Analysis has been raised that the Palestinian armed political faction Hamas is using the ‘asymmetric tactics’ of the Islamic State (IS), a Sunni radical militant group that once dominated areas of Syria and Iraq, to oppose the Israeli military that has entered the ground war in the Gaza Strip.
While the Israeli military, which has completed its siege of Gaza by deploying ground troops for a week, is expected to enter urban warfare soon, attention is being paid to how well Hamas will be able to withstand the overwhelming power difference through asymmetric tactics.
On the 2nd (local time), British daily The Times reported that Hamas is defeating the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), armed with cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology, through drone strikes and tunnel raids.
According to reports, the day before, Hamas released a video of a drone dropping winged grenades on Israeli troops. The image of Israeli soldiers hurriedly fleeing as the grenade exploded was captured in the video. It is believed that the drone in question was modified to be able to load explosives manually.
In addition to drones that drop bombs from the sky, Hamas also possesses suicide drones that directly attack targets. A representative example is the ‘Zouari’ drone. It is named after Mohamed Zuari, a Hamas space engineer who was shot in Tunisia in 2016.
The Juari drone has a loitering function, so it hovers near the target and destroys it at the optimal moment. Hamas also officially acknowledged that on the 7th of last month, when it raided Israel, it attacked the Israeli military command center at Sheba Farm in northern Israel with a bomb-laden Zuari drone.
The drones made by Hamas are similar to those used by IS, which occupied northern Iraq and eastern Syria from 2014 to 2017. At the time, IS modified non-military drones to be able to drop grenades and other explosives. Hamas, who watched this, learned the lesson that military inferiority can be overcome even with seemingly temporary weapons.
In contrast, Israel is devastating the Gaza Strip using highly sophisticated weapons and cutting-edge target tracking systems. The IDF announced that since the Hamas raid on the 7th, it has attacked more than 12,000 targets in the Gaza Strip alone.
It is known that an AI model using deep learning technology was used in the target identification process. This is because a vast amount of information had to be processed in real time. All facilities linked to military purposes were targeted, including the rocket launchers used by Hamas, workshops that manufacture them, military warehouses, command and control centers, and military homes.
The Times predicted that in future urban battles, Hamas will strategically use tunnels to neutralize the Israeli military’s surveillance assets. Using tunnels with a total length of 500 km that cover every corner of the Gaza Strip, Hamas fighters launch a surprise attack against Israeli soldiers roaming the city center and then quickly hide in the underground world.
The tunnels that Hamas has painstakingly built over the past 15 years are being used for a variety of purposes, including attacks, smuggling, and storage. In an interview with Reuters on the 26th of last month, Reserve Brigadier General Amir Abibi, who previously served as deputy commander of the Israeli army while stationed in the Gaza Strip, said, “The 40-50m deep tunnel not only contains bunkers, headquarters, and storage facilities, but is also connected to over a thousand rocket launch points. “There is,” he testified.
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.