Armoured automobiles of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are seen throughout their floor operations at a location given as Gaza, because the battle between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas continues, on this handout picture launched on November 1, 2023.Â
Israel Defense Forces | Reuters
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned his nation {that a} “long and difficult war” lay ahead.Â
The Israeli Defense Forces, after launching the biggest navy mobilization of troops in its historical past, has now entered into the “second phase” of its war in opposition to Hamas within the Gaza Strip. The IDF is supplementing heavy aerial bombardment of the besieged territory with what’s been described as a floor incursion, the details of which have been kept closely guarded.
The airstrikes started in response to the Oct. 7 assault by Palestinian militant group Hamas – designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and EU – on southern Israel that killed greater than 1,300 individuals and noticed greater than 240 taken hostage. And the IDF’s long-held technique of retaliation is in full pressure, with greater than 8,500 individuals killed in Gaza in simply over three weeks, in accordance to Hamas-run well being ministry authorities there.
In the primary six days of the war alone, Israel’s navy mentioned it dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza – a blockaded enclave roughly the dimensions of the town of Philadelphia. Now, floor troops are shifting into the territory.Â
Civilians strive to attain survivors, lifeless our bodies amid destruction attributable to Israeli strikes on Bureij refugee camp positioned in central Gaza Strip on November 02, 2023.Â
Ashraf Amra | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
“Our soldiers have been operating in Gaza City for the past few days, surrounding it from several directions, deepening the operation,” the IDF’s Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi mentioned Thursday. “Our forces are in very significant areas of Gaza City.”
A floor offensive is critical to obtain Israel’s aim of eliminating Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, the IDF says. A chronic invasion, nonetheless — ought to it turn out to be that — will be bloody and dear not just for these dwelling in Gaza however for the Israeli navy as effectively, navy veterans and analysts say.
‘We know they’re ready for us’
Urban counter-insurgency, because the U.S. navy realized in Iraq, brings lethal challenges to troops that don’t apply in an aerial marketing campaign.
“In urban combat, you take higher casualties. That’s just a historical fact,” Jim Webb, a former U.S. Marine infantryman who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, advised CNBC.Â
“Iraq showed just how much of an advantage the defender, particularly an asymmetrical one, has in urban combat. There, lightly armed insurgents were able to use the urban landscape to first slow and then tie down the greatest maneuver force in world history for years.” Â Â
In the case of Gaza, that defender is Hamas — and it will have nearly each benefit in floor combating, Webb mentioned.
“Cities naturally canalize the attacker into predictable avenues of approach. It also means these fights happen at close range, which makes the use of supporting arms, such as tanks, artillery, or air power, extremely difficult, even if there are no civilians in the area,” Webb mentioned.Â
“Gaza is full of civilians, and Hamas will be able to blend in,” he added. “I do not envy the task the IDF may be asked to undertake.”Â
Palestinian members of the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas motion, participate in a gathering on Jan. 31, 2016, in Gaza City to pay tribute to their fellow militants who died after a tunnel collapsed within the Gaza Strip.
Mahmud Hams | Afp | Getty Images
Israeli troopers will be coping with unfamiliar streets and alleyways, mountains of demolished buildings, and Hamas’ intensive tunnel community, which the IDF euphemistically calls the “Gaza metro.” Hundreds of ft underground, the tunnels home weapons shares, electrical mills, command and management facilities undetectable from above — and certain most of the hostages that Hamas kidnapped from Israel on Oct. 7.
“We know they’re waiting for us,” one Israeli soldier, who declined to be named due to his position in Israel’s safety service, told CNBC. “And as bad as Gaza is above ground, underground is much worse.”
‘It’s going to be bloody’
No one is aware of how long the militants will final, says Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar on the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. But he suspects that drawing Israel into a protracted floor invasion is definitely Hamas’ aim.Â
“I think their plan is to inflict as much cost on Israel as possible during its ground incursion and ensure that pockets of the organization survive so that, assuming that Israel does engage in a long-term ground presence in Gaza urban centers, it can launch an insurgency,” Ibish mentioned.
That insurgency would seemingly start slowly as a result of the group is so decimated, he mentioned, however a excessive threat stays that it may acquire steam over time. “Hamas hopes to be able to eventually start picking off Israeli soldiers individually and in small groups,” he mentioned, “killing and capturing them, and bleeding Israel horrendously.”Â
The IDF didn’t instantly reply to a CNBC request for remark.
“In terms of Israel’s stated strategic games, I think that it’s going to be really difficult,” mentioned Dave Des Roches, a professor on the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies on the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.Â
“It’s just not going to be the ’67 war,” he mentioned, referencing Israel’s Six Day War in 1967 throughout which it quickly defeated three neighboring Arab armies and gained territory four times its original size. “No,” Des Roches mentioned, “it’s going to be long and it’s going to be bloody.”
A captain within the IDF, who spoke to CNBC anonymously due to restrictions on talking to the press, mentioned that Israeli troops had been absolutely conscious of the dangers and ready to take them on.
“We are ready to inflict serious damage if we do go in despite the potential military casualties. Absolutely,” he mentioned. “We have trained for this exact situation.”
Des Roches believes that destroying Hamas’s navy functionality will require the IDF to management the bottom, basically occupy it piece by piece, after which systematically map out and destroy what the militants themselves have described as greater than 300 miles of tunnels constructed over the past 30 years.
But taking out Hamas as a navy pressure could be just the start of Israel’s challenges, battle analysts warn. What of the roughly 2.three million Palestinians left, nonetheless trapped in a destroyed Gaza in what the U.N. has described as a catastrophic humanitarian disaster?Â
“Once you’ve destroyed Gaza, once you’ve destroyed Hamas – assuming you can do that – you’ve got more than two million destitute people,” Des Roches mentioned. “And if you don’t give them a better way of life, you’re just going to have this problem again in five or ten years.”