Re: [Marxism] Hamas is hoping for an IDF ground operation

["Lüko Willms" <lueko.willms@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:12:53 +0100, Jeff wrote:

> However I am not as optimistic about the outcome 
> as in the case of Lebanon. 
> Hamas does not have the military sophistication of Hizbollah, and more 
> importantly, they are very poorly supplied. In particular, with Gaza 
> essentially surrounded and blockaded by Israel, they can attempt to "starve 
> out" the Gazans (as they have been doing anyway!) and that might be 
> successful if there is not a sufficient international response.

  Well, they are effectively living in a huge free air prison camp, completely 
closed on all four sides, with the tunnels under the southern border to Egypt 
as the only relatively independent routes of supply, and a few drops of 
charity delivered from time to time by trucks from the state of Israel. 

  I just hope that Hamas could get as much anti-tank weaponry thru the 
tunnels to immobilize at least a part of the Israeli armada. 

  Another big problem is the different geography: as Gaza, Lebanon is a 
relatively narrow strip of land along the Mediterranean sea, but to Lebanon 
the Israeli attackers had to enter from the narrow edge, and fight their way 
along the length of the land, while into Gaza they can go via the long edge; 
51 of the 62 kilometers of land border of the Gaza strip is with Israel. 

  In southern Lebanon, the hilly terrain favored the guerilla struggle against 
the tanks where several of the Merkava tanks were destroyed. Gaza is rather 
flat, but in the last days I also heard of swamps which might slow down an 
advance with tanks. 

  But any way, the main battles would be in populated areas, the cities and 
refugee camps. And the Merkava tanks are not very good for street battles 
as they had to find out in the West Bank. But they can kill much more people 
than in Lebanon where the tanks did not get thru the hills of south Lebanon. 


Comradely yours, 
Lüko Willms
Frankfurt, Germany
--------------------------------
visit http://www.mlwerke.de Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotzki in 
German

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