An army, that of Israel. A guerrilla, Hamas. A scene, Gaza. All that is missing is the final order for the land invasion. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assures it will take place, but does not say when, how or to what extent. Then a new phase of the war will begin in which the urban areas of the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated areas in the world (5,500 people per square kilometer), will be decisive. Israel has made it clear that it does not want to remain in a hornet’s nest, but rather wants to destroy the political and weapons structure of Hamas and then disappear. According to the specialists surveyed, achieving this in a short time and with a lower cost of living is beyond all predictions. Battles such as Fallujah and Mosul in Iraq or, more recently, Mariupol and Kramatorsk in the Ukraine are remembered.
“Hamas is aware that it cannot defeat the Israeli army despite its “main weapon,” the underground network of tunnels and captured hostages, says John Spencer, a leading urban warfare expert and Hamas military officer for 25 years. Infantry in the US Army. During a telephone interview, he predicted a battle lasting weeks and probably months that will virtually destroy Gaza City and result in thousands of deaths. It is not battalions or brigades that need to be deployed on site, but rather several divisions (more than 10,000 soldiers each), estimates Kobi Michael, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of National Security (INSS), an Israeli think tank. “It will be a very expensive operation, but we have no choice but to go to the end,” because “we will not return to reality before October 7,” he adds, convinced that Israel will comply Hamas will put an end to it, whatever the price. After the ax blow she gave that day.
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According to its spokesman Nebal Farsakh, the Palestinian Red Crescent has no specific protocol in Gaza in the event of a military ground invasion. “As a humanitarian organization, we have many contingency plans and are considering different scenarios that we update every day,” but “what is happening in Gaza right now is beyond all of us, we have no response capacity, there is no plan to face this destruction,” this escalation and the blockade. “The situation overwhelms us and breaks our hearts,” he explains on the phone.
Two other factors, in addition to the underground tunnels, make this military operation different from previous ones in the Palestinian enclave. On the one hand, the presence of more than 200 hostages captured by Hamas on Israeli territory, unprecedented in the conflict. On the other hand, the deaths of hundreds of militiamen, many of them the most highly trained, during the surprise attack that triggered the current conflict and in which around 1,400 Israelis died.
Israel’s military power far exceeds that of Hamas, with 170,000 active members and a record 300,000 reservists out of 465,000 mobilized for the occasion. The army also has very good technology, around 2,200 tanks – including the powerful Merkava IV – and a classic ally, the Gaza collaborators on the ground. The bombings in the Gaza Strip since October 7 have so far claimed more than 7,300 Palestinian lives. Despite everything, to support the invasion, the Pentagon has sent a team of military advisers to Israel, headed by a three-star general with experience in urban battles such as those in Mosul or Fallujah, Iraq, as revealed this Wednesday from the Financial Times newspaper.
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Faced with this arsenal of the Israeli army, the militia has been able to prepare and equip itself with the help of Iran, its livelihood, and has bomb drones, more advanced missiles and, let us not forget, “people willing to die.” Spencer details. . “They are ready to sacrifice themselves and fight to the end,” comments Kobi Michael in a telephone conversation from Cyprus, where he is caught up in Israel’s air traffic problems caused by the war. Therefore, the Israeli army has no choice but to “saturate” Gaza with soldiers.
Spencer estimates that Hamas now numbers up to 30,000 men, compared to 5,000 in previous conflicts. Despite all the losses suffered, it is “a big unknown” what could happen. It is also advantageous for the defending side to wait for the enemy on its own territory, which it knows well and where it moves like a fish in water. In this sense, the fact that they can hold the kidnapped people in the tunnel system will, in principle, prevent the Israelis from destroying the underground galleries with blood and fire.
