mistake IMO. Just bomb the entire city until it is a pile of dust and rock. Start in the north and move slowly south pushing the Terrorists eventually out and across the border.
Then build a new Border wall at the border with Egypt and never let them back in. Then confiscate all the land and sale it to jewish citizens.
Egypt is an Israeli ally and is putting troops along the Gaza border to prevent the hapless Gazan’s trying to flee.
History has shown repeatedly that bombing a city just makes it more difficult to clean out armed defenders
From the reports at the news link, it appears that is essentially what Israel is doing.
But they do not have enough bombs to completely level the area. Nor do they have enough artillery. The IDF is on a limited budget for ammunition and must be economical in targeting.
They did make a quick jump into Gaza at various points and then withdrew to staging areas back in Israel. That was probably a smart thing to do. Rinse, rearm, and repeat. They cannot afford to lose troops in block-to-block fighting.
Let drones and artillery do most of the killing. This is the new way of war. Nobody has good defenses against drones - yet.
Most of the hostages taken a week ago are dead by now. They are no longer a factor in the battles.
The IDF cannot afford to get tied down in Gaza. They are needed on the northern front against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and on a western front against Palestinians in the West Bank areas. They are seriously overextended.
The forced migration of 1 million people into southern Gaza will be catastrophic for all the remaining Palestinians there. Without water, there could easily be 200,000 deaths in the next two weeks. Unfortunately, Hamas has all the guns and will certainly commandeer whatever stocks of food and water may be present in southern Gaza. Their fighters will survive until the IDF hunts them down and kills them all.
IDF will do just that. If civilians are in the way, they will die too. That has always been the true nature of War. We forget that at our own peril.
Life is already Hell for the Palestinians in Gaza. It will be a lot shorter for many of them. The Israelis no longer care about "world opinion" on such matters. What may be less obvious is that the major Arab countries do not care about the Palestinians either. They don't want them in their countries and seem perfectly content to let the Israelis dispose of them as they see fit.
Afterwards, the Arab countries can condemn Israel for "human rights violations" and the "final solution" Israel applies to the Palestinians. Win-Win-Win.
At the core, Hamas are pawns, and the Hamas campaign is suicidal effort, encouraged and exploited by other players who are not even on the maps where we are looking.
The Hamas campaign has succeeded in derailing the planned normalization efforts between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Activation of Hezbollah in Lebanon directly threatens Israel, and also the government of Jordan.
Iran is the major beneficiary from all this turmoil.