Israel faces a daunting fight in Gaza City

It could take Israeli forces months to seize complete control over Gaza City, the Hamas stronghold that is now surrounded by troops and armor, as they push to root out militants scattered across the urban battleground. 

Israel has warned that the fighting will be brutal as it seeks to capture the city block-by-block and defeat Hamas fighters hiding among civilians or staked out in a vast network of underground tunnels. 

“Gaza is the largest terror base built by mankind, ever — the entire city is one big terror base,“ said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on television Tuesday, vowing to continue fighting until full victory is achieved. “We are gnawing away at this capability.” 

While it’s possible the city could fall within a month, Israel has moved fairly slowly as forces gradually tighten an encirclement of Gaza City. The United States, Israel’s key backer in the war, has urged the military to minimize civilian casualties, and Hamas is still believed to be holding more than 200 hostages — both of which are potential factors in the deliberate pace so far.  

Ensuring the complete destruction of the military infrastructure of Hamas, which killed more than 1,400 Israelis and snatched some 240 hostages in a surprise attack Oct. 7, will be even more challenging.

“The intensity of this is about to pick up,” said Jonathan Spyer, the director of research at the Middle East Forum. “It takes time, it takes effort, it takes boots on the ground, and it can also take considerable losses.” 

‘The diplomatic clock is ticking’

The military challenges in the city are immense, but Israel also faces growing political pressure to end the war as protests continue around the world calling for a cease-fire. In the U.S., the Biden administration and a growing group of Democratic lawmakers are pushing Israel to agree to a “humanitarian pause” in fighting to allow for more aid into Gaza, and safe passage for civilians out of besieged areas. 

Israel has pulled out of previous wars — including conflicts with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in 1996 and 2006 — before completing its military objectives, due to political and diplomatic forces.

“The diplomatic clock is ticking,” Spyer added. “Will the key American support for the operation hold for a sufficient amount of time for Israel to complete its activities?” 

More than 10,000 Palestinians have already died in the war, according to the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry, whose figures cannot be independently verified. Palestinian health officials claimed on Facebook this week that 70 percent of the victims are the elderly, women and children.

Michael Makovsky, president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said the longer the war plays out, the more likely there will be a widening of fissures on the left and among progressives in the U.S.

“The world doesn’t want to give them that kind of time,” he said. “And already a lot of people have already forgotten about the barbaric massacre that triggered this.” 

The Israeli military is already engaged in intense fighting across northern Gaza, securing Hamas military bases and destroying weapons compounds. Israel says it has struck more than 2,500 terror targets since launching the ground operation Oct. 28. 

Gaza City is the next key hurdle for Israel to overcome, fraught with booby traps, bunkers and Hamas hideouts. And Hamas is embedded in the civilian population, with its main base thought to be at Al-Shifa hospital. 

The urban battle is in the early stages. While there does not appear to be a large maneuver yet, Israeli soldiers are already operating in Gaza City, said Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

“We are acting inside it,” Netanyahu said Tuesday during a televised address. “We are deepening pressure over Hamas by the hour, by the day.”  

Howard Stoffer, a professor of national security at the University of New Haven, said he expects Israel will keep closing in on Gaza City to split the city into two halves. 

“Then their forces will continue to break up Gaza City into smaller and smaller pieces,” said Stoffer, who also served in the State Department and worked in the Middle East. “And they’ll have to fight [in the next phase] door-to-door, house-to-house and try to find the fighters that are still there.” 

Palestinian militants are prepared for a long war  

On Telegram, the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, hinted that its forces are deployed “in all arenas” and has taunted Israel to move deeper into Gaza territory.

Stoffer said Hamas will hold “all the advantages” inside its tunnels and that the Palestinian fighters do not wear uniforms, blending into the civilian population. 

“It really creates a dilemma for Israeli forces,” he said. “They spent 50 days in [the city] in 2014 and they didn’t take Gaza.” 

John Barranco, a retired U.S. Marine and now an adjunct professor at the Naval War College, said in urban warfare, “every building is a potentially hardened bunker from which an enemy can launch an ambush,” and improvised explosive devices can be deployed everywhere. 

“Patrols of infantrymen only a block apart will not be able to see or support each other with fire,” Barranco wrote in an analysis. “Efforts to evacuate the wounded will be slowed by the lack of landing zones to support medical evacuations by helicopter.” 

Even taking Gaza City might not spell an end to the fighting, which could drag out as militants engage in sporadic guerilla warfare. 

Michael Eisenstadt, director of The Washington Institute’s Military and Security Studies Program, said it will take months to destroy military workshops used by Hamas. 

“The relatively low-tech nature of the Hamas force, its reliance on arms workshops that employ dual-use equipment, and the retention by Hamas members of the know-how gained while building this infrastructure will greatly complicate Israel’s efforts to eliminate these capabilities on a lasting basis,” Eisenstadt assessed. 

What happens after Israel captures Gaza City?  

If and when Israel takes full control of Gaza City, it will have severed the Gaza Strip in two, with one half of the coastal enclave occupied, and the other half, in the south, home to more than a million civilian refugees.

Analysts say there are more Hamas bases that Israel will have to move toward next, including in southern Gaza, which could become politically tricky given the number of civilians there. 

And Netanyahu said when the fighting was done, his country would have control over Gaza for an “indefinite period.” 

“When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine,” he said this week. 

President Biden has warned that an Israeli reoccupation of the Gaza Strip would be a “big mistake,” but that taking out Hamas was a “necessary requirement.”

However, David Petraeus, the former CIA director and commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said Israel may have little choice. 

“It is going to be very, very challenging, but I fear it is going to be inescapable,” he said of an Israeli occupation, during a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace event Tuesday. 

“You’re going to have to keep a very close eye, and you are not going to be able to do that from Israel.”

Stoffer said the ideology of Hamas is popular and will be impossible to get rid of without a solution that ultimately allows for Palestinian independence. 

“I don’t see how Israel could administer a territory, small as it is, with 2.3 million people and a lot of children,” he said. ”The only solution is a two-state solution. There really is no other way for all these people to share the same land.”