Brigadier General Itzik Cohen, commander of the 162nd Armored Division Ha-Plada, which is leading the ground operation in the Gaza Strip: “Our division’s forces are deep in the Strip, on the outskirts of Gaza City. Over the past few days we have destroyed many Hamas capabilities, we attacked its strategic facilities, all its mine infrastructures, underground and other complexes. This is a war for the continuing existence of the State of Israel, and we will win it.”
Pay attention to his words — “we are ... on the outskirts of Gaza City.” This means that the Israel Defense Forces are advancing towards Hamas’ center — Gaza City. This is what could and should be the key moment — the liberation of Gaza, primarily the capturing of the “Shifa Hospital,” under which Hamas’ main headquarters appears to be located.
It is known that during the Yom Kippur War, the Lubavitcher Rebbe SHLITA King Moshiach urged Israel’s political leadership to capture Damascus, and later, after forcing the Suez Canal and advancing our forces into mainland Africa, to take Cairo.
After the war, the Rebbe met with several high-ranking IDF commanders and asked them why they did not occupy these capitals. When they began to explain where and in what areas they had fought, the Rebbe remarked to them that wars are decided by conquering capitals, not by fighting over a particular territory.
The same is true now.
To defeat Hamas, it is not necessary to liberate the entire Gaza Strip and clear it of every single terrorist. All that, except what is necessary to improve the safe movement of our units and the regular supply of reinforcements, supplies and ammunition, can be done later — as a matter of routine.
To defeat Hamas we must destroy its command system, its system of control. That is how we will crush the terrorists’ will to fight. We can achieve this by liberating the actual capital of the Strip, Gaza City, capturing its central part, with its command posts and headquarters located under hospitals and clinics, especially the Shifa Hospital.
Capturing the enemy capital, destroying the central command centers (which also entails eliminating and capturing many of the bosses) is exactly the sort of thing that can determine the course of the campaign.
After that, when the capital of the Strip is liberated and the central command centers are in the hands of the IDF, the enemy’s will to resist will be crushed, which means that it will be much easier to take over (with minimal military effort) a huge number of Hamas terrorists and its smaller allies.