With the deployment of Israeli ground forces imminent in the Gaza Strip, the base of the Palestinian armed group Hamas, there are speculations that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will attempt a tactic of precision-attacking Hamas fighters to minimize civilian casualties. Israel is expected to reflect U.S. President Joe Biden’s guidelines that “Hamas and Palestine must be responded to separately” in its ground warfare operations in some way. However, Hamas is expected to wage a guerrilla war using the ‘hostage shield’ strategy by taking advantage of the geographical characteristics of the Gaza Strip, which has the highest population density in the world, raising questions about whether precision strike tactics will work effectively.
American military experts believe that in the event of a battle in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military will minimize artillery fire using advanced armored weapons such as tanks and armored vehicles and will engage in urban warfare focusing on infantry. This is because civilian casualties are inevitable in the method of destroying a specific building or area with large-scale artillery fire and then deploying infantry.
According to the U.S. diplomatic magazine Foreign Policy, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Affairs Mick Mulroy said, “Israeli forces must use infantry to neutralize Hamas’ extensive network of tunnels that span multiple buildings and underground facilities in the Gaza Strip.” He said, “We will have to fight soldier-to-soldier and block-to-block.” This means that the battle will proceed in a way that the infantry will continue to engage in small-scale battles, taking over buildings and streets one by one.
Former Assistant Secretary Malloy also said, “Israel’s special operations forces may focus on eliminating Hamas leadership through precision attacks.” If all Hamas troops are set as attack targets at once, the front line will become too wide and the attack target may be compressed to the leadership in the early stages of a ground battle. There is also the prospect that Israel will carry out a parallel operation to narrow the radius of Hamas’ activities. Former Deputy Assistant Secretary Malloy predicted, “Israel may seek to limit the ability of Hamas fighters to move by attacking and seizing the eastern part of the Gaza Strip first.”
The reason the IDF is considering this tactic is because there are several obstacles to attacking the Gaza Strip. The extremely high population density makes it difficult to distinguish between civilians and combatants, and the tunnels that Hamas has dug underground, as dense as a spider’s web, are also factors that make attacks difficult. The British Financial Times (FP) analyzed, “Hamas is likely to use the tactic of using women and children as human shields and hiding among them, just as the Islamic State (IS) did in Iraq and Syria.” Hamas appears to be trying to stimulate international criticism of Israel as much as possible through a strategy of highlighting the civilian casualties caused by ground warfare as much as possible.
There is a lot of skepticism about whether Israel’s precision attack will be successful. First of all, it is difficult to determine the location of Hamas. Retired General Frank McKenzie, who served as commander of the U.S. Central Command until last year, said, “It will be difficult for the Israeli military to identify where Hamas is attacking.”
The Israeli think tank Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) reported that when the Israeli military deployed ground troops to the Gaza Strip in 2014, Hamas used tunnels in various ways to transport members and weapons, as well as detonating explosives against Israeli troops and kidnapping soldiers. evaluated as having done so.
There is a high possibility that Israeli infantrymen will fall into a trap set by Hamas during the infiltration or withdrawal process. FP explained, “Israeli forces are likely to face a ‘kill zone’ containing landmines (planted by Hamas), drones, etc.” Even in the process of removing troops who fought the ground battle to a safe zone, they may be attacked by remaining Hamas members. Another problem is that a large number of civilians still remain in the combat zone. The Israeli military notified approximately 1.1 million residents of the northern part of the Gaza Strip, where ground attacks would be concentrated, to evacuate for three consecutive days, but escape routes were extremely congested and many residents gave up fleeing.
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.