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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">A US Invasion Of Gaza Could Spell Israel’s End: Here’s How <br></h1>February 7, 2025</div>
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<img src="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Trump_CleanOut_PC.png" alt="" title="Trump_CleanOut_PC" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" width="500" height="336" style="margin-right: 25px;">
US President Donald Trump. (Design: Palestine Chronicle)
<p><strong>By <a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/robert-inlakesh" title="Display all articles for Robert Inlakesh">Robert Inlakesh</a></strong></p>
<blockquote>
<h3><span>Given all of the above-mentioned points, a US invasion and
occupation of Gaza, coupled with ethnic cleansing, is on every level
nonsensical. It is a murderous and genocidal endeavor that makes no
sense to anyone.</span></h3>
</blockquote>
<p><span>While even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has
started to backtrack on behalf of his American counterpart, correcting
Donald Trump on his Gaza invasion threats, elements of the US
President’s rhetoric still dominate the discourse on a post-war outcome
for Palestinians.</span></p>
<p><span>Laid out as part of Palestine Chronicle’s previous Analysis
article on the topic, the likelihood of Donald Trump’s plan to take
“ownership” of the Gaza Strip is low. It is in fact more likely that his
words were a calculated verbal “shock and awe” tactic, employed in
order to keep together Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, cover
for its inability to defeat Hamas, and create leverage for further
Israeli expansionism.</span></p>
<h4><strong>What Trump’s Gaza “Ownership” Would Look Like</strong></h4>
<p><span>Donald Trump presented his Gaza plans as “outside of the box”
thinking, ultimately aiming to create prosperity for the “people of the
area”. The wording employed here is rather well thought out, on the one
hand, it sounds like a very thoughtful humanitarian gesture to his base
of followers, many of whom are completely clueless of the realities on
the ground, while also fulfilling the wildest dreams of the most
hardline Zionist extremists.</span></p>
<p><span>It is clear from observing the public responses that there are
two ways Trump’s remarks were received: a majority of people heard it as
a declaration of war and to ethnically cleanse millions of
Palestinians, while at least a portion of his base heard it as a
humanitarian real estate arrangement. </span></p>
<p><span>The truth, assuming that his words were actually intended to
translate to policy, is that this would constitute a full-scale invasion
and violent expulsions of already displaced refugees.</span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span>The some dozen Palestinian resistance groups operating inside
the Gaza Strip violently resisted an Israeli full-scale onslaught,
backed by the United States and European nations, for 15 months. Despite
the Israeli PM repeatedly stressing that his war goals entailed
“destroying Hamas” and returning the Israeli captives held in Gaza by
force, his armed forces failed to complete these missions.</span></p>
<p><span>Although this may sound counter-intuitive, a US invasion of
Gaza would result in a far greater soldier casualty count than the
Palestinian armed groups managed to inflict against Israeli forces. Why
you may ask? Because Israel never actually devised a plan to defeat the
Palestinian armed groups, instead it inflicted a genocide, pulverized
almost all the territory’s infrastructure and would occasionally commit
targeted assassinations.</span></p>
<p><span>The ideas floated at the beginning of the war, that Israeli
soldiers would be going door-to-door and street-to-street with ground
forces, clearing areas, engaging in fierce battles and penetrating
Gaza’s underground tunnel system, simply did not materialize. Even in
the occasional cases where special forces teams were used to attempt to
extract captives, penetrate a tunnel or ambush a Palestinian armed
force, they were scarcely able to produce any tangible results. These
operations were the exception and not the rule.</span></p>
<p><span>What occurred on the ground during the 15-month-long war, was
that Palestinian fighters devised an ambush and artillery fire strategy.
