Ground invasion of Gaza is no silver bullet against Hamas threat

Frank Gardner

Security correspondent

There is an assumption in some quarters that the threat to Israel from Hamas can somehow be eliminated once and for all with a full-scale invasion on the ground.

History would suggest this is unlikely to be the silver bullet some are hoping for.

When Israel invaded Gaza in 2014, more than 2,000 Palestinians were killed, with each funeral generating ever more radicalised young men.

Since then, Hamas has continued to fire rockets across the border.

Its armed wing is believed to number around 30,000 fighters, most of them fanatical in their determination to defend Palestinian land. They know their tunnels, cellars, bunkers and backstreets better than the invaders.

Such a densely populated piece of territory is no place for tanks, which would be highly vulnerable to ambush.

From a purely military standpoint, a ground assault could result in short-term success, eliminating most of Hamas’s commanders.

But in the absence of a lasting peace deal, Hamas would likely regenerate itself, calling up a new generation of angry, radicalised young fighters.