Via UnHerd, October 17:
What Israel will face in Gaza
Hamas is concealed within a network of fortified tunnels
When conventional armies take on enemies who have neither uniforms nor overt bases, and who impolitely refuse to assemble in conveniently targetable mass formations, the inevitable problem is how to find them. Indeed, such a task is often impossible, a reality that otherwise intelligent tacticians have mysteriously refused to accept, from Napoleon in Spain to the US in Afghanistan.
In all their wars, that is the one error the Israelis have never made, and they are not about to start now. Aside from the Fauda teams before they defected to Netflix, and the undercover Shin Bet agents who can track down individual leaders, the Israelis have been content to remain on the defensive. Any offensive actions are taken only against clear enemies in recognisable garb, even if not actual uniforms, as well as physical facilities that can be spotted from the air, such as the recently destroyed Iranian rocket depots in Damascus and Aleppo.
In Gaza, by contrast, there are no visible military facilities, while Hamas fighters can shed their fashionable black outfits and dress like civilians. This will not, however, frustrate the Israeli offensive, which still has fixed, immovable targets. These are the deep tunnels — too deep for aerial bombing — that Hamas has been excavating and lining in concrete for more than 10 years, using construction equipment and vast quantities of cement donated by different governments and international organisations “to house refugees”. As a result, Gaza’s refugee “camps” do not contain a single tent. Instead, they are home to a forest of high-rise apartments, which is undoubtedly a good thing, except for the fact that both machines and cement were also diverted for tunnelling on the largest scale.
These tunnels house relatively sophisticated rocket-assembly lines, motor-assembly works, sheet metal and explosives’ stores, and warhead-fabrication workshops. More tunnels house Hamas command posts and its ordnance stores of small arms, mortars and rockets. Even deeper tunnels house its leaders’ lodgings and headquarters. Finally, there are the exfiltration tunnels, though there is no sign that they were used in the October 7 attacks, perhaps because their exits had been detected and blocked long before....
....MUCH MORE
