For more than a decade, Israel's military leadership has grudgingly acknowledged a key trait of its enemies in Gaza: Hamas knows how to bide its time.
"Let the beast sleep until you are ready," was the mantra of Mahmoud Ajrami, a veteran Palestinian fighter who trained a generation of Gaza militants.
There are many examples. In 2018, Hamas released photos of Israeli soldiers being targeted by their snipers - no shots were fired, even as the Israelis fired on protesters at the border fence. In another video, extremists are shown destroying a military bus with a "cornet" missile - but they waited for the soldiers to disperse and for the driver to take a cigarette break.
The apparent restraint was interpreted by Israel as a sign that Hamas was deterred. But for Ajrami, this militant group was just waiting to drag Israel into the fray at a moment of its choosing.
"Bring me the beast, and together we will kill it," he promised fighters outside his villa in 2021, after Hamas declared victory over Israel in an 11-day war that included a fierce exchange of Palestinian rockets and Israeli bombs - but no ground fire troops.
The trigger came on October 7, when Hamas fighters stormed Israeli cities and military positions, killing more than 1400 people and taking 230 hostages, in what Israeli officials say is the largest loss of life inside Israel since the founding of the state. The scale of horror in that attack drew Israel into the largest military operation in Gaza, in air and artillery attacks leveled huge parts of the territory, and more than 9000 people were killed, according to Palestinian officials.
With technological superiority and fierce weaponry, Israel has now launched its first ground offensive in Gaza in nearly a decade. Since last Friday, "merkava" tanks and the army have entered the Gaza Strip. Their destination is Gaza City, the heart of the Hamas political and armed machine.
"As the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) move into Gaza City, Hamas will have home turf advantage -- and they are ready," warned Devorah Margolin of the Near East Policy Institute in Washington.
"We were preparing for an Israeli ground offensive even before we launched our attack. We have some surprises for the enemy. It will be easier to deal with warfare in the city than with airstrikes - it cannot be compared, said one of the leaders of Hamas, Ali Barek.
Back in August, Major General Yitzhak Brik, a former military ombudsman, warned that Israel was "not ready for war." Israeli soldiers have not been involved in major ground combat since 2014 - when Israel last deployed troops inside Gaza - and top military officials have been concerned with potential threats from Iran rather than the territory in the immediate neighborhood.
Meanwhile, Hamas has grown militarily stronger since 2008-9, when it first faced an Israeli ground attack, military officials and analysts said.
Even then, Hamas' military wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, deployed 16000 fighters in addition to 2000 troops in units. Now according to the IDF, Hamas has as many as 40 elite fighters, a large arsenal of drones and about 000 rockets. From October 30 to Friday, 000 rockets were fired, exhausting Israel's "Iron Dome" interception systems to the point that the US had to send replacements.
Emil Hokajem, director of regional security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said Hamas was trained by "the best in the business," referring to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard and its most powerful proxy, Hezbollah in Lebanon. "It is also a fast-learning organization that has fought against Israeli forces on several occasions," Hokayem said. "Hasmas knows the field extremely well and will defend it fiercely and cunningly".
Its fighters had already shown during the October 7 attack that they could carry out a well-coordinated operation involving at least 1500 soldiers who attacked Israel from land, air and sea, under the protection of 3000 rockets that almost overwhelmed Israel's air defense system.
In Gaza, Hamas dug a vast network of deep aerial bombardment-proof tunnels and stocked them with supplies to withstand a months-long Israeli siege.
"We were preparing for an Israeli ground offensive even before we carried out our attack," Ali Barek, a prominent member of Hasa's political leadership in exile, told the Financial Times last Sunday. "We have some surprises for the enemy," he added. "It will be easier for us to deal with urban warfare than with airstrikes - it cannot be compared."
Many of the military lessons Hamas learned from Hezbollah stem from the fateful moment in 1992 when Israel deported some 400 Palestinians, including Hamas leaders, to Lebanon and left them in the middle of winter in a mountainous no-man's land.
Shiite-dominant Iran and Hezbollah then had the opportunity to draw in Sunni Hamas, after nurturing the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, a smaller militant group that is also involved in the conflict. Israeli officials claim that Hezbollah introduced rocket technology, training and other techniques to Hamas.
Beirut has since become home to several Hamas leaders and, over time, Hamas has begun to build a military presence in Lebanon—as evidenced when a weapons cache believed to belong to Hamas exploded in late 2021.
Since then, Hamas has slowly upgraded the quality of its weaponry, smuggling components to convert rockets into precision-guided weapons and even building an underwater drone.
According to Hamas, the group is now building Mutabar-1 shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles, which it claims can shoot down Israeli helicopters, and al-Jasin anti-tank missiles, which it claims can penetrate the reactive armor protection of Israeli tanks. "Merkava".
Meanwhile, the group has developed an urban warfare technique driven by the need to counter Israel's technological and air superiority by taking the fight to the streets of urban areas.
"Hamas is more Viet Cong than ISIL," Hokajem said, referring to the communist fighters who ultimately defeated American forces during the Vietnam War, and the jihadist group that Israel compares to Hamas.
As the Viet Cong did in Vietnam, Hamas has turned Gaza into a fortress of barricades and mouseholes - including a 400-kilometer network of tunnels that Hamas fighters can take shelter in during Israeli airstrikes and use to ambush Israeli forces.
As Israeli troops push deeper into Gaza, Hamas is likely to try to use aerial ambushes, swift strikes and bombings to wear down Israel's largely civilian army of reservists and force them into street fighting.
"Hamas does not have a doctrine in the strict sense of the word. Their approach is mainly based on inflicting as much damage as possible on the Israelis, using a combination of hybrid and conventional forces," said Bilal Saab, a fellow at the Chatham House Institute in London.
"Operations are also largely decentralized. There is a kind of cellular military structure, in which each company operates independently," he said.
Hamas' propaganda operations are another important component. Downed Israeli helicopters, destroyed tanks or captured soldiers will help the militant group project an image of victory, military analysts said.
At the same time, rockets fired from hidden launchers will keep the conflict deep inside Israeli territory, fueling Hamas' support base - as when Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport was closed during the 50 2014-day war.
Another lesson Hamas has learned from other militant groups is the importance of secure communications. While Hezbollah built its fiber optic network, Hamas maintained operational security by opting for "stone age" and wired phone lines, avoiding devices that can be hacked or that emit an electronic signature.
One of the reasons why Israel could not have foreseen the October 7 attack was, according to one Israeli official, that they were listening on the "wrong lines". Meanwhile, key military information was exchanged either through "analog" systems, or other encrypted systems, possibly imported from Iran that were unknown to Israel.
This is a technological trick that carries a strong warning of an Israeli ground attack. "What else were they hiding?" - said the Israeli official. "Don't you think we're wondering the same thing?"
Translation: N. Bogetić
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