Israel has imposed a “total siege” on the Gaza Strip since Monday and announced that it had deployed tens of thousands of soldiers in the south of the country, partially regaining control of its border with the enclave. At the same time, preparations for a land invasion are intensifying, but urban warfare is one of the most difficult battles to wage.
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Dark night in Gaza. In the Palestinian enclave which is home to 2.3 million people, the effects of the total blockade are being felt. No more fuel for the power plant. The bombardments continued throughout the night with the shelling of several neighborhoods where Hamas and Islamic Jihad installations are located, including the Hamas Nuqba force which carried out the attack on Saturday morning, according to the army. Israeli. An Israeli spokesperson said this Thursday morning during a briefing that the exact location of these sites comes from the interrogation of the attackers taken prisoner since the start of the attack. For the first time, the army acknowledges that there were warning signs of an imminent operation last Friday, reports our correspondent in Jerusalem, Michael Paul.
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On the Israeli side, Hamas claimed to have fired rockets towards Tel Aviv. The army and police continue to scour the outskirts of the Gaza Strip in search of armed Palestinians. On Wednesday, at least four of them were shot dead by Israeli security forces. And then the Israeli passive defense continues to investigate the breakdown of its alert system, the sirens and the mobile application which sent the entire country into shelters on Wednesday following a bug or an error. cyberattack for an incursion of enemy drones from Lebanon which in reality did not take place.
In the Gaza Strip, at least 1,200 people, including many civilians, were killed in Israeli air raids, according to local authorities. The Israeli army also claimed to have recovered the bodies of 1,500 Hamas fighters who had infiltrated several locations near the Gaza Strip on Saturday. On October 7, in the middle of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish rest, hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel in vehicles, by air and sea, killing more than a thousand civilians in the streets, in their homes or in full rave party, and sowing terror under a deluge of rockets.
“ Hamas is Daesh and we will crush and destroy it »
“ Every member of Hamas is a dead man “, launched Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sixth day of the war during a first solemn speech with his emergency government, formed the same day with Benny Gantz, one of the main opposition leaders. “ Hamas is Daesh and we will crush and destroy it like the world destroyed Daesh “, he added after describing the attack as “ savagery never seen since the Shoah “.
As of Wednesday evening, this new working group began the task of deciding on military operations. In principle, decisions are made by the war cabinet: Netanyahu, Defense Minister Gallant and new minister Benny Gantz, surrounded by several observers. Formally, these decisions will have to be ratified by a larger forum including far-right ministers Smotrich and Ben Gvir.
Important point: the entire legislative process, particularly on the reform of the judicial system which deeply divides Israelis, is frozen. This emergency government will only last for the duration of the war. In its editorial this Thursday morning, the daily Haaretz demands the dismissal of Minister Ben Gvir who asked on Wednesday to launch an operation targeting Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel. This new government received the blessing of American President Biden who for the second time asked Israel to respect the legal rules of war.
A dangerous operation
“ We are preparing for the next steps. We hit a lot of targets “, Israeli army spokesperson Jonathan Cornicus said at dawn on Thursday. The concentrations of troops on the border raise fears of a ground offensive against the enclave, from which Israel withdrew unilaterally in 2005 and which has been governed by Hamas since 2007. Nearly 300,000 reservists have been recalled.
“ The objective will be to inflict maximum damage on Hamas’ military structures, estimates the gGeneral Jérôme Pellistrandi, editor-in-chief of the National Defense Magazineat the microphone of Martin Hortin. This means continuing the work that has already been undertaken since Saturday evening with the aerial bombardments but this time by targeting from the ground all the buildings, all the installations likely to shelter Hamas fighters. This also means a return to the territory of the Gaza Strip. But a return which could be punctual with the assumed risk of having losses on the Israeli side. A risk which is clearly assumed by the government which, in a way, benefits from a form of national unity after the terrible images that we have seen in recent days. »
A terrifying prospect of fighting in the heart of an extremely densely populated city, underground and in the presence of hostages. With around 5,500 people per square kilometer, Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, and engaging in combat there risks proving perilous for the Israeli army. Because the urban area, the military notes, is the ultimate battlefield. The partitioning of the environment, the presence of the population and the abrasive nature of the city give the defender the opportunity to inflict significant losses on the opponent, even if he is more powerful.
The city is said to have an equalizing power between two belligerents. In urban warfare, combat is never very far from hand-to-hand combat, it is a duel. Progress is necessarily slow, building by building. Leaving it means running the risk of being shot down by snipers. And in this street war, tanks and heavy artillery are almost of no use.
In 2017, during the Battle of Mosul, it took 100,000 soldiers to defeat 5,000 Islamic State terrorists. The battle for Gaza will therefore also probably be long, complex and costly in terms of combatants.