Israel has declared Gaza city a “dangerous combat zone” in the latest phase of its offensive, which analysts expect to rely on intense efforts to force Hamas fighters on to open ground.
Analysts briefed on tactics the Israeli army would bring to “initial stages” of a planned offensive told The National that commanders were reliant on heavy weapons and technology to avoid losing troops in ambushes. Attacking in a dense city terrain with a million-strong civilian population has drawn strong international condemnation.
Three weeks of what one analyst called “high kinetic activity” lies ahead, risking high loss of civilian life and raising the likelihood that few of the 20 remaining Israeli hostages would survive.
Commandos plan to flush Hamas out of their tunnels into its net of AI facial recognition systems. These operate to identify fighters hidden among the general population that flees the deadly barrage. Since early Friday morning, hundreds of Gaza city residents have begun the journey south, piling their few remaining possessions such as mattresses on to pickup trucks or donkey carts.
Israeli determination to avoid high casualties will mean a continued pounding of the city to eliminate any threat of ambush, before sending troops in armoured vehicles to Hamas strongholds. Merkava V tanks, Namer personnel carriers and D9 bulldozers would be used.
Lavender watching
Lt Col Avichay Adraee, a spokesman for the Israeli army, posted on X on Friday that the operation is in its initial phase, but that the Israeli military will “intensify our strikes” and “will not hesitate” until all Israeli hostages are returned and Hamas is dismantled “militarily and politically.”
Already, tanks equipped with surveillance systems have been sent to the city outskirts and a force of about 60,000 Israeli reservists called up.
A military cordon is being set up around the area to drive the beleaguered civilian population out, with the promise of food, safety and shelter in camps on Gaza’s south.
A host of drones, covert cameras and other surveillance will also be in place using Israeli’s highly advanced Lavender system – previously reported by The National – to spot faces, and even walking gaits, that will, in theory, allow them to identify Hamas suspects.
With the ability for AI operators to authorise and conduct a strike within 20 seconds, Hamas leaders would be targets, with civilian deaths and casualties accepted as collateral damage.
“A lot of Hamas are going to try to exfiltrate along with the non-combat population and that's one of the things the Israelis want to see,” said Lynette Nusbacher, a former British military intelligence officer.
“The first thing drones are going to do is fly over the people evacuating from Gaza city and use facial recognition capability to spot known faces and imprison or kill them.”
Drones would also be used to bolster the military’s intelligence before deploying a barrage of precision munitions from aircraft and artillery.
Tunnel system
Advanced multidimensional sensors, including thermal imaging, will seek to spot people operating below ground or coming out of the tunnel systems.
After two years of war damage, new maps will be necessary so data can be fed into the Gospel AI system used to pinpoint Hamas strongpoints or buildings.
The Yahalom tunnel specialists, all combat engineers trained to remove hidden bombs, would tackle the huge underground labyrinth that is “four or five times bigger than Israel's most pessimistic estimates before the war,” said Frank Ledwidge, a former navy intelligence officer.
The Yahalom's high-tech special forces and dog units have gained experience from previous missions, he added. “They understand the limits. They understand they can't just pump water into tunnels and everything will go away. It will simply be a question of grinding through the objectives.”
Once the majority of civilians are cleared, they would use a large amount of munitions to “blow stuff up before they send soldiers into harm's way”, Dr Nusbacher added.
Intelligence driven
The gathering of intelligence will be fast and intense, with human sources and signals intelligence from phone intercepts fed into Lavender and Gospel.
This could allow the Israelis to move at speed through operations, potentially achieving their objectives in Gaza after three weeks of intensive fighting, said Mr Ledwidge.
But warfare expert Brigadier Ben Barry, of the IISS think tank, argued that while there would be a formidable AI intelligence operation there was “no single silver bullet on either side”.
Hamas is able to rely on forces of about 40,000, despite losing an estimated 13,000 fighters. After almost two years of war, the group had “not been militarily obliterated” and “appear capable of mounting attacks and ambushes up to platoon strength”, he added.
“They will continue to attempt to wage guerrilla warfare with the prime objective of inflicting casualties on the IDF (Israel Defence Forces).”
Tech role
“What we’ve learnt in the last two years of war, is that the Israelis will use as much technology as they possibly can to substitute for house-to-house fighting, using dismounted infantry,” said Dr Nusbacher.
But, according to Brig Barry, there is a limit to what can be achieved by soldiers in vehicles. “They do need to get out on the ground, including to actually talk to Palestinians,” he said.
Surprises ahead
The Israelis may also have a surprise tactic that they will introduce, similar to the pagers bombing of Hezbollah, suggested Mr Ledwidge.
“Given the innovations we've seen against Iran and Hezbollah, it's not inconceivable that there could be some sort of coup de main that they employ. We haven't yet really seen that decisive innovation in Gaza.”
The knowledge of that all plays into the psychology of urban warfare that is far more intense than many other battlefields.
Dr Nusbacher, who trained British troops in urban warfare at a special mock-up town in England, called the operations “especially human intensive”.
“The strain on those people is much greater than anywhere else,” she said. “You get more psychological casualties and people are ground down a lot faster in urban ops.”
This will not make it easy for those out of the one million citizens in Gaza city who remain behind, sheltering and enduring famine. “It is going to be really hard on them,” she said.
