The goal of the Israeli army is to eliminate the military structure of the Hamas movement and its leaders, as confirmed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The IDF can focus more and more on the current campaign through small raids by elite units. It could expand this through larger and more extensive night raids.
Israeli infantry units are trained to fight using advanced thermal night vision goggles and have camouflage techniques to hide at night. This way, Hamas fighters and snipers will literally be in the dark.
Night operations still provide advantages for the IDF: there are fewer or no civilians on the streets. A weeks-long bombing campaign will also make Hamas fighters more exhausted, making fighting at night more difficult for them.
If Israel focuses on relatively smaller operations, it could also remain below the threshold that would prompt other players in the region, such as the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, to become fully involved in the conflict. A war on two or three fronts in Israel is not something Brussels or Washington are looking for.
Even under this scenario, more than two million civilians in Gaza remain particularly vulnerable.
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