Israel doesn’t want to delay the invasion of Gaza to protect hostages, but the US claims the IDF is unprepared

Israel’s energy minister, Israel Katz, said that the country will not postpone a potential ground invasion of Gaza due to the hostage situation there. Talking with the German tabloid Bild.

When Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, it resulted in the deaths of over 1,400 people, the majority of whom were Israelis, and the kidnapping of at least 222 persons, four of whom have since been freed.

Everything would be done to free the hostages, but if we chose to launch a ground attack, it cannot stop us from acting. Hamas wants us to deal with the prisoners while delaying sending in the troops to destroy their infrastructure. That won’t happen, Katz reportedly said.

According to a report by the Times of Israel and the New York Times, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are not prepared to invade Gaza for a land assault, raising worries about the type of outcomes a ground invasion would have.

According to the Times of Israel story, the Israeli military has been presented with two proposals: one is to destroy Hamas militants using a mix of surgical strikes and targeted special operations forces raids, much as the US did in Mosul in 2017 with the assistance of Iraqi and Kurdish troops.

Or to begin a more extensive ground invasion, akin to what US forces did in Fallujah in 2004 alongside Iraqi and British forces.

Daily phone calls between Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are being conducted to discuss how the IDF intends to invade Gaza, where terrorists operate from tunnels in one of the world’s densestly inhabited metropolitan areas.

Austin also told ABC that if Israel intends to utterly eliminate Hamas, it will take longer than it did for the US to overthrow the Islamic State in Mosul.

Austin told ABC, remembering his experiences as the previous commander of the US Army’s Central Command, “This may be a little more difficult because of the underground network of tunnels that Hamas has constructed over time and the fact that they have had a long time to prepare for a fight.”