Hamas Holds Advantage in Gaza Campaign

Summary

Israel began preparations May 9 for an offensive in the Gaza Strip, massing troops along the border and calling up reservists. The government has identified militant group Hamas, which took credit for a suicide bombing this week, as its key target. An operation in Gaza, however, will be substantively different from the recent campaign in the West Bank and likely will be more intensive.

Analysis

Israel massed troops overnight on the outskirts of the Gaza Strip in preparation for a military offensive in the tiny territory, following a suicide bombing near Tel Aviv earlier this week that killed 16 Israelis. The military will reportedly target bases belonging to militant group Hamas, which took credit for the bombing, but the operation will reportedly not be as wide-scale as the recent Israeli offensive in the West Bank, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported May 9.

STRATFOR has written extensively on the probable shape and scope of an Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip. Hamas -- the government's identified target, which is dispersed throughout Gaza and engaged in both security and humanitarian operations -- enjoys broad popular support and is well trained in guerrilla tactics and countermeasures. Unlike the recent West Bank operation, where urban guerrilla warfare was confined to a few places, an Israeli military incursion into Gaza will likely be bloodier and more intensive.

Hamas is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Resistance Movement). A Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization mirrors its Egyptian counterpart by balancing its militant activities with grassroots organizing and social services.

Hamas administers thousands of mosques, schools, hospitals, clinics, youth groups, athletic clubs, daycare and food-distribution centers in Gaza, providing the bulk of social services to residents. According to the Jewish Post newspaper, 95 percent of the group's $40 million to $70 million budget goes to social services.

Such a strategy gives the group broad popular support and also allows it to operate openly throughout the territories. This poses the greatest challenge to an Israeli military offensive aimed at disrupting Hamas' suicide-bombing network. Israel's goal will be to take out Hamas' infrastructure; the problem for them is the group's infrastructure primarily consists of people. Without intelligence to identify specific leaders, the Israeli military will implement a broadside assault on the entire Hamas organization, including its social services network in all of the Palestinian areas in Gaza.

There is no question that the Gaza Strip is smaller than the West Bank. Indeed, the territory measures a total of 139 square miles, compared to the 2,262 square miles of the West Bank. This will make the division of the territory by the Israel Defense Forces into manageable sections much easier.

Gaza also has approximately 1.1 million Palestinians, almost at much as the entire West Bank's 1.6 million Palestinians. But the population density is exponentially larger: approximately 8,000 Palestinians per square mile, compared with 700 Palestinians per square mile in the West Bank.

Moreover, both residents in the Gaza Strip and Hamas members are distinctly different in their approach to the conflict with Israel from their West Bank counterparts. Gazans are a much poorer, less educated populace, and their attitude toward Israel is more hard-line and radical. This lends itself to stauncher resistance and a greater willingness to engage in guerrilla activities.

In fact, some of the most psychologically devastating attacks Palestinians have launched successfully against Israel since the start of the intifada almost 20 months ago have occurred in Gaza. Palestinian militants in the territory have twice this year successfully ambushed and destroyed Israeli Merkava tanks, considered one of the most indestructible tanks in the world.

The Iz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the militant wing of Hamas, is also known to use timed and remote-controlled bombs, commando attacks and armed ambushes including assaults on both military targets and Israeli settlers. Reports already indicate that Gazan residents have prepared sand barricades rumored to be armed with explosives to block an IDF advance into the cities and refugee camps.

Another advantage the Palestinians in Gaza have is access to underground tunnels to Egypt. Though the Israeli military continually monitors activities along the border and shuts down these tunnels as they are discovered, reports suggest that some continue operating and are being used to smuggle weapons in from Egypt. The Gazans are also making their own weaponry, including the short-range Qassam rocket.

Hamas uses the Gaza Strip's compactness and population density to its advantage, maintaining a social network that ensures support among the population and a ready supply of recruits. Though accurate force numbers for the group are unknown, Hamas reportedly has a dedicated group of fighters that number in the hundreds and supporters in the tens of thousands.

Positioned on the edge of Gaza, the IDF faces a geographically smaller and yet more difficult operation. Given the circumstances, the geography and the attitude, the IDF must consider the entire Gazan population hostile and potential combatants, which is a force multiplier for Hamas.

What are these people smoking?

Obviously Gaza presents a different challange than Jenin but an "advantage"? Stratfor must be making a comparator of Arafat's rabble to Hamas' organization but not to Israel.

