Israel appears to be following my plan for ISIS almost to the letter with the Gaza strip. My first clue was when Netanyahu stated that Israel was at war, but he emphasized that it was not other things several times. Precisely how I phrased it in my blog entry. Then I found out that Israel had distributed a map of zones within Gaza where noncombatants were supposed to go in Arabic, another thing I explicitly spelled out in my plan. One thing missing was that Israel was not announcing that they would kill anyone who stayed where they weren't supposed to. I figured, "Nah, Israel would never do that." Then tonight I saw some reporting that had gotten hold of text messages being sent to Gaza residents which read simply, "You stay. You die." Three elements of my plan laid out so closely to what I argued that it seems a bit more than a coincidence. Anyway, glad somebody with some power is listening. If I am right, then Israel is not going to massacre innocent civilians. They are simply trying to get them to move away from Hamas' defense of the strip. They'll adhere to their already high standards for not killing civilians, but they won't hesitate to do so if it becomes necessary, also spelled out in my plan.
Another element of my plan was to give a timeline, which was six months. That is probably not going to happen here for several reasons. Gaza is much smaller than Syria, so it shouldn't take as much time for things to shake out there. There's the political necessity of immediate action before Israel loses global support. Then there's the imminent security threat to Israel itself that requires fast action, not to mention the hope that maybe they can save some of the hostages. But the most interesting reason is one thing that I didn't include in my plan: the cutting off of water, food, and electricity, especially the water. Gaza gets 80% of its water from Israeli sources. Cutting off that much water means several things: Israel is going to argue to anyone that they don't have any responsibility to provide anything to Hamas after what happened. But if Israel holds fire too long, Gazans will begin dying of lacking basic necessities. This will move world opinion against them and also result in foreign aid likely reaching Gaza and negating the effect. So the effect of suddenly removing access to water will be temporary.
This might be a calculated measure to force the Gazans to hurry up and leave for all the aforementioned reasons. Intentional or not, cutting off that much water significantly moves up the timeline from six months any way you slice it. The question is how long. Everyone seems to think that Israel's ground offensive is imminent. I think they will wait several days. They've got to give the Gazans time to leave, but also it's to their advantage to wait until Hamas' supply problems become desperate. That also will lead to more people leaving, as Hamas is likely to monopolize supplies by force. (They've already followed my prediction of ordering Gazans to stay in place.) All this is to Israel's advantage, but they can't wait six months. I predict a week or two starting from the initial attack. That means no Israeli ground incursion until Friday or Saturday this week. By then water shortages will be severe and hopefully will have cleared out at least the combatant areas specified by Israel.
There are, however, some concerning differences between Syria, where I had initially suggested this, and the Gaza strip. Gaza is far smaller, and there are far fewer places for noncombatants to go. There are only two places really, one being Israel, which for obvious reasons they cannot go. The other is Egypt, which has closed its border with Gaza and has consistently refused to accept refugees for years. So the small size of Gaza and limited options for where people can go makes this much trickier than Syria. It will still result in the same dynamic of Hamas trying to force people not to go to the designated zones. I'm quite curious to see what kind of combat power Hamas still has in Gaza, and what they will do if the messaging works and civilians actually do go to the designated areas or force their way into Egypt. There was a strike on a crossing to Egypt earlier, but Israel claimed it was against a tunnel. I suspect it may have been to eliminate Egypt's border security so Gazans can get through. If not, it should be. Israel should continue striking Egyptian border security using that as an excuse, with the real goal being to make it easier for Gazans to enter Egypt.
The real problem though is going to be the population density and the fact that many Gazans intuitively don't believe they have anywhere to go, and so they simply won't leave. The other thing playing into that is Gazans are far more ideologically unified than Syrians, and not in a good way. Many, if not most of them are just as committed to Hamas' goals as Hamas is. A very large portion of Gazans may simply stay even if they believe they will die for ideological reasons. That's a problem, and the only solution would be to hold the blockade for much longer than two weeks, weathering the inevitable global outcry and also forcibly preventing foreign aid from reaching them. That's a bad option, but it might be better than going in sooner and having most of Gaza's 2.4 million residents still there. Hopefully, Gazans will be less likely to stay if they face death from thirst than an Israeli bomb or bullet. Israel may have to simply play this one by ear by monitoring how many stay versus how many leave, and how Gaza's supply situation develops. That may be why there's no countdown. Precisely when they go in will be based on those factors which aren't known yet. Timing on this will be absolutely crucial.
