How effective is the naval blockade on Gaza? Is the water mined? Could boats with refugees (or whatever) slip through and sail to Egypt, other mainland countries, or Mediterranean islands - without being detected or attacked before reaching the traditional 12-mile territorial limit?
Would Egypt or anyone else let them land?
I would think maritime resupply would work.
Look up the news articles about the Turkish ship that tried to deliberately break the blockade, full of activists for several countries. It apparently caused a major incident - boat from foreign country stormed by commandos from zodiacs and helicopters in international waters. Mind you, they made it clear what they were doing very publicly before they approached Gaza.
In the documentary on Netflix, Born In Gaza you can see the story of the survivors from the half-dozen young kids (10 years old or so) who went to play soccer on the beach in Gaza and got shelled. Fortunately (?) only half of them died. Israel said it was an 'accident".
As the people in the documentary mention, they cannot go more than 5 miles ofshore, where the fishing is still not that good. Quite logically a small boat cruising the waters near Gaza suggests smuggling, possibly weapons, so is a target. Presumably, a force that would shell kids at play has no compunction shooting first and asking questions later. After all, on Oct. 7 the Hamas forces did include attempts to infiltrate Israel by sea too. It’s NOT a game.
Nobody has mentioned mines - it seems that presents logistics problems, and large vessels are not the main problem. There are flotillas of ships watching for violations of the blockade. (And if I were the Israelis, I would also use ariel surveillance drones to watch from above)
As the old saying goes, there’s only one way to find out.
The naval blockade around Gaza serves two purposes: to prevent incursions into Israeli waters (and onto Israeli land) from Gaza, and to prevent arms from being brought into Gaza. If refugees wanted to leave Gaza to non-Israeli shores, the Israeli navy would probably just open a lane and let them through.
As far as I know, Gazan waters aren’t mined.
Really? How would they tell the refugees from the Hamas militants escaping bombardment? But if you pull the boat over and search it, what do you do about fighters willing to blow themselves up if an Israeli soldier is close enough to go with them? They’re hiding under hospitals and UN schools. They wouldn’t hide in a boat full of refugees?
Arnaud Amalric comes to mind. Simpler to disallow any traffic.
If the enemy wants to run away, why not let them? Every Hamas fighter sneaking out on a boat to wherever is one that the Israeli military won’t have to fight in Gaza. So long as the navy prevents the boat from turning around and landing in Israel, it sounds like a win-win.
That said, now that there are hostages in the mix, any hypothetical refugee ships would probably be stopped to make sure that hostages aren’t being moved to a hostile country.
Now. But they’ll be back later. And the Israeli military approach seems to be as much “for once and for all” as much as they can do.
Where - in Lebanon, under Hezbollah?? I think they’ll find that the two organizations get together better in theory than in practice. Besides, letting some enemy troops run is great for breaking their morale. Nobody wants to be the last one to rout.
Look, I’m neither statesman nor strategist. I am, however, an Israeli voter, and as such I’d be thrilled to learn that Hamas is running away.
I’m sure the civilian government would pay attention to that sentiment, if it were a politically significant majority. But I wonder if that’s the case.
And until the government calls off the dogs (like the US did with the fleeing Iraqi military during the Gulf War after the Highway of Death), sound military doctrine will hold, and one consistent principle is that you destroy the enemy or capture it, but you do not let it withdraw and regroup (if you have the wherewithal to).
Editing to add: The Highway of Death incident actually has a clue to how a Gaza blockade could be forced to end. If there are bloody high visibility incidents enforcing the blockade, it might have to be called off to mitigate bad public relations. OTOH, the air and ground campaign have already been brutal and still resistant to PR pressure, so who knows how the government would respond?
The sea changes things. Look at it this way: another consistent principle is not to leave fortified enemy forces to the rear of your advance, and yet, the U.S. military did just that in its island-hopping campaign in WW2. That’s because it knew that without naval or air assets, it was neutralized, no matter how dep it had dug in. Well, a Hamas battalion getting off a boat in, say, Greece or Turkey is neutralized just as effectively. It may still exist, but it’s ability to threaten Israeli forces has been nullified to the extent that it might as well have been wiped out.
Look, I understand that there are upsides and downsides to everything, but from a purely pragmatic point of view, it’s to Israel’s benefit that as many Palestinians as possible leave Gaza, be they Hamas or civilians.
Not in Lebanon or Syria.