Its operations can be broken down into three primary categories:
Ambushes on Israeli stationary positions, ambushes on moving convoys,
and short-medium range artillery attacks. </span></p>
<p><span>The approach adopted by the Palestinian fighters was a
well-prepared strategy. It sought to preserve ammunition due to a lack
of any supply lines into Gaza, while also using effective tactics to
inflict maximum casualties and disable military vehicles. Unlike
Lebanese Hezbollah, which sought to hold territory and repel advances,
the fighters in Gaza allowed Israeli forces to advance and tied them up
in deadly ambushes.</span></p>
<p><span>There are a few isolated cases where the Palestinian armed
groups did try to temporarily hold territory and prevent Israeli
advances, such as occurred during the second major invasion of Jabalia
Refugee Camp in May of 2024.</span></p>
<p><span>Meanwhile, to put it bluntly, the Israeli soldiers didn’t
really fight. They abandoned accepted military rationale. Instead, they
decided to send their forces inside heavily armored military vehicles in
order to penetrate an area, before creating fortified positions. The
Israelis did not even put infantry forces in front or beside their tanks
when advancing, relying on the efficiency of their medical-evacuation
procedures and armor/active protection systems, to minimize soldier
deaths.</span></p>
<p><span>Although its casualty figures are not reliable, Israel
officially announced that 15,000 soldiers were injured during the
15-month war, and around 800 were killed. This is a ratio of roughly 33
injuries for every death, which is a much higher injury-to-death rate
compared with other modern urban warfare settings.</span></p>
<p><span>The fact that there is scarcely any footage from Israeli
soldiers that shows them engaged in direct combat, while the Palestinian
armed groups released a near daily stream of videos featuring their
stunning ambushes, tells this story for itself. </span></p>
<p><span>There are plenty of videos documenting the majority of the
Israeli army’s work, however, which was rounding up civilians, blowing
up homes, smashing neighborhoods with bulldozers, and arbitrarily
killing unarmed people. This was coupled with hundreds of videos proudly
uploaded by individual soldiers, featuring them wearing women’s
underwear, defecating on floors of homes, destroying stores, etc.</span></p>
<p><span>It suffices to say that if the US military invades Gaza, which
is what would be required to go through with Donald Trump’s proposed
ethnic cleansing, American soldiers would actually have to fight a war,
unlike the Israelis who were too afraid of casualties to actually go
after the Palestinian resistance in a meaningful way.</span></p>
<p><span>An experienced Palestinian resistance force, armed with weapons
made from the countless unexploded Israeli ordinances, would face off
against a US invading force that would have to navigate their way on
foot through area after area and penetrate the underground tunnel
systems.</span></p>
<p><span>American soldiers would be ambushed constantly, falling victim
to sniper fire, IEDs, RPGs and round-the-clock artillery fire. If they
set up checkpoints, they will likely be attacked too and if the goal is
to occupy Gaza, then it will likely mean a constant stream of dead US
soldiers over a period of years. While casualty counts are incredibly
difficult to predict, it’s safe to say that thousands of American
service members could be killed.</span></p>
<p><span>In order to plan such an invasion, which would likely mean
deploying around 150,000 soldiers to the area, it could take around 8
months of preparations. The cost could travel into the hundreds of
billions, while there is no guarantee that the plan would even work,
meaning a possible US defeat at the hands of Hamas; purely based upon
the ability of the Palestinian Party to survive and Gaza’s people
remaining.</span></p>
<h4><strong>The Arab Regimes and the Collapse of Normalization</strong></h4>
<p><span>Assuming now that Donald Trump succeeds at ethnically cleansing
a significant portion of Gaza’s population to Egypt and Jordan, both of
these countries would be destabilized; especially Jordan.</span></p>
<p><span>According to leaked reports, Cairo has privately communicated
its position that the mass displacement of Palestinians into Egypt could
cause them to reconsider their normalisation treaty with Israel. Some
have even speculated that the Egyptian army could be forced to act
against the Israelis. Meanwhile, Middle East Eye reported that Amman
could threaten military action over the issue.</span></p>
<p><span>While the idea of the Jordanian and Egyptian militaries
launching any kind of offensive action against Israel is rather
