October 7, as the scale of the Hamas massacre became clear to the Israeli public, it would have been inconceivable to a stunned and horrified Israel that 19 days later, their forces are still idling outside the Gaza Strip.
Almost three weeks after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Hamas is still alive and kicking, able to send teams of naval commandos on suicide missions into Israeli territory and rockets through the south, center and north.
With substantial international support, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his vaunted war cabinet still have no significant military achievements in the same time it took for Israel to defeat Syria and Egypt in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
As it has done in the endless series of Gaza operations before, Israel continues to boast about the B-level commanders it eliminates, the number of airstrikes it carries out and the Hamas infrastructure it destroys. Hamas’s ability to threaten Israel is unaffected, and the overwhelming majority of its fighting force remains comfortably dug in.
In the meantime, Hamas can point at plenty of accomplishments since its unqualified “success” on October 7. Some 200,000 Israelis have left their homes, leaving the borders with both Gaza and Lebanon denuded for the first time in the country’s history. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been forced into shelters in massive barrages on Tel Aviv and its environs. Over 300,000 IDF reservists in the prime of their careers are out of the economy. Diplomatic initiatives with Muslim partners in the region are suspended indefinitely
