Israel faces a major dilemma as the war progresses now into the fourth month of fighting.  As an American Jew, I know that Israel needs to prevail in Gaza.  The last war that the U.S. won was WWII, when we crushed our enemies.  So, too, Israel needs to crush Hamas into total surrender if the Israelis are ever to see peace again on the Israel-Gaza border.

This a war like no other that Israel has engaged.  It is fighting an entrenched army of fanatics in nasty urban combat with tunnels.  Israel does have some advantages that were lacking in Lebanon and 1967 and in 1973 with Egypt and Jordan.  The biggest is absolute control over the borders of Gaza (like the U.S. in Germany and Japan after WWII).

It also has some major issues with Hamas’s irregular warriors.  They blend in with the civilian population, in public they wear no uniforms, and they apparently taunt the IDF soldiers on a regular basis.  Because of the IDF rules of engagement, they cannot shoot such persons.  Hamas warriors can hide in a house, go down into a tunnel, and then pop up to commit mayhem.

I see the war bogging down as an apparently reticent and fractured cabinet tries to

1. play nicey-nice with double-dealing Joe Biden, who loathes Netanyahu;
2. placate an increasingly strident group of hostage family members; and
3. rotate reservists in and out of Gaza while trying to keep the Israeli economy alive.

I do not profess to be an expert on Israeli affairs.  I am just a deeply interested bystander and six-times tourist who has seen pretty much the entirety of Israel, from Metula in the north to Eilat in the South.  I have also visited two of the villages on the Gaza border that were savaged on October 7.  From my visits, I know that younger native Israelis (sabras) are proud to be Israelis, in a way that very few younger Americans are proud to be Americans.

If Israel is truly determined to win (in the tradition of the USA in 1945), it is my feeling that four things need to happen:

1. Take 100% control of the border, including the area adjacent to Egypt.  Egypt may complain, but remember that until 2005, Israel did have 100% control of that border.
2. Israel needs to get every Gaza resident photographed and issued a hi-tech ID card that is associated with a piece of facial recognition software.  This will allow the IDF to identify the active enemy (no ID card, and you are an automatic suspect).  This will also assist Israel in vetting the folks who will be running Gaza in the future.  It will also put pressure on Hamas to reveal their members by default.
3. Systematically kick the U.N. out and let Israel or other trusted international partners handle the distribution of emergency food and building supplies.
4. Let Israel or other trusted international partners supervise the educational infrastructure to destroy the culture of hate.

If Israel is determined to win, it is my feeling that these four things need to happen.

If Israel does not do these four things as high-priority, I fear that it will endure more tragic casualties and be back in Gaza in four or five more years.

Image: Israel Defense Forces via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0.