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which is a force multiplier for Hamas

Nice... throwing in that term makes this analysis sound more credible, but I think that it grossly understates the effectiveness of Israeli intelligence, and their lessons learned from Jenin.

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.

Stratfor doesn't make things up on its own like Debka. Other people who don't like us (such as Pakistan's ISI) make things up and Stratfor repeats those uncritically. I.e., there is no difference to the reader.