"Officials said that Israel and Egypt were prepared to let foreigners leave the Strip which is under heavy Israeli bombardment, but Hamas had refused."
"Officials said that Israel and Egypt were prepared to let foreigners leave the Strip which is under heavy Israeli bombardment, but Hamas had refused."
That doesn't even make sense. If the point is to destroy Hamas assets and people, there's no sense in tipping them off about it. So either they're doing that and destroying people's homes for no reason, or they're not actually doing that.
It's not actually possible to take out military targets like that in civilian neighborhoods with air strikes in a "clean" way. Obviously the only reason they don't go in on the ground with IDF soldiers if they actually have legitimate targets instead is because the lives of Palestinean civilians are less important than the lives of Israeli soldiers, and they know that air strikes don't lead to any casualties on their side.
The primary point of airstrikes is to stop the Hamas bases that fire rockets indiscriminately in the vague direction of Israel. They warn people so that people can escape, and then, if people escape, and the rockets are disabled, that's a win-win. Of course, it would be even better if they had magic airstrikes that only disabled rockets, created protective bubbles around any civilians to protect them from any rubble, and convinced terrorists to just stop politely. But short of that, they're going to focus on disabling the rockets and warning civilians.
Yes, they call Hamas terrorists and warn them. They'd rather everybody survive than civilians die. Hamas would rather everybody die than civilians live.
Right. Feel free to recommend something cleaner than airstrikes.
They did go in on the ground with IDF soldiers, what news are you following?
But launching a ground invasion into Gaza every time Hamas or PIJ fired a rocket would be worse, you see how much the world is complaining (and attacking Jews) because of the current ground invasion, right? They're calling the ground invasion a genocide. Surrounding Muslim nations have been saying that invading Gaza by ground would be an act of war against them, they're just itching to invade Israel. Ground wars are not safe for civilians either.
Moreover, if you attack a Hamas rocket facility on ground, kill every terrorist, and let every civilian go free, the rockets and rocket-firing infrastructure are still there. You need the soldiers to stay around long enough to dismantle all that and carry the rockets away. In that time, Hamas will obviously attack the soldiers, and the escalation will inevitably result in more destruction.
How can harm be minimized here? Really? There is no sensible solution while Hamas exists. Hamas must not be allowed to continue existnig. (Nor should PIJ, for that matter). That, at this point, is the justification for a ground invasion.