Israel’s ground invasion of the northern Gaza Strip began on Friday evening, an urban warfare operation that is likely to be lengthy, fraught with danger for its military and Palestinian civilians and whose ultimate goals remain uncertain.
It began more than three weeks after Hamas’s surprising and brutal cross-border attack of 7 October, in which 1,400 Israelis were killed, and comes amid what the monitoring group Airwars says is an aerial bombardment that “far outpaces” the number of bombs dropped in “the deadliest months” of the US-led war against Islamic State.
Israeli forces have already fired more than 8,000 munitions into north and south Gaza, according to the country’s military, in an attempt to soften up Hamas resistance, but which has also led to thousands of casualties, including dozens at the Jabalia camp in the north of the strip that was hit on Tuesday.
Video and pictures released by the Israel Defence Force on Tuesday show soldiers and tanks entering a shattered urban terrain, with the Israeli military and Hamas describing fighting fierce battles, although these are likely to be only initial skirmishes for strategic position.
Verifiable information is hard to come by, but the limited evidence emerging from the combat zone suggests that the IDF is seeking to encircle Gaza City, probably as a prelude to trying to capture what was the capital of the strip.
Tanks were filmed having advanced to cut the main north-south Salah al-Din road south of Gaza City on Monday, although subsequent reports suggested the road had reopened, potentially to allow a porous encirclement, where fighters and civilians are allowed to escape a looming siege, in theory making it easier for the attackers.
Urban warfare is the most dangerous form of fighting, and as the near year-long battle of Bakhmut in Ukraine showed, even a ruined landscape still confers significant advantages to the defenders. But Hamas has gone further, building a sophisticated, cement reinforced tunnel network underground, from which fighters can endure the most sustained aerial attack, knowing that an Israeli invasion may one day come.
A battle in three dimensions is complex enough, but Ben Barry, an analyst with the International Institute of Strategic Studies, said that Israel’s military had also been set contradictory political goals by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
On Saturday, Netanyahu said the invasion’s objective was to destroy “Hamas’s governing and military capabilities and to bring the hostages home”. The first part may imply an aggressive assault with less regard for casualties, where Hamas tunnels are mined by armed Israeli robots, or simply sealed off.
But freeing hostages, Barry argues, requires a more measured approach where the 240 people held by Hamas are located and rescued in what are likely to be complex individual operations. “You would need good intelligence and to proceed carefully,” Barry added.
Another question is how Hamas will respond. Its military strength and capacity is unclear, but its leaders have choices. Conventionally, Israel measures the size of the Hamas fighting force at about 30,000, and while about 1,200 were killed during the October attack, the impact of the Israeli bombardment is unclear.
If its fighters remain cohesive, there is the option of fighting for Gaza City and trying to inflict immediate casualties on the Israeli military. Alternatively, they could hang back, retreating to the southern part of Gaza and taking hostages with them if possible, and allowing Israel to take control of the north relatively quickly.
Israel retains formidable conventional military advantages: air superiority and a well-trained, modern fighting force with 400 tanks at the ready and more in storage. Its standing army is estimated to number 126,000, strengthened by the call-up of 360,000 reservists, but its military has to guard the north from Hezbollah in Lebanon and contend with a deteriorating security situation on the West Bank.
By contrast, Hamas has limited equipment. A video it released of its fighters showed they were armed with rocket-propelled grenades.
If the initial plan is to seize Gaza City in the north, which the IDF believes is at the heart of Hamas’s operation, the fighting is likely to be hard on both sides, complicated by how many civilians choose to remain in a congested urban setting where civilian and Hamas military objects are frequently located side by side or intertwined.
The destruction of urban areas will be almost unavoidable – a study in the Washington Institute for Near East Policy observed that during the battle of Raqqa, recaptured from IS in Syria 2017, 80% of buildings were destroyed in 90 days of fighting. At least 1,600 civilians were killed in that battle, significantly fewer than the 8,000 Palestinians declared dead by Gaza’s health ministry in the fighting so far.
A more significant complication is the sheer danger and uncertainty in the fighting that is to unfold. A fortnight ago it appeared the Middle East was on the brink of wider unrest, when Hamas claimed the Israeli air force had bombed al-Ahli Arab hospital; in fact the blast that authorities in Gaza say killed 471 civilians was probably caused by a missile launched from inside the territory.
Israel says that Hamas’s main command centre operates from underneath the overcrowded Dar al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, where doctors say that 19,000 wounded people remain and another 14,000 are seeking shelter, despite calls from the IDF for it to be evacuated. Hamas officials deny Israel’s claim, but sites such as the Shifa hospital will, at the very least, be encompassed by the fighting in the weeks to come.
