TEL AVIV—Deadly health epidemics deployed as a weapon against Palestinians. Nuclear bombs dropped on Gaza. These are just two of the latest proposals being put forward by influential figures inside and outside the Israeli government as ways to accelerate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war.
Nukes can have a yield anywhere from 10 tons TNT up to… well, turns out there is no upper limit, but this one would be of the smallest ones possible:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W54
At that point it’s comparable to the largest non-nuclear bombs (10-40 tons TNT), but the point is, one could pick a yield that could be small enough to impact only the intended area. Furthermore… an underground explosion could be even more contained, and still demolish a sizeable chunk of anything built both above and under ground.
As for environment, the US nuked themselves over a thousand times, mostly on the Nevada desert. People in the 1950s used to go to Las Vegas to watch the explosions, nowadays they still go for the casinos, and that’s after many of the old dirtier bombs got exploded above ground.
So maybe Gaza itself would turn into a non-colonizable zone for a while, but as far as helping with the genocide, destroying infrastructure, and claiming the natural gas reserves under Gaza’s economic influence area of the sea… it could work.
I’m afraid a key part of Israel’s population is already fine with the idea of genocide, getting martyrs would be mostly to increase further that approval and save face in front of the international community.