far-fetched, the collapse of their normalisation agreements is not. Both
nations are struggling financially and the prospect of civil unrest
instills fear in the hearts of their leaderships.</span></p>
<p><span>In Jordan, an influx of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians
from Gaza is a recipe for destabilization. To begin with, the ability to
absorb such a high volume of people is all but non-existent. Yet, the
most important takeaway is that the only place to settle this population
would be in areas that are close to the border with occupied
Palestine. </span></p>
<p><span>On top of the issues with the State’s infrastructure to absorb
such a sudden population influx, many of whom will need to be treated
for various injuries and ailments, is the combined factor of the
Jordanian population’s reaction. Most of the Jordanian public are
Palestinians, expelled from their homeland during the Nakba (1947-9),
Naksa (1967) and in 1970-71. </span></p>
<p><span>Huge portions of Jordan’s citizenry, who are already
emotionally fed up with the inaction during the Gaza genocide, will be
livid at their Hashemite ruler for participating in the ethnic
cleansing.</span></p>
<p><span>Now you have an economically suffering and politically charged
public who will be united with a refugee population, many of whom would
have resistance fighters or political figures in their families. It is
an uprising against Israel waiting to happen, and inside the country
that shares the largest land border with Israel. In the event that a
revolutionary movement that sought to fight the Israelis emerged, the
Jordanian State would be fractured and the movement is right next to
Iraq and Syria, making weapons smuggling simple.</span></p>
<p><span>In Egypt, the prospects for the above-mentioned scenario are
much lower, but even if a small group of Egyptians and/or Palestinians
decide to launch an assault on an Israeli border position, it could
provoke an incursion into the Sinai by Tel Aviv. </span></p>
<p><span>All of these scenarios are by no means guaranteed, but
especially in the case of Jordan, ethnic cleansing is a recipe for chaos
just waiting to happen. Nobody in the region is going to forget what
happened to the Gaza Strip, despite the relative inaction we have
witnessed recently. </span></p>
<p><span>Eventually, the genocide in Gaza will inspire more people to
resist and this is something the Arab leaders all understand well. The
Nakba already left an irreversible scar on the Arab World’s psyche, what
happened in Gaza has inflicted another that dwarfs the former.</span></p>
<p><span>Amman and Cairo fear the repercussions of Donald Trump’s plans,
because they will impact them directly. In addition to this, Israel
will be the one threatened the most under such a scenario. As for the US
and its ability to form relationships across the region, it will be
further from a Saudi-Israeli normalisation deal than it has ever been.</span></p>
<p><span>For the United States, Trump has no popular mandate, let alone a
legal one. The costs of his proposal would be financially enormous,
while the loss of life amongst his soldiers would inflict a serious
wound on his credibility. The surrounding Arab nations would undoubtedly
be destabilized, if not toppled. While the Israelis themselves could
end up facing the greatest strategic threat in their history.</span></p>
<p><span>Former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in one of his
final foreign policy speeches, given at an event organized by the
Atlantic Council think-tank, even warned of the possible repercussions
of the US and Israel not pursuing a Palestinian State. </span></p>
<p><span>While the first portion of Blinken’s address was geared around
supporting Washington’s propaganda talking points, he did give credible
sober warnings in the speech’s latter half, contradicting the former
portion. He warned of the collapse of Tel Aviv’s normalisation treaties
with Egypt and Jordan, claiming that this could be a reality in the
foreseeable future in the absence of a “Two-State solution”.</span></p>
<p><span>Given all of the above-mentioned points, a US invasion and
occupation of Gaza, coupled with ethnic cleansing, is on every level
nonsensical. It is a murderous and genocidal endeavor that makes no
sense to anyone.</span></p>
<p><em>(The Palestine Chronicle)</em></p>
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<p><br></p>
<p><span><em>– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary
filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He
contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle. </em></span></p></div>
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