Key Points
- Even if Israel wiped out Hamas, another movement would takes its place, experts predict.
- They also say Israel doesn't want to take over the Gaza Strip.
- Other Middle East states are unlikely to get involved in the conflict, though all eyes are on Hezbollah.
Israel has bombarded Gaza non-stop following Hamas', which killed about 1,400 people, mostly civilians.
Israel's immediate strategy is to destroy Gaza's infrastructure at the cost of high civilian casualties, three regional officials familiar with discussions between the US and Middle Eastern leaders told Reuters. It also aims to push the enclave's people towards the Egyptian border and go after Hamas by blowing up the l the group has built to conduct its operations.
An Israeli invasion has yet to start, have already been killed by the aerial bombardment – a larger death toll than in any previous conflict between Hamas and Israel.
Israel has fought three previous conflicts with Hamas, in 2008-9, 2012 and 2014, and launched limited land invasions during two of those campaigns, but unlike this time, Israel's leaders hadn't vowed to destroy Hamas once and for all.
Here are possible outcomes of the conflict, according to experts.
Option one: Israel achieves its stated aim of wiping out Hamas
It's possible Israel will eradicate Hamas but that would simply be "pushing the problem down the track", Middle East specialist at Charles Sturt University Sally Totman told SBS News.
"More and more people will be drawn to a militant conflict in the future. So another anti-Israel, Palestinian group would take Hamas' place."
Hamas itself sprang up when people felt that Fatah, the Palestinian Authority's ruling party, wasn't doing enough for the Palestinian cause, Totman says.
Hamas, which is a political and military group, has gained power in the Gaza Strip since winning legislative elections there in 2006.
Another group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, feel that "Hamas isn't bolshy enough", and would likely respond with incredible violence in Hamas' absence, she adds.
Martin Kear, an international relations expert at the University of Sydney specialising in war and conflict, believes it's impossible to wipe out Hamas.
"Hamas exists inside and outside of the territories, so its members would just go somewhere else," he told SBS News.
Does Israel want to occupy Gaza again?
Regional and Western officials with knowledge of the conflict told Reuters Israel doesn't have a clear end plan in sight.
Experts believe Israel doesn't want the Gaza Strip, which it was co-administering with Egypt until 2005 when it pulled out "because it used too many resources", former Australian ambassador to Lebanon Ian Parmeter told SBS News.
"The big problem is that the Gaza Strip is pretty well unmanageable. You're talking of a population of about 2.3 million that's growing at a rate of over 2 per cent compounded per year.
"The territory is not getting any bigger and there's nowhere for all these people to go. It's a recipe for radicalisation."
Three children wander around the rubble of ruined buildings that were destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. Source: Getty / Youssef Alzanoun
"I don't think Israel wants to defeat Hamas because if they do, they become responsible for Gaza Strip, and that's a huge humanitarian crisis, and they've made that crisis. I don't think Fatah would want that mess either.
"I wonder whether Israel's tactic will be to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable."
Israel has insisted on the right to defend itself following the Hamas attacks, a stance supported by countries including Australia and the United States.
Late last week, Israel's defence minister Yoav Gallant indicated his country no longer wanted responsibility for Gaza. Israel has tightly controlled the territory through a blockade it imposed in 2007 and has traditionally supplied Gaza with most of its energy needs
Gallant said after destroying Hamas' infrastructure and eliminating "pockets of resistance", the third phase "will require the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip, and the establishment of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel".
This begs the question, Parmeter says, of "what does victory mean for Israel"?
What about the West Bank?
Violence in the has surged since Israel started bombarding the and clashing with Hezbollah at the Lebanon border, fuelling concerns the flashpoint Palestinian territory could become a third front in a wider war.
The violence poses a challenge to both Israel and the Palestinian Authority Fatah, the only Palestinian governing body recognised internationally, which is headquartered there.
The Israeli military said it was on high alert and bracing for attacks, including by Hamas militants in the West Bank.
Hamas is trying to "engulf Israel in a two- or three-front war", including the Lebanese border and the West Bank, military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus told Reuters. "The threat is elevated," he said.
While Hamas tightly controls besieged Gaza, the West Bank is a complex patchwork of hillside cities, Israeli settlements and army checkpoints that split Palestinian communities.
