Judah Ari Gross is The Times of Israel's military correspondent.
A soldier from the Israeli military's Home Front Command walks outside a house in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon that had been struck by a Hamas rocket on May 20, 2021. (Edi Israel/FLASH90)
The 11 days of fighting in Gaza that made up what the Israel Defense Forces calls Operation Guardian of the Walls constituted the first major conflict overseen by army chief Aviv Kohavi. The results were at best a mixed bag, despite claims by military and political leaders of unprecedented achievements.
On a strictly military basis, in this round of fighting, Israel emerged the clear victor. The IDF destroyed large amounts of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad weaponry and infrastructure and killed over 200 of their members, including senior leaders. The underground tunnels that represented the primary challenge for Israel before and during the 2014 Gaza war were not only not a threat, but were instead a liability for Hamas. And while the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups can count a number of small achievements to their credit, they failed to carry out any major, paradigm-changing attacks.