Israel Prepares for Block-by-Block Warfare in Gaza

Israel is set to begin an imminent ground operation in an effort to destroy Hamas after the militant group’s cross-border invasion into Israel left more than 1,300 people dead this week. 

Israeli officials said the goal of the effort is to dismantle Hamas—destroying its infrastructure, decapitating its leadership, and decimating its rank-and-file troops. And they’re asking civilians to get out of harm’s way. The Israeli military on Thursday ordered the evacuation of more than 1 million people from northern Gaza—a move the United Nations condemned, warning against “devastating humanitarian consequences” from the forced relocation.

But officials and experts are wary that Israel, one of the most advanced militaries in the world, with a stockpile of American precision-guided munitions at its disposal, will get drawn into an urban brawl with the Iran-backed militant group. 

“They’ll seek to draw it into a city street fight,” said Frank McKenzie, a retired U.S. Marine four-star general who led U.S. Central Command, overseeing all American troops in the Middle East, until 2022. “They can use their tunnel network to get in behind the attack or to attack in all directions to make it very difficult for Israel to effectively employ a technological advantage.”

McKenzie said that Hamas will likely try to take the fight into a proverbial phone booth, up close and personal, “where it’s very hard to discern where Israeli forces end or Hamas begins.” 

Hamas may also take a page from the Islamic State, which utilized tactics to blend into the dense urban environment in its dual capitals of Mosul, in Iraq, and Raqqa, in Syria, using women, children, and disabled people as human shields, before a U.S.-supported coalition helped demolish its self-declared caliphate. Haim Regev, Israel’s ambassador to the European Union and NATO, asserted in an interview that Hamas will likely use human shields to protect itself. “All options are on the table,” Regev said. “But it’s going to be very tough.”

The Israeli military insists it has protocols in place to protect the civilian population in Gaza, a thin strip of land in between Israel and Egypt that is about the geographic size of Philadelphia and is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. 

“The goal is to hit Hamas in a way that it will never recover militarily,” Regev told Foreign Policy in an interview in his office on Tuesday. “We have to be sensitive. There are 2 million people there in Gaza. We are warning people before we hit some of the targets.” Regev said the Israeli military had succeeded in stopping, killing, or arresting the remaining Hamas infiltrators who had broken through the fence over the weekend. 

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which has mobilized 300,000 reserve troops, about two-thirds of the active-duty U.S. Army, is dropping leaflets and plans to knock on doors to let residents know it is coming, when operational conditions allow it. And even if Israel follows the protocols to the letter, which include diverting airstrikes if warplanes detect the presence of children nearby, Hamas can draw on an extensive network of man-made tunnels under the Gaza Strip that it can use to store supplies of weapons and food or prepare more attacks.

“They will have to dismount their infantry and essentially fight soldier on soldier and block by block in the built-up areas,” said Mick Mulroy, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East. “Special operations forces may be leaping ahead in surgical strikes to take out Hamas leadership and recover hostages.” 

Even as Israel prepares the urban battlefield with airstrikes while softening up Hamas targets with artillery and indirect fire, the human cost of the war continues to rise. Israel’s death toll has soared to 1,300 people since Hamas fighters breached the Gaza border fence on Saturday. The Israeli military said it has recovered the bodies of more than 1,500 militants from the group, which the United States and European Union designate as a terror organization, some of them from roadsides in southern Israel. 

Regev said the Israeli military operation also aimed to stop the cycle of Hamas rocket strikes from Gaza—most of which are intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system—that have been a feature of life in the country for years. “The rocket era from Gaza has ended,” Regev said. “Now there is zero tolerance.” The Israeli diplomat added that the country hoped to see moderate Palestinians take control of the Gaza Strip after the operation but said that Israel did not have any intention to again control the area as it once did and would withdraw troops after the military achieved its mission. 

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Tuesday announced Israel’s move to a full offensive following Hamas’s deadly attack from the weekend. As the Israeli military prepares for a possible ground strike in Gaza, it has already imposed a food, fuel, and water blockade. Gaza’s sole power plant ran out of fuel on Wednesday—increasing the risk of hospital generators dying and exacerbating the crisis. 

Mulroy said that while the IDF had superior troops, weapons, and equipment, Hamas has become very comfortable fighting in the urban jungle on home soil. As IDF troops come forward, Mulroy said, they are likely to face obstacles aimed at directing them into prepared kill zones where mines, anti-tank missiles, and deadly drones can take out their tanks and vehicles. 

“This is about as hard a tactical problem as anyone has faced lately,” said Joseph Votel, a retired U.S. Army four-star general who led U.S. Central Command until 2019. 

And the threat on the northern front is even worse: Iran-backed Hezbollah boasts a missile force of between 150,000 and 180,000 rockets that it could fire into Israel if it enters the conflict in any significant fashion.

U.N. experts warn that without essential supplies, the 2.3 million Gazans are at an “inescapable risk of starvation” and are calling for an immediate de-escalation. “[T]here’s going to be a determined effort to try to decapitate Hamas,” said Michael Lynk, who served as the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories. “And the only way to do that is to lay waste to large sections of Gaza and its civilian population.” 

“This is both a humanitarian crisis and a challenge for international law,” he said. “Collective punishment, the punishment of not the guilty but the innocent, is an absolute prohibition in the Fourth Geneva Convention which governs the laws of occupation and the laws of war.” 

The U.N. has estimated that at least 340,000 Palestinians have been displaced by the fighting, and there are likely to be more as the Biden administration has urged putting in place humanitarian corridors so the Israeli ground operation can proceed with as little civilian bloodshed as possible. 

It’s already been a bad year. Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said that 2023 saw the most Palestinians killed in the West Bank in any year since the U.N. began systematically recording fatalities in 2005.

“The bloodshed did not begin this week,” he said.