I hope everyone here understands that none of this is Israel having a change of heart. The truth is the IDF based their entire warplan on Palestinians turning on Hamas and them being isolated. It hasn’t worked, Gazans are more supportive of Hamas than ever and average people are fighting back against Israel.
Now with the credible threat that Iran might attack, they have to regroup their military. Israel’s biggest weakness is their low population, while Israel claims it has access to up to 1.5 million troops, that is at the cost of the country’s working population. Realistically they only have a pool of 180,000 of active military units in fighting condition, compared to Iran’s 650,000. Losing troops in Southern Gaza is militarily a poor tactic.
Israel understands that their military has an additional huge weakness that no other militarized nation does, their moral always has to be very high, given that half the population of the nation has a foreign passport and could easily flee and that they’re reliant on the approval of Western governments, blocking fleeing dual-citizens is too dangerous. If Iran attacks, the fighting age population of Israel might halve overnight.
But, naturally, if Iran stands down, the IDF will march back into the South and begin their extermination campaign again but I think just now are the Israeli strategists realizing they might have bitten too much off to chew with Iran, especially with Russia analyzing everything very carefully if they should intervene in some way.
I mean Iran seems to have nukes as well (although I’m sure far fewer than Israel has), not sure how this doesn’t trigger an apocalyptic event.
I certainly hope Iran has nukes by now. They should have learned from North Korea that nukes are the best guarantee of your nation's future existence. Israel needs someone in the area who can threaten mutual destruction and keep them in check.
It wouldn't take nuclear weapons, or even Iran to step in. Hezbollah has enough ballistic missiles pointed at Israel alone to wipe the country off the map. No one actually decided MAD requires nuclear. Israel's tiny.
@RyanGosling@hexbear.net OHHH NOOO YOU CAN'T SAY THAT ZIONISTS ARE INCOMPETENT IT'S WHAT THEY WANT
Wasn't there a similar headline about "Israel" being about to withdraw from Gaza just some months ago? And then it just didn't happen?
Israel doesn't really "hold" any territory in Gaza. They sent in big groups to set up a perimeter somewhere around a building, shoot anything that moves, take some pictures, then retreat back out. Every time they've tried establishing a long-term perimeter, they ended up getting ambushed from behind and mauled.
These headlines, so far at least, have been mostly cases of people misunderstanding how the war is prosecuted by Hamas and Israel.
The IDF was disheartened that their divide and conquer tactic not work, but they rather decided to just keep up the genocide.
