A partial effort guarantees Hamas will attempt additional massacres of Israeli citizens.
By Hezy Laing
The IDF must execute a complete military takeover of the Gaza Strip to successfully dismantle the deeply entrenched infrastructure of the Hamas terrorist organizations.
This urgent strategic assessment is championed by Yoni Ben Menachem, a prominent senior Middle East analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and former director general of the Israel Broadcasting Authority.
He strongly argues that standard targeted raids and political isolation are entirely insufficient to eliminate the systemic threat posed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Without a permanent, total territorial conquest, these Iranian-backed factions will inevitably rearm, rebuild their production assets, and launch subsequent mass-casualty assaults against Israeli border communities.
The scale of this proposed military reoccupation requires the IDF to neutralize the remaining network of fortified tunnels, weapon manufacturing workshops, and drone storage depots.
Since October 7 Hamas massacre, IDF forces have seized control over more than 70% of the enclave.
However, Ben Menachem stresses that leaving any sector unmanaged allows the remaining combatants to exploit local governance and intercept humanitarian relief supplies.
To counter this, he calls for the urgent establishment of a temporary Israeli military administration to replace the hostile civil government.
This operational shift would systematically target civil and governmental infrastructure to permanently erode the administrative grip of the militant leadership.
Executing this total takeover faces profound friction within Israel’s high-level leadership and the international community.
Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir have consistently voiced support for widening operations to secure complete victory.
Despite international pressure, Ben Menachem insists that a war of attrition, culminating in full territorial control, is the sole pathway to guarantee national security.