The American analyst understands that this network, popularly known as the “subway”, is, in addition to the time gained, the “main weapon” of the Islamist militias, which enables them to develop “guerrilla tactics”. According to Spencer, Hamas has had many years to prepare for this moment, as Israeli troops “did not penetrate deeper into urban areas” in previous invasions such as those in 2008 and 2014. Now “it’s a different fight, they have to clear the city. Come in, destroy the tunnels, the rockets, the Hamas military leaders and their fighters.”
The defense of Hamas
But this “hidden” fortress forces “a completely different fight because Hamas can escape many bombings and ‘aerial reconnaissance,'” said this veteran Iraq war analyst. The militants have had “a lot of time” to prepare for the network of tunnels and booby-trapped explosives, agrees Yaakov Katz, defense analyst and former military correspondent for the Jerusalem Post newspaper, but warns of the “cynical operation” they are likely to undertake will view civilians as “human shields.”
A militant from Hamas’s armed wing at the entrance to a tunnel in the Gaza Strip, last July. SOPA Images (SOPA Images/LightRocket via Gett)
“We have to deal with the fact that the military infrastructure and most of the Hamas terrorists, their leaders, their decision-making ability and their weapons are underground,” claims Michael, “and I assume the hostages too.” “We “We don’t just have to reach the last grenade launcher, the last Kalashnikov or the last terrorist, what will be crucial is reaching its center of gravity,” the INSS expert continued. In any case, he emphasizes, “we have to be very careful because they will be waiting for us with traps and we have to surprise them,” he warns.
The experts interviewed admit that the challenge of completely destroying the fundamentalist militia is difficult to overcome. “Eradicating Hamas is a major challenge and difficult to define precisely (…) What Israel can do most in practice is to reduce Hamas’s capabilities and kill or capture as many fighters as possible “That means they are not able to repeat what they did on October 7th,” Katz said by email, without ruling out that the organization could re-emerge. as long as members are still alive.
“The fundamental differentiating factor of Gaza’s urban battlefield is the third dimension: underground tunnels, tall buildings and intense drone warfare above,” explains Michael Knights, an analyst at think tank The Washington Institute. “Hamas will take the underground war to the extreme,” he continued in an email exchange. The Knights estimate Gaza could exceed the 9,000 deaths recorded in the 2017 battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul against the Islamic State.
Preparatory raids
Spencer adds that Israel “will need not only its military capabilities,” but also “the [información de] Intelligence information” and “bribes” to the local population in order to buy information and endanger the abducted people as little as possible. Qatar is the linchpin of negotiations promoting the releases, although Hamas has released only four women so far. “We have to assume that not everyone will make it out alive,” admits Michael, who is also a professor at Britain’s University of South Wales. John Spencer recalls, without mentioning him by name, the case of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was kidnapped in Gaza for five years until he was exchanged for a thousand Palestinian prisoners. Hamas is currently demanding the release of 6,000 prisoners from Israeli prisons in exchange for the more than 200 it has.
In addition to clearing the ground through air strikes, Israel carried out several attacks, particularly in the last three days, led by columns of its tanks. It is about testing the terrain through intelligence work to find out the positions of the enemy, be it military or his commanders, or possible places where he could hold hostages, and eliminate possible front-line anti-tank weapons leaders of the fundamentalist militia. The airstrikes would not stop once the ground troops entered, Spencer assured. It will be the turn of more controlled attacks from lower altitudes, thanks to drones, helicopters or planes that can fly lower.
Kobi Michael further assumes that “citizens will be informed that if they do not leave the area, they will be considered Hamas terrorists and will be killed because there will be no difference between Hamas terrorists and innocent civilians.”
“There is not a single safe place in all of Gaza,” said Abdalla Hasanen, a 23-year-old resident of Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip and on the border with Egypt. “I was born here, I have always lived here and I have witnessed many escalations and attacks, more than I can count,” says this young activist from the organization We are not Numbers, to try to represent them a face to this population that often hides behind impersonal figures. “We are not prepared for this ethnic cleansing,” but “even if they arrive here in Rafah, we have no plans to leave Gaza,” he says.
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