How the Israel -Hamas War is changing the art of warfare!

 

Hamas launched a large-scale scale operation against Israel early in the morning of 7 October 2023. The attack started with a rocket barrage, followed by a swift land, air, and sea invasion through foot soldiers, ultralight aircraft, paragliders, and landing craft. The militant groups forced their way through Gaza border crossings after bulldozing the barrier that separates the 140 square kilometer Gaza strip from Israel. They entered the Israeli settlements and military installations, surrounding civilian communities, and the military bases, taking the settlers and military personnel by surprise.

Benjamin Netanyahu initially vowed to decimate Hamas and hinted at expelling the entire Palestinian population from Gaza. In his eagerness to upstage Netanyahu, Biden urged that destroying Hamas was Israel’s duty. Biden’s harangue was targeted at the Democratic Party’s voters – US elections are scheduled in 2024.

However, Netanyahu’s initial cockiness was diluted when he realized the impracticability of his ambition. Perhaps the consequences of the 1982 IDF siege of Beirut forewarned Netanyahu that his ambition would lead the IDF into a viper’s nest in Gaza. Netanyahu now talks about only expelling Hamas from Gaza, and Biden meekly seconds him. The thrust of Israel, backed by the US and the EU, is to somehow persuade Egypt and Jordan to accept the Hamas into their territories. Both these countries have refused.    

The state of Israel was proclaimed in May 1948 and was immediately attacked by armies of its Arab neighbors. Except for Trans- Jordan which had a British-trained army, the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq were no match for the better-trained Israeli paramilitary outfits - Haganah and Stern Gang. These Jewish settler- outfits were thus able to defeat the Arab armies on the Egyptian and Syrian fronts, and the Iraqi and Saudi army contingents which had invaded the British-mandated Palestine on the outbreak of war. Only the Jordanian Army, under Glubb Pasha, its British commander, could take on the Jews and occupy the West Bank of the river Jordan and East Jerusalem.

Looking back, one finds that Israel defeated the regular Arab armies in the 1948 and 1967 wars, but could not as effectively confront the militant groups like PLO, Hezbollah, and Hamas that arose out of the ashes of the 67 and 73 Wars. In 1967 the IDF defeated the combined Arab armies through sheer force of armour and air power. In 1973, the impact of the Israeli shock effect was somehow diluted when IDF, for the first time, confronted the Egyptian soldier with his hand-held anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. The 1973 War was a strategic defeat for Israel because consequently, Israel had to vacate the Sinai Peninsula, Sharm el Sheikh, and part of Golan Heights.

  In 1982, IDF came across the PLO fighter who employed the same weapons and tactics as were used by the Egyptian Army during the 1973 War. The invincibility of IDF was cracked. The Israeli siege of Beirut had begun on 14 June 1982 after IDF completed the encirclement of the city the previous day. The Israelis chose to keep the city under siege rather than forcibly capture it, as they were unwilling to accept the heavy casualties that the heavy street fighting required to capture the city would have resulted in.

Israeli forces bombarded targets within Beirut from land, sea, and air, and attempted to assassinate Palestinian leaders through airstrikes. The Israeli Navy maintained a blockade on the port of Beirut with a ring of missile boats and patrol boats supported by submarines. PLO was expelled from Beirut through a UN-brokered deal. It then re-established itself in Tunis. Though PLO had to leave Beirut, it was the first time after the 73 War that DF had suffered heavy casualties, this time at the hands of an Arab militia (that’s what PLO was), not a regular Arab Army.

After PLO’s expulsion from Beirut, Hezbollah, a Shia militant organization backed by Iran, rose in Lebanon. In 2006, Hezbollah fought the Second Lebanon War with Israel. Hamas is a Sunni Islamist political and military organization created in the Gaza Strip in 1987, While Hamas is headquartered in Gaza City, it also has a presence in the West Bank where its secular rival, the Palestinian Authority, exercises control.

Since 2005, Hamas has built an underground city beneath Gaza. It is a vast network of tunnels used for bypassing the Israeli blockade on movement of eatables and utility items into Gaza, and for fighting the Israeli occupation. The underground tunnel network allows Hamas and other militant groups to store and shield weapons, gather and move underground, communicate, train, launch offensive attacks, transport hostages, and retreat without being detected by Israeli or Egyptian authorities. This network of tunnels is colloquially referred to as the Gaza Metro.

The tunnel system runs beneath many Gazan towns and cities, such as Khan Yunis, Jabalia, and the Shati refugee camp. Typically, tunnel access points are hidden inside buildings, such as private homes or mosques, or camouflaged by brush, which impedes their detection via aerial imaging or drones.  access points and routes, starting in several homes or chicken coops, joining together into a main route, and then branching off again into several separate passages leading into buildings on the other side. 

According to the BBC News:

 

The cross-border tunnels tend to be rudimentary, meaning they have barely any fortification. They are dug for a one-time purpose - invading Israeli territory. The tunnels inside Gaza are different because Hamas is using them regularly. They are constructed for prolonged warfare and equipped for a longer, sustained presence. The Hamas leadership uses the permanent infrastructure as command-and-control centres. They are equipped with electricity, lighting, and rail tracks.

 

Palestinian and Lebanese militant outfits are taking on the Israeli juggernaut and bleeding it where the mighty Arab armies failed during the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israel wars. The Hamas-Israel and Hezbollah-Israel conflicts are not characterized by armoured columns sweeping through the Middle East deserts.  Instead, the world is increasingly swarmed with media footage showing masked Arab gunmen, holding RPG-7 confronting Israeli tanks and APCs.

These militant outfits are supported by Iran and many Islamist organizations such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. They fight with a cocktail of weapons built by Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea. Hezbollah and Hamas are both trained like professional armies. Their arsenals are comprised mostly of small, man-portable, and unguided surface-to-surface artillery rockets. Although these devices lack precision, their sheer number makes them effective weapons of terror. The rockets are made from water pipes stuffed with a mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate, an oxidizing agent. The quality and accuracy of the mixing and curing process can produce a propellant capable of reaching a specific impulse for a workable rocket.

The IDF's predicament against Hezbollah and Hamas is mirrored in what happened between the Soviet Army and the Afghan Mujahideen almost half a century ago. In a set-piece Soviet attack, the Mujahideen localities were pounded by fire from gunship helicopters and artillery. ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft guns mounted on medium trucks would engage and try to flush out the guerrillas holding the heights.

Thence, the Soviet armour, closely followed by mechanized infantry, attacked and swept across the area, firing with all their weapons. Rarely did the mechanized infantry dismount and pursue the enemy into their hideouts where the tanks and IFVs could not go. This happened during the Panjshir offensive and was replicated elsewhere. Resultantly, when the Soviet troops withdrew after a battle, the rebels came out of their sanctuaries and reorganised for fresh attacks.

 Like the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Israeli armoured formations were ineffective against small guerrilla groups which used hit-and-run tactics and did not present a tangible target to the enemy. In the heavily built-up areas of Beirut and Gaza, armour protection and firepower gave a false sense of security to the Israeli tank crews and infantrymen cloistered inside the APCs/IFVs. In urban warfare, armour and mechanized infantry are of little value unless the infantry dismounts, runs through the minefield, attacks the defender, and overcomes the enemy in hand-to-hand fighting. This is what some of the armies trained in mechanized warfare are averse to.

 

 

 

Saleem Akhtar Malik

17 March 2024

The author is a Pakistan Army veteran who regularly writes on national and international affairs, defense, military history, and military technology. His talks on these subjects are aired on his YouTube Channel "The Observation Post". His blog "Sam1953.blogspot.com" features his articles. Tweets @saleemakhtar53.