If the War Resumes, How Can Israel Beat Hamas?

Assuming that Hamas does not accept the cease-fire terms being offered it, and that siege tactics alone won’t be enough to bring it to its knees, the IDF will have to return to Gaza. And that possibility raises an important question: if Israel couldn’t destroy Hamas in the first fifteen months of fighting, how much could it really accomplish in a renewed offensive? In his January essay, Ran Baratz argued that winning will require a major strategic rethink. John Spencer, America’s leading expert on urban warfare, is a bit more sanguine in his discussion of the IDF’s successes so far, and what it will take to achieve victory, with Haviv Rettig Gur. Here Spencer refers to some of the responses to Baratz’s essay. (Video, 54 minutes.)