Palestinian Christians wave national flags during a demonstration in solidarity with the people of Gaza in the village of Jifna, north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Source: Getty / Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP
Option two: Hamas achieves its stated goal of liberating Palestinians
Hamas said its recent attack was driven by Israel's escalated attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, Jerusalem and against Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
"This is the day of the greatest battle to end the last occupation on earth," Hamas military commander Mohammad Deif said, announcing the start of the operation in a broadcast on Hamas media and calling on Palestinians everywhere to fight.
Many believe Hamas’ 7 October attacks on Israel were intended in part to scuttle the potential normalisation of Israel's relations with Saudi Arabia, with the two nations on the verge of signing a historic peace deal.
The militant group's stated aim is to establish a Palestinian state, while refusing to recognise Israel’s right to exist.
Now Hamas is facing a ground invasion they cannot hope to win, Kear says.
"Hamas will lose simply on numbers and equipment. I suspect that Hamas will try prevent the invasion as long as possible to allow them to fortify a bit more."
The number of Hamas militants is only estimated to be around a tenth the number of Israeli reservists, let alone the figure of active Israel Defence Force troops.
Totman says the ground invasion Israeli troops are preparing for could end in several different ways.
It could end with "Israeli troops being ambushed and taken hostage, which is why they're they're preparing the landscape by bombing northern Gaza currently to make it safer for the troops when they go in".
"It could end up with actual conflict with Hamas fighters in Gaza."
Another outcome could be that Hamas kills hostages as a result, she says.
it captured on 7 October.
Option three: The fighting stops and the sides reach a two-state solution
Australia, the UK, the US and the United Nations remain committed to a two-state solution in which Israel and a future Palestinian state coexist in peace and security, within internationally recognised borders.
On Thursday, US President Joe Biden reiterated the position, saying at a joined press conference with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese: "Israelis and Palestinians equally deserve to live side by side in safety, dignity and in peace."
This position has been verbally supported by Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the past. Hamas says it wants a Palestinian state but has opposed past peace processes.
Alam Saleh, expert in Middle Eastern studies at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University, believes the current conflict cannot be solved through war but only through dialogue.
"This is not a military issue but a historical one so you can't solve this with weapons," he told SBS News.
"The West is responsible morally and ethically for this issue and needs to seriously solve the problem through diplomatic and political dialogue to create a balance of power between the two sides and to ensure both sides compromise."
But Parmeter says while allies keep calling for a two-state solution, he believes this idea is little more than "lip-service", at this point.
"There are no current negotiations in play, because Israel has now put so many settlements in the in the West Bank."
The alternative to a two-state solution is a one-state solution, which, as Parmeter explains, would be for Palestinians to enter into Israeli society; for the West Bank and Gaza to be annexed and for all of it to be one state called Israel.
"That's not going to happen, because the Israelis won't have that. So there really is no movement towards peace at the moment."
Option four: The conflict becomes a broader regional war involving Western and Middle Eastern allies
"Egypt and Jordan have got peace agreements with Israel and they show no signs of wanting to tear those up on behalf of other states."
The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco also signed peace agreements with Israel, at the Abraham Accords in 2020.
"The issue here for many Arab states is that they don't like Palestinians being hurt, but they don't like Hamas because Hamas is supported by Iran," Parmeter said.
Most Arab states, apart from Syria and Yemen, see Iran as being their major enemy, he says.
On 15 October, Iran issued an ultimatum to its enemy Israel: Halt your onslaught on Gaza or we'll be forced to take action, its foreign minister warned.
But hours later, the country's UN mission softened the hawkish tone, assuring the world that its armed forces wouldn't intervene in the conflict unless Israel attacked Iranian interests or citizens.
Lebanon's Hezbollah fighters have traded rocket attacks over the border into northern Israel, in the biggest escalation of tensions between the country in 17 years.
The country is undergoing its own governmental and economic crisis and Hezbollah, which has around 100,000 militants, is the only group in Lebanon that could get seriously involved, Parmeter says.
and militant group formed in 1982 after Israeli forces invaded southern Lebanon. It is listed as a terrorist organisation by countries including Australia, the US, Germany and the UK.
"The United States has warned Iran not to get involved, and it has two carrier battle groups, and it's quite possible that guns or aircraft from those carrier battle groups could be used against Hezbollah, if it becomes involved."
Hezbollah has warned Israel will "pay a high price," if it launches a ground invasion in Gaza.
- With additional reporting by Reuters.
