The IDF doesnt have the guts for a ground operation in Gaza, otherwise they would be there a long time ago.
Israel will push the US marines in Gaza, or they will just attack from the air.
Israeli ground operations are almost never a success without help from a third party.
Regarding guts, I'll leave it to the 360,000 or so IDF troop+reservists to figure out if they have the stomach to do so. I'm more interested in their preparations.
The last time IDF engaged in mass Urban warfare was in 2014, that's 9 years ago. And they left after 2 weeks. In comparison, leading up to Mosul, the Iraqi Army has engaged in at least 4 separate campaigns of urban warfare during the two years the Iraqi army left:
-Baiji campaign
-Ramadi campaign
-Tikrit campaign
-Fallujah campaign
Each were bloody on its own, and casualties were in the thousands for both sides, and when the Mosul campaign started, the Iraqi army was still prone to mistakes. The IDF not only doesn't have its own preparatory campaign, but most of the time their ground troops spent their time harassing teens in the West Bank.
Mosul took 9 months 2 weeks to conclude, against ISIS troops amounting to a brigade size (6000) defender against an entire army of 100,000+ Iraqi-Kurdish forces. That's a force ratio of 1:17. In Gaza, Hamas has 7x times that against 360.000 or so IDF amounting to 1:8 defenders: attackers ratio. ISIS has 2 years to prepare, Hamas has 17.
that and smuggling networks to and from Egypt to keep food, ammo, and supplies, prolonging combat. It also helps that Israel has spent the last 2 weeks killing children and women which surprisingly could lead to :
- Increase pools of potential recruits
- reduced burden for Gaza's authority trying to keep besieged people fed.
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