[wretchard]

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.

[MonroeDNA]

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.