After the brutal incursion by Hamas militants into Israel on 7 October last year, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has drastically scaled up its military response. The scale of Hamas’ surprise attack, the number of people killed and abducted was unprecedented and in just a few hours laid bare to Israelis how vulnerable their country could be. The Israeli military response was immediate and the government outlined a range of main objectives; the most immediate of these was to eliminate Hamas in Gaza entirely, the militant group Israel views as a threat to its very exi…