I can only assume that Stratfor factors "world opinion" as part of the equation. Specifically that if the Israeli's eliminated the population in 48 hours the EU, the UN and the arabs would "get mad".

Thank you for this informtive post.

The IDF tested out its new urban tactics in the West Bank. The results there, and in the coming campaign in Gaza will be of intense interest to the US, which is also building up its urban warfighting capability.

The performance of the IDF in the West Bank, although far from totally satisfactory, was far superior to that of the Russian Army in Chechnya. The IDF, in common with US doctrine, has relied primarily on a "fusion" of intelligence to give them key advantages. The idea is to have constant realtime intelligence which will give a building-by-building picture of the battlefield. Each strongpoint will be reduced in detail.

Information superiority makes it possible to create virtual rear areas and front lines where none are physically identifiable. The Jenin experience seemed to indicate that realtime intelligence didn't give sufficiently good resolution. Hence, the PLA were able to ambush one Israeli unit and inflict nearly a third of total IDF campaign casualties in a few minutes.

The IDF innovation was to introduce the concept of physically slicing up the battlefield with armored bulldozers. They cut the urban battlefield into grid squares which could then be reduced in detail.

As the Stratfor report suggests, Gaza will be a more severe test. But the IDF has always known it would eventually go into Gaza, and one of the reasons they may have held off until now was to gather urban battle experience on the West Bank. They will have a strategy to deal with the tunnels and the widespread Hamas infrastructure.

In fact, the very dispersion of the Hamas infrastructure may be an Israeli advantage. There is no way Hamas can protect it all. Hamas must concentrate in redoubts or try to fight a semi-mobile campaign to defend their assets. Remember that Israel will view assets, not primarily in terms of buildings, but in terms of people they want to kill or capture. If Hamas disperses, Israel will pick them up like cherries. If they gather for common defense, the armored bulldozers will rumble in again.

Prediction: an IDF victory.

Yes ...nice lingo. But would an Army of Israel's stature rather engage a concentrated densely entrenched enemy or a more scattered and mobile enemy?

WWII based military armies seem to have done better against a more consolidated foe...from my armchair perspective.

The real downside for the IDF and those of us who support them is the increased danger of larger non-combatant casulaties which of course the Pali loving media will trumpet incessantly.

As an analogy. Would you prefer to fight a scattered foe in say Utah or a concentrated foe in 10X13 mile dense urban area? If the IDF were not held to such lofty "humanitarian" restrictions and were able to fight total war fashion then I believe the answer is obvious. Under this new PC form of war against the PA and Hamas, it will be more difficult but in my view I think easier than the West Bank (which is hardly conquered btw)

Just my 2 cents...I still hold to the view of massive deportation and partition as the only answer with any legs of the long variety.

Regards.

Just my 2 cents...I still hold to the view of massive deportation and partition as the only answer with any legs of the long variety.

Deport to where? Who would have them? Most of the Arab states have kicked them out already. Egypt could have had the Gaza Strip back, and didn't want it because it already had a lot of bad tenants on it. Better to build their resorts on the nice, quiet Sinai rather than below cliffs full of troublesome Palestinians.

Jordan, after bloodily evicting thousands of Palestinians, renounced any claim on the West Bank. They wouldn't take it back if the Israeli's gave it to them.

Lebanon and Tunisia breathed sighs of relief after the PLO left their shores.

No, I'm afraid that mass deportation is no solution, unless we put highrises in Camp X-Ray.

As for how the world believes Israel should confront Hamas, I'm sure their preference would be that Israel politely request that the PA conduct a proper investigation, and get back to Sharon when they have something to report-"if that wouldn't be to much to ask for, Mr. General Yassir Arafat, sir."

Kinda like a small LA, filled with gangs, on the border of a country that wanted to kill us and blow up whatever, totally taken over by that countrys' sympathsizers. Not a quick battle, unless "civillians" were regarded as colateral damage.

In WWII, the city would have been simply wiped out with lots and lots of bombs.

Today, we have to be careful of "civillians," because the Socialist Democrats and UN says so.

IDF will win, but the outcry will be nothing compared to Jenin. The UN will go even more nuts then they already did over that non-massacre.

I know Isreal will do what it takes, and I support them with all my heart.

They will have to be forced on someone. Were I a Pali, I would be fighting to retake Jordan from the Hashemites who they would outnumber decisively were they ALL in Jordan. The little boy King and his Brit and US(origin) relatives are not sacred cows destined to be preserved in power forever. They are after all monarchs. They come and go. That's all the Arabs understand or are capable of maintaining as a form of government. Authoritarianism.

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