In one sense, time is on the IDF's side ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

In one sense, time is on the IDF's side

Haaretz writes about the current fighting in Khan Younis.

The article makes several important points:

The Israel Defense Forces has recently changed its orders to soldiers in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip and its special units have begun fighting inside the city's tunnels and engaging Hamas fighters in close combat.

The reason for the change stems from the army's perception that creating contact with Hamas in the tunnels will lead to significant information about the location of the hostages and senior Hamas figures residing inside them. Intelligence officials believe that the hostages and the Hamas leaders are still in the tunnels in the area, and are moving from place to place based on the army's progress.

When the fighting started in Gaza, soldiers were ordered not to enter the tunnels because army brass believed that Hamas was trying to draw the forces in to attack them. In practice, it seems that Hamas didn't really believe that the army would try to look for its leaders. In most tunnels, only the shafts were booby-trapped, and so far the tunnels themselves have not been booby-trapped in a way that threatens the soldiers. Commanders have said that they were surprised by the scope of the tunnels and the shafts dug throughout Gaza. They added that they think that Hamas was surprised that the army was also fighting underground.

The IDF is the first army to deal with underground fighting of such proportions and are learning on the fly. Battles underground are difficult and complicated, with fighting conducted in complete darkness and knowledge that hostages could be there as well. The army recognizes that aerial attacks are insufficient to reach Hamas leaders because most of the tunnels they are in are too deep.

As previously mentioned, fighting in tunnels in urban areas is the most difficult kind of warfare there is. But if the IDF has been good at anything in its history, it is flexibility, learning on the job, and applying lessons learned very quickly in battle.

This is a huge advantage of the IDF's organizational structure and culture. While it has strict policies and must adhere to the laws of war and its own standards, it also has the ability to adjust during wartime and to learn from mistakes instantly.

While the IDF is not sharing details, it clearly has also innovated in tunnel warfare itself, almost certainly using methods like robots and trained dogs. Moreover, they must have come up with solutions to electronic communications from the surface to the depths of the tunnels: radio will not penetrate that deeply, so I imagine they are deploying ad-hoc wireless hubs to allow everyone to have situational awareness even in the deep, dark underground.

These are impressive achievements. And at least some of them were only tested and deployed during the battle itself, which is astonishingly fast for a large army.

Similarly, in a press release, the IDF announced that it was indeed flooding some Hamas tunnels, which is a complex job:

In cooperation between units in the IDF and the Ministry of Defense, various tools were developed to channel large volumes of water into Hamas’ terror tunnels in the Gaza Strip. This is part of a range of tools deployed by the IDF to neutralize the threat of Hamas’ subterranean network of tunnels.

These capabilities consist of installing pumps and pipes, the materialization of engineering developments, and the ability to locate tunnel shafts suitable for the deployment of these tools. The capability was developed in a professional capacity, including analysis of the soil characteristics and the water systems in the area to ensure that damage is not done to the area's groundwater. The pumping of water was only carried out in tunnel routes and locations that were suitable, matching the method of operation to each case.

This project was developed following combat procedures, accelerated force-building efforts, and while training forces with technological expertise.

While I'm sure these plans existed for a while, actual testing, fixing unforeseen engineering problems and implementation couldn't be done except while under fire in an actual war zone. Again, this is impressive.

As long as Israel is fighting, it will continue to get better and better, both at attacking Hamas and at minimizing civilian deaths that Hamas tries to maximize. Hamas does not have any new tricks up its sleeve: the tunnels were its guarantee, and they bet their organization on the IDF not being able to fight in the tunnels themselves and not being able to neutralize more than a small percentage of them. But the IDF is gaining more knowledge, more experience and more intelligence every day, and it applying this information extraordinarily quickly.

Which means that time is on Israel's side. It needs to make clear to the world that it will not stop fighting until the war's goals are met, but also that it is not only progressing but accelerating in achieving them.

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