The Strategist gets to the bottom of what the IDF's most likely objective is: "the Israeli government wants to decapitate Hamas's military leadership, while leaving in place a defanged political wing, with whom it can negotiate some form of longer-term security arrangement." This is an intelligent recognition of the fact that the political wing cannot be eliminated. And in some ways, the military wing took the wrong lesson so far from Hezbollah in seeking to go for a hybrid defense. Concentrated in a small enclave with many administrative targets, Hamas in 2009 is not Hezbollah in 2006, able to mount a layered defense across their state-within-a-state. An alternative option may be to facilitate a Fatah transitional administration. Neither goal is entirely out of reach, but it is extremely difficult to translate military power into "facts on the ground," especially when the Israelis lack even the most basic element of legitimacy among the Palestinian population. Still, their progress so far shows that they have indeed learned some lessons from 2006 and are backing up airpower with ground force. When the dust settles, it will be interesting to examine the specific method of urban operations and see what similarities it holds to the IDF's urban offensives in the first few years of the Second Intifada.
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