Description
But Krieg says this is not the only reason.Fighting Hamas is not something that will happen overground. It will mostly happen underground. We still estimate that there's a third of the entire infrastructure that Hamas has built underneath the territory that is still intact. By seizing territory overground, you're not necessarily destroying these tunnel systems. So the Israelis will have to show that this is what they're actually trying to do.
The Israeli official line is always that they're fighting Hamas and they're trying to get their hostages back. But a lot of what we've seen is also to push civilians out and not let them return to their territory. It’s a bit of both.
But for Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King's College London School of Security Studies, what is at stake is also to “control the territory”.
All the ground corridors have been a way for the Israeli military to somewhat control the territory. What we see over time is a policy of divide and conquer, where the Israelis are dividing the territory up more and more and more, creating ever-smaller enclaves that the IDF finds easier to control. The smaller the territory, the more you're able to actually respond to any issue that might arise within the enclave.
Krieg says:
If the overall agenda – and that seems to be what the Israeli military and government have announced – is to seize the complete Gaza Strip, the way to do it is to create corridors, hold this territory and from there ever more encroach on that territory, to cleanse it, not just of Hamas operatives, but also of civilians and then completely seizing the entire Gaza Strip.
| Period | 12 May 2025 |
|---|---|
| Held at | France 24 Television, France |
Keywords
- Israel
- Morag
- Gaza
- Hamas