Many pro-Israeli commentators are making statements about how the IDF has learned the lessons of the 2006 war against Hezbollah and how the mistakes which were then committed by the Israelis would not be repeated today. Sounds good, but it also makes me wonder what exactly they are referring to? Let’s take a closer look at the two main aspects of the 2006 war and see whether they are really relevant to the assault on Gaza today.
The bombing campaign by the Israeli Air Force:
So far, if there were any “lessons” learned from 2006 one can be excused for not being able to identify which ones: the Israelis are bombing buildings with the hope of hitting the forces of the resistance. That, of course, assumes that resistance fighters are stupid enough to hide inside the targeted buildings. Why would any infantry force be so kind as to conveniently hide itself inside easily identifiable and targetable buildings is anyone’s guess, of course. So if there was a “lesson” to be learned from 2006 it would be that BUILDINGS are not COMBAT FORCES. Simple, but totally overlooked by the Israelis. Or is it? If one assumes that the Israelis are truly after Hamas, then it would appear that the Israelis are just amazingly obtuse and do not learn their lesson. But if one makes a different assumption, that the Israelis are not trying to hit Hamas, but are trying to make the civilians population pay for its support for Hamas, then the Israeli strategy makes sense (in a sick way). Of course, this is also what took place in 2006. The reality is that Israel never really attempted to destroy Hezbollah with air strikes. Weaken it somewhat, yes, probably, but not really destroy it. Today we are seeing the same “garden variety” Israeli form of terrorism which uses F-16 to punish a misbehaving Palestinian population. Is that an effective technique? Of course not, but that is one the Israelis simply like. So much for the “lessons learned” thing.
The ground invasion
After being humiliated by Hezbollah’s defiant resistance to its 2006 version of “shock and awe”, the Israelis send their ground forces into Lebanon with the somewhat vague objective of “disarming Hezbollah” and freeing the two Israeli soldiers made prisoners by Hezbollah. The result of that was a 28 day SNAFU which will rank as one of the most humiliating defeat every inflicted on a military force. How would an invasion of Gaza compare to the 2006 invasion?
First, it is important to stress here that the terrain in Gaza is dramatically different from the one in southern Lebanon. While the latter is a combinations of hills, narrow valley and 
small villages, Gaza is flat and extremely urbanized. Gaza is also of a rather elongated shape (take a look at the high-res map by clicking on it), so Gaza can be cut into several separated sections by an Israeli combined arms thrust towards the coastline. The main advantage of such a strategy would be mainly psychological: it would give the Israelis the opportunity to say that they have taken control of “all of Gaza”. Good PR for sure, but fairly useless in military terms as it would still leave the main urban areas in the hands of the resistance. What to do with these areas is really the key decision which the Israeli generals have to make: do they go in or not?
If they decide to stay clear from the highly urbanized sections of Gaza they will have achieved very little in military terms: Hamas will just pull back its forces inside and keep on striking the Israelis in a way and manner of their choosing. If the decide to go in the urban areas then the Israelis will be looking at a type of war which the never had to face before.
Sending in Merkavas is simply not an option. This is exactly what Eltsin’s defense minister Pavel Grachev did during the first Chechen war when ordered a hastily assembled Russian armored force enter Grozny . We know the result: the Russians did rapidly get inside the center of Grozny, but only to be immediately slaughtered by Chechen infantryman with antitank weapons. Not even the Israelis could repeat such a crude tactical mistake (Grachev was one of the most incompetent officer to ever command a Russian military operation).
The correct way to invade an urban center like Grozny or Gaza is to do what the Russians did in the second Chechen war: to send in heavily armed mobile infantry units, supported by armor coming in *behind* them. Such a force has to move in with little or no support from the air (helicopters are too vulnerable, aircraft too prone to blue on blue mistakes) and it cannot make much use of advanced military technologies besides UAV/drones and nightfighting optics. Could the Israelis repeat the Russian operation in Grozny? That really depends on the quality of their soldiers but my guess is that they cannot.
For the second Chechen war the Russians did not repeat Grachev’s criminally incompetent mistakes: they sent in very well trained forces, a mixture of Airborne Forces, Naval Infantry, Special Operations units, Internal Ministry special forces (SOBR), FSB special forces (Vympel, Gruppa A) etc. Many of these forces were composed of professional soldiers with a great deal of combat experience and with a strong determination to eradicate the Wahabi Chechen terrorists which had taken over the Chechen republic.
