Israel is beginning to cross the Rubicon in the Gaza Strip

Israel began crossing the Rubicon in the Gaza Strip late Friday evening, beginning with a series of intense aerial and field artillery bombardments. They were the largest since the 22-day war against Hamas began on Oct. 7. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) knocked out internet and phone service, and began exchanging heavy counterbattery fires with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihadists (PIJ) firing rockets into central Israel.

Limited in scope for now, IDF ground incursions into northern Gaza appear focused primarily on intelligence gathering and condition setting – striking ground targets, command and control, high-value militant commanders – and gauging where and how Hamas reacts. It is also likely intended to keep Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s military commander, and his lieutenants off balance and guessing.

The IDF’s Friday “Night of Rage,” as the Drudge Report captioned it Saturday morning, was massive. The IDF reported “its warplanes hit 150 underground targets overnight [in Gaza] and killed the head of Hamas’ aerial operations.” Tunnels, bunkers and munition depots were reportedly targeted.

Washington, purportedly, is urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF to delay any wide-scale ground incursion into Gaza. Pentagon officials are said to be pushing Israel instead “to opt for a more ‘surgical’ operation using aircraft and special operations forces carrying out precise, targeted raids on high-value Hamas targets and infrastructure.”

Saturday afternoon, however, Netanyahu essentially confirmed that a full-scale ground invasion is all but inevitable. Notably, he was joined by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galland and opposition leader Benny Gantz in a show of unity. Echoing Winston Churchill, Netanyahu declared, “We will fight on the land, air and from the sea. We will fight on the ground and under the ground.”

On Friday, the IDF offered a glimpse of the underground fight that is to come, and how Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields. IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari claimed that “Hamas has several underground complexes under Shifa — the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip — that are used by the terror group’s leaders to direct attacks against Israel.” Simulated graphics depict a Hamas command center under the 1,500-bed hospital that employs 4,000 people.

Israel is already widely using bunker buster bombs to destroy Hamas’s tunnel systems. However, the labyrinth of concrete tunnels are vast in number, and not all are likely to be destroyed from the air. The tunnels are used throughout the strip to smuggle weapons, fuel and ammunition, as well as for storage facilities and movement of Hamas militants underground.

Netanyahu for now is still caging his language. During his Saturday press conference, he noted that his war cabinet “unanimously approved the widening of the ground invasion.” Emphasis being on the word “widening.” He did not characterize its scale, and, as of yet, Israel’s ground incursions do not appear to be wide scale.

For President Joe Biden and his administration, however, it may not matter. Their Rubicon moment arguably has already come as well — and loudly, so in the early days of the war Biden was canceled in much of the Arab world in the aftermath of the Al-Ahli Arab hospital bombing that initially was globally misattributed to an Israeli airstrike. U.S. intelligence later confirmed PIJ terrorists had fired the rocket then experienced engine failure causing parts of it to fall on the parking lot.

Biden’s entire Mideast foreign policy is now in a complete shamble. Diplomatic normalization talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia are essentially scuttled. Prospects for a lasting peace and a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians are as distant as ever. And the Arab world, at least for a while, is coalescing – Shias and Sunnis alike – in angry opposition to Israel and in a show of support for Hamas.

U.S. and Israeli embassies across the Mideast are now under siege. Anti-American sentiment is growing — and an old nemesis dating back to the Iraq War, Iraqi Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, is demanding the shuttering of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Turkish President Recep Erdoğan is fanning anti-Israel and by extension anti-American flames across Islamdom. During his address last Wednesday to Parliament in Ankara, he declared, “Hamas is not a terror organization. It is an organization of liberation, of mujahedeen, who fight to protect their land and citizens.” At a pro-Palestinian rally on Saturday, Erdoğan accused Israel of being a “war criminal.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose fingerprints, we have argued in these pages, are all over Oct. 7, is sensing a new opening in his war against the West, and on Thursday “Russian Foreign Ministry officials met with Hamas leaders Bassem Naeem and Mousa Abu Marzouk in Moscow.” Israel denounced the meeting.

Globally, the tide is turning as well. On Friday, the United Nations General Assembly voted 120 to 14 to adopt a resolution calling for a humanitarian truce. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, seething ahead of the vote, declared any nation opposing the resolution “means approving this senseless war, this senseless killing.”

The U.S. and Israel voted no.

To his credit, Biden understands that Hamas, allegorically speaking, is his close fight. But it is essential that the president and his administration now accept that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are America’s strategic fight in the Middle East.

The Biden administration’s continued unwillingness to directly confront Iran – the mullahs and the IRGC – keeps sending the wrong message. Iran’s hardline Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, in effect, militarily threatened the U.S. by saying that America will “not be spared from this fire.”

It is time for the White House to take Amirabdollahian at his word. Biden needs to make it clear to Iran that any future attacks on American forces – the Pentagon estimates that at least 20 attacks have taken place over the last two weeks – will be met with devastating consequences, and that the U.S. will consider any attack by Iranian supported proxies as an attack by Iran itself.

We are already at the point of no return. Israel winning the war against Hamas, and by extension against Iran, may offer the best pathway to winning and securing lasting regional peace — and restoring Washington’s standing in the Middle East.

Netanyahu views this war as Israel’s “second War of Independence.” It can and should also be the Middle East’s own war of independence from extremism. Biden can help make that happen by ensuring that Hamas is destroyed, Iran marginalized and a glidepath set in motion leading to a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Mark Toth is an economist, entrepreneur, and former board member of the World Trade Center, St. Louis. Jonathan Sweet, a retired Army Colonel and 30-year military intelligence officer, led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014.