Sébastien Le Belzic, edited by Loane Nader // photo credit: Jalaa MAREY / AFP
While the IDF has carried out two incursions into the Gaza Strip, there is still no ground offensive on this Palestinian territory on the 21st day of war. If the wait is prolonged, it is because there is a reason for it, as the military explained to Europe 1.
Still no large-scale operation in the Gaza Strip carried out by the Israeli army. After 21 days of war, several warnings and a first incursion, the IDF did not launch a ground offensive. But the general staff explains the reason: Hamas has prepared a whole series of traps in Gaza. Mine belts and anti-tank missiles were scattered throughout the city, well before the massacres of October 7.
500,000 civilians
The terrorists had therefore anticipated a response from the Israeli army, which puts their number in Gaza at 25,000 and several thousand kilometers of tunnels up to 40 meters deep. Not to mention that there would remain around 500,000 civilians exposed to IDF strikes, and who have not found refuge in the humanitarian zone of southern Gaza, with Hamas using them as human shields.
The army therefore explains that it still needs time to organize and destroy these pockets of resistance. The good strategy according to the general staff is that of a blockade, because without fuel, without food and without water, Hamas cannot hold out much longer in these tunnels.