Organized in mobile infantry operational groups the Russian forces retook Grozny building by building, with some instances of close quarters and hand to hand combat against the Chechens, and while the Russian forces did not suffer as many casualties as some had predicted, their losses were not trivial either. It takes a great deal of resolve to be able to pull off that kind of operation. Are the Israelis capable of this kind of resolve? I don’t think so.
From a “real” fighting force, the IDF has gradually transformed itself into a “punitive” forces whose main capability is to shoot, kill, maim and otherwise terrorize and humiliate Palestinian civilians. Then there is the deeply ingrained Israeli racism which makes them believe that the Palestinians are somehow “inferior” to them. In contrast, while the Russians definitely hated the Wahabi Chechen leaders for the innumerable atrocities these terrorists were guilty of, the Russians never felt that the Chechen people were somehow “inferior”. Most Russians, in fact, knew that the Chechens are formidable and courageous fighters and they respected them for that.
The Israelis have neither the training nor the guts to take back the urban areas of Gaza house by house. In stark contrast to the Israelis, I am willing to bet that the Palestinians are impatient for that kind of fight to begin and that Hamas and the other Palestinians are as ready as ever to finally get a chance to take on their oppressor in a fairly even combat.
For all their boisterous hubris, the Israeli commanders probably know all this and while it is hard to make prediction about what kind of follies a born looser like Olmert might commit before he finally leaves office (Olmert is, I think, in the same league as Grachev), my guess is that the Israelis will not reinvade Gaza.
Yes, they will go in, kill many Palestinians, and then declare victory and leave (probably under the figleaf of some kind of a Egyptian or Quartet brokered deal). In the end, Hamas will win a first military victory which will be strenuously denied by the Zionist controlled media. Ditto for the US political class: remember how Dubya announced to the world that Israel had “defeated” Hezbollah in 206?
Hamas is not Hezbollah, not by a long stretch. But the Israelis are every bit as stupid as they were in 2006, that is the real “lesson” which the Palestinians will learn from all this. Hopefully, this ill-conceived Israeli assault is what will finally make Hamas into a Hezbollah-like force and then Israel will find *itself* surrounded by a “wall” of its own: a wall of resolve and courage by the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance forces. Lastly, the Israeli blunder into Gaza will contribute to destabilize the puppet Mubarak who will find himself in a position similar to the one of Siniora and the rest of the Israeli puppets in Lebanon.
While the first couple of days probably feel good for many Israelis, we can count in hearing the first cries of “oi veh!” fairly soon. Israel will find out the hard way that there is no quick fix for the Gaza problem out there.
The Saker
Isn’t it highly unlikely that the Israelis will launch any kind of ground offensive? Far better to keep starving Gazans and firing missiles from a distance wantonly slaughtering Palestinian civilians.
I suspect this whole disgusting episode is an attempt by the Kadima move to hold on to power at the next election. It reminds me of how Perez presided over the shelling of a UN camp in Lebanon just to show how tough he was.
As I recall Netanyahu won that election anyway and I suspect he will win this one also.
Brilliant article from Justin Raimondo on the politics of the Gazan massacre
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13965
In the name of the Gazans and in deep solidarity with them, I dare to borrow Neruda’s words to shout: I demand punishment!.
TODAY I AM A PALESTINIAN, AND I DEMAND PUNISHMENT!
Here, they brought their guns filled
With powder and ordered callous extermination,
Here, they found a people singing, a people reunited
By necessity and love,
And the skinny girl fell with her flag,
And the once-smiling boy rolled wounded to his side
And the dazed town watched the dead fall
In fury and pain.
Then, there
Where the dead fell, murdered,
They lowered their flags and soaked them in blood
To raise them again in the face of their murderers.
For these our dead, I ask for punishment.
For those who spilled blood in our country,
I ask for punishment.
For the executioner who sent us murder,
I ask for punishment.
For those who prospered from our slaughter,
I ask for punishment.
For he who gave the order that caused our agony,
I ask for punishment.
For those that defended this crime,
I ask for punishment.
I don’t want them to offer us
Their hands – soaked in our own
Blood: I want them punished.
I don’t want them as ambassadors,
Or living comfortably in their homes:
I want to see them tried
here in this plaza, here in this place.
I demand punishment!
If you would learn how to bring Israel down, Lucia, read “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. It is full of neoliberal ideology but does describe how technology transfer from the West to China will relegate the US to a second rate power.
Hi Saker,
Interesting post. Do you have a military background?
Some thoughts:
It is useful to think about Gaza as halfway between between Grozny and Lebanon, but in the end i think Grozny is closer to the mark.
