Professor Hannu Juusola from the University of Helsinki states that no conclusions can yet be drawn as to whether Israel is about to start a large-scale ground operation.
The Israeli army says it struck 150 underground targets in the northern part of the Gaza Strip last night.
Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Helsinki Hannu Juusola notes that Israel has stepped up its attacks. According to him, however, no conclusions can yet be drawn as to whether Israel is about to start a large-scale ground operation.
In his opinion, it can be either that, or that the airstrikes are supplemented by ground attacks.
– We are not sure of the overall picture, what the next step will be. The only thing that is certain is that there has now been a clear increase in contributions, says Juusola.
According to Juusola, Israel is trying to make the defense capability of the terrorist organization Hamas crumble specifically in northern Gaza.
Civil defense officials in the Hamas-controlled area say that hundreds of buildings were destroyed in last night’s attack. According to them, a total of thousands of homes have been damaged in the northern part of Gaza. So far, no accurate information about the destruction has been received from independent sources, as communication connections to the area have mostly been cut.
Professor: A full-scale ground attack would increase the number of casualties
Professor Hannu Juusola estimates that if Israel launched a full-scale ground attack, the fighting would intensify significantly.
According to him, there would be many more fallen fighters on both sides and the number of civilian casualties would clearly increase.
– In addition, an Israeli ground attack would increase the probability that Hamas’s allies in the region would try to intervene in the conflict even more in one way or another.
According to Juusola, this could, in the worst case, mean starting a second front from the north, where the terrorist organization Hezbollah and its supporters would launch wider attacks from Lebanon or Syria.
A ground attack would also increase the possibility that US targets will be attacked in the region to an increasing extent, Juusola states.
follows the latest events of the Gaza war in this article.