- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned his country that a “long and difficult war” lies ahead.
- The IDF is supplementing the heavy air strikes on the besieged area with a so-called ground attack, the details of which are kept top secret.
- Prolonged urban fighting will pose a number of deadly challenges for the IDF – and likely some key advantages for Hamas, military analysts say.
In this handout image released on November 1, 2023, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) armored vehicles are seen during their ground operations in a location indicated as Gaza, as the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas continues.
Israel Defense Forces | Portal
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned his country that a “long and difficult war” lies ahead.
After launching the largest military troop mobilization in its history, the Israeli armed forces have now entered the “second phase” of their war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The IDF is supplementing the heavy air strikes on the besieged area with a so-called ground attack, the details of which are kept top secret.
The airstrikes began in response to the October 7 attack on southern Israel by the Palestinian militant organization Hamas – classified as a terrorist group by the US and EU – in which more than 1,300 people were killed and more than 240 taken hostage. And the IDF’s long-held retaliatory strategy is in full force: More than 8,500 people have been killed in Gaza in just over three weeks, according to Hamas-run health officials at the Ministry of Health there.
In the first six days of the war alone, the Israeli military said it dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza – a blockaded enclave about the size of the city of Philadelphia. Ground troops are now advancing into the area.
Civilians try to reach survivors and bodies amid the destruction caused by Israeli attacks on the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on November 2, 2023.
Ashraf Amra | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
“Our soldiers have been operating in Gaza City in recent days and have surrounded the city from several directions, deepening the operation,” IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said on Thursday. “Our forces are stationed in very important areas of Gaza City.”
A ground offensive is necessary to achieve Israel’s goal of eliminating Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, the IDF said. But a prolonged invasion – should it occur – will be bloody and costly not only for the people living in Gaza but also for the Israeli military, military veterans and analysts say.
Counterinsurgency in cities, as the U.S. military learned in Iraq, poses deadly challenges for troops that cannot be deployed in an airstrike.
“In urban combat there are higher casualties. That’s just a historical fact,” Jim Webb, a former U.S. Marine infantryman who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, told CNBC.
“Iraq has shown what a great advantage the defender, especially an asymmetrical one, has in urban combat. There, lightly armed insurgents were able to use the urban landscape to first slow down and then tie down what had been the largest maneuver force in world history for years.”
In the case of Gaza, that defender is Hamas – and it will have almost every advantage in the ground fight, Webb said.
“Cities naturally channel the attacker into predictable attack paths. “It also means that these battles take place at close range, making the use of supporting weapons such as tanks, artillery or air power extremely difficult, even if there are no civilians in the area,” Webb said.
“Gaza is full of civilians and Hamas will be able to intervene in the situation,” he added. “I do not envy the IDF the task it may have to take on.”
Palestinian members of the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, attend a gathering in Gaza City on January 31, 2016, to remember their fellow fighters who died after a tunnel collapsed in the Gaza Strip.
Mahmoud Hams | Afp | Getty Images
Israeli soldiers will face unfamiliar streets and alleys, mountains of demolished buildings and Hamas’ extensive network of tunnels, which the IDF euphemistically calls the “Gaza Metro.” Hundreds of meters underground, the tunnels house weapons stockpiles, power generators, command and control centers that cannot be seen from above – and probably many of the hostages that Hamas kidnapped from Israel on October 7th.
“We know they are waiting for us,” an Israeli soldier, who did not want to be identified because of his role in Israel’s security service, told CNBC. “And as bad as Gaza is above ground, it is even worse underground.”
No one knows how long the militants will hold out, said Hussein Ibish, a senior researcher at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. But he suspects that Hamas’s goal is actually to lure Israel into a prolonged ground invasion.
“I think their plan is to inflict as much cost as possible on Israel during its ground assault and to ensure that parts of the organization survive so that it can take off, provided that Israel maintains a long-term ground presence in Gaza’s urban centers.” Uprising,” Ibish said.
This insurgency would likely start slowly because the organization is so decimated, he said, but there remains a high risk that it could gain momentum over time. “Hamas hopes to eventually begin attacking Israeli soldiers individually and in small groups,” he said, “killing and capturing them and horribly bleeding Israel dry.”
The IDF did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.
“As far as Israel’s stated strategic games go, I think it’s going to be really difficult,” said Dave Des Roches, a professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, DC
“It just won’t be the war of 1967,” he said, referring to Israel’s Six-Day War in 1967, in which it quickly defeated three neighboring Arab armies and gained four times as much territory as it originally did. “No,” said Des Roches, “it will take a long time and it will be bloody.”
An IDF captain, who spoke to CNBC anonymously because of restrictions on communicating with the press, said Israeli troops were fully aware of the risks and were prepared to take them.
“We are prepared to cause serious harm if we intervene despite the possible military casualties. Absolutely,” he said. “We trained exactly for this situation.”
Des Roches believes that destroying Hamas’s military capabilities will require the IDF to control the site, occupying it virtually piece by piece, and then systematically mapping and destroying what the militants themselves describe as more than 300 miles of tunnels running into were built in the last 30 years.
But conflict analysts warn that eliminating Hamas as a military power could be just the beginning of the challenges facing Israel. What about the roughly 2.3 million remaining Palestinians still trapped in the devastated Gaza Strip in what the United Nations has described as a catastrophic humanitarian crisis?
“Once you destroy Gaza, once you destroy Hamas – assuming you can do that – you will have more than two million destitute people,” Des Roches said. “And if you don’t give them a better lifestyle, you’re just going to have this problem again in five or 10 years.”