“Israel Dominates Air and Ground, Hamas Underground – It Will End in a Quirky Guerrilla War”

The geostrategic analyst, Konstantinos Grivas, speaks of a “too complex equation”, referring to war between Israel and Hamas. He raises the question of whether “Israel is determined to accept the losses that it is expected to receive in this attack that it will engage in.”

In particular, Mr. Grivas noted regarding the attack that Israel has long announced: “It is not an easy operation at all, at least based on the data we have now, both from an operational point of view, given that Israel does dominate the air and on the ground, but Hamas dominates the underground, it has created this underground world, which can be used both defensively and offensively, that is, to have prepared areas with explosives, where when the Israeli troops pass through to blow up, it can be used as base and to spring from there armed groups with advanced weapons, such as can be modern anti-tank systems, hit, run” stressing that it will end up as “a kind of peculiar guerilla war”.

In fact, Mr. Grivas recalled that “we saw it on a smaller scale in Beirut in 2006 from Hezbollah. It is very likely that we will see it on a much larger scale.”

“I think Israel will do something, but I am not at all sure that they will do this very large-scale operation to virtually eliminate Hamas that has been advertised” the well-known analyst added, among other things, adding that “the attack on the hospital, regardless of who is to blame, was a huge blow to Israel’s image” and added in this regard: “If it gets involved in a prolonged war, such incidents will multiply. This means that there will be a lot of pressure from Western public opinion, but mainly from the public opinion of the Arab countries, with the result that Israel will probably find itself again in a circle of hostile countries and all the efforts made for decades to normalize relations with countries such as Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, falling into the void. So the equation is difficult.”

It is worth noting that, among other things, Mr. Grivas underlined while speaking to ERT and the Newsroom show the following question: “what exactly are Israel’s targets?” To destroy Hamas?’ commenting that such a thing is not easy to do, unless it achieves a colossal humanitarian disaster in Gaza, a kind of ethnic cleansing, adding among other things that “this will be a terrible blow to Israel’s high strategy, since it will trigger reactions throughout the world, especially in the Muslim world.”

Mr. Grivas attached particular importance to the fact that “for the first time in a long, long time and decades we are seeing a general unification of the Islamic world that we had not seen even in the years of the Cold War” adding that “this within a new international system in which the hegemony of the West is generally challenged, in which new great powers emerge, new ones with very big players, such as China, may have effects on the world chessboard far greater than we expect”, even speaking of a “kind of mild civil war within our societies” due to the large Muslim element in Europe, clarifying of course that “the scenario is inevitable and very extreme, but it is not out of the question if this conflict is driven to the full depth of its dynamics”.