>>213991426
IDF command is also saying that what the civilian leadership wants will take a year or more, which they can't sustain. If they do try it, they will end up with a pointless occupation that doesn't even destroy Hamas. Hamas is smart enough to go underground figuratively and literally, also all the hostages will die which will destroy what's left of Netanyahu's coalition because so much of the Israeli public only cares about the hostages. The IDF is heavily pressuring the government to accept a hostage deal, as is the public. Also, the already worsening starvation and malnutrition crisis will skyrocket and make Israel look terrible.
Fallujah was 300k and took months, and the US army was orders of magnitude better than Israel and still took heavy losses. Gaza City is over a million. Also Israel panics when it loses a dozen troops and the IDF can't fight and its armor reserves are badly depleted - if they have to use Merkava IIIs and Narmers they will take heavy losses as they have no combined arms doctrine, the reservists just act like sitting ducks in vulnerable APCs.
This is literally the end of Israel as a regional power player. They will have to take a hostage deal or else destroy their own state (probably serious internal collapse) if they actually try to take Gaza. They can't back down but they can't win either. They are trapped. Meanwhile Iran and now even its proxies have credible deterrence, forever, and that was even before the Houthis showed they can bypass Israel's interceptors with the new cluster munitions. The US knows Israel will just burn through its entire stockpile for nothing if they go to war again. The US will HEAVILY pressure Israel to back down from any serious conflict now.
Israel didn't draft the Haredim, it destroyed its public perception and is now peer or sub-peer with its regional rival Iran and its proxies. Most likely: It will take a hostage deal, back down, and slowly die and experience severe brain drain over 10 years.