Hamas doesn’t have the same kind of anti tank arsenal or sophisticated mines that Hezbollah did. Hamas doesn’t have as sophisticated command and control capabilities as Hezbollah did either. Gaza’s terrain won’t lend itself to ambush operations as readily as the Lebanese hillside did. Hamas hasn’t had the time or opportunity to harden it’s bases as Hezbollah had. The Palestinian Resistance is also compromised by israeli intelligence; it’s a fair bet israel won’t have to look for anyone in particular for long. Hezbollah could arrange for shipment of resupplies, Hamas can hardly find bread to feed it’s children in the best of times.
Most important Hezbollah had a clear goal to achieve from the very begining of the war and a systematic plan on how to achieve it, as well as well thought out contingencies for how to defeat Israeli tactics. Hamas is not quite there yet.
Israel’s proximity to and familiarity with Gaza will make it’s task much easier than Russia’s in Grozny. In Lebanon, the longer the fight went on, the stronger Hezbollah got. In Gaza the opposite will be true as the entire population is made to starve to death while there is any resistance still active. Israel was bogged down in Lebanon because it had no achievable aims. In Gaza they will be able to track down what remains of the PA government and “liquidate” them and declare victory. There is no military objective that Hamas can deny Israel.
Hamas may be able to shut down some Israeli cities for a week or two. And they’ll have the chance the inflict some pain on ground incursions into urban areas(at a great cost), but i’m afraid they will be physically unable to keep it up.
Unless Hamas has some real surprises up it’s sleeves, Palestinians are in a world of trouble(more so than usual).
The only thing they can hope to get out of this is an uprising in Egypt that insists on complete Egyptian-Palestinian Control of the Rafah crossing, and perhaps more unity amongst themselves.
Masoud
@Masoud: thanks for your comments. I have to say that I do not know for a fact how well prepared Hamas has prepared itself for the current Israeli assault or not. My guess is that they did have two years to prepare and if that is true I would give Hamas better chances that you do.
While, as I wrote, the terrain in Gaza is flat, a densely built urban terrain offers many excellent opportunities to prepare a defense. The biggest unknown to me is the quality of the buildings in Gaza. Grozy has many very tough Soviet era building which were very hard to bring down short of a direct artillery or missile strike, and this is one of the reason the Chechens did not put up too much of a fight in the comparatively weaker outskirts of Grozy.
If Hamas prepared well, the resistance’s combat engineers should have prepared the main axis of advance of the Israeli forces and they should have stores of food and ammunitions to sustain a rather lengthy assault. Again, I do not know that they did that for a fact.
Also, keep in mind that it will take a *lot* of Israeli manpower to search and arrest/kill most of the Hamas leaders in the midst of 1’5 million people. The Russians did not do that either, or even attempt to do that: they ingeniously used an agent provocateur from the Russian intelligence service to impersonate a corrupt officer. He convinced the Chechen leaders to flee Grozny through an “undefended” sector which in reality was a minefield combined with a free fire zone. I don’t expect the Israelis to show that degree of sophistication.
Concerning weapons:
Hezbollah did use advanced Russian anti-tank missiles in 2006, but keep in mind that their main strength was the great distance at which they could destroy the Israeli Merkavas. Inside Gaza, distance will not be a factor and even upgraded RPG-9 can be used very effectively against Merkavas, in particular from the top and from the back (especially on the escape hatch at the back of the tank). Also, mines and large IED can be used very effectively against tanks.
As for command and control, Gaza is much smaller then southern Lebanon so sophisticated communication capabilities can easily be replaced by very basic means such as couriers. Lastly, urban warfare is slow and is very much a local thing: advanced command and control is not needed since there is little maneuver in an urban setting.
Time will show, but I hope that this war will be Hamas’ “graduation’ to the ‘Hezbollah league’ and that, for the first time, the Palestinians will defeat Israel themselves. I have been disappointed by Hamas many times in the past, and this might be just another one of them, but I will keep hoping for Hamas to have the courage and the sagacity to do the right thing.
Cheers!
The Saker
“That, of course, assumes that resistance fighters are stupid enough to hide inside the targeted buildings.”
Sadly, though, in this case they may have been right. It appears that the Egyptians lulled Hamas into a false sense of security by indicating that any attack would not take place when it did, which meant that most Hamas (or “Hamas”) personnel probably were indeed present in the targetted buildings.
I do agree that the Israelis are hihgly unlikely to launch any significant ground invasion, for the reasons you mention. They lack both the courage and the competence. Besides, in a country where 100s of Palestinian lives are not worth one Israeli ‘soldier’ why bother?
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