Will Israel win the battle but lose the war against Hamas?

The scene is one familiar from many conflicts. 

- Jason Burke

Soldiers line up to get food from a canteen, weapons slung haphazardly over their shoulders, boots muddy, shirts undone. An armoured personnel carrier clanks by, the roar of its engine temporarily drowning out the boom of artillery. Officers shout orders. Tired men jump down from dusty vehicles and swear.

Even during the recent ceasefire, the rear areas of the massive Israeli military offensive in Gaza were busy.

So too was Hamas, which used the seven-day pause in hostilities to reorganise its battered forces.

At 6.45 am last Friday, 15 minutes before the truce was due to expire,

Hamas fired a barrage of rockets into southern Israel. All day, phone apps that warn Israelis of incoming missiles buzzed and beeped. In the late afternoon, drivers on the northern outskirts of Tel Aviv pulled over, left their cars, and lay down in the dirt of the roadside the recommended routine when incoming rockets are signalled.

What the Israeli military had been preparing rapidly became clear. At 7.04 am exactly, the first airstrikes hit targets in Khan Younis in the southern part of Gaza. An hour or so later, a doctor in the European hospital in the city described his fears for the coming hours.

"First, they'll go to emergency and then they'll come to me," said  Paul Ley, an orthopaedic surgeon with the International Committee of the Red Cross. When contacted again in early evening, Ley had performed eight amputations, including the double amputation of legs from a two-year-old child, whose entire family had been wiped out earlier in the day, except for one badly injured brother.