Israel says its goal is to “crush and destroy” Hamas, but what happens next remains unclear.
Even the White House fears that Israel does not have an endgame plan, US sources say.
How and when the conflict ends will depend on a number of variables, not least which Israeli forces will be detected when they enter Gaza.
They will also have to contend with the risk of the conflict escalating into a two- or even three-front war.
Here we look at six possible scenarios developments of events. War between Israel and Hamas.
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Israel may seek a time-limited invasion in which almost all Hamas members would be killed, followed relatively quickly by an Israeli withdrawal.
Defeating Hamas militarily would mean the death or capture of all 30,000- 40,000 members of the group and the destruction of its military infrastructure, such as missile launchers.
It would also require the elimination of Nukhba's elite commando unit and the death or capture of all of the group's political forces. leadership — although Hamas's main political leader is based in Qatar.
Topping the killing list are Yahya Sinwar, Hamas's leader in the Gaza Strip, and Mohammed Deif, its military chief.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar (center) will be a key target for Israel Photo: MAHMUD HAMS/AFP
Israel's order to Palestinians to flee south of Wadi Gaza suggests it is already trying to split the strip in half: the northern half, where most of the fighting with Hamas is, and the southern half, where Palestinian civilians are being held.
Israel says it evacuated the Palestinians for their own safety. It says they will be able to return «when another clearance is made to allow it.»
If the Israeli attack is militarily successful, Gaza will need new leadership that the Israelis will tightly control.
One option could be the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is led by the Fatah movement and governs the West Bank, extending its control to the Gaza Strip. This would change the outcome of the 2007 civil war in the Gaza Strip, during which Fatah was forced to leave the territory after losing an election to Hamas.
It is unclear whether PA President Mahmoud Abbas has any interest in this. The deeply unpopular Palestinian Authority works closely with Israel on security — so closely that it faces accusations from Palestinians that it is a de facto wing of the Israeli military occupation, a charge it denies.
«Israel's preferred situation, and the one supported by the US, is to see an alternative Palestinian leadership in the Gaza Strip, most likely a Palestinian Authority,» said Dr Julie Norman, a Middle East expert at University College London.
However, the PA is considered extremely weak in the West Bank and will likely lack legitimacy in Gaza, opening the door to a potential power vacuum.
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Israel may decide to extend its decades-long military occupation of the West Bank into the Gaza Strip . This is a large-scale task that will require the presence of huge numbers of troops in the sector for the foreseeable future.
This occupation will last a long time. for years or perhaps decades rather than months, the latest estimated time frame Israel has set for a future ground invasion.
This could include dividing the Gaza Strip into non-contiguous pieces of land; the apparent attempt to divide Gaza into militants in the north and civilians in the south suggests that this is already happening.
Isaac Herzog, Israel's president, appears to have already ruled out this scenario. “We have no desire to occupy or re-occupy Gaza. We have no desire to rule the lives of more than two million Palestinians,” he said in an interview with CNN over the weekend.
Joe Biden, the US president, also called on Israel to abandon this course of action, calling it a “big mistake.” Mr Abbas is also reported to be strongly opposed to the long-term occupation of the Gaza Strip. While the PA has extremely limited influence over Israel, its status as a potential new government in Gaza could give it some leverage on that front.
Complete occupation
As of Monday, about half of Gaza's two million people were ordered by Israel to flee from north to south.
This forces them inside the country, where there is a common checkpoint on the border with Egypt (Rafah crossing), through which they will be able to flee if opened by Egyptian authorities.
But some reports suggest that many Palestinians may refuse to flee the Strip. They fear a second Nakba — «catastrophe» in Arabic — echoing the events of May 14, 1948, the day Israel declared independence and 750,000 Palestinians subsequently fled or were driven from their homes.
The main problem is that even if Palestinians temporarily flee to Egypt's neighboring Sinai region, they will never be allowed to return.
In any case, Egypt has so far been extremely reluctant to open Rafah, a move , which will require housing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees.
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were ordered to leave their homes and move to the south Photo: Anadolu Agency
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt's president, clearly hopes to avoid this scenario for domestic political reasons, not least the administrative and financial costs.
He may be particularly concerned about Hamas members entering Egypt. under the cover of a civilian exodus and potentially begins to exert influence in his country in the future. Although Sisi's government mediates between Israel and Hamas, it is not a fan of the group's Islamist ideology.
Hugh Lovatt, senior Middle East analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the mass displacement «could certainly play into the hands of far-right Israeli voices that have long called on Israel to restore settlements in the Gaza Strip.»
