The Israeli army's war in Gaza was expected to begin during the night. In recent days, all sources seemed to agree on this point, when it came to envisaging how Israeli ground operations should begin in the Gaza Strip, already targeted by intense bombardment. For the rest, from the outline of a full-scale ground invasion, sketched out in the emergency after the Hamas attack on October 7, to a plan integrating localized actions before a multi-phase infantry deployment, a whole range of actions has been envisaged. Most recently, a series of operations limited to certain sectors, carried out by highly mobile forces, seemed to be the preferred option.
On the evening of Friday, October 27, three weeks after the Hamas attack on Israeli territory in which 1,400 people were killed and more than 220 kidnapped, a new military milestone was passed. It was revealed by Israeli army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari: "The air force is attacking underground targets and terror infrastructures with significant means, and infantry forces are expanding the scope of their operations." "The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] are acting with force... to achieve the objectives of this war," he added.
What are these objectives? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had succinctly defined them two days earlier in a televised speech in which he explained that the army's mission was "to eliminate Hamas by destroying its military and governance capabilities, and to do everything possible to get our hostages back." After the Hamas attack, when the Israeli military response seemed to be driven by a determination to strike back that nothing seemed able to temper, the hostage issue was not at the heart of tactical projections. Over time, this position became more nuanced.
But while attempts at negotiations on this subject were still underway, for a number of Israeli military sources, having to wait for a collective release before launching ground operations seemed like a trap. On Friday, one of them saw the negotiation process as "a way for Hamas to gain time, hoping to play us against us."
On Saturday morning, the scale of the operations underway remained difficult to gauge. "During the night, Israeli Defense Forces fighter jets struck 150 underground targets in the northern Gaza Strip, including tunnels used by terrorists, underground combat sites and other underground infrastructure. Several Hamas terrorists were killed," said a statement issued by the IDF after a night of intense air raids.
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