It was reported this weekend that the Israeli Defense Forces plan to expand the ground operation in Gaza in order to severely weaken terrorist organization Hamas.

Hamas is weaker now than it has been in years, senior IDF officials said Sunday. They believe that as many as 300 Hamas fighters have been killed during the offensive. Entire battalions have been taken out, the IDF says. Not only have many Hamas fighters been killed or captured, many others have deserted. In fact, so many fighters have deserted, the Israeli government claims, that top Hamas figures are forced to come out of their bunkers and fight against IDF forces themselves. This has led to at least one Hamas leader in Gaza City; Izzadin Kassam, commander of Hamas’ rocket division in Gaza city was killed Saturday.

The IDF now plans to escalate the offensive, believing it may be able to deliver Hamas a death blow before any cease fire is imposed on Israel. Since Hamas seems to have been so severely weakened, Jerusalem hopes, it may be that the organization can be overthrown in Gaza altogether and replaced by Fatah.

This does mean that casualties are likely to increase in the coming days and that Gazans will have to prepare for more (aggressive) fighting. The international community, which has called on both sides to accept an immediate cease fire for two weeks now, can continue doing so, but will be ignored by the IDF until Israel’s civilian leaders decide that the objectives of the operation have been reached or that the IDF will not accomplish what it hoped to accomplish (in a reasonably amount of time).

It is interesting, by the way, that Hamas has become less vocal recently, or at least less convincing. The IDF seems to have learned from the 2006 war with Hezbollah. Hamas may be great at (producing) propaganda, but fighting real wars is not the strong suit of the Palestinian terrorist organization.

Meanwhile, all Gazans and everyone else can hope is that civilian casualties will be limited. Keeping an eye on Israel’s actions, even though the war in itself is justified, is incredibly important in this regard; that you have the right to fight a war in a specific situation does not mean you have the right to fight it whatever way you want. Civilians should be respected, and civilian casualties should, as much as possible, be prevented.

The humanitarian crisis is getting worse, Dutch news networks report, for instance. If this is true, it should be a major reason of concern; for Israel and every other country in the world. Every step has to be taken to help Gazans as much as possible; the international Red Cross should have full access to Gaza and international aide should be brought in and distributed to Palestinian civilians. Winning the war goes much further than merely beating Hamas militarily; Israel and the West also have to reach out to Palestinians, help them get through this mess and help them improve their neighborhoods, cities and towns once the war has come to an end.