Israel: seeds of success?

By Richard North - October 29, 2023

It is rather ironic to see a piece in the Sunday Times headed: “Russia intensifies attacks in Ukraine while the world isn’t looking”.

The author is Michael Clarke, the visiting professor in defence studies at King’s College London, who seems to be better at writing about Ukraine than he is about Israel – although many of the Ukraine military pundits seem to have reinvented themselves as Israel “experts”.

Clarke is right to remind us of what is going on in Ukraine, a conflict which has fallen foul of the British media’s tendency only to cover only one war at a time. But at least he gets to tell us that, as Moscow focuses a winter offensive on strategic locations such as Avdiivka, Kiev worries that the West will stop providing aid at the first hint of stalemate.

After exploring the issues, he concludes that the Ukrainians are inevitably bogged down in a bitter, long-term slog, and when Western leaders glance back from the Middle East, and see that an attritional war has begun, Kiev’s fear is that the West’s nerve will fail and 2024 will become Ukraine’s toughest test yet.

However, the Gaza war has just entered a new phase and the Israelis are acknowledging that ground troops that entered the strip on Friday evening are staying there for an unspecified period. This means that Western leaders aren’t quite ready to do any glancing back.

As for the born-again Israel military experts, with troops in the ground in Gaza, many are turning their attention to the problems of taking the war into the network of tunnels constructed by Hamas, in which the hyperactive Sunday Times has decided is “where the war may be decided”.

Leading the way amongst the national dailies, though, has been the Telegraph with its talk of “sponge bombs” and other devices which are aimed to give IDF troops a technological edge, including the “throwbot”, a wheel-mounted infra-red camera which can be used to scout ahead for penetration teams.

Oddly enough, one acknowledged expert on Underground Warfare is Dr Daphne Richemond-Barak, an assistant professor at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy, in northern Tel Aviv. Her advice on using troops to clear these tunnels is “don’t” – a sentiment which she articulates in a recent podcast.

One of her ideas for solving the problem is to install a rig offshore in the Mediterranean, to drill laterally into the tunnel system and then flood it with sea water – the flooding stratagem having been adopted by Egypt when sealing off the smuggling tunnels into their territory. The Egyptians also spiced up the lives of the Hamas terrorists by pumping in raw sewage.

For the moment, the weapon of choice appears to be the so-called bunker bombs, which Al Jazeera says are already being used, with the GBU-72/B being a possible candidate.

Delivered by an F-15E Strike Eagle, this is an advanced weapon, developed in 2021, weighing out at 5,000lb and configured with a modified GPS-based guidance system. Weapons such as the earlier GBU-28/B were reported as being able to penetrate 150ft of earth or 15ft of reinforced concrete. The GBU-72/B is expected to have a better performance, capable of knocking out even the deepest Hamas tunnels.

The huge complication, of course, is that the hostages taken by Hamas on 7 October are likely being imprisoned in the tunnel system and airborne attacks risk killing them. However, on past form Hamas take hostages in order to secure prisoner exchanges, so they may avoid putting them in harm’s way – they are far too valuable to use as human shields.

As it stands, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Sinwar, called for an immediate prisoner exchange with Israel, the moment Netanyahu had concluded his meeting with families of the hostages.

“We are ready to conduct an immediate prisoner exchange deal that includes the release of all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails in exchange for all prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance”, Sinwar said in a statement.

Given that the Israelis have been signalling in advance where they intended to launch their bombing campaigns – and will continue to do so – it seems unlikely that the Hamas would use parts of the tunnel system known to be at risk.

Thus, Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, thus seems confident in the declared strategy. “As long as the military pressure and fire is going to be increased”, he says, “as we hit the enemy harder, there’s a better chance … that the enemy will agree to solutions to return the loved ones”.

Prime minister Netanyahu is clearly supportive of this line, rejecting the calls from the hostages’ relatives for a cease fire in order to concentrate on release negotiations. Instead, he describes the objectives of what he is calling the second stage of the war as “to destroy Hamas’s governing and military capabilities”. By inference, bringing the hostages home is only the secondary objective, dependent on the first.

Militarily and politically, Netanyahu is between a rock and a hard place. If he commits troops to searching the tunnel system in search of the hostages, he risks a high casualty rate without necessarily achieving success. On the other hand, if he is not seen to be taking every possible step to rescue the hostages, this could be extremely damaging to him, especially if they are subsequently killed.

Yet, if one stands back from the rhetoric, there does seem a certain logic to the strategy which the Israelis seem to be evolving – apparently devised with the assistance of US military advisors, as identified by the Washington Post two days ago.

In an attempt to reduce the risk of the conflict spreading – the Biden administration was urging Israel to rethink its plans for a major ground offensive, instead opting for a more “surgical” operation using aircraft and special operations forces carrying out precise, targeted raids on high-value Hamas targets and infrastructure.

This, though, was not how the situation has panned out, with my piece yesterday noting the suggestion that the Israelis were adopting a new strategy of gradually escalating the violence “boiling frog style”.

But, under the new strategy, the IDF will be occupying sequentially, small areas with overwhelming force. In so doing, the Israelis will be giving Hamas the opportunity to evacuate their tunnels in threatened areas, rather than trying to stand and fight. They will also have the opportunity to move any hostages who might be in the area. This strategy, therefore, could be seen as protecting the hostages rather than putting them at risk, leaving Gallant’s “military pressure” to exert its influence.

Once an area is occupied in force, the Israelis can use their D9 armoured bulldozers in an attempt to expose the entrances to any tunnels which are not already destroyed. Additionally, they can use a variety of equipment from ground penetrating radar to seismic imaging (a sort of land equivalent to sonar) to detect the hidden tunnels. They can then either trace their entrances, or drill into the tunnels, in order to insert demolition charges.

Despite Hamas having hoarded food, supplies and weapons in their tunnels, to the detriment of the Gaza population who are going short, the gradual attrition will degrade the ability of Hamas to fight, and increase pressure on their fighters as they are squeezed into a smaller and smaller space. Eventually, they will be forced out into the open to fight, but on the IDF’s terms.

Nevertheless, some pundits still argue that the ground operation will fail, one in particular pointing to an incident earlier in the year, when one of the IDF’s most modern armoured personnel carriers, designed specifically for use on the West Bank, was attacked and disabled in an attack near Jenin.

Here, the man misses the point. In the 2014 Gaza war, the IDF was largely reliant in the obsolescent and vulnerable M-113 APC, losing 11 troops in two attacks on these vehicles. To have a heavy APC disabled is no big deal, especially when it can be recovered and repaired, if the crew survive unharmed.

Despite the wailing of the pundits, therefore, and those who argue that the tunnels are a great equaliser, “neutralising Israel’s advantages in weaponry, tactics, technology and organization”, the Israelis may have stumbled on a methodology which has within it the seeds of success.

With fighting continuing overnight, so far the Israelis have claimed that no IDF soldiers have been killed. If they are able to continue avoiding the high casualty rate that some say is tragically inevitable, they are definitely onto a winner.

But there is something else needed. “It’s not going to be a short war. It’s going to be a long war”, says Gallant. “We should have patience”. Maybe then, Ukraine will get a look in.