A full-scale Israeli ground invasion of Gaza was imminent on Friday after the Israel Defense Forces confirmed for the first time that its troops and tanks had begun conducting raids inside the Palestinian enclave.
Israel has amassed a significant arsenal on the edge of Gaza as its war with the Hamas terror group escalates, including 35 battalions containing 300,000 troops who will be led into battle by 100 D9R fortified bulldozers, 300 tanks and dozens of armored vehicles. personnel transportation. [APCs].
The IDF said Friday that troops have already carried out “localized raids” into Gaza to hunt terrorists and try to find some of the approximately 150 Israeli hostages captured by Hamas during last week’s ruthless attacks, which sparked the war and left more than 1,300 Israelis dead. .
Since then, Israel has launched nightly bombardments on Gaza with some 6,000 airstrikes against strategic targets, reducing many to rubble. The territory’s Health Ministry said 1,900 people were killed in the airstrikes.
Israel has already prepared some 35 battalions (with tens of thousands of troops, tanks and artillery) along the Gaza border. EyePress News/Shutterstock The IDF said Friday that troops have already carried out “localized raids” in Gaza to hunt terrorists and try to find some of the approximately 150 Israeli hostages captured by Hamas.
On Thursday, the IDF dropped leaflets in northern Gaza warning its approximately 1.1 million residents to head south of the Wadi Gaza Bridge within 24 hours, which included the evacuation of 11 hospitals, three the UN and two refugee camps, which most took as a sign of a ground invasion. would follow. Hamas told its citizens to ignore the warning and remain where they are.
Multiple military authorities warned that fighting in such a densely populated urban environment is an extremely difficult and laborious proposition.
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“There will be IDF soldiers dismounted, not only in the streets, but trying to go house to house… opening holes in the walls,” Seth G. Jones, director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. , he told CBS News.
“They will have to travel in armored personnel carriers to protect them. They will also have main battle tanks and bulldozers to accompany them. “They will be supported by Israeli F15 and F16 fixed-wing aircraft, probably helicopters and then Israeli drones.”
Although the Israeli military will have air support, including AH64 Apache attack helicopters, it is unlikely they will be able to help against Hamas’s 300-mile labyrinthine underground tunnel system, built at an estimated cost of $90 million, which is believed to only terrorists to know all the intricacies of.
“Some of them are probably booby-trapped,” Colin P. Clarke, a conflict and terrorism specialist at the Soufan Group, told iNews this week of the tunnels.
The Israel Defense Forces began moving tanks and weapons toward the border near Gaza this week. EyePress/Shutterstock News
“Preparing to fight in such terrain is incredibly difficult and would require extensive intelligence about what the tunnel network is like, something the Israelis may not have.”
Time is also ticking and pressure is mounting to rescue the hostages captured on October 7 who are currently being held somewhere in Gaza, most likely in the tunnel system.
Estimates of the number of Hamas troops range between 15,000 and 30,000.
They also have a series of weapons to deploy such as mines, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank weapons, civilian vehicles modified to carry heavy machine guns or explosives, and snipers.
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Military experts have also noted that fighting through airstrike debris is problematic as the bombs create wide open spaces surrounded by debris, offering many hiding places for the enemy.
Israel’s first line of defense against that will be to send in the D9R bulldozers, which are heavily fortified against gunfire and can easily clear mines and destroy infrastructure like walls.
Merkava IV tanks and the army’s Namer armored vehicles are likely to follow.
The Israeli military has invested enormous resources in launching its ground invasion, including building a training base in the southern desert, dubbed “mini Gaza,” that was intended to replicate the region’s urban landscape.
Israel activated some 300,000 reservists to join its standing IDF force of more than 160,000 in the days after last weekend’s attack. EyePress/Shutterstock News
The most difficult threat of all will be to distinguish who is a terrorist and who is a civilian as the battle unfolds.
“I think the initial challenge facing the Israelis is one of intelligence: who is a friend and who is an enemy?” Jones said, adding that terrorists would likely use “civilians as shields.”
“It’s going to be virtually impossible to distinguish between civilians and Hamas,” he added.
This also raises the question of how a humanitarian corridor allowing civilians to leave Gaza could be implemented.
Estimates of the number of Hamas troops range between 15,000 and 30,000.AP
The United Nations issued a statement saying that Israel’s 24-hour evacuation order cannot be met.
The country’s ambassador to the UN responded by saying it is doing “everything possible to minimize civilian casualties.”
Israeli officials have already made clear that it will not be a quick or easy campaign.
Former US Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CNBC that the war will last “at least weeks… but it depends on what the objectives are and whether it escalates.”
The Israeli military has invested enormous resources in launching its ground invasion, including building a training base in the southern desert, dubbed “mini Gaza,” that was intended to replicate the region’s urban landscape. EyePress News/Shutterstock former US Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CNBC the war will last “at least weeks… but it depends on what the objectives are and whether it escalates.” EyePress News/Shutterstock
The war is already expected to last longer than the 2008 Gaza war, which lasted just over three weeks, and the 2014 Operation Protective Edge, which lasted six weeks, for the IDF to achieve its stated goal of erasing Hamas.” from the face of the earth.” ”.
Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu promised in a speech Friday night in Israel: “We will destroy Hamas… This is just the beginning.”
“The purpose is to defeat all the military capabilities and military apparatus of Hamas and that will require a long operation,” an Israeli security source said.
“Most of the targets, people, equipment and logistics are located underground and it is possible that the hostages are located underground,” the source continued.
“The objective will be to flatten the terrain so that we can then reach the underground bunkers.”
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