On Tuesday, the IDF struck the latest leader of Hamas in Gaza. It comes after the killing of another Hamas leader there a week ago. At the same time, Israel’s prime minister has vowed to crush Hezbollah.
This is putting Israel once again in the complex position of fighting on and managing two fronts. Israel has become an expert at this kind of complex battle. However, questions remain about what will be achieved.
The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) announced the attack on the latest Hamas leader: “At the direction of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz, the IDF has just struck at Mohammed Odeh in Gaza, the new leader of the military wing of the Hamas terrorist organization and one of the architects of the October 7 massacre.”
“Odeh served as the head of Hamas’s intelligence staff during the October 7 massacre and was appointed – about a week ago – to replace Ezzedine al-Haddad, who was eliminated in an IDF strike in the Gaza Strip two weeks ago,” The PMO added.
The attack on Odeh would appear to show that Hamas is not observing security around its leaders or hiding their movements. For instance, previous leaders, such as Yahya Sinwar, Marwan Issa, and Mohammed Dief, were hard to eliminate.
What will the IDF do in Gaza, Lebanon?
The elimination of Odeh and Haddad harkens back to an earlier era. In 2004, Israel killed Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin and Abdul Aziz Rantisi in a month of targeted assassinations. In those days, the targeted killings were a bit more controversial. Now they are seen as the norm.
It is not clear whether the elimination of the Hamas leaders in Gaza will lead to a new round of clashes or whether Hamas will be weakened. Will Hamas now collapse?
It has lost most of its brigade and battalion commanders in some 961 days of war. It has lost its leaders. But it has not collapsed. It continues to control half of Gaza. Israel has essentially walled it off in half of Gaza, where it continues to rule over 2 million civilians, half of whom are under the age of 18. These people are trapped under a weakened Hamas. In essence, Hamas might collapse if it weren’t able to hide behind all these people, but it appears to be propped up by being among them.
Hezbollah is in a similar but also a different condition. It has also lost many leaders and commanders. It is also able to swim among the people by hiding in Shi’ite communities in Lebanon.
These communities are mostly in southern Lebanon, as are the Dahiyeh suburbs of Beirut, along with the Beka’a valley.
Hezbollah has suffered losses, but it continues to threaten Israel. Its recent threat has been the use of FPV drones with optical fiber. Hezbollah uses small drones with munitions to evade Israeli defenses. Troops have taken to using nets to try to stop the drones, a tactic used in Ukraine. However, the threat will take time to defeat.
In Jerusalem, the narrative is that Hezbollah will be “crushed” again. This comes after 960 days of war against the group, and one would think that Hezbollah should have been handed a defeat. It took only a month of fighting in 2006 to beat Hezbollah and achieve over a decade of quiet in the North. Now Israel is back in a security zone in southern Lebanon; it has razed Shi’ite villages in a tactic used in Gaza, yet there is no clear strategy to be rid of Hezbollah.
The IDF is once again facing a multi-front conflict. Tactical success on each front has not yet led to strategic success.
The Israeli public is left wondering whether the strategy might change. In the North, the schools have had to be cancelled again. The drones won’t stop yet. Talk is easy about defeating Hezbollah, but actual success may require a rethink of what comes next in Lebanon and Gaza.