My professional experience does not help me so much in understanding the explanations and analyses provided by some military experts when they are hosted by television channels to talk about the plans of the Hamas movement and its military doctrine during its confrontation with the Israeli forces. They project onto it what they learned in education curricula about traditional regular wars. For example: What do they mean when someone talks about the “line of contact” between the “Al-Qassam Brigades” and the Israeli forces or when another talks about “delayed war” operations launched by Hamas?
The logic of guerrilla warfare is different …
Hamas, like other Palestinian armed resistance factions, is not a regular army. It carries out a guerrilla war, with its line of contact located wherever it can strike the enemy. It is not a confrontation on a battle front, where the geographical borders separating the two parties to the conflict are usually well-defined on the ground, in a way that allows talking about lines where the two warring parties meet. In urban warfare, the term was commonly used to describe the streets or roads separating the two sides of the conflict.
This does not apply to the Gaza war, even though it is included in the register of “urban wars.”
Likewise, “delayed war” also does not apply to it completely, Hamas’s goal is to inflict the greatest possible harm on the enemy wherever and however it can: whether the enemy is moving or stationary. At the present time, it is not working to expel him nor to extract ground points from him, control them and cling to them, but rather to move and camouflage him in order to inflict on him the greatest possible losses and weaken him.
In addition, the war is taking place in a very narrow geographical area: the area of Gaza is 365 square kilometres and the distances are short between its various points and locations. Its topography consists mainly of cities as we mentioned; Highly populated cities favor the Palestinian resistance: the population is sympathetic and supportive of Hamas
Which creates a major dilemma that hinders the work of the occupying forces, even though they do not avoid “collateral damage of war” as international law requires of the bellige.
On the contrary, Israel is carrying out collective punishment on the Palestinians: it is deliberately brutally killing them and trying to displace them. It is as if it is taking revenge on them for the missteps and difficulties it faces under those cities, where its opponent has a type of power that is difficult to deal with: the weapon of spending.
This is a strategic concept for using the field – underground – that is not yet common. It is difficult to find a parallel or much mention in the literature on military education curricula. Perhaps the lessons of the current Gaza war constitute the starting point for his theorizing and teaching .
While we wait for this, we note that Hamas’s combat actions do not meet as we mentioned above the standards of traditional war. This prevents her from fully realizing her plans and dealing with them easily.
Military goals are unattainable, so where is the escape?
It is true that Israel has significant experiences in confronting irregular wars. However, in the context of the current war, its strategic vision does not appear to be at a level of efficiency that qualifies it to achieve the aggressive goals that members of the war management team in Tel Aviv are competing to urge and repeat in a violent tone, which are:
- Completely eliminating Hamas;
- Free all hostages;
- Ensuring Israel’s security in the future from any military threat from Hamas and the Gaza region .”
It seems clear that the Zionist regime’s inability to achieve these goals is due to several factors, the most important of which is the lack of realism with regard to the declared strategic goals and their lack of compatibility with the means used. The Israeli War Council with its extreme right-wing orientation, set an excessive ceiling on its ambitions when it set goals that were not within its reach. Completely eliminating Hamas does not only mean destroying and neutralizing its military capabilities and tools, both human and material but rather includes first and foremost its defeat, irreversibly, on the political and intellectual fields .
This is what the Israeli leadership is trying, in vain to convince its citizens and its Western allies that it will achieve through the war of annihilation and the war crimes it is now committing in Gaza and in Palestine in general. However, all indicators point to completely opposite results: Hamas is far from perishing , the hostages have not returned to their families, while Israel is experiencing increasing international isolation and unprecedented moral humiliation .
Where is the military escape from the predicament of total war ?
Netanyahu and his team are searching for what seems impossible to achieve: a “fruitful” war or military operation that will end the comprehensive war they launched against Gaza and preserve their reputation. While waiting to obtain it, they must act inverse of the saying of the German strategic theorist Carl von Clausewitz .
If “war is the continuation of policy by other means,” according to the latter, then the Israeli Prime Minister and his team are inevitably forced to return to negotiations and accept truces in the near future, until they obtain a military way out of the adventure of the war of annihilation they embarked on in Gaza, which has become apparent. Its disastrous failure; While they cannot get out of it like this nor continue it as they announced and repeated over and over again with all arrogance and insolence. There is no military solution in sight for their predicament .
Even the United States is unable to get them out of the impasse, despite its terrible military arsenal and its enormous financial resources that it has generously provided to Israel since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Rather, President Joe Biden and his team are searching for a way out for themselves, fearing that they will be overwhelmed by the wave of dangerous political repercussions, internal and external of Israel’s current military adventure in Gaza and Palestine.
Retired Colonel El Boukhakhary Mohamed Mouemel Al Yaakoubi
* https://gssinst.com/politics/the-peculiarity-of-hamass-military-strategy...
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