What’s going on in Gaza?
I think the truth would have to be that no one really knows. War, it seems to me, is chaos, with the victor usually being the side with a slightly better view through the fog.
There is an awful lot of media handwringing going on about the Israeli offensive into Gaza, and I think it will be some time before we know (if ever) what is actually happening. You just can’t believe the media because spin is everything and everybody in the game knows it.
The Israelis know it, so they are working carefully to control media access (as the US has in many of its engagements), and Hamas knows it and is not immune to “staging” matters for maximum media impact. The media is simply a willing (unfortunately, but it has always been so) accomplice in playing the spin game. So, don’t count on the media for “the truth” because it doesn’t know the truth. There would be a very small group of people who actually know the truth, and they are the least likely to tell the media (except some specific version for some specific purpose).
This situation has been a long time brewing, but outright collision was always going to happen at some point with two groups so implacably opposed in such close proximity to each other, especially when one of them has a radical and unapologetic policy regarding the existence of the other. The stated extreme Hamas position regarding Israel is not negotiable, so discussion seems a little pointless. At some juncture, it was always going to end up in a fight.
And, after totally screwing up the action against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and the resultant dent in the IDF reputation for invincibility, I fear that the people of Gaza have both Hezbollah and Hamas to thank for their suffering at this point because the Israelis are unlikely to fiddle around this time. It will be “shock and awe” in spades.
And, of course, in the long run, no one will actually win this, even after the Israelis have totally ground Gaza back to the stone age. But, I suppose Israel can live with that in the short term. That’s the Middle East way.