An Israeli tank drives toward the Israeli southern border with the Gaza Strip on October 9, 2023 near Sderot, Israel.
Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images
Israeli forces continue to mobilize ahead of what appears to be preparations for a ground invasion of Gaza.
The IDF said it ultimately wants to strip Hamas of its military and governing capabilities there.
War experts say rooting out Hamas will still be a tough fight, given the urban environment.
The Israeli military appears to be on the verge of carrying out a major ground invasion of the Gaza Strip to topple Hamas just days after the militant group launched a series of ruthless attacks against Israel and killed over 1,000 civilians.
Hundreds of thousands of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops have been mobilized near Gaza, alongside heavy armor and other weaponry, as top Israeli officials signal their intent to imminently advance into densely populated coastal enclave. But even though Israel boasts one of the world’s most powerful militaries and is backed by the US, war experts say it will still find itself in a difficult fight given the complexity of waging combat in an urban environment, where a well-armed adversary on defense can hide, set up deadly traps, and employ surprise guerrilla warfare tactics.
“Urban combat is something that no military seeks to find itself doing,” Andrew Borene, a former senior US intelligence officer, told Insider. “The risks to loss of innocent civilian life are grave. The risks to friendly forces are grave.”
Israel officially declared war against Hamas on Sunday, a day after a brutal massacre, and began bombing what it said were militant targets across Gaza, a tiny sliver of land that’s home to roughly 2 million people. The IDF also called up over 300,000 reservists and said at the time that its goal is to strip the Hamas of its military capabilities and ability to govern Gaza, which it has done for over 15 years.
In one of the more pointed statements, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, said on Tuesday that the country is moving into a “full offense” against Gaza, telling troops near the border that the densely populated coastal enclave “will never return to what it was.” Ultimately, it remains unclear when Israeli forces might actually advance, but it is clear preparations are underway.
A view of an ammunition as Israel tightens measures by the army, police and other security forces.
Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
A full-on invasion of Gaza will be a difficult undertaking for Israel’s military and pose a tremendous risk to civilians, who remain trapped in the enclave and are searching for safety after Israel announced a complete blockade of the strip, cutting off food, water, and electricity. The ongoing airstrikes — which Palestinian authorities say have killed hundreds of people so far — are likely paving the way for ground forces to eventually move in as part of a multi-domain operation, which involves a huge amount of sophisticated planning to execute. One such aspect of this effort is gathering intelligence before forces potentially move in.
“Undoubtedly, the Israeli defense military planners and decision-makers are trying to get as granular of a view as possible, particularly in an urban environment,” said Borene, who served as a special security officer in the US Marine Corps during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The idea is to collect as much information as possible on the battle space — from whatever sources necessary — and send it down to individual soldiers at the tactical level who may find themselves battling a force fighting irregularly within Gaza.
A major challenge for the Israelis in this space, Borene added, is that because Gaza is an urban environment, “it can be difficult to get imagery inside of buildings, in covered areas. But they’re going to want to protect innocent civilian lives and protect the lives of their own troops.”
The intelligence that Israel is able to collect before any invasion would come into play as ground troops moved in. At that point, after the potential assault begins, every individual soldier and vehicle becomes an intelligence sensor with the ability to communicate intelligence in both directions.
“Taking that granular tactical operator” and making sure “their observations feed back into a collective picture accurately so that the maneuver commanders can do things like prevent unnecessary loss of civilian life and get a better, more accurate picture of where hazards may exist for sabotage or for ambush” is crucial, Borene said.
Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on the Gaza Strip, on October 10, 2023.
Photo by Momen Faiz/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Inside any potential battlespace, Israel has significantly more firepower than the Iran-backed Hamas, but the latter still poses a threat. It’s unclear how much capability the militant group lost during its initial attacks — as many as 1,500 Palestinian militants have reportedly been killed by the IDF since Saturday — but it’s also unclear how many more may await Israeli forces in Gaza. The Times of Israel reported in 2021 that Hamas may have up to 30,000 men, thousands of rockets, and hundreds of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles in its arsenal.
And given the attack Hamas launched against Israel, it is likely anticipating retaliation and further fighting.
“Hamas has been preparing for attacking Israel and also defending Gaza for decades,” John Spencer, a former US Army infantry soldier who served two combat deployments to Iraq, told Insider. “So you can believe that they’ve stockpiled a lot of weapons — not just rockets for attacking into Israel, but for attacking a possible ground invasion.”
Spencer, now the chair of urban warfare studies at West Point’s Modern War Institute, said the ability of Hamas to launch rockets will be an important characteristic of this war, as it will likely continue to lob the munitions at Israeli cities and also toward the approaching IDF soldiers. Beyond the rockets, Hamas can also use drones, roadside bombs, and its elaborate network of tunnels — which the IDF previously described as a “vast underground city with dozens of access points located throughout Gaza” — to launch surprise attacks.
“When you enter a contested urban area, you basically have to enter in with your face and wait until you get punched in the face before you know where to engage,” Spencer said. “The enemy gets first shot in an urban defense. But usually that means … now the enemy has identified itself.”
Spencer said whoever is defending an urban terrain tends to start with the advantage because buildings offer pre-made military fortifications. But, he added, there’s also no other military built with the purpose of engaging in contested urban areas like the IDF. Another disadvantage for Hamas is that it likely hasn’t had time to construct military-grade obstacles like anti-tank ditches to prevent the forward movement of Israeli armor.
Israeli forces mobilizing.
Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Complicating an Israeli ground invasion, however, is the fact that Hamas is suspected of having between 100 and 150 hostages who were abducted during the attacks on Saturday and may be kept underground. On one hand, Spencer said, quickly carrying out a ground invasion risks adding hostages to the casualty count, but on the other hand, waiting longer means there’s a diminishing chance that they survive in the first place.
President Joe Biden confirmed on Tuesday that there are American citizens who are being held by Hamas — at least 14 were killed over the weekend by the militants — and said he is sending intelligence experts from the US government to consult with and help advise Israel with its hostage recovery efforts.
“Not all warfare is the same, but a large-scale attack of a defended urban area, it is the hardest military operation you can ever ask any military — to include the world’s best — to do, because of these complexities that are beyond just the military tactical stuff of the concrete buildings, the ambushes, the aerial attacks,” Spencer said.
“There’s no other place on the planet where you have these other factors that determine military success or failure, ” he said. “The factors of dense non-combatant population, the cost of the military operation on the population — the infrastructure, the buildings — and then, you’re not going to fight any fight in an urban area without a global eye on every strike, every action. “