IDF ground forces, supported by the IAF, continue operating in Gaza. Four mortar launchers, an explosive device, and other equipment were uncovered on the outskirts of Gaza City. Courtesy IDF.

The Hamas leadership understands that it cannot defeat the IDF in battle. But it’s convinced that Israel can be beaten in the media.

EXCLUSIVE TO ARMCHAIR GENERAL –
During the War with Mexico, American soldiers fighting in the streets of Monterrey faced streets swept by cannon and snipers in masonry buildings. Instead of charging down the boulevards or rushing into ambushes, the U.S. regulars and volunteers used pick-axes, hammers, bayonets and black powder to open holes through interior walls, creating attack corridors inside blocks of buildings.

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That’s what Israeli troops are doing in Gaza today. Their equipment’s more sophisticated, but the concept and the challenges of urban warfare haven’t really changed very much—this is still the toughest fighting going, three-dimensional warfare in a thickly populated battlespace, slow, grinding and nerve-wracking.

After a superb initial air effort exploiting a carefully developed target bank, Israeli ground forces moved into the Gaza Strip on multiple axes, initially concentrating on the northern sector to isolate Gaza City, the Jubalya Refugee Camp (actually a permanent settlement) and various satellite towns. Israeli forces moved through the less-developed spaces, avoiding the densest population centers but cutting the terrorist lines of communication and seizing known rocket-launching sites. A subsequent supporting effort targeted Khan Younis is southern Gaza.

Israel employed the classic technique of “slicing up the pie,” creating isolated sub-areas of operation that could be addressed successively, while limiting the ability of Hamas terrorists to offer each other mutual support. Locally, cordon-and-search tactics continued the effort to split Hamas into isolated pockets of resistance.

Despite sound planning and professional execution, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ground assault has gone slowly, for multiple reasons. First, Israel is wary of casualties, both among its own troops and among Palestinian civilians. Second, terrorists work together and teach each other. Hezbollah and its Iranian backers taught Hamas the value of deep bunkers positioned under hospitals and schools, the utility of mosques and civilian homes as weapons caches, and, above all, the value of booby traps and improvised explosive devices (IEDs)—the latter lessons taken from Iraq and Afghanistan. Israeli targeteers must carefully weigh the value of each target against the inevitable propaganda outcry, should it be struck.

The IDF has carefully set the stage for a full-scale assault into Gaza’s “heart of darkness,” should Israel’s government leaders order one, but, as of this writing, the final phase of the operation remains on hold. If the IDF delivers the coup de grace against Hamas, casualties in all categories will be grim. For now, the IDF continues to gnaw into the terrorists’ urban citadels as it further develops intelligence from multiple sources and refines its plans and operations orders.

Overall, good intelligence—vastly improved since the Lebanon fighting in 2006—has been a crucial element in the IDF’s success. Working with agents on the ground, as well as technical means, the Israelis pinpointed hundreds of targets, from terrorist training sites to smuggling bunkers. Now, though, the hardest targets remain, such as a Hamas command bunker reportedly located under the Gaza Strip’s primary hospital. The only “acceptable” way to deal with that target would be to go in with engineer commandos and special operators—backed by armored firepower.

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