Israel, under global pressure to end the Gaza war, is escalating, launching a ground operation at Gaza City in the hope of crushing Hamas’s remaining leaders there or forcing them to surrender and release the hostages.     

Three Israel Defense Force divisions entered Hamas’s final redoubt at Gaza City on Tuesday in an attempt to eliminate remnants of its military capabilities. The operation was launched after days in which the army warned civilians to leave the city for a safe zone in the south of the Strip.

Known as “Gideon Chariots 2,” the operation has been launched as Israel is under tremendous pressure to end the war. A Doha summit Monday ended with no agreed upon statement, but contained calls for severing ties with Jerusalem. The European Union commission is planning to partially end economic agreements with Israel, and next week many Western countries are expected to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nevertheless urged foreign investors to “get on board now, because we’re about to take off into the technologies of the future.” He spoke Tuesday at a hastily arranged press conference following Tel Aviv stock market selloffs resulting from his prediction to officials of the finance ministry on Monday that global isolation will force Israel to become increasingly self-reliant. Israel will be a “super Sparta,” he said.   

While President Trump is backing Israel’s efforts to end Hamas’s chokehold on Gaza, Washington is also urging a quick resolution of the war. Can it end quickly, though? “Well, that depends,” a former commander of the IDF research unit, Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser, tells the Sun.

Taking Gaza City “could end in three weeks, followed by mop-up operations,” Mr. Kuperwasser, who now heads the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, says. “Yet, the IDF’s current methods entail deep sterilizations of each captured piece of land. That could significantly extend the operation, so it could last several months.”

Then again, he says, the war “will be shortened if Hamas decides it had enough, and accepts Trump’s proposal.”

Negotiations could force Hamas to concede, “‘We’re going to demilitarize, we’re no longer going to pose a threat, we’re going to disband, we’re going to release every single hostage,’” Secretary Marco Rubio told reporters Tuesday as he left Israel for Qatar, where he hoped to reignited the diplomacy efforts. “We don’t have months anymore, and we probably have days, and maybe a few weeks.”

At Doha, the secretary met Emir Tamim bin Hamad al Thani and commended his mediation efforts. “Qatar could play a very important role in that, as they’ve tried to do in the past,” he said. 

“What destroyed the negotiations for the hostages was the European nations going and having this push for a unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state,” the American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, told a Jerusalem Post conference Tuesday. 

Officials in Mr. Netnayahu’s cabinet are saying that Tuesday’s ground invasion in Gaza could weaken Hamas’s resolve and force it to release the hostages and disarm. Their political opponents cite reports that the IDF chief of staff, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, said in recent closed-door consultations that entering Gaza City could mean troop casualties and the death of hostages, and lead to added global isolation.

The cabinet reportedly dismissed the IDF warnings and authorized the new operation, which General Zamir now leads. 

For days the IDF has flattened high-rise residential buildings at Gaza City, saying they were used to monitor troop movements. “Hamas has established at Gaza City the most extensive human shield structure in history,” the IDF spokesman, Brigadier General Effie Defrin, told reporters Tuesday. “It is blocking civilians from evacuating the war zone, using harsh violence.”

According to General Defrin, 350,000 of the city’s million residents have already left. With the IDF’s assault intensifying, residents are attempting to leave, creating traffic jams. Hamas, meanwhile, has published video clips of Israeli hostages being paraded around town to indicate they would be killed by IDF bombs. 

“I have just read a news report that Hamas has moved the hostages above ground to use them as human shields against Israel’s ground offensive,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This is a human atrocity, the likes of which few people have ever seen before. Don’t let this happen or, all bets are off. Release all hostages now!”

Mr. Trump is yet to show signs that he intends to lean on Israel to let up on its war on Hamas. Many in Israel and at Washington, though, predict that his patience could run out if casualties amass on both ends of the war. “The president wants to see it end,” Mr. Rubio said Tuesday. “He wants to see it end quickly.”