Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told Israeli Army Radio that Israel’s war aims are not just the total destruction of Hamas, but the country also aims to reduce the size of Gaza. The pronouncement is the most explicit indication yet that Israel will move to annex parts of Gaza, as some analysts have speculated.
Armchair general here, but if i were to guess israel’s plan:
The northern part of Gaza is where the majority of rockets get launched, since they have geographical proximity to several israeli cities from there. IF israel annexes north gaza, that would already be very changing to the military situation. Hamas can obviously launch stuff from south gaza, but the geographical distance to israeli hotspots dramatically increases (by itself an obstacle), AND norh gaza can be transformed into an extended Iron Dome with several military facilities in place to act, not to mention that now Israel only has to watch half the terrain.
The heretofore events point to this possibiliy, since Israel gave the ultimatum to evacuate northern gaza, and south gaza for now seems to be spared from this. Of course, if Israel then eventually proceeds to colonize north gaza with new settlements (aka West Bank 2.0 electric bogaloo) , hamas has a new ‘easy’ target to hurl stuff into, but the military infrastructure in place will be much more impenetrable, and the local jews would be staunch sionists that accepted the risks and have high morale and preparations to deal with this, and not the mainstream israeli society.
Feel like mainstream Israel society has been pretty dogmatized if they elected that fascist into power again. Agree with the rest of your analysis that they’re going to annex as much of Gaza as possible. Israel’s goal is to get Palestinians into the Sinai peninsula, with USA support they might do it in the next decade. I’m curious what will happen after the complete annexation of Palestine. Does US weapons aid stop? Does Israel become more of an apartheid state?