My Brother's Keeper: Month 2, Week 3, Day 2.

Since Saturday (2/8/14) the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have very much been on the move in Gaza. As a military they have obviously not been keen to let everyone - particularly their enemy - know exactly what they're up to. However it appears that the have withdrawn all troops to within 1km (0.6miles) of the border and moved the majority of their forces back into Israel.

Primarily this appears to have been done to allow them rotate troops out of the battlefield so they can be replaced by fresh troops. After all weary troops make mistakes and that is how civilians get killed. However in response to the largely unjustified international pressure on Israel over the past week or so there seems to have been a concerted effort to speed up the operation in order to allow Israel to end the operation as soon as possible. As a result 30 of the 31 known tunnels into Israel have been destroyed and the remaining one is being kept as a sort of tourist attraction for the international media. As a result it is possible to argue that the IDF has achieved 100% of the objectives it set out to achieve when it launched the ground operation on July 17th (17/7/14).

The exception is the town of Rafah. Literally located right on the border between Gaza and Egypt it is not the most logical place for Hamas to build tunnels intended to attack Israel. In fact there's been a lot of talk of Rafah's tunnel building families being forced to relocate to other Gazan towns in order to dig the attack tunnels. As a result Rafah was never intended to be a main focus of the IDF operation and their activities there should have been limited to doing a quick search to establish that there were no tunnels. This of course changed on Friday (2/8/14) when IDF soldier Hadar Goldin was killed in a kidnapping attempt. As Goldin's body has yet to be recovered the IDF is now conducting an extensive search of Rafah in an effort to recover that body and finally establish exactly what happened. This process could take a very long time because today the World marked the 100th anniversary to the start of the First World War. The nations involved in that conflict are still working to recover the remains of soldiers who went missing on those battlefields.

With the exception of the Rafah area the completion of this phase of the operation allowed Israel to declare a unilateral 7 hour humanitarian pause beginning at 07:00 (10:00 local) and ending at 14:00 (17:00 local). With the exception of an air-strike at the long term (est: 1948) al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City - which I presume killed a high-value target  - the IDF held their fire throughout.

For their part Hamas declared the withdrawal and humanitarian pause to be a "Criminal Act" and continued to fire some 63 rockets and mortars into Israel during the pause. On the West Bank an IDF soldier was wounded in a drive-by shooting by men on a motorcycle and a Jewish man was run over and killed by a Palestinian man in an industrial digging machine who proceed to knock over a bus before being shot and killed by the police. There was also the rather surreal situation in which a man telephoned the police in Tel Aviv to tell them that he was a suicide bomber who had changed his mind and wanted to return to Hebron. This prompted a several hour search for the man which didn't find him but did succeed in snarling up traffic across Tel Aviv. Fortunately the incidents on the West Bank seem to be the work of so-called "Lone Wolves" rather then co-ordinated terrorist attacks. Al-Qaeda of course moved to Lone Wolf tactics once its infrastructure had been smashed and it was unable to carry out more co-ordinated attacks.

Having achieved their original objectives the IDF now faces a choice; It can either end its operation and leave having scored a partial victory or they can search out fresh objectives. Given the increased regional security threat posed to Israel by the conflict in Syria and Iraq I think the IDF would be well advised to take the latter operation. That though poses the further question of whether they want to achieve those new objectives using ground forces or air power alone.

The main advantage of ground forces is that it puts people directly on the target so they can establish for sure that it is a legitimate military target before striking and revisit the target afterwards to establish that the target has been fully destroyed. This is particularly important when dealing with underground targets including tunnels and bunkers. It also provides the IDF with vital evidence to refute the rather wild propaganda claims that have been made against them in this operation. For example where ground troops have destroyed Mosques they have been able to provide video and pictures showing exactly the tunnels and bunkers that Hamas have dug below the Mosque and the weapons that Hamas has chosen to store within the Mosque. When the IDF have destroyed a Mosque with an air-strike we are simply left with images of smoking rubble where the Mosque used to be. This makes it much easier for people to try and argue that the IDF is attacking Mosque on religious rather then military grounds.

The main disadvantage to ground troops is that it massively increases the risk both to the soldiers on the ground and civilians in the area. That is because when the IDF - or any other army - go to destroy a tunnel they don't simply turn up on the back of a flatbed truck. Instead they first attempt 'soften-up' the area by subjecting it to attack using heavy, area weapons such as artillery. They then establish a cordon around the target using tanks backed by air-support. If fighters attack that cordon or civilians simply stray into it they will be counter-attacked by tank fire. As a result targeted, smart air-strikes are actually the more humane option particularly in the more built-up areas such as in the east of Gaza City even if they provides less certainty that a target has been destroyed.

Fortunately it seems that the IDF will have plenty of time to consider its next move because as I've been writing this it is being reported that the Palestinian factions involved in negotiations in Egypt have declared a unilateral 72 hour cease-fire and Israel have also agreed. However as yet there are no details of when this cease-fire will begin and what exactly it will involve. 

19:50 on 4/8/14 (UK date).