With the border sealed, the army now turns to reduction of the enemy within its own turf:

The Israel Defense Forces said it had finally regained control over its suddenly porous border with the Gaza Strip Tuesday morning, some 72 hours after Hamas terrorists blew through sections of the barrier and launched an invasion that saw over 1,000 Israelis slaughtered or kidnapped.

As Israel continued to grapple with the emerging enormity of Saturday’s massacres and the military was formally notifying hostages’ families that their loved ones were being held in Gaza, air force planes bombarded wide swaths of the Strip. Meanwhile, some 300,000 reservists girded for a possible ground invasion, sweeps to locate terrorists feared still hiding inside Israel continued and tensions on the northern border threatened to snowball into a second front.

That number has grown to 360,000 reservists mobilized as of this morning. That is in addition to their active-duty ranks, too, which are at the tip of the spear on both ends of the country. A ground invasion of Gaza won’t need all 360,000; it may not require half of that number. That’s something that Hezbollah/Lebanon might be keeping in mind at the moment, or should be.

Back to Gaza:

Amid a threat from Hamas that it would begin executing hostages in response to Israeli strikes in Gaza carried out without warnings, the IDF said Tuesday it struck more than 200 targets in the Gaza Strip overnight, including a weapons storage site in a mosque, an apartment used by Hamas’s anti-tank guided missile forces, and a high-rise tower used by the terror group, among other military installations.

Hecht said the military struck hundreds of Hamas targets overnight in Gaza’s City Rimal neighborhood, which is home to many Hamas ministries and government buildings. He said residents were being notified over social media to evacuate before the strikes but did not elaborate further.

So much for Hamas’ human shields, eh? Hecht also made clear that while Israelis want their loved ones back, those are secondary considerations given the profound security issues involved for Israel. If Hamas thought this would be business as usual around hostaging, they made a serious mistake.

The gloves are obviously coming off now. Israel has made clear that it will not accept a half-solution on Hamas any longer, and the pictures coming out of Gaza now show it:

Gaza this morning after a night of IDF strikes pic.twitter.com/QZbTcgl4aF

— Shirl the Sabra (@sabra_the) October 10, 2023

In past conflicts, Israel avoided creating images such as these. After the brutal, widespread, and clearly planned atrocities by Hamas against Israeli civilians, they no longer care. Previously, they would conduct targeted airstrikes to “reduce capability”; this time, they are going for a full-on war to completely defeat Hamas and the Gazans that support and shelter them.

It’s Germany 1945, not Gaza City 2013 this time. And these pictures reflect the difference.

What’s next? An armored ground invasion, backed by air power, to root out all of the military and political assets of Hamas. Their mobilization has now hit 360,000 reservists called up, enough to launch a major invasion of Gaza as well as bolster defenses in the north to deter Hezbollah/Lebanon from joining the war:

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israeli forces would attack Hamas with a force “like never before” and that the destruction of the group’s strongholds in Gaza would be “just the beginning.”

“This enemy wanted war, and this is what they will get,” Netanyahu said Monday, adding “difficult days are still ahead of us.”

Israeli jets continued to bombard Gaza overnight into Tuesday, striking over 200 targets in the Rimal and Khan Yunis neighborhoods, according to the IDF. CNN teams near the border heard large explosions and heavy rumbles within Gaza and saw fighter jets above.

It is anticipated that Israel will launch a major offensive into Gaza, although the full scale of the Israeli response remains unclear.

Oh, the scale of this is already clear this time, and it doesn’t appear that Netanyahu and his unity government are in the mood for negotiation over it. The scale isn’t the real question; that was set when Netanyahu declared war on Gaza. Declarations of war require outright victory, a point that even Vladimir Putin knew and hedged his bets by avoiding with Ukraine. A ground operation that results in Israeli casualties will only end when Gaza capitulates and Hamas is destroyed, or the other way around.

The real question is the long-term fate of Gaza. Gazans have used their land to continuously launch missile attacks on Israeli civilian centers ever since the Israelis ended their occupation in 2005. In fact, Hamas is threatening another “major” rocket barrage on Ashkelon today, in a desperate bid to virtue signal against the Israelis:

As the ongoing conflict between Israel and terrorist group Hamas grows tense, the spokesperson for Hamas’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida, has threatened the Israel’s coastal city of Ashkelon with a major rocket barrage in the coming hours, The Times of Israel reported.

The Hamas leader has also asked the residents to leave their homes in order to not fall victim to the attacks.

“In response to the enemy’s crime of displacing our people and forcing them to flee their homes in several areas of the Gaza Strip, we give the residents of the occupied city of Ashkelon a deadline to leave before 5 p.m.,” Abu Obeida said on his Telegram channel, according to The Times of Israel.

This is Hamas’ attempt at PR, claiming that they are giving more warning than the Israelis. This is, of course, utter nonsense; they gave no warning before butchering 900 or more Israeli civilians, raping women, dragging bodies through the streets, and kidnapping 150 or so hostages to use as bargaining chips against the response for the war they launched.

Again, this returns us to the long-term fate of Gaza. The Israelis cannot afford to allow Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or any other Iranian proxies to re-establish themselves on this land, period. This government will eventually fall over the massive security  and intelligence failures that allowed Hamas to succeed in its opening war moves, and the next government will learn from that outcome. The Israelis won’t go for another “occupation” in the legal sense either, which was almost as ineffective for their security. This time, if the Israelis take Gaza, they will almost certainly keep it — and simplify the Palestinian question by localizing it to the West Bank.

If so, that has some strategic consequences too, not just for Israel but also Iran. We’ll have more on that later.

Also, the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today’s show features:

• Israel found itself in its worst war in 50 years, and Joe Biden still can’t be found.
• Andrew Malcolm and I discuss two successive days of pre-noon “lids” at the White House, and the terrible way in which the media rushed to blame Israel for Hamas’ barbaric attacks on civilians.
• The unseriousness of Biden and the media afflicts Congress as well.

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!