Can Israel defeat Hamas in its own tunnels?

And the answer is: NO! 

Actually, I've heard that the Israeli forces are pretty weak at this point, which can be born out that most of what is coming out of that area is "hasbara" and not anything of real substance. We are hearing that Israeli raids are directly hitting civilians from the Palestinian side.

 Which is a war crime.

 

The IDF is a "risk adverse" force and tends to retreat when it is being beaten. It will take a certain level of casualties and then run.

They ain't the French Foreign Legion which is best exmplified by the Battle of Camarón, which occurred on 30 April 1863:

A small infantry patrol, led by Captain Jean Danjou and Lieutenants Clément Maudet and Jean Vilain, numbering just 65 men was attacked and besieged by a force that may have eventually reached 3,000 Mexican infantry and cavalry, and was forced to make a defensive stand at the nearby Hacienda Camarón, in Camarón de Tejeda, Veracruz, Mexico.

The conduct of the Legion, who overwhelmingly outnumbered, refused to surrender, killing and injuring hundreds of enemy troops before finally succumbing, led to a certain mystique, and the battle of Camarón became synonymous with bravery and a fight-to-the-death attitude.

 No, the Israeli Military embodies the spirit of Masada, which is where the Jews killed themselves rather than die in battle.

Going into Gaza is going to be the Battle of Stalingrad on steroids. The IDF are fools for thinking they will get too far into Gaza before the shit hits the fan. And the risk adverse IDF won't commit to what is necessary to actually do this.

Especially the body count on their side.

So, they would rather commit the war crime of targeting civilians, which is another blunder since what made the terrain in Stalingrad so difficult was that it was bombed out. That gave the Russian defenders lots of great positions to defend from.

Let's toss in Hamas's tunnels for good measure, which an IDF soldier described as fighting ghosts. Hamas's tunnels make it easy to move from position to position. The IDF will be ambushed on a regular basis by the highly mobile defenders.

And fighting in built up areas (FIBUA) is difficult under normal conditions. The Palestinian won't be the ones being slaughtered if they go into Gaza: it will be the IDF.

Toss in that the Hamas fighters have nothing to lose. They know they are going to die and are willing to take as many IDF with them as they can. That's a very formidable foe.

The real problem with Israel is that it has set itself up for defeat the moment Herzl conceived the Zionist movement and has been living on borrowed time since then.

Maybe Patagonia or Uganda were the better choices for a Jewish state.