«As violence in Gaza escalates, they may also see a chance to expel large parts of Gaza's population into Egypt and prevent their return in the future — in what many Palestinians now fear could become a new Nakba,» he said.
This would be ethnic cleansing, which, according to the United Nations, is not only classified as a crime against humanity, but also a potential violation of the Genocide Convention.
A settler movement that still has great influence on Israeli leaders over — remain deeply embittered by the withdrawal of troops from the Gaza Strip in 2005, when 21 settlements were evacuated.
Failed offensive
Any battle with Hamas will be long, difficult and costly for Israel. The Islamist group has at least 30,000 heavily armed and trained fighters who will have an advantage in defending territory they know very well.
The «colossal» security failure that allowed hundreds of Hamas terrorists to break into south of Israel. raised serious questions about the competence of Israeli intelligence and military leaders.
Survivors of the massacres complained of long delays in Israeli troops reaching their sites as they pushed Hamas back across the border into the Gaza Strip.
Colonel Roy Levy, one of the Israel Defense Forces' most respected unit commanders, was killed in battle with Hamas terrorists, a sign that the group has improved its training and tactics .
In other words, Israel has never faced such a military test before.
If the offensive stalls and large numbers of Israeli soldiers begin returning to their families in body bags, Netanyahu may be forced to bow to pressure to limit the scope of the ground offensive or cancel it, and then take over the hostage negotiations entirely.
There are currently at least 200 Israeli hostages in Gaza, and secret negotiations are already underway with a focus on rescuing some of the women and children. Qatar, Turkey and Egypt are mediating these negotiations, but so far no progress appears to have been made.
The priority appears to be exchanging women and children in the Gaza Strip for Palestinian counterparts in Israeli security prisons.< /p>
But a more ambitious deal involves exchanging all 200 Israelis held in the Gaza Strip for about 5,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. Some Hamas officials claim that this was the ultimate goal of the October 7 massacre.
In the famous Shalit prisoner exchange of 2011, one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, was exchanged for approximately a thousand prisoners.
Gershon Baskin, the lead hostage negotiator involved in the Shalit exchange, suggested there might be an alternative to a ground invasion.
Gilad Shalit was exchanged for about a thousand prisoners back in 2011. Photo: HO/Reuters
Stressing that Hamas was «unfit to exist and unfit to govern and govern» in a Times of Israel column, he said Israel's goal to completely destroy Hamas was just a «slogan.»
< p>He then came up with his own idea: Hamas would release the hostages, hand over control of the Gaza Strip to the United Nations, and in return receive safe passage from the Gaza Strip to a sympathetic Arab country. However, he admitted that this idea is unlikely to work.
Regional conflict
Iran and its leading proxy group Hezbollah have threatened to join the war if a ground invasion occurs. Only regime leaders in Tehran and Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, will know for sure. Is this a bluff?
Hezbollah also has a presence in Syria, while some pro-Iranian proxies in Iraq have also threatened to attack Israel this year. The Houthi rebel group in Yemen, which is believed to have intermediate-range missiles capable of reaching Israel, is also considered a proxy of Iran.
This poses what the Israelis call a «multiple risk.» War on the front, an event they have been warning about for years: missiles approaching simultaneously from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and perhaps even Yemen.
This may well explain the apparent delay in the start of Israel's ground invasion. A war with Iran and its proxies would be even more costly than a war with Hamas, especially since Hezbollah, in particular, has much more powerful weapons.
“The prospect of regional escalation is clearly concerning,” Dr Norman said. “American diplomacy with Arab partners has been in full force this week to try to contain the conflict.”
“But the real wild card will be Iran, and if it takes steps to fully activate Hezbollah to open a northern front against Israel. Despite the cross-border escalation, we have not yet reached this point, and the US, Israel and regional partners will strive to contain this move.»
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This is the most extreme scenario that no sane leader would want to bring upon themselves .
If Hezbollah and Iran join the war, the United States would face overwhelming pressure to launch direct attacks on both entities. Washington has already stationed F-15 bombers in Jordan and sent two aircraft carriers to the region. The UK, which sent Royal Navy ships to the Mediterranean, would find itself in the same situation.
This, in turn, creates the risk of outright war between the US and Iran. Iran's nuclear program is likely to be destroyed by joint Israeli and US attacks, breaking its most powerful tool to pressure the West. Iran's leaders will take this into account when discussing the prospect of entering the war.
Russia, a key ally of Iran, may also decide to intervene. In recent months, Iran has become a major supplier of drones and missiles to Moscow as part of a growing military alliance.
At that point, all bets will be off and the risk of global conflict cannot be ruled out. Although this remains the most nightmare and remote scenario.
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