“This will be one of the most difficult military operations in recent decades, exceeding the challenges we faced in Iraq,” says Norman Roule, former chief of the CIA’s operations against Iran. “Gaza’s urban area is crowded and large, but it also has a large number of multi-floor buildings that must be cleared of weapons and terrorists who don’t wear uniforms. We should steel ourselves for heavy civilian and military casualties.”
The Gaza operation poses two agonizing challenges, which tragically seem to be in conflict. First, Israel must restore deterrence against its enemies — in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran — after Saturday’s devastating surprise attack. At the same time, it must minimize civilian casualties and save the lives of as many hostages as it can. This seems like a macabre mission impossible.
We can’t know how Israeli commanders will organize their assault. But public comments suggest that the priority is the safety of Israel itself, rather than individuals. “The most important thing is that we teach the other side that there is no way that they can do this without us changing the reality,” Gen. Dan Goldfuss, a paratroop commander, said on Tuesday.
“What other surprises do they have?” asks a former U.S. official. “For them to have planned this well, this long, there has to be another step to this.” Hamas must have anticipated that Israel would attack Gaza in revenge for the ghastly attack, he argues. What defenses did they prepare?
According to one Western official, the intelligence services of Jordan and Egypt have given Israel a grim warning. Their agents inside Gaza report that Hamas has prepared improvised explosive devices, antitank weapons and other defenses along the avenues of approach into the enclave, according to this source.
Urban warfare is an especially brutal kind of conflict, with difficulties that confound even the most professional militaries. I reported on two examples as a journalist — Israel’s siege of Beirut in 1982 and the U.S. Marines’ assault on Fallujah in 2004. Both offer vivid warnings now for the Israeli attack on Gaza.
The siege of Beirut was an example of how battle plans can go awry. The Israeli military burst into Lebanon on June 6, 1982, determined to drive the Palestine Liberation Organization from its sanctuary in West Beirut. Israeli tanks reached the city in several days. But rather than bolt and run, as some Israeli military planners had expected, the Palestinians stood their ground — and Israel began a two-month siege of the city, shelling it with artillery and bombing from the air.
As I wrote at the time, Israel’s problem was that its messages got mixed. The aim was to scare the Palestinians into leaving but reassure world opinion. Instead, Palestinians grew more stubborn and global criticism of Israel increased. In the end, the United States brokered a settlement that allowed PLO leader Yasser Arafat and his fighters to safely leave the city.
But after the PLO had gone, Lebanese militiamen massacred Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, near the posts of Israeli troops supposedly safeguarding the city, harming Israel’s image. The Palestinian gunmen in West Beirut were replaced by the Lebanese Shiite militia that became Hezbollah. Some Israeli officials told me later that the invasion had been a mistake that had left Israel less secure.
Fallujah was the setting of another urban-war nightmare. A city of about 300,000 people just west of Baghdad, it was a center of Sunni resistance to the American occupation of Iraq that followed the 2003 U.S. invasion.
Against the advice of local Marine commanders, top U.S. officials ordered an assault on the city in April 2004. After a few weeks of heavy casualties, the Marines withdrew. Fallujah became only more rebellious, and the Marines attacked again in November 2004 in what proved to be the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War. The U.S. suffered 95 killed and 560 wounded in fierce house-to-house combat, across a city of 50,000 buildings.
Gaza is a far more difficult target than Fallujah. It has more than five times the population and a vast, confounding mix of high-rises above and tunnels below. Israel will probably try to decapitate the Hamas leadership. That was the goal of a January 2009 invasion, but the head grew back quickly.
The Israelis have some technology advantages this time that weren’t available 1982 or 2004. They probably have detailed computer images of every major building in Gaza, and they can use robots and drones to scout those buildings, find the Hamas defenders and kill them. Many of the terrorists who kidnapped Israeli hostages were recorded on video — and it’s a safe bet that every one of them will be a target for Israeli revenge.
Technology might help, too, in finding and rescuing the hostages. But this will be difficult. Arab intelligence officials believe that some of the hostages were taken by freelance looters and thugs rather than Hamas fighters, according to the Western official. Finding where they’re hidden will be difficult and dangerous.
And after the assault on Gaza, what then? Does Israel really want to own this poor, hungry enclave that even today, 75 years after Israel’s birth, resembles a refugee camp? Perhaps Israel’s Arab friends, including a post-normalization Saudi Arabia, can create a stable post-Hamas government in Gaza that can bring prosperity and security to this place of misery and death.
Israel must answer Saturday’s terrible attack. The country’s very existence was shaken by the assault. And perhaps the aftermath will bring a happier future for Palestinians, who are one of modern history’s most ill-fated people. But as a colleague warned me many decades ago, when it comes to the Middle East, it’s an unfortunate truth that “pessimism